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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

ParryShen's Xanga Site - 6/30/2004 2:39:32 AM

So apparently if we go see spiderman 2, all the cantonese we'll hear is the voice of Parry Shen... and it all sounds like "Walla Walla..."
ParryShen's Xanga Site - 6/30/2004 2:39:32 AM

In other news
e's bro comes to visit 2nite. We also have plans to visit a 2 bedroom apt with a real garage underneath in a complex right near adam and paulie. It's all hardwood floors, which is apparently very off putting to e. I think we could get some area rugs or something. I'm more worried about caring for hardwood than anything else... Is it really easy to scratch? Anyway, I think if we get a cat, then we wouldn't have to worry about it tearing up the carpet or needing to shampoo the carpet when we left.

I was a little bummed because I called another apt to look at yesterday (we'd driven by the place and LOVED the neighborhood), but I was told they'd already found renters... DAMN!

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

The weirdest apartment searching experience

We had the weirdest apartment searching experience ever when we visited 1810 San Carlos Ave.

Our apointment to view this 2 Bdr unit was at 4:30pm. Our arrival at 4:20pm found us inching our way through the parking lot which was narrow and terraced providing a bumpy and nervous ride (the whole complex was on a hill, and was named ___ terrace, so everything was terraced for stability i guess).

We tried to follow the signs to find the rental office. We got lost somewhere around the pool where current residents pointed us upstairs to an apartment which served as the office. We tapped on the sliding glass door of the apartment and this 10-12 yr old skinny kid comes to the door and slides it open.

e or me, (I can't remember): "Uh, we have an appointment at 4:30pm"
kid: "I didn't know that." shuts door. we watch as he runs to the phone. we watch him hang up and come back to us with a set of keys.

It was very odd, as he stepped out of the door, he started ringing off the apartment spiel that we heard at every other apartment complex. e and I could barely hide giggles and smiles as we went up and down stairs and around corners to some shitty ass apartments shown to us by this prepubescent child.

The whole experience was like a trip to another time and place separate from the rest of our day. It felt like this complex had been lifted up out of Nowhere, Nevada and plunked oddly into the California landscape. interesting experience...

the apartment search

e and i went apartment hunting all last weekend. We still haven't found a place that is perfect, there always seems to be at least one thing wrong.

There was this amazing place in menlo park on Ravenswood, 2Bdr, 1Ba for $1200/mo. They allowed cats, and the kitchen was great (new appliances and a nice gas stove!). The carpet was wonderful, the bedrooms and living space were nice and large. The drawbacks...
an itsy bitsy balcony incapable of holding my garden or allowing e to BBQ. Plus, there was only one parking spot, and since you can't park on Ravenswood, one of us would have to park on a side street further from the house. Damn!

We saw some niceish places in San Mateo, including a couple town houses (2Bdr, 1.5 bath, 2 floors). But we've... I've... now decided San Mateo is out because it's too far north for me. On that note, e has decided Mountain View is too far south for him, so we can check off visiting the town houses down there.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

LJ mind map

also see ' comic!


A Portal clicks into another MindMap!Palo Alto , CAPalo Alto, CaliforniaRedwood City , CAMillbrae , CASomerville, MassachusettsChicago, IllinoisSanta Cruz, California
MindMap

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

pisser

i was in the middle of watching a charmed episode when the power went out for about 10 seconds. When everything came back on, and TiVo booted up, the episode had an error that made it impossible to watch the episode... grrr!!!!!

ofoto.com

i finally had some digital photos printed and sent to me from ofoto.com. It was 29 cents per print, and e reminded me that we do have our own photo printer.
However, since our photo printer hasn't been plugged in in a while, and I wanted around 45 pictures printed, it was simpler just to order it. Anyway, the pics came within a day or two right to my house which was a major plus.

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

ill

I feel ill today.

I accidently unplugged the TV and Tivo before I left for work today. I didn't notice that when a picture fell behind my dresser, it knocked the plug out of the wall. Think of the programming my TiVo missed!!

The family trip was better than expected. I even visited 4 states I've never been to before: 1. Colorado (a stop over in Denver), 2. Pennsylvania, 3. West Virginia, and 4. Ohio.

The wedding was actually in Wheeling, West Virginia. But the closest airport was an hour away in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Will also wanted to get a new gameboy game, and our hotel said the nearest place was Walmart (10 mins away from our hotel) which was located across the border in Ohio.

more about the trip and other stuff later.

Friday, June 11, 2004

one of my friends

told me her reason she's never having kids which was both very interesting and very funny to me.

She has a phobia of parasites. So the idea of a child growing inside and off of her freaks her out. Those damn parasitic children :)

so cute!

If I ever got another rabbit. I would want one that looks like this



or this


they're called angora rabbits... they're adorable... and apparently you can harvest their wool to spin your own yarn (easier than raising sheep)...

they can also look much hairier like this:



hmm... i do miss my old bunny

Thursday, June 10, 2004


I made a new hair thing for me to wear to the family wedding coming up Posted by Hello

cute meme from cutemew's journal

Char Ham Bau Hamster Curry Hamster Maki Sushi Chinese Tea Mint Choc Chippo Icecream
Only 1100 yen!
Get your own at Hamstar's Noodlebar!

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

the talent

I don't normally post to other people's diy... but this girl's work is impressive

Blogger Help : Known Issues

Blogger Help : Known Issues: "Images uploaded with Hello appear broken when linked-to from domains associated with Blog*Spot Plus accounts. This will be fixed asap. "

so apparently my feed people cannot see the images. lame. i hope they fix it soon so people can see them via live journal.

if you're dying to see the pictures, just click on the link above the feed post

my zucchini plant has so much fruit on it that it's leaning over. i grabbed a few spare stakes i had lying around, but i need another one to keep it from toppling soon! Posted by Hello

I have 3 tiny tomatoes on one of my tomato plants! Here's the biggest one. In other news, my 2nd heirloom tomato plant (black krim) has started to shoot up since the weather got a little warmer. I was afraid that it was some weird dwarf breed, but I'm thankful that it's finally catching up with my other two  Posted by Hello

so apparently, this service sends only one photo at a time? well, at least i don't have to resize anything, and the image hosting is free! Posted by Hello

Yes, i know summer is pretty much here, but i just got the hang of knitting. I knitted this scarf in roughly 5 hours! It was the first scarf I've ever completed!  Posted by Hello

trying out this new photoblogging service...  Posted by Hello

so you want a GMAIL account?




yes i got three invitation codes yesterday in my inbox... 1 has already gone to evan, another was whined away by my mother (i would have had to give to my father too, but my brother got invite codes too, so he had to give one up).

i haven't decided what to do w/ my 3rd one yet...

but if you want one, one of my lj friends is doing a raffle of one of his invite codes.... see here

also, did i mention my brother was a dork and registered "ebay.com@gmail.com" as his new gmail account. he thought it was "cool". oh please

Monday, June 07, 2004

surprising

on friday I had a nice dinner with my work group. After most people left, I stayed with my boss to keep him company while he paid the bill. I was majorly caught off guard when he pulled out a $100 gift certificate for Evvia for e and me.

Apparently, I made quite an impression at work. He went on to talk about how rare it is to have someone who takes such initiative. He called me a "go getter." I have never been that highly praised to my face before. It actually made me uncomfortable, but happy at the same time.

Friday, June 04, 2004

been reconstructing :)



pink stretchy fabric made into a shirt. used memory wire necklace for the top of the shirt. stenciled the bottom free hand with masking tape and a paint brush. This shirt was actually a prototype for another I plan to make.





Reconstructed t-shirt



My punk skirt. completely hand made, pink plaid, black lace, black skull and cross bones





DIY retro looking skirt with red bow... i love how comfy this skirt is!



Wednesday, June 02, 2004

YAY!!!

email from my advisor:
"The thesis is great. I think you are done. Why don't you get it bound.

I am going to recommen that Barbara[the honors professor] give you an A+ for the honors project."

yay! i can sleep well again...

whoopee!!!

whee!

Gmail

e mentioned something about people trying to make gmail illegal in the way it scans your email and pops up advertisements for you.

all the uproar

Arnold is gonna decide

My take:

I've used gmail now for a month now. All my email is being forwarded to that account so I use gmail on a regular basis. Honestly, the ads don't bother me. They're very unobtrusive, and thus I really don't have a problem with it. Furthermore, Google does not give out any information regarding me, it just serves up some ads it thinks I might like, but the advertisers don't know specifically that I like beads or psychology, etc.

Google states, "Gmail is a technology-based program. Advertising and related information are shown using a completely automated process. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers our AdSense program. This technology enables Google to effectively target dynamically changing content, such as email, or news stories.

No humans will read the content of your email in order to target such advertisements or related information. Because the ads and Related Pages are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.

Google does not and will never rent, sell or share information that personally identifies you for marketing purposes without your express permission. No email content or other personally identifiable information will be provided to advertisers.

Privacy is an issue we take very seriously. Only ads classified as Family-Safe are distributed through our content network and to your Gmail inbox. For example, Google would block certain ads from running next to an email about catastrophic news."


As long as people going into gmail know Google will be doing this, I don't see a problem. People are CHOOSING to let Google give them ads. I CHOSE to let Google do this by signing up for Gmail as opposed to yahoo mail or something. (ok yes there was a huge novelty factor, but that's beside the point).

that's my 2 cents... ;)

coming to an end

I need to take my graduation cap and gown out of the bag they've been in for the past year to let the wrinkles fall out. (nope i never returned it last year, apparently the guy said they didn't really care if they got them back).

Psych graduation here I come. Man I should do this every year. :)

senior art show a no go?

so the art department is soooo together. the senior show should be going on nowish i think. I have yet to be contacted by the organizer. I sent her an email asking where to put up my stuff and when. Whatevs. No skin off my back if I don't spend the time putting things up. Things have been crazed enough as it is. If I don't hear from them, I'll just assume it's not happening.

Work finishing

Today was my last day of work... except I still have a bit more to do.

Cliff Nass found out I want to go into a PhD program for Social Psych and automatically told me he'd write me a recommendation when I apply (yay!). He's pretty well known in social psych arenas. He is most famous for having taken social psych into the technological world, and found that people actually treat computers as a social agent. On top of all that cool work, he has been labeled especially COOL in my book because he is so commited to a vision of shared global prosperity and really helping developing nations to attain better living conditions for their citizens.

I really like the people i work with. I'm gonna miss them. Very cool people.


left to right [Dylan, Roma, me, Marie]

it's all coming to an end... THANK GOD!

I'm presenting my thesis tomorrow, "Exploring Multiracial Identity: Ethnic affiliation and physical features among Asian American and Hapa college students," at 4:20pm in Bldg 420-050 on Stanford Campus. I am only allowed 8 min (that's b.s., you can barely communicate anything in that amount of time) so i'm actually not talking about all of my findings. if anyone wants to stop by, they're free to come. I'll be there from 1pm - 5:30 pm listening to talks (we're required to stay the whole time to support each other).

I'm a little nervous because our psych department is full of such big name people (Phil Zimbardo (recently been all over the news for his well-known Stanford Prison Experiment which has been cited in all the coverage of the Iraqi prison abuses), Claude Steele (famous for his idea of stereotype threat), Hazel Markus (famous for showing cultural differences between interdependent and independent cultures... pen study), Albert Bandura (bobo doll - see violence do violence), to name a few). I've studied under them, but to have them come and listen specifically to me for 8 minutes about my own work...man, that's something else! I'm guessing people will only come to the ones they are interested in... so I predict much of the social psych dept will be there as well as anyone studying cultural psych.

and my thesis will be bound tomorrow or tonight... and i'll be able to sleep again... hopefully.

Is this bullshit? Some scam to get email?

I can't believe it would be anything but spam...

it's supposedly some website where people can ask about you/talk about you with anonymity

anyone know if this is just spam? as in a way to get people's emails?