My love affair with chinatown continues…

This is an article written by my Uncle Francis who spends his retirement sending amusing e-mails to family members that eventually get to me, and leaving hilarious messages on my cousin’s answering machine. I’d thought I’d share his latest dispatch with you…

Breakfast with Uncle Francis

Breakfast with Uncle Francis
Oakland, California

Nikon D200, 50mm f/1.8D
1/60 sec @ f/1.8, iso 100, 50mm (75mm)

Yeah, he looks like a teddy bear, but he’s pure evil :-D.

My love affair with the China town continues…

Every Sunday after 7:30 AM mass, I have been driving down to the downtown Oakland to have breakfast in Chinatown over past ten years. Once there, I used to devour a sumptuous meal such as a noodle set with big pineapple bread, freshly brewed coffee, and a few cups of jasmine tea at the ABC Cafe for bargain price ($3.50). I could finish the meal in no time and often still felt hungry. But that was so until last year. After getting to the pinnacle of my golden age 70, it isn’t so any longer. Beyond one dim sum plate & tea, my stomach starts grumbling, ‘stupid old man, no more, OK?’. Although it makes the stomach filling easier for most men of my age, this old man, who has perpetually self-generating real or imaginary worries, is different. If the old man cannot eat at the ABC Café, what should he do for next Sunday breakfast?

In past 5 years, a number of first-rate dim sum restaurants popped up in the Chinatown like wild mushrooms. The foods there are fantastic, and waiters and waitresses appear sincere & some even cordial. Since these restaurants are almost always packed with long waiting crowd, the old man’s first worry is about getting refused right at the front door for lack of a table to sit one guy. Even after getting seated by a chance, his second worry follows up, “Can I gulp down only one dim sum plate (plus courtesy green tea) and make a graceful exit without hearing dirty Chinese curses on cheapskate behind my back?” Lately the ripe (‘hopelessly’ is a better description) old age toughened my thick face even thicker. I gave up the damn pride and challenged to myself – ‘old man, let’s JUST DO IT! You have nothing to lose.’

[The search for sticky rice after the jump]Continue reading

Random stuff that comes out of my mouth when I’m drunk

[I don’t realize how over-the-top I am until I sober up. Here is a random snippet of conversation.]

Me: “You know how I am. I went to that g—d—n school. I think they’re all idiots who are divorced from reality. I said that to you when they bought out Overture.”

K—: “They’re eggheads. That’s true anywhere, not just Caltech. It’s not Burbank anymore, the new people in Sunnyvale are like that too. You talk to them and think they’re smart, but all the do is draw boxes.”

Me: “Boxes? You mean like UML?”

K—: “No, that would imply code being written. I mean boxes.”

[More random stuff after the jump]Continue reading

Brains!!!!

When Jeremiah twittered that he was going to check out he Zombie flash mob, I had to jet off work and check it out.

It was a lot of fun running out of the office: “Where are you going?”

“BRAINS!!!”

???

I’ve been bitten

I managed to escape that day with only a little zombie blood on my pants and a memory card full of images I should post to flickr. But today, I got f&@$ing bit on Facebook by Blake.

I’m an Ensign Zombie Newbie

I’m just a Ensign Zombie Newbie

There is a 20 bites/day maximum right now so what I want to do to reach Leftenant Zombie status is have you add the zombie application and then say that I was the one who bit you. (If you aren’t my friend. Just friend me and send me a message saying “BRAINS!!!!”)

Now I know what Blake’s been doing with all that spare time since BuildForge got bought out by IBM.

Why is this man smiling?

Why is this man smiling?
Ning, Palo Alto, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso800, 26mm (39mm)

(Hey Slide or Bitnik, Wouldn’t it be cool if an app like CrazyFunPix had a zombify editor? You know so I can celebrate my new found need for BRAINS???)

[I’ll post the zombie flashmob photos sometime later.]

The Bat Cowl

VINYL ¾ BATMAN FACE MASK

Overheard S— talking today. Here are some snippets:

“You know how you see a girl with a hat and sunglasses on, and you think, ‘She’s pretty hot.’ Then she takes it off and she goes from pretty to ugly in like that! “That happened to me today, and I realize that’s why nobody knows who Batman is. From now on I’m calling it the ‘Bat Cowl.’

“Yeah, yeah. [the girls] know that the hat and sunglass thing is totally cute—that’s why they do it. But if [a guy] makes a judgement based on the Bat Cowl, he’s basically judging her based on her chin: ‘Excuse me, you have a pretty chin. Can you take off your sunglasses and hat?’”

Good thing I wasn’t drinking anything at the time. I’d have had coke up my nose.

I just like hearing my name

As I told Ed Finker,

“Newbie, did I forget to tell you he just likes it when people say his name?”
—Dr. Cox, Scrubs Season 5

Unfortunately, Ed didn’t oblige me like he did last time. But luckily for me, Sean and Paul did. 🙂

With Cal’s PHP Abstract now on the air, the busy developer may be wondering which they should listen to. It’s simple, if you have to choose, I’ve been mentioned three times on Pro::PHP Podcast and not once on PHP Abstract.

Verdict: I recommend Pro::PHP Podcast 😀

terry chay

terry chay” by kbconference

This is me at ZendCon. You”ll notice that I have the lens on my D200 that the two are talking about. (Fire engine red… gotta love Canon.)

[Paul and Sean are the Kevin and Bean of the PHP world after the jump.]Continue reading

Samplings from friday night

There is no way I can roll with the hip Asian lingo…

G—: Damn, you drop two hunna on a Boss shirt and you wear shoes like that?

G—: Fuck you. I’m half black. I’m black from the waist down, bitch.

(After Q— gets bounced trying to enter a strip club)
G—: C’mon, let’s got to C—.
H—: I don’t want no “numbers and call tomorrow.” I just want titties in my fucking face.
G— (to Q—): How many times we gone out? Who the hell doesn’t carry an I.D. with them?
Q—: I got my I.D. right here. (strokes beard)
G—: You just look like a fat fifteen-year-old with a goatee. Fuck, now I’m going to have to pay to get your ass into C—.

Me. Sometimes a little out of place…

…other times a lot.

[tags]asian, fashion, nightclubbing, black, strip club, carding, urban dictionary, lingo[/tags]

Have we reached “Peak Ruby”?

ruby8ball

The Terry Chay peak theory, also known as peak ruby, is a not-so-influential theory concerning the long-term popularity of software languages. It predicted that future popularity in Ruby will reach a peak sometime in the year 2007 and then decline. Some observers believe that because of the high dependence of the language on hype, the impending post-peak scalability problems and possible resulting severe migration to another language du jour as the next panacea. (citation needed)

A conversation (that mostly happened):

D—: You killed Ruby! You bastard!

tpci_trends
Ruby TIOBE stats by itself

Me: I didn’t start the fire! 😀 Yeah, that one-month dip was a big deal in the Ruby community.

D—: They got bent out of shape over the tiobe stats? It was a one-month statistical glitch. They don’t know what a stat is.
D—: On that channel9 link, Replace Ruby with Java. It’s the same thing. “I’m sorry, you just used the wrong JVM. Why not use IBM’s.”

Me: No, you just don’t understand the psychology of Ruby people.

D—: I don’t.

[The psychology of Ruby after the jump.]Continue reading

Way to “PA”

Me: I mean I’m pretty shy—oh, don’t laugh, it’s true. Internally, I have to really force myself to talk to a new person. I just want to crawl into my hole.

H—: But I think you like to meet people.

Me: Especially at Caltech. You talk to a girl there are only two possibilities: 1) You talk to her with four other guys talking to her; or, 2) you talk to her for like ten seconds before four other guys come around to talk to her.

H—: Hahah. Well, you know what they say… “The odds are good when the goods are odd.”

Me: “The odds are good when the goods are odd?” Sounds like a poster advocating a Prince Albert.