Daily Entry

Apologies for the absence of entries the last 3 days. Got some cool news: there's a 50/50 chance of snow on valley floor starting from Friday thru the weekend. This hasn't happened to the Silicon Valley since 1976! I've got my camera ready to take some awesome photos of this rare event.

jp

Daily Entry

I'm like the biggest Tom Cruise fan out there. Ever since Top Gun came out in the 80's, Tom Cruise was my idol. So its really cool to find out that the movie is at the top of the list of 15 BEST GUY MOVIES EVERY MAN SHOULD SEE.

"Fast planes, hot chicks and a guy named Maverick. After seeing this movie, you know you wanted to hop in an F-14 and blow away a mig.

BEST LINE: And if you screw up just this much, you'll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog out of Hong Kong!"

Who doesn't remember the scene with Maverick and Goose singing, "You've lost that lovin' feeling"!

jp

Daily Entry

My two cousins and their parents from Australia are in town. I haven't seen any of them since 1988 (except my Uncle who visited us briefly on Sept. 11, 2011). One of my cousins wasn't even born in '88 and their older sister was about 9 when she visited us in '88. And yup they have the cool Sydney accent. Its really nice having relatives from our around the world. 8)

jp

Daily Entry

From an article today, "4 feet of snow in a day near Lake Tahoe: Storms have dumped up to 9 feet since Monday along Sierras". It looks like the storm we had this week has been packing quite a wallop from here to Nevada!

jp

Daily Entry

What a drizzly day. I heard the rain pitter-pattering last night on the roof before I fell asleep. I woke up to a gray day in the morning. When we went to celebrate my parent's anniversary at lunchtime, it was coming down in hail. However this is my favorite kind of day to read a good book indoors.

Oh btw Happy Anniversary to my Parents for making it thru 40 something years of marriage (I think its 43 years but I don't remember the exact date!).

jp

Daily Entry

Last post for this week. Going back to Friday night, I was watching Alaska Gold Rush. It was highly entertaining, enjoyable episode (though its the first one I've watched). I believed its the second to the last show for the season. The crew they were documenting had been working on their "Glory" hole for the last 5 months with this episode counting down to the winter season (which normally shuts down all mining). The crew finally hit the bedrock were the potential rich hit is. In the last 16 minutes, they showed how much gold was in the dirt before they sifted it thru the filtering water machine. All that being said, my biggest concern about watching all the events unfold was how destructive their methods are in the environment. In order for the crew to break even, they need to find about $275,000.00 worth of gold. Anything more is profit. If their lucky, their "Glory" hole could have millions of dollars. In the worst case scenario, they would find less than the $275,000.00. What struck me as tragic is these guys are trying to make a profit at the expense of tearing up this old river/waterfall and leaving a gaping whole when they are done. Who is going to clean up their mess when they are finished? The government? Probably not since they have more important bills to try to pay. Some concerned local citizens? Unlikely. Maybe an environmental group? Slim chance. In the end, Mother Nature will probably have to take care of the mess but it will take years and years. When interviewed, one of the crew members mentions that the jobs in his hometown have all dried up. Thus forcing him to invest his mortgage in this gold mining venture. One of the last pristine environments in North America but some people desperate enough to tear up for gold. It really looks like the past is repeating itself. The same thing happened in Nevada and California in the 1800's. From gold panning 49er's to big mining companies using hydro processing that left a devastation. I'm curious to see if any of these concerns will be addressed on the last episode. Incidentally Alaska Gold Rush claims to be the #1 rated Friday night show with I think 6 million viewers watching every week.

jp

Daily Entry

I am sooo pooped from last night. While my sister, mom helped my cousin out looking for wedding dresses, I was stuck babysitting my two younger nieces. Now my youngest niece is just shy of 3 years old but let me tell you she's not finished with her terrible twos! All night long it was, "I don't like you", "I don't want to talk to you", "I don't like this cartoon [it was Nihao, Kai-lan btw]", etc. And if she wasn't telling me what she didn't like, it was throwing things when I told her not to play with her juice, grapes or cereal. Or "I want to talk to Mommy-Momma". Argh! At one point, I wanted to lock myself in the bathroom like my Uncle did to me and my sister when I was ten years old. At the time I was pretty upset with my uncle but now I'm a little more sympathetic. Not surprisingly after all this activity from a pint-sized-almost-3-year-old, she ended up lying down next to me on the couch while I tried to finish Discovery's Alaska Gold Rush show. Literally about a minute after that she was sleeping like a baby. When my sister and parents finally showed up, they had a good laugh when I told them about the night's events. Me? I hope I don't have to babysit for my sister for a long while so I have a chance to recover. 8)

jp

Daily Entry

I finally finished the video for the TechCU Annual Party 2011 event from last month. This is the low quality version. I still am on the fence on making a higher quality unless TechCU wants it.

jp

Daily Entry

I've already twitter'd this a few minutes ago but for my regular bloggers, check out this deal. If your on the fence about buying an e-reader like Amazon's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook, this is totally steal! Hurry 'cause there's less than 6 hours left on the sale. Who knows if they may run out of inventory.

Barnes & Noble Certified Pre-Owned NOOK™ eReader With Wi-Fi® and Crisp E-Ink® Display

jp

Daily Entry

Surprise, surprise. I received 2 more orders from the corporate party from the 2 weeks ago. I hope to get at least 10 more orders. In the meantime, I'm working on ordering some wedding albums I designed as display samples. The only thing is they are frickin' expensive but the potential new customers should justify the cost. I hope! 8)

jp

Supplemental Entry

I read this post from my friend in Chicago who has been snowed out this week. As a Christian, I thought this was a truly unique sign from above. See? Miracles can happen in our every day life!

jp

"Something Absolutely Crazy Happened to me Today

alright... uh lemme start this by saying im pretty sure im the only christian on this server, at least so it seems, so i kind of hide my faith simply because i know people dont want to here a bunch of rambling of scriptures, and i know i dont leave the impression that i do believe in God, since i swear like a sailor at times, but no one is ever a "perfect christian" and im trying to work on watching my mouth... i just copied and pasted this from my facebook that i just posted

i strongly encourage you to read with an open mind if do read it, i wont be offended if you say something contrary to this, or if you dont say anything at all, i feel like its something that just needs to be heard

craziest thing ever happened to me today... and let me tell you, that this is not exaggerated in any shape or form. let me start out by saying i know probably 50% of my facebook friends are atheists, maybe 25% agnostics, and 25% christian/catholic... i get a text message every day from my cousin from oklahoma that has 2 bible verses, the first one doesnt really have a pattern and the 2nd one is always from Proverbs... well i was running on the treadmill at the gym and i was looking for the right song to run to, so i was skipping around on shuffle mode and i got my daily bible verse text, the song stopped on For Today - Agape, which i would have skipped because i pressed on the screen, but the text message got in the way so i couldnt change it, and whenever i get this text, no matter what im doing, i stop, read, and meditate on the message... todays 1st passage was Matthew 22:37 "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." right when i read that i felt like i just got a surge of emotions, like i just got hit with lightning... in the song For Today - Agape, the ending break down goes like this "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all mind, all your strength" and they repeat this like 4 time. some people can say, "o thats just a coincidence that the verse relates to the song you stopped on" no, its not... its definitely not, let me go over why its not, my workout play list consists of 82 songs... 1/82 1.22% chance this song comes on when im browsing... ok... now my cousin texts me anywhere from 10 am - as late as 5 pm, 7 hours x 60 minutes = 420... 1/420 = .24%... ok that slims it immensely, but here comes the back breaker... there are 31,103 verses in the bible... seriously... 1/31,103 = .003215% chance of that happening... 1.22%, .24%, and .003215% all these occurring at the same exact time is absolutely impossible in my mind... what im trying to get at is people need to open there eyes and see these signs, non believers probably think im crazy, but this is not purely coincidence, i cant even fathom how people can deny that there is a God. if you actually took the time to read all of this, please post or at least like. Thank you."

Daily Entry

Today I played some tennis with Glen at the park near his home. This is the second time we played this week. Now this normally would not be a profound, newsworthy or even blogworthy but it is for me. The last time Glen and I tried tennis was either last year or even sometime in 2009. Neither one of could last more than 15 minutes without stopping for a break (Mind you Glen is physically in better shape than me but hasn't been to the gym probably as long as I have). Tuesday's daytime warm up game was maybe 20-30 minutes. tops. Tonight was different in that we played 35-40 minutes strait. Even though it was a mite chilly, we got an all around good workout. We managed to take a 10 minute break before playing for another 10 minutes. In my mind, this is a good start for getting back into tennis. I figure if we can get our technique playable, we can do this 2-3 times a week which makes for a good workout routine. So we can have fun while still getting a workout!

P.S. I did install a Slingbox on the cable TV so my brother can watch this Sunday's Superbowl while he will be out of town coaching his team's volleyball tournament.

jp

Daily Entry

Nothing to report other than I ate something last night that disagreed with me. Woke up in the very early AM with intense abdominal pain. Took a bunch of meds which finally eased the pain by 11am-ish which allowed me to get some much needed sleep in the afternoon. hopefully i will get thru tonight without waking up too early. i have lots to do tomorrow without any unnecessary illness!

jp

Daily Entry

My buddy in Chicago posted on our forum that they are getting socketed with winter weather. Then I saw this headline on MSNBC, "Colossal storm roars across nation". While here in Silicon Valley, CA its been a typical nice California weather for Feb. Hope ally my friends back midwest, east, south, southwest weather the storm ok (no pun intended!).

I grabbed this photo from an article. It shows how massive the current weather system thats hitting most of the US! Click on this link to read the full article.

jp