Preflight check-in information is incorrect. The flight home is pretty packed! The three seats to my left have been taken up by a family of three. Oh well. I still have the aisle seat and some legroom to stretch out to the actual aisle itself. Yay for using travel agents through the company and having saved seating preferences!

This is a 10.5 hour flight to SFO today. Let’s get this show on the road! Next stop: SFO! I guess this flight feels less like a cattle drive than the flight out here. But then again, I have been living in a city of 20 million (?) people for the last two weeks. There definitely is no concept of a personal bubble. People push and shove to get somewhere and they don’t wait their turn.

I woke up around 4am this morning – 8 hours before my flight. I just could not soundly sleep through the night with the anticipation of finally flying HOME! I did get to catch up with a few friends over Google Chat in the morning. It’s about time we were able to have a conversation without my colleagues bothering me (I didn’t go into the Shanghai office today). Chatting with friends is always a good deal. Talking over the phone would be better, but prohibitively expensive. I did call home a few times though… you know, priorities.

Dude, just now, I was called a banana by the Chinese guy sitting next to me – yellow on the outside with a white heart on the inside. That was rude. Also called an ABC again. Woo. >:

The flight attendant is cute!

1:45pm – Time for take off (well, in a few minutes anyway). I have my gifts in hand and my backpack is safely stowed in the overhead bins. We’re taxiing around the airport. Everyone please have your seats in the full upright position and your tray tables showed! UA 858 is on its way home! I’ll land around 8am pacific time. It’s 21:29 Feb 3rd in SFO at the moment. If all goes well and this flight lands on time, I have a short layover at SFO and then I’ll be on my way to PDX!

I’m not sure what kind of interesting things one can find to write about on the flight home, but I’ll see what I can do for you. I still have DVT plans to review and I’ve been pushing off that work for the last 2.5 weeks. I *should* be doing that on the flight, but I would need a lot of incentive first!

“Hey, you look Chinese, why aren’t you speaking it?” – more words from the guy next to me. Dude, shut up.

Well, I’m doing what I said I would do: I’m capturing my thoughts on paper first. It’s a little more convenient than opening my laptop and waiting for it to come out of hibernation. However, the tarmac bouncing is making it difficult to write with any good penmanship. It’ll just be fine and dandy as long as I can read it and transcribe it later!

1:56pm (Shanghai time) – Still taxiing around the airport. This is a huge place. I kinda wish I was at the window seat so I can take some video of the eventual take off.
1:58pm (Shanghai time) – Woohoo! Engines are reving up! Here we go!

Jessica – I got the maglev photos for you. We topped out at 431km/h this afternoon! There was a loud sonic boom as the second train passed us at full speed. That was a trip! I have a video of the speed indicator as we ramped up. Here is applied magnetics in action! Maybe I should have sat at a window seat on the maglev. That way I could have seen a little bit more of the country. There’s always next time I guess – though still hoping “next time” is a ways out there. I much rather stay home and have the Shanghai team travel to the US on the next round. It’s only fair, right?

Of all the things that I’ve missed from home, my family and friends is first on that list. That’s a good thing. I’ll see you all in a few hours.

We’re hitting some mild turbulence in the first few minutes of this flight! The seat belt sign is on. The flight attendant has announce in both English and Chinese that one should remain seated but some of the Chinese passengers are not listening to the directions on this flight! How difficult is it to understand when the sign is on you SIT?

We’re currently going @ 625mph and passing 25K feet. We’re still climbing!

Yay for filling out the US Customs and Border Protection forms. This is at most a minor inconvenience for all of the freedoms that we all have at home.

Observation: All of the customs forms for foreign countries are in at least two languages – the local language and English. However, the US customs form is only in English. What’s up with that? When I flew into the EU and China, the local country made the effort to cater to the needs to the world traveler. Why doesn’t the US do the same? Are we above everyone else? Let me know your thoughts. I’m sure I’ll get some flak for this one.

So I’ve felt completely foreign in Shanghai. I don’t know Mandarin and I cannot speak Cantonese fluently. Also no one knows Cantonese in Shanghai anyway so any kind of normal communication was an absolute bust! I’ve made this point before. This got me thinking: I think my family heritage will be lost with my generation (or at least with me anyway). That’s a pretty sad thought actually. I never did really learn our family history. I know it’s not too late though; I need to make an effort and find out what I can. Being American born I don’t have any true idea of all of the hardships that my parents, grandparents, or even my great grand relatives had to over come. I admire what my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents did 30 some years ago and decide to immigrate to the United States to start a new life in the land of opportunity and enjoy the freedoms that we may take for granted. I guess I really don’t know what it really means to be Chinese. Kind of a sobering thought. There’s just too much time to let the mind wander and little activity to do on the plane, ya know? I guess I’m being brutally honest with myself.

We’re currently flying over Osaka, Japan – 890 miles into the flight @33K feet with a 162mph tail wind. 723mph ground speed.

Regarding the US forms: The lady in front of me is graciously helping other Chinese fill out their paper work for entry into the US. How nice of here to do that.

Ah, just finished flying over Japan and Dr. Horrible has started! First of many viewings for this flight, I’m sure. “The world is a mess and I need to RULE IT!”

I can hear a lot of yelling on the place. Most Shanghiese speak REALLY loud. I can hear them through my head phones. Time to invest in a set of noise cancelling ones for a future flight (or even for general zoning out in the office.

My hand hurts from writing these five pages. I’m so used to typing!

Ground speed 719mph. Somewhere over the Pacific. Time to Zonk out w/Dr. Horrible in the background. 4625 miles to go, 2hrs 21minutes on the flight clock.

3hours 16 minutes into the flight. I’m wide awake now. I got a few minutes of shuteye w/Dr. HSAB. OH man! That stinks. The kid two seats down just let one rip. Margin note: Scan these documents! It might be a good sharing idea. This would be something different than just reading electronic text from me all of the time.

Linkin Park’s “In Pieces” is playing again!

A guy just asked me if I would like to trade my seat with his in the very back row of the plane. Really? Why would I even consider that?

We are now approaching the International Dateline. Yay to returning to the same day (Feb 4th) for the second time! Woohoo!! Yippee!! I’m shifting through time!!

646mph, 35K feet. 3115 miles left, 4hours 47 minutes into the flight; 3263 miles traveled. Tail wind is 104 mph. I’m looking at the map way too much! I haven’t paid any attention to the in-flight entertainment.

Cold Play – Clocks is playing in my headphones now.

Snack service has started. Looks like we’re getting a third of a sandwich on white bread, with ham, cheddar cheese and a flimsy piece of lettuce. There’s also a lemon cookie – OOH, I should make lemon cookie! I have lots of random thought tangents. But you probably know that by now.

Airline food is hit or miss. The things you are safe with is soda, and tea. Oh, speaking of which, I seem to have mostly kicked the soda habit while I was in Shanghai. I only had a few cans worth versus the bottles and bottles worth on a weekly basis in the US. The same goes with coffee (mainly because they don’t serve coffee in Chinese restaurants!)

Felicia Day’s ‘(Do you want to date my) Avatar’ is playing. Another OH! Moment –> Must watch Avatar in IMAX 3D again when I get back!

I have not written this much in one sitting in a long time. I guess this is still pretty readable – which is encouraging. At work, I have a tendency to write really fast, but at the expense of legibility and sometimes I spend more effort trying to figure out what I wrote in the first place! This fine tip ball point pen seems to be working out OK! (Yeah, so this is apparently the kind of “interesting things” that I found to write about on the flight home. Hey, you’re reading this. Ha!)

3863 miles traveled, currently going 661 mph at 25K feet. 2530 miles remaining. We’re currently 5 hours and 42 minutes into the flight.

Reflections on the Shanghai airport: This is a huge place! There are two main ticketing terminals. Terminal 2 houses all incoming and outgoing UA flights along with 20 other carriers. The maglev takes you from downtown Shanghai (around Century Park) to the far east side of Shanghai in just under 8 minutes for the 300km/h run, and obviously faster when operating at 420km/h (that’s 268 mph for the people that like imperial units). As with most foreign airports, they are pretty darn smoky – and just like every other place in Shanghai. After going through customs and security I still had an hour and a half of spare time. I can just kick it around the gate and not worry about making it to my flight. That worked out well. I bought a bottle of water after passing through the security gates with the intention of drinking it on the flight. At least that would be some better guarantee that it is drinkable. However, once we entered the gate, the airport officials told everyone that water/liquids would not be permitted on the flight even if you purchased it in the secured area. 30RMB (~$4.20USD) brand new bottle of water tossed. What a waste. Many others scoffed at this. That is crap, but we want to get home so it’s smarter not to make a big fuss!

At 37K ft, 654mph ground speed. 4897 miles traveled, 1340 miles left, 7hrs 16 minutes into the flight.

I really should try and get some sleep. ‘Clocks’ is playing on my play list again. Apparently I have a 2.5 hour mp3 playlist on my laptop!

Hey! It’s time for breakfast on this flight. We’re getting close!

At 38k ft, 5994 miles traveled, 456miles remaining! We’re 8hrs 56minutes into the flight.

We’re just a few minutes away from landing back in the US. YAY! So excited! I think it’s around 7:15am PST February 4th off the California coast. Funny, didn’t I already live this moment halfway around the world yesterday?

My cell phone is going to get turned back on once we hit the tarmac. First things I’m going to do are obviously text and call people! I’m glad to be able to use at least one comfort of ‘home’ again (I’m in the US — that counts as ‘home’ for now… just another flight to go before actually getting back to PDX).

Starting decent; passing through the clouds at 23K ft at 430mph.

Cabin lights are back on. We’re landing at SFO at 8am – 38 minutes ahead of schedule.

Oh I need to find all my receipts and get my expense report in order.

Well, it’s been fun. We landed after 10 hours of flying and after writing 9 pages of notes in my notepad. I’ll see you on the ground. We’re landing this 777.

The plane is currently taxiing to the SFO terminal. LOL, I just turned my cell phone back on… there is a huge backlog of text messages that are now just being delivered. I’m going to get breakfast at SFO. I think I’m done writing for now. My hand hurts. I’ll call you guys when I get into PDX. Cheers!

-T

Jill, Desi and I headed down to the fake market in Pudong this morning so they could look around. We headed back over to the Puxi side for lunch at Boxing Cat, and dinner at Kabb (bar and grill). The beer selection at Boxing Cat looked really good, but I passed on having anything to drink while I’m here – probably for the better. After lunch, we walked around a small market square. The items there are much better in quality, and are made local. I picked up some cool gifts.

My lungs, eyes and throat burns from all of the smog that I’ve been inhaling outside today. I also found out that the Zhangjiang high tech park is surrounded by chemical companies. That is just wonderful. A similar problem exists in my hotel room – some guy on this floor is smoking and the cigarette smoke is going through the ventilation system. That is just wrong. It feels like I’m a chain smoker today and it is really making me feel sick.

Sunday January 31st (Shanghai)
I finally got enough sleep. Jill and I went over to the Shanghai World Financial Center and purchased our tickets to the 100th floor observation deck. It was FOGGY in Shanghai today, so there wasn’t any kind of view. Still a cool place to visit. I posted a set of photos on Facebook. We had lunch at a place called Element Fresh.

We went back to the fake market to meet up with Desi. Dinner was at a place called Blue Frog. Element Fresh and Blue Frog seem like trendy places.

Afterwards we took a taxi down to Puxi and saw some of the Bund area (the waterfront) and walked down to the People’s Square (kind of like the Shanghai version of Times Square).

I called it a night pretty early.

Monday February 1st (Shanghai)
I used chopsticks for the first time in a long time for lunch at the IBM center buffet. Still apparently know how to use them. Now I won’t go hungry

Tuesday February 2nd (Shanghai)
Yes, behold the power of chopsticks. After work, we went to dinner at a fancy and popular restaurant in Pudong with some co-workers after work. I got enough crap for having to ask for a fork last week. I figured I should just use the chopsticks and hone my motor skills.
-T

Wednesday February 3rd (Shanghai)
YAY this is my last day of work in Shanghai. I’ll be glad when this day is over. Not much to talk about in terms of work stuff… really there wasn’t much to do anyway. After work, I went to an Irish pub in Pudong with one of my US colleague and each of us bought a 300gram steak. I got it well done just because I didn’t entirely trust the meat over there, but it was still pretty darn good tasting. A Guinness on the side would have been perfect but I behaved haha.

I did a pre-flight check-in this evening on the United Airlines website. The seating chart shows that the middle three seats are empty for my row. Hopefully it’ll stay that way and I’ll get plenty of space to sprawl out for the flight.

I just finished repacking my bags, and I’m so ready to get out of here. See you tomorrow!
-T

These are my observations for the 13 hour flight to Shanghai. I swapped between the in-flight movies, watching Dr. Horrible, and listening to music on my laptop.

1 hour into the flight. It’s time for lunch service: The dude next to me is smacking his food. And someone else is hawking up a huge loogie. Lovely.

2 hours into the flight: Everyone in the back of the cabin is closing the blinds on the windows and going to sleep. It’s only 2pm (US time)! I guess it’ll be dark inside the plane for this trip, even though it’s going to be sunny all the way over – that is going to be interesting. The flight back will be dark the entire time! The in-flight map shows that we are currently traveling at 640/mph at 34000 ft. That is pretty cool.

~6 hours into the flight: We are currently flying over the Bering Straight and the first thing that came to my mind was the Deadliest Catch on Discovery, along with the Bon Jovi theme song that goes with it… is that bad? I observed the full nose pick twice from the person next to me. She really got her finger up in there and did a number on the nostril. Lol

I find it funny that people are talking to me in Mandarin and I respond in English. Talk to me in Cantonese and there just may be a chance for me to reciprocate with you! I have a feeling I’m going to get a lot of that as I spend my time overseas.

Oh yeah, I have the Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight CD with me… oh so good! Listening to `Valentine’s Day`… maybe I should change the song. I’ve already played out `In Pieces,` – every time I hear it I want to jump around the plane… but I think I’ll have to resist doing that in fear of being tranquilized!

7 hours into flight: I’ve been cooped up in the same airplane for the last 8 hours…. 7 hours in the air. The flight duration is 13 hours! Our current airspeed is 504mph… yeah we slowed down and there is a fierce headwind of 140mph. We crossed over the International Date Line an hour ago. I’ve not slept one bit and the funny thing is that I’m wide awake. There has been constant sunlight since we took off from SFO. This is a 6100+ mile adventure one way. Let’s not make it too frequent eh?

The first thing that I’m doing in Shanghai is logging into Facebook and Gmail. I think it’ll be around 3am in the US when I’m doing that. Would be cool to see at least someone online, but I’m guessing not. I hope everyone is doing well at home.

I’m continuing to pass the time with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and a few episodes of The Guild. I’ve seen most of the movies and shows that are playing on the in-flight entertainment system. I also apparently forgot to copy my other movies to my laptop. More Dr. HSAB never hurt anybody! (well, technically he did!)

The flight path was a little weird. I thought we would have flown straight across the same latitude from SFO to the destination, but we went up north along the coast of Alaska, and dropping in from Siberia. I guess this is a shorter path. Just used to seeing a 2D projection of the world.

I think I should have just grabbed the pad of paper and pen from my backpack. It’s a little bit less distracting while trying to plop down thoughts… especially from people overlooking my shoulder. I think one of those polarized security screens would be a good idea for the next trip. The local time in Portland is 7:42 PM. There is 2300 more miles left, 4100 traveled thus far. Time to sign out… and go back to the entertainment of Dr.HSAB!

10 hours into the flight: I resorted to playing minesweeper and I’m getting fairly good at it. It’s a good way to pass the time

Monday Jan 25th (Shanghai time) –
We arrived in the Pudong airport in Shanghai and went through immigration and customs just fine. I noticed that they had IR cameras trained on people’s faces to measure their face temp. The purpose is to try and identify those with a fever and … wait for it… H1N1! It’s a good idea, but I think that may give some false readings since the temperature measurement is taken at a distance.

We took the maglev train out of the airport. That thing travels at 300kph! I got checked into the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel. This place is really nice! My bed is huge! The view from the 17th floor is pretty cool as well.

My manager and I went down to a local Thai food place down the street. Got fried rice with shrimp and mangos. I should remember this one for next time that I have people come over.

The first experience of crossing the street wasn’t too positive – I almost got run over by a taxi. Streetlights and crosswalks don’t mean a thing over here. If you walk across the street, be very aware of the cars, bikes and mopeds that are around you.

I’ve been awake since 4am Hillsboro time Sunday Jan 24th, now it’s approaching 7am Monday Jan 25th. Body clock is completely screwed up.

Tuesday Jan 26th (Shanghai time) –
I’m up at 5am here. My wakeup call isn’t for another hour and I’ve only gotten 5-6 hours of sleep after this whole traveling ordeal. I’m hoping this will get better as the week progresses. I really need to catch some elusive Z’s.

I checked the hotel internet speed with the Speakeasy speed test. It is less than 500Kbps. At a cost of $160RMB/night (approx $22.90USD/night), that is a rip off.

The sun was out today and it was rather beautiful. First day in Shanghai and I saw the sunrise from my room window.
I met the design team today. They are much older than me. I think they were surprised to learn that I was younger than them and that I am their mentor. We went to a local noodle house for lunch with a few members of the design team.

My manager and I went to the underground market (fake market) after dinner. It was an experience – many markets in two underground sections filled with imitation products ranging from electronics to clothing. Haggling for prices is an art form here. They start out higher than the US prices, and you low ball them. People eventually meet somewhere around 1/3 of the asking price. I didn’t get anything from this place since it was all cheapo things. Still interesting to walk around though. I did see some 580GB USB sticks. LOL, there is no way that density can fit in the small form factor.

Wednesday Jan 27th (Shanghai time) –
I had scrambled eggs, fried rice, sushi, sausage links for breakfast at 7 this morning. A nice change up from having breakfast around 9 after I stroll in to work in Hillsboro.

It’s been a rainy day. Wow it sucks outside and all I can think about is “this is acid rain!”

Went to lunch at the IBM center and dinner with a few colleagues at a fancy Chinese restaurant. I’m an ABC – American Born Chinese – that was the phrase for the night. It’s true, but kind of got annoyed by the reference. I feel really, really foreign here.

Thursday Jan 28th (Shanghai time) –
Woke up in the middle of the night. Realized I’m still at RadiSys, Shanghai! Even after a few days, my sleep schedule is still messed up. I went to sleep at 10pm yesterday, but ended up waking up at 1am, and again at 4am. I decided to check e-mail. That put me back to sleep (thank goodness).

Had breakfast with scrambled eggs, ham, potatoes, and a spring roll. I’m eating way better than I normally do for breakfast. That’s good! Kinda wonder how much food has been laced with MSG.

Went into the office by 7:30 this morning. My manager and I are the first ones here, and one of the last ones to leave. Kind of weird, but have to deal with the e-mail and work here, and deal with e-mail from the US. The world needs to be flat so there are no time zones.

The sun is back out today. I went to lunch with Tim and Grace at the IBM center again. We decided to take a long walk around the technology park on the way back to the office.

I left work at 6pm, had dinner at the hotel and just camped out in the hotel room afterwards. I think i’ve had a little bit too much time to think. I miss home and I have another week here. I miss the familiar. I miss hanging out with my friends. Its 9:18pm – time for bed.

Friday Jan 29th (Shanghai time) –
We went out to lunch at a place called “Soup” (a Cantonese style family restaurant) in downtown Zhangjiang with our Shanghai team. That place was pretty high class!

After work, I met up with Jill and Desi at the Cantina Agave over in Puxi. I’m glad they made it up from Ningbo for the weekend. It was good to finally see them again! We’ve got some cool plans for the weekend. ‘night everyone.

Nike Campus, south entrance

Full ride stats can be found here. I cycled Baseline from my place all the way out to Cedar Hills and back. It’s not the most fantastic route ever, and you spend most of that time sucking down car fumes, but the weather forecast was saying 30-40% chance of rain so I wanted to stay close to the max line in case it pours. (It didn’t).

I caught up on some work e-mail and did some work for the evening. What? I left early. It balances out, I guess.

I’ve also been doing laundry for the last 6 hours. I guess I shouldn’t wait close to 2 weeks before washing a load of whites, dark clothing, jeans and most of my cycling gear. Have a good night everyone.

-T

Tuesday Jan 19th –
I got my boards today! They came to the lab at the end of the day (LATE!), but at least I have them now. I was able to spend one hour on the initial bring up of the switching power supplies this evening. They all work and are within regulation tolerance (thank goodness). I’m fairly relieved that at least that portion of the board started up with no issues. Other subsystems aren’t working yet, but we’ll see how that goes. Obviously I can’t tell you what I’m working on, so we’ll just keep it high level. Though… if you want to sign your soul away to me, I mean… yeah , I’ll gladly take it in exchange for information

Wednesday Jan 20th –
I went to sleep at 3am this morning. I couldn’t sleep at all. Just worried about the project and why the storage controllers aren’t seen at all. Is it a manufacturing defect? Is it a design issue??? I commented on my Facebook page that I really need a sleep button so I can just zonk out. That would have been real nice.

5 cups of coffee, 1 tea and 1 soda got me through the day today. Yeah.

I spent half a day of debugging and I got one of the two storage controllers working this afternoon. The issue was due to some resistor stuffing options which is a relief. The lack of sleep from yesterday isn’t particularly helping either.

I left work at 5 and started to prep for the Wet Wednesday party at my place. Teanna and John came over. It was a small crowd but still fun. I made spaghetti with sausages. The tomato sauce was from the store, but I added a red bell pepper, 2 fresh tomatoes (coarsely diced), and a small pack of mushrooms, also coarsely diced and half an onion. It took a while to reduce the contents, but it turned out well. Dinner was served with a side salad and garlic bread. Yum!

The movie selection for the night was Seven Pounds. It was nice to just chill for the evening and get my mind off of work.

Thursday Jan 21st –
I got 8 hours of sleep! Yesterday night was definitely some “me time.” So I’m halfway functional this morning.

I was chatting with Jessica online. She commented that it would be a great day to go cycling – lucky you since you don’t have classes in the afternoon – but I was stuck at work instead. 30 minutes later, I decided, screw it. I needed some mental health time so I left work around 2:30. I figure that I’m waiting for responses overseas anyway and their work day doesn’t start until 5pm US time. I hopped on my bike and put in 30 miles in 1hr 45minutes. It was really nice outside – around 53 degrees. Eat your heart out Jess Ride stats can be found here.

I went back to work around 5 and worked in the lab until 10 or so. The only thing that I had the entire afternoon was just a Clif bar during the ride. Man. That is not good at all. I was the only person left in the entire building… it felt like the long work nights back in August again. I did manage to get 90% of the board working and functionally tested. Just one more part to check out in the morning. I have less than 24 hours to figure out what is wrong with this board.

I went home and ended up working until 3am Friday morning wondering what is causing the remaining board issues. I learned the hard way that I should pay more attention to my own energy levels as the schematic error was right in front of my face and I said “oh, that works!” instead. Shoot.

Friday Jan 22nd –
I managed to subscribe to the 5 hours of sleep work plan this evening. I do not recommend it, especially after a less than stellar week of sleeping habits.

I did get the board completely working before 10am!!! This will be a nice and short afternoon… I still need to finish packing. Packing seems to always take forever!

Today was Teanna’s last day at work. I organized a going away lunch at CPR. It was mostly co-workers that attended, but Jessica, John, David Z, and Reed showed up as well. Good times! Glad everyone could make it out there. Note to self: I still need to e-mail each person that has a photo with Teanna in it… I’ll hopefully get to that in a day or two.

I hung out with Jessica and we watched some Firefly. The plan is complete! I have you addicted to the TV show, now you should spread the addiction on to others! Maybe the movie will make more sense now. I did get some work completed this evening at Starbucks. There are lots of reviews left to finish up and the next two weeks will be super busy.

Saturday Jan 23rd –
I decided that I should try to invert my nights and days while I’m still in the US – I went to sleep around 5am this morning! I drove up to Skyline and saw the view of Beaverton and Hillsboro from the West Hills. It’s always a good calming place to check out. Definitely worth it.

This week would have been so much easier if I didn’t have to go to China. I guess I should stop complaining because I’m going regardless and it should be a good experience.
I woke up at noon. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually sunny outside. The weather forecast was calling for 40% chance of rain and cloudy conditions. I’ve lost all faith in the weatherman. I’m glad they are wrong on this occasion. I went on a 11.5 mile cycling ride and rounded out 100 miles for the month of January. That’s good for now… but I put in 150 in December, so that’s a regression, not an improvement and it’s definitely not aligning with my resolution to cycle over 3K+ miles for the year! I need to get it together… maybe find more time in just riding during the work DAY and just work at night when the Asia teams are awake and online. I should let my manager know this is my intention, I’m fairly sure that will be OK to do.

Found out someone decided to wake up at 4pm for the day. That’s just lazy For the record, I went to sleep at 5am too, and this was also after 22 hour day, and having little to no sleep for the week AND cycling twice this week.

I’m spending the night out in PDX and had dinner with the parents. My flight is early in the morning on Sunday.

No one has a wireless network that I can tap into at my parents place. So I was in a pinch to find SOME kind of connectivity and connection to the world. I discovered the wonders of internet access on my phone. Free for the next 30 days. $10/mo after the trial ends. The browser on the phone is limited in capability, and it doesn’t seem to store cookies well at all so I have to login after almost every page load on FB… it does a little bit better on GMail though.

Heritage Dr. Pepper - made with real sugar

I got my flight itinerary updated for my Shanghai trip. I’m currently traveling Sunday January 24th through Thursday Feb 4th. This should be an interesting experience.

I noticed that the cafeteria is now carrying the “Heritage” Dr. Pepper that is made with real sugar and it has an old school branding look to it. I personally still like the high fructose corn syrup version.

I did manage to finish up my performance review by 2pm. I didn’t have anything else to do for the day so I just left and went cycling for an hour. I got my ride fix, and it made up for missing it yesterday. It was mostly cloudy outside. It was around 46 degrees. Perfect. I posted the ride stats and route map. I spent the rest of the day shopping for stuff that I may need in China. It was one VERY relaxing day.

I found out that there’s an A-Team movie that’s coming out June 2010! I think i’m going to watch that
A-Team theatrical trailer: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808402981/video/17565315

-T

Tuesday Jan 12th -

Dynamics = fun

I did a dynamics problem this afternoon because I had nothing else to do I secretly still love that class.

I ended up prepping food in the evening and got the chicken ready for tomorrow’s party. I’m pretty sure I will not have time to do that tomorrow before the party and I am making sure I’m gonna be part taking in the party activities this time around I’m also glad that the number of people invited is substantially less… and way less chaos to deal with! (Sorry!)

-T

Wednesday Jan 13th –
Notable things for the day:

Garlic lemon chicken breasts

• Google Analytics report states that someone is still using dialup to visit my site! I feel sorry for ya since it may take a while to load the content and have it all rendered.
• I ordered the Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight album. It was weird to think the last physical album that I bought was over 10 years ago.
• The shared video memory for my work desktop is starting to crap out. I really should ask for a new work computer.

Wet Wednesday party at my place. Happy birthday Erik, Teanna, Jared and John! I made garlic lemon chicken breasts from a cooks.com recipe and served them with a side of rice. I think it turned out pretty well and it was good! Photos have been posted on Facebook.

-T

Thursday Jan 14th -
Went to lunch with Sue and David at Coyote Grill on Baseline. Had an interesting convo that went like:

• David (to Sue): What do you do?
• Sue: I work in HR.
• David (turns to me): So you brought the devil with you!.
• Me: Stunned, silent. Awkward.

Real nice, dude, real nice. LOL

Went to a CPR outing afterwork. Not happy. Keep your cool and move on, I guess. GRR.

-T

Friday Jan 15th -

At Blazer game w/Sue

I can tell you one common theme this week: the work day was boring. I’m still waiting for boards to arrive in the lab. I’ve been looking for any excuse to leave the office mid day ’cause I don’t have much to do at the moment. I guess I should enjoy that while it lasts for another 3 days – then it’s hardcore project time for the next 6-7 months.

Anyway, I checked my work e-mail late Thursday night and noticed some Blazer tickets were up for grabs vs the Orlando Magic in the RadiSys Suite. I got 2 tickets and took Sue to the game with me. It was a good! Blazers won 102-87. We went to Henry’s afterwards for a drink. I came home and watched a few hours of Firefly into the wee hours of the morning. Good times!

-T

Saturday Jan 16th -

Defrost heater

I got the new defrost heater installed in the freezer today. The heating element works like a charm in bypass mode. Now I just have to wait a few days to see if the coils automatically kick in. If it does, then great, all is solved with my freezer issues. If not, then perhaps the thermostat is busted, or the control logic really isn’t working. If the issue is the latter, I’m just planning on connecting wire leads to the control board and have a toggle switch for a manual bypass. We’ll see I guess. It does, however, remind me of a light saber.

AVATAR!!

-T

Sunday Jan 17th -

Axis and Allies

It was a good packed weekend spent with good company! Yeah, I noticed that my entries are a little short. I’m tired at at least I jotted down the highlights for the week. Good night.

-T

Sunday Dec 6th – Watched ‘Up’ at my place with Dan, Erik, Jessica and Kenny. Bought the Blu-Ray disc three weeks ago, never saw it in the theater either. But was pleasantly surprised at the plot. Good movie

Monday Dec 7th – Game night over at John’s place. Watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (got some new viewers too!). Might be my 15th time of watching that. I’ve lost count. Played Apples to Apples and Curses… the latter is one crazy, CRAZY game. Didn’t get a chance to play Fluxx though… next time.

Tuesday Dec 8th – I think I ended up having a late lunch that day and ate cafeteria food from work. Yuck. Hit up Bike Gallery and REI for some winter cycling gear after work with Erik. Gonna give this year round cycling a shot.

Wednesday Dec 9th – Lunch at Orenco Station Grill with Jessica. Good conversations at Starbucks. Wet Wednesday over at Erik/Dan’s place – watched ‘Death Proof’ in good company. Showed one episode of ‘The Guild’ and the “(Do you want to date my) Avatar” music video. Eh, not for all I guess.

Thursday Dec 10th – Tuna fish sandwiches for lunch @ Jessica’s. Yum I think I just worked this evening. Not a fun night I tell you.

Friday Dec 11th – Late lunch at Pho Tango with Erik. FINALLY started my paper work for getting a Visa into China for work in January. I should have done that sooner. Stupid weather forecasts say freezing rain and snow in PDX starting late Friday night. It never happened. Forecasts pushed back to Saturday. Left work early. Had last minute movie night my place. Watched ‘Breach’ and an episode of ‘Fringe’ with Jess. Made fried rice for company and an awesome chicken recipe (thanks Jessica!).

Saturday Dec 12th – Surprised to find it dry outside and very happy that the weatherman was wrong about the “ice storm” in Portland. Picked up winter cycling pants. Went with Jessica and Kenny to pick up Jess’ new bike at River City Bicycles and went for a short 23 mile ride. Tuned the front derailleur a little bit. Everything should shift a-OK now! Zier invited us over to watch Boondock Saints, then we hit up the theater that same night to watch Boondock Saints 2. Watching the first one in its entirety was a good idea… I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it.

Sunday Dec 13th – Yet again surprised to find that it was dry and not icy outside. Weather forecasts all wrong. Went on a 26 mile cycling ride. John joined up with me at the Evergreen theater around mile 10. 31 degrees at the start, 34 towards the end. Winter gear rocks.

HA! I didn’t think about work all weekend. This is wonderful. Thank you for an awesome week everyone!

It did in some ways — mostly just because it was a workday. I ended up getting 4 hours of sleep. I consumed 5 cups of coffee, and two pepsi’s. I got stuff done this afternoon, which was rather surprising. Just had the headphones on and edited the hardware specs that were in my queue for the last two weeks. I just woke up from a rather short nap. I think I was better off just staying up for that time, now I’m rather grawgy and just want to sleep. Dinner might be a good idea. Sleep sounds better.

It’s a lot of stress on the body. I hope I don’t get sick because of this event. oye.

Side effects: left eyelid is twitching inwards (outwards?) now. Wonderful.

-T

Work has been stressful, as I’m sure many of you can relate. I spent the better part of May, June, July and August cooped up in the hardware engineering lab or the EMC chamber until the wee hours of the morning. There were a few off-site adventures to NW EMC to checkout FCC compatibility of my project, and at times find out that we’re not so compliant which led to a lot of debugging. As it were, it was a constant rinse and repeat cycle of working from 8-5 verifying my project, and debugging issues. I’d go cycling for an hour or two to get my head on straight, then return to the office from 8-midnight or later. I’m sure that can’t be good for anyone. Some days I would be so tired that my mind was completely numb, and I’d just walk around in a daze.

Cycling, for the most part, kept me sane. I’d ride 20-30 miles after work just to get my mind off of things. It was really nice to just sit and propel yourself on a country road for miles at a time. I started the season back on March 12, 2009, and officially ended it just last week on Sept 23rd, 2009 with a total of 2321 miles over the last 6 months. My bike, a 2006 Specialized Tarmac Comp has seen well over 4000 miles since i bought it in the spring of 2007. I wore out the original set of brakes and the original set of wheels after 3000 miles. The chain was changed back around 2000 miles and it’s only been through one “accident” during the 2007 STP. Not too bad.

Other stuff
Somehow I found some opportunities to fall in love with a new movie — well, new to me anyway. In early August, I was over at a friend’s place and and watched “Serenity“. Yes, it was originally filmed in 2005. The acting was great and the concept of a colonized universe because the “Earth was used up” seemed appealing to me. Apparently my brother, David, tried to show me this movie back in 2006 after it came out on DVD, but I had no reason to watch it. Boy, was I mistaken. I come to find out that the movie was based on the 2002 TV show “Firefly.” I looked it up on Hulu the same weekend and gave the first and second episode a shot. Boy, it was good and I wondered why I never heard of it before — perhaps it was because it was stuck in the library studying my ass off at the time.

I watched almost the entire season in the first weekend and thought I’d better see how many seasons this show ran. I was saddened to find out that the series only ran for one season before being canceled by Fox. D’oh! I bought the Blu-Ray versions of both titles and watched them both at least twice over now. I think it just gets better each time really. As a side note, I found the character of Kaylee Fry (played by Jewel Staite) really sweet and loving. She’s the ships mechanic, who is sweet and “bubbly” and yet be very stern and straight with someone when she is upset. I think Jewel is hot, so that may have something to do with it as well The whole Firefly / Serenity series consumed about 2 weeks of the late night hours which is great – something to watch before I doze off to sleep for the night.

Somewhere in here, I bought a new home theater system. I thought, man, it might be time to get sound that is better than just the two speakers from my TV. I’m glad I made that choice since the “movie experience” in the house went from “OK” to “DAMN! I didn’t know that bullet went from the front left corner of the room to the rear right!” (Of course, you may have guessed the first thing that popped into the DVD player was The Matrix and the all mighty lobby shoot out scene

ANYWAY… After finding out that Firefly only aired for a season, i started looking at the Filmography of the principle characters and found a couple of other good shows as a result. Nathan Fillion (who played Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds) was in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (starring Neil Patrick Harris — yes, Doogie Howser); Adam Baldwin (who played Jayne) is in Chuck as John Casey (knew this one already since I already watch Chuck!); Summer Glau (the Terminator on the Sarah Connor Chronicles, duh!) and Jewel Staite who was casted as a recurring guest star in Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis and promoted to a regular status in Season 5 as Dr. Jennifer Keller.

I watched Stargate: SG1 on and off for the last few years on SCI-FI and was familiar with the whole “Stargate” concept so I thought I’d give Stargate Atlantis a try — started with Season 5. I watched it and definitely loved the characters in the show as well as a continuation of what the SG:1 series had already established. But again, I was saddened to find out that the show did not get renewed for a sixth season. (Man, i thought, that’s two shows that I’ve watched and that’s two shows that I find out that has been canceled?!?). So if you know me, then you’ll also know that I really like Science Fiction — yes, even Star Trek; I’m sure there is a Trekkie side in you as well — so I went a head and bought seasons 4 and 5 of Stargate: Atlantis on DVD (there is no Blu-Ray version, unfortunately ). While I waited for those to arrive, I started watching the Pilot episode of Stargate Atlantis and for the next month I watched Seasons 1, 2, and 3 from, uh, shall we say, an “online, and out of country, source.” The video quality suffered a bit, but the story line was rather engaging. I then followed suite with Season 4, and re-watched Season 5 for continuity and clarification and got all of the inside-jokes in the screen play. Watching SG:A revived my love for Sci-Fi, I went a head and bought Seasons 1-3 as well.

Stargate: Atlantis (SG:A) is the second part of the Stargate series (preceded by Stargate:SG1). With the cancellation of the show, the SyFy network premiered Stargate: Universe (SG:U) to explore the 9th chevron of the Stargate (9th symbol address to “dial” between two stargate devices and establish a connecting wormhole). Some back history can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device). It should be noted that much of the “Stargate” travel is heavily based on theoretical astrophysics, particularly that of black holes and wormholes — so not entirely “far fetched” considering that there are real people, today, that spend their lives doing theoretical astrophysics. But of course, “far fetched” is used broadly in this context Naturally i watched the pilot episodes and find it intriguing at this time. The only actor/actress that i know from that series is Ming-Na (who played Dr. Jing-Mei Chen on ER).

Oh yeah, so after watching the last season and episode of SG:A (for the second time!) i started to search for other shows that the main characters are a part of. First, there’s the obvious (because I told you above, unless you just skipped a few paragraphs) — Jewel Staite from Firefly who played as Dr. Jennifer Keller, Chief Medical Officer of the Atlantis base. David Hewlett (who plays as a self-described genius and astrophysicist Dr. Rodney McKay) wrote a British comedy themed movie called A Dog’s Breakfast — which starred himself, Kate Hewlett (real life and movie sister), Paul McGillion, and Rachel Luttrell – which i found quite odd and hilarious since some of those are the primary cast members and recurring guest stars on SG:A. I bought A Dog’s Breakfast just yesterday along with SG:A Seasons 1-3, so lets watch it at a movie night sometime in the near future.

There’s currently rumored to be a direct to DVD Stargate Atlantis movie, but the release date hasn’t been announced. I hope that one makes it through.

In closing:
If you’ve have made it this far, I applaud you.

When i started to write this several hours ago, I re-watched the Firefly episode “Out of Gas.” – If you don’t get into the whole Firefly series or the Serenity movie, do yourself a favor and at least give this episode a try. It shows a lot of the character development and the back history of the main characters that were on the ship. In my estimation, which may or may not be worth anything to you, it is definitely a “MUST SEE”

Thanks for sticking with it.
-T