yjblog

Bleh, the Alert-Red Flu (ARF — Arf?) is back, and I have my first-ever SAF MC. Well done, me. I should refrain from further comment because my thought processes have been rendered incomprehensible(r) by medicine.

Oh, and Firefox 1.0 is out!

That’s all this time.

… meaning the end of the weekend, no?

Finally got some of that elusive sleep-in time the last couple of days, despite losing Sunday afternoon to Exercise SB closing ceremony rehearsals. Must stop announcing Chief of Malaysian Army’s name wrong.

Other than that, attempted (and failed) to play tennis, bumped into random people at Borders on separate occasions, and at one point met a somewhat abrasive blast from the past — or maybe I’m becoming more easily irritable nowadays. How does one lead such a (seemingly) successful life while having such a fundamentally caustic personality? I don’t suppose I want to know the answer to that.

And Stanford football won 37-10 over BYU, mirroring last year’s promising start. Hopefully the team doesn’t go 2-7 the rest of the way like last year.

Here comes Alert Red, dudes. Expect more frequent updates from stuck-in-camp-YJ.

While searching for tennis rackets in the store room today, I came across my portfolio from my (regrettably) only Art class at Stanford — discounting the animation one, which was mostly MATLAB programming and/or Maya. Naturally, I dug it out (and naturally, everything fell on me).

I was especially looking for this “self-portrait” that we had to do as a final project for the class — the only requirement being that it had to be life-sized (yes, life-sized for me == problem) and everything else was left open to choice (media, form, etc). I ended up doing a stream-of-consciousness comic strip which, upon consideration three years later, really did reflect me quite well (and probably still does).

Bits of it are embarrassingly silly and self-indulgent, but I can probably live with posting it on this blog (or the drawings site). That is, once I figure out how to scan it. Life-sized, remember.

Anyway, I used the good old wocka character from secondary school. Here it* is, on top of the robot thing. Painted this sophomore or junior year, I think.

(Click for a higher-res version)

* I’ve decided it’s asexual.

Thinking about it, it’s been awfully long since I’ve really drawn anything, or even done any designs I’ve really liked. I got a sketch book last year as a birthday present, and I’ve only used two pages of it; I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a single inspired design for the second battalion t-shirt; even my redesigned Stanford Alumni site wasn’t up to standard for my clients (though my pride and its occasional ally common sense dictate that mine is definitely better-looking than the old design).

Am I missing anything by forgoing this satisfaction from self-expression and instead seeking simpler-to-derive entertainment such as video games, downloaded TV and movies?

Maybe I should be thankful I have the chance to even raise that question.

swamped with work, on the week before the start of alert red. i suspect it’ll actually be much more relaxing during the alert itself, but first i have to get through range (which, conveniently enough, coincides with my interview with the commission; did they really have to wait till two weeks before the rescheduled interview to tell me?).

anyway, here’s an article my dad actually picked out in the print version (my dad doesn’t read the english news… does he?!).

The school of second chances [TODAYonline]

and yes, i know the dude in question (jacques was my primary…two? classmate, following which we were in remotely connected circles in the gep, rj s01, and then the bay area). it’s honestly very refreshing to hear from someone like him instead of the usual academic success stories.

anyway, i’m sure he’ll do great in the SAF, unlike some moron boss i might have spoken ill of on a recurrent basis lately.

Crap-ass morning. First, the Powerbook upped and died for good (wouldn’t display anything on boot-up; previously it had teased me by booting up properly after a few tries), and I hadn’t backed up my stuff in quite a while. Guh. Back to AppleCare centre for you.

Then, found out that the Horse servers at WebhostingBuzz (which hosts stupidchicken.com, though on a different server) died, and so did all its backups, which meant most of my new Stanford Alumni Singapore site went down the drain (since my backup was, well, the Powerbook).

Ah well, managed to restore the old (as in the very original, not to mention ugly) site onto another server, this time a Win2K server (at 3Essentials, which seems pretty decent for its price and features). Which was what they wanted anyway, since the Stanford Alumni Executive Council decided they didn’t like my ne design sometime last week and asked me to change it back. To the ugly one. Did I say I wouldn’t mention it? Fuck, it’s so fucking ugly I can’t help it.

Hopefully that’s it in terms of computer crappiness for the moment.

Finally bought the Garden State soundtrack from whatever that CD store is at Cineleisure. Surprised they had it, but I finally possess a quality version of Iron & Wine’s Such Great Heights. Woot!

Also, found Daily Show torrents again at ShunTV. Thank goodness for life’s small mercies, now I can get my coverage of the Republican Nonsense Convention from the past week.

I don’t know what’s with all the links.

Yay! Scrubs is back, and a less-than-inspiring NSF life is made bearable all over again!

The little pleasures, I suppose. Maybe Stanford football (first game vs San Jose State this Saturday) won’t suck major ass again this year, either.

Ok, can’t ask for that much. But Scrubs!! Yay!