Category: about me

Pure Vanity.

A Grand Slam

It’s important to listen to feedback from your readers:

Comment on my blog from John:

Lol, what a complete load of bollocks. I can’t believe I wasted my life reading this.

Comment on my blog from “photog”:

“You are not a real photographer, look at your shots. Stick to being a dork and don’t post this nonsense. Your camera doesn’t help your images.”

…

There is this old joke about how waitresses at Denny’s have to look ugly in order to make their food taste better:

Diner: “Excuse me, miss. There is something wrong with my Grand Slam breakfast.”

Waitress: “Hmm. Let me see.” *holds breakfast next to face* “Now does it look better?”

…

To John, photog, and others. Thanks for being the Denny’s waitresses of this blog. I always appreciate how your insightful commentary make me look good.

We serve slams all day

The real version of this sign says “Open 24 Hours” in red on the bottom.

Parting slam

A college friend once once went to a Denny’s in the Florida panhandle. It was closed. “Sorry we’re closed,” the guy inside said.

“But the sign outside says, you’re ‘Open 24 hours,’” my buddy pointed out.

“Yeah, but not all at once.”

Posted on by tychay 1

Triumphs of the Human Spirit

Blurb is hosting Lunch 2.0 today on Valentine’s Day!

Reading people’s twitter’s I think

Am I the only single person who loves Valentine’s day?

Oh the gifts, flowers, chocolates, singing telegram, and the the restaurant dinner reservation! I love watching the public trauma this day brings to two people in love. Sometimes it is like a romance sped up. Other times it is a romantic comedy in miniature, but mostly it is a complete disaster—still memorable in a “visit the inlaws” sort of way.

To that last one, I remember how my friend Jay broke up with his girlfriend by taking her to McDonald’s for Valentine’s—given how I love fast food, this would probably be my ideal date. 😀

I thank that I never have had to privately experience that public trauma. Historo-mathematically, it should have happened—I know that I’ve been in a relationship during some February 14th of the past, but somehow I’ve been spared any compulsion to participate.

Instead, I normally celebrate it by spamming friends and family with an e-card.

Not this year.

[Triumphs of the Human Spirit]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

Starbucks mastermind

All month, the closest Starbucks’s chalkboard has read: “Try a Skinny or Mocha Cinnamon dolce Latté A Non-fat, Sugar-free dairy delight!”

I had to stop ordering them because I dislike the sugar-free aftertaste. This means that I’m now faced with the question, “Do I want whip cream in it?”

Of course, when given an option for my food, I almost always say “yes,” and I started to realize that this is eating into my need for variety. How to balance those two?

[choice, choice, and more choice after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 11

LEGOs of things past

Scott Beale notes the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.

Burka asks, what is our preferred LEGO theme?

Does it show my age when I mention that pretty much the only theme available at the time was SPACE:

LEGO SPACE Model 442 (1978)

LEGO Space Shuttle (Model 442—1978)

Just so you know, the antenna in the back turns into a long range gauss gun. 😉

Look up the legos from your childhood on the LUGNET LEGO Set Database.

In 1977, there was a popular series of LEGO-like kits that allowed you to snap together models battleships, destroyers, and such. I don’t remember the name, but given the timing, they were the reason LEGO started to make themes. Here’s to that forgotten piece of toy history.

Posted on by tychay 4

Being popular

After the merkley??? party, I went with some friends to Matt Mullenweg’s birthday party.

(Matt, for those of you who don’t know, wrote WordPress which over the years has become the premier blogging application on the internet. Matt also gets a lot of shit from me when I talk about programming)

My friends and I are chatting in line outside BigFoot, when this pretty girl, K—, who I’ve never met before, ahead of me in line, turns around and says, “Wait, is your name ‘Terry Chay?’”

“Oh noes!” Morgan says, “Terry, you’re internet famous!”

So this is what it feels like to be popular?, I thought. Is it wrong that I sort of like it?

[Internet Fame after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 18

OOps! I (recycled my talk) again!

PHP is a hacky piece of shit that gets the job done that somehow that suits me just fine.

I honestly don’t know why I support SF PHP Meetup.

Quite frankly, I find the whole “Meetup” website strangely-segmented, overly-restrictive, and a closed-off and archaic anachronism. I am counting the days until Facebook or Ning finally gets their s—t together and wipes it off the face of the earth. But there it is, and I still show up these meetups despite opening my mouth and subsequently drinking a whole Cup ’O Instant Regret.

The only valid conclusion is I have a huge ego and just like hearing myself talk. So when Touge invited me to turn the next SF PHP meetup into a “Terry Show,” I felt strangely compelled to say yes.

And just so that you don’t have to navigate that horrible website, I, in a weird spate of generosity, decided to copy down the deets…

What: OOps! The PHP Fear and Loathing Guide to Object-Oriented Design
When: Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 7PM
Where: CNET networks, 235 2nd street, San Francisco, CA
Why: Because someone has to provide the “asshole engineer” benchmark, it might as well be me.
RSVP: The great thing is you show up. Just don’t give security the queer eye…download iCalendar, spam Upcoming, and whore this on Facebook.

A small dilemma was, as an asshole engineer, I’m fundamentally lazy—that’s why I became a software architect in the first place: so I wouldn’t have to actually write anything and could just rip into other people’s code and claim credit for their hard work.

What to do?

How about recycle an old talk FTW? After all, George seemed to like it.

OOps at SF PHP Meetup

Think of this just like Britney’s comeback performance only a whole lot worse a trainwreck.

So you better go to this talk, because my ego isn’t big enough for the both of us and I’ll need you around to pop it. If you can’t make it, maybe I’ll install Profcast or someone will stream it so you can count my cuss words on #phpc again. Then again, maybe not. Because you obviously missed the memo wherein I revealed I’m a lazy sloth.

Perhaps I’ll actually delete the slides that are truly embarrassing, but probably not. Wouldn’t want to mess with my perfect record of regret at PHP meetups.

Posted on by tychay 6

My analog blog

I showed up late to the Pownce party and crouched into the back of the line. Since there was not much else to do, I started to write something down in my notebook, which I’ve been carrying around since my iPhone replaced my Palm T|X.

(Isn’t it ironic that we used to be able to beam people our contact information and now, seven years in the future, we have to resort to pen/paper, or a phone call/exchange. Technology, why hast thou abandoned me?)

A friend, further up in the line, made the comment, “Terry Chay is writing in his analog blog.”

“Pownce Launch Party” by magerleagues

Yeah, it’s a moleskine. Don’t shoot me.

Then ensued some Q&A about what I write down in there?

Answer: really boring stuff like shopping lists, task lists, an occasional outline for a blog entry I’ll never write…

So if you ever see me writing in “my analog blog,” you know it’s nothing interesting.

[More pownce after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 15

Zippers

My grandfather once told me this story:

Every day, on his way to work as a chemistry professor at the University of Utah (1948-1973), my grandfather would pass the same man walking the other way. For some reason, each never exchanged more than a tacit acknowledgement of the other. This bothered my grandfather, but as it had happened so often, it had become the protocol.

Then one day, as they were walking toward each other, the man extended his hand to my grandfather.

Finally a chance to meet this man! my grandfather thought and happily extended his hand in return.

“No,” the man said as his hand formed into a point, “your zipper is down.”

…

I mention this story, because now is the second time in two days I’ve gone hours before realizing I forgot to zip up.

My grandfather is very famous in his home country. I heard there is a statue of him at a university there and he’s buried in the national cemetery. Somehow the thought of this embarrassment of one of Korea’s most famous scientists makes mine a little less.

I miss my grandfather.

Posted on by tychay 3

The purpose of pr0n

In the early 90’s, random dot stereograms made really popular geek posters.

I haven’t a clue what this really looks like. click here to view larger. You can view more and get other stereogram paraphernalia here.

To view them, you had to unfocus your eyes a bit and then stare at infinity. I could never do this so I never saw the fucking giraffes, giraffes fucking, or whatever that others claimed they saw. This caused me to develop quite an elaborate conspiracy theory around the Magic Eye corporation.

When I walk to work, I have this insanely long internal monolog. During a twelve minute walk, I create at least one blog entry I’ll never write and come up with three clever turns of phrases of which maybe I’ll remember one of them in the future and someone will say, “I’ll quote you on that”—but they won’t and we’ll forget it together forever.

However, if you stuck one of those posters in front of me right then, my eyes are so unfocused, I’d probably be able to see the fucking giraffe fucking and finally dispel a conspiracy theory of my youth.

[The Blog Post Who Lived. After the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6