Category: about me

Pure Vanity.

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy
somewhere over the Eastern United States

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/90sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

My tweets make no sense.

This is why nobody follows me and even my friends have turned off updates.

I just can’t seem to explain my experiences in 140 characters. Maybe I should have titled this blog “The Circumlocution.” Oh well, at least two people asked me about this confusing tweet after my plane landed.

But it’s really quite a simple story, even if I can’t tell it right.

Here is a helpful diagram…

Helpful diagram

[More misadventures after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 16

'tis me fav'rite day o the year

Like last year and the year before…

Annual Talk Like A Pirate Day ecARRRRRRRRd

Text reads: Ahoy me mateys and buxom wenches!
The day ’tis ripe fer Talk Like A Pirate.
Ye be talkin’ like a pirate or ye be a scurvy bilge rat!
Arrrrrrr!
—The Dread Pirate Terry

I think the reason I love Pirate Day so much is that I had a horrible speech impediment in grade school where I couldn’t say my r’s (you can still hear it if you listen closely, but please don’t). Now I’m making up for it with some extra Arrrrrr’s. The infamous Meebo Pirate emoticon

[More pirate after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 3

Ruby, Photography, and Women

My second twitterstalk was Andrei at Caffe Trieste in North Beach. Andrei is someone everyone should be nice to for reasons I mentioned before. He’s trying to get me back into photography.

I think it’s because he has a photoblog now…

from Andrei’s photoblog, 9 august 2007

and probably figures that getting my competitive juices flowing will be the photography equivalent of dollar-nassau. But I hate to compete and the only thing that motivates me is, quite frankly, intense fear. And besides, what chance do I have? As Ed Finkler says, the man’s got scary amounts of kevorka:

This White Russian smiles

This White Russian smiles
CNET Headquarters
SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX. SB-800
1/60sec @ f/2.8, iso 100, 38mm (47mm)

Go subscribe to his blog now (besides the pictures are good, quite unlike mine).

[cats, coffee, photography, ruby, and women after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 21

Not a way to begin an e-mail

I got this cold-email from a Hank Z…

Mr. Chay… (Ms??)

We are the deleted

We saw your resume on the Web…

We are urgently seeking candidates who are SW engineers, and have a background in database SW development, and also expertise in mySQL.

Boy, Hank, (or is it Ms. Hank?) you recruiters know how to bring back bad memories, fuck you very much!

See, when I got in to the physics graduate school at the University of Illinois, I got a “Ms. Terrence Chay” acceptance letter from them. I thought Oh shit, I checked the wrong box. You might think this is impossible, but when I asked my father to dig up the photocopy of my application, he didn’t give a pause and I could see he was already relishing the opportunity to lord this mistake over me for the rest of my life.

(Thankfully, I checked the right box—truly, the first time in my life I filled out a form correctly. Needless to say, purchasing stuff online is always a trial for me.)

[the only highlight after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Best. Commerical. Ever.

The first time I saw this, I didn’t think it was that good. But then I actually paid attention.

So pay close attention…

(Yes, I’ll be at Zend Conference this year. No, I won’t be drinking heavily else I’m liable to tell Keynote speaker, Joel on Software, what I really think of his software. Hint: not good. You should come! Someone needs to represent the the true spirit of the PHP world.)

Click here for the reason why this commercial rules.

Top this, Sean 🙂

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Twitter stalk

My first twitterstalk.

When I woke up, just as I was heading out from McDonald’s, I noticed Scott Beale’s tweet about being at the only In ‘N Out in the city. That was just three blocks away from me.

I first met Scott when he showed up to the Hitachi Lunch 2.0 Web Expo last year. Ever since then, I run into him shooting his Canon 5D with a 24-105mm f/4L at events that I happen to stumble upon that are halfway interesting:

DSC_6753.JPG

Scott Beale, the Tony Soprano of the San Francisco scene
Varnish, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, SB-800
1/80sec @ f/1.8, iso800, 50mm

(He’s gotten so used to his setup that you no longer notice it’s there anymore—and that’s a pretty big camera too.)

He was surprised that anyone he knew actually lived in the area. Scott was just heading from an event and I was late to one. (Apparently, according to someone at the Meetro party, I had a disco nap that went way over.)

Since I was late anyway, I bugged Scott about his recent appearance in a Wall Street Journal article on LOLcats. We also discussed Lunch 2.0, social networking, photography, and the insanity that is Fisherman’s Wharf.

There were a lot of funny miscommunications because we hang around in different circles and assumed we each knew the other’s peeps—his are the entire San Francisco art, culture and tech scene; mine are my imaginary friends.

Scott is a good person to know.

[tags]Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, photography, Twitter, TwitterStalk, Laughing Squid, Scott Beale, nap, disco nap, LOLcats, Lunch 2.0, Wall Street Journal[/tags]

Posted on by tychay 6

Squash soup

“Hey, What’s up? How’s your Mickey D’s?”

Me: “I haven’t left yet. You know me, I’m such a fuck up.”

“Haha.”

“I think I’m an affront to San Franciscan’s everywhere eating stuff like McDonald’s, but I got to flush out the nice food I ate today. I think I had butternut squash soup or something for lunch.”

“That stuff is good! When I came here, I had squash soup and I thought, Isn’t California wonderful? Who would have thought you could make a soup from squash? You and I are on the opposite ends of the food spectrum.”

“Yep.”

“But you do have a point. Someone like you needs to clear out the vegetables with a good meat scrape.”

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

I’m officially a LinkedIn whore

I’ve been achingly close to reaching that fabled “500+” in LinkedIn for a while now—that icon reserved only for a select few recruiters (13), marcom/sales peeps (5), product/program managers (5), founders/CEO (3), professional networkers(3), VC (2), and Adam Glickman (dude, I see you at Lunch 2.0 all the time, but still haven’t figured out what you do).

LinkedIn Pre-whore status

So on Friday, I guessed that it was time for another of my infamous LinkedIn Haiku blast to more of peeps who have had the misfortune of find themselves in my address book.

LinkedIn Post-whore status

Now, I’m officially a LinkedIn whore!

[More observations after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1