Been busy on various things: Getting my new iMAC 27″ setup (wooo!!!), hanging out with my mom since she’s here for a month, working on music, playing computer games…etc., and of course, work from my job. Also been working out a lot, was able to keep increasing the weights, making good progress. Got my huge bottle of soy protein yesterday, hoping it’ll further help out on getting more lean muscle mass.

Last two days was all devoted to the new PC game that I got: Alice: Madness Returns. Still remember ~10 years ago when I played the original game “American Mcgee’s Alice”, how creative and fun it was, and the cool graphics and character design. Been waiting for a sequel year after year and finally, American Mcgee made one! I didn’t know how good the sequel would be, i’d play it regardless how good/bad it is. After setting up the game, I was visually stunned already at the very first scene - super detailed graphics, very nicely rendered, with nice voice acting. After wandering around the “asylum” area in London where Alice’s “normal” life lives, I was brought into the wonderland. The first few minutes I was basically in awe how beautiful the scenery is, wandering around the area, checking out the mushrooms, flowers, insects, water, trees, and all the floating gardens. I haven’t seen anything that looks quite like that for quite a while, and I kept taking screenshots. The music from the game is just as awesome, with orchestral scores and some erie/dark elements. Very high quality sounds as well. All in all I’m extremely pleased and can’t wait to keep playing it for the next while.

I really hate Michaels art store now. Went there to get a new ZIG 2 way glue (my favorite glue for papercarfts) and they no longer have it. Asked a shopkeeper if they have the X-ACTO knifes she was like, didn’t even know what it is. She led me to the cutter section where of course I’ve already walked by 3 times and didn’t see any. Bad/unknowledgeable employees, high prices, lack of products….everything sucks. So I went all the way to Granville Island, found both the ZIG glue and X-ACTO replacement blades at Opus Framing & Art Supplies. Nice staff (actually walked to me and see if I needed help), tons of products…etc. Great store, love it. The ZIG glue that they had wasn’t exactly the one I was looking for, and one of the ladies said Paperya may carry them, and pointed me where the store is. I went there and boom, found it! Totally out of surprise because usually when people point you to another store, 95% of the time the other store won’t have what you need. On the way I grabbed some very nice looking/colorful macaroons for Wendy. When I headed back to my car, I realized that I’ve dropped/lost the X-ACTO blades that I got! Didn’t know where they went, maybe the pouring rain swept them away from my pocket… I didn’t want to go through the hassle to find a parking spot again so I just headed back home, dropped by Rona, didn’t have it, dropped by Homehardware, didn’t have it. Ended up getting them at Staples, and it was even cheaper ($2.5). I guess that was alright, at least I have 5 new blades now it’s going to last for another 5 papercrafts!

It’s really been a while that I played some game, got this new free online game called Uncharted Water Online. It was a sequel to this Chinese game I played 1x years ago that I was really addicted to, now in English version, in form of a MMORPG. I never play MMORPG as I hate online games but…guess I’ll give this one a try just cause I’m too bored, plus Vincent and his wife are playing it as well so I might as well join them up. So far it’s quite interesting, I get to wander around a lot of familiar European cities like Amsterdam, Antwerp, London…etc. The graphics is so-so however it did have some really cool looking churches and architectures. So far I’ve been taking “lectures”, although they are pretty boring but they help me gaining level. Combat at the sea is also quite interesting. I just have to figure out what’s the best way to make money as I’ve spent all savings on buying this new ship, lol, it’s fast and good looking though.

Days were boring without games, hopefully this game will cheer me up a bit. Just booked tickets and I’m going back to Hong Kong from March 4th to 19th. Not really for fun, but to deal with some messed up problems. We’ll see what happens. Oh well, at least I get to getaway for a bit from the neverending, super busy workload at work..

Last week was definitely the worst week I’ve had in the past year. A database server died during an IT maintenance window, it was a disaster. Took me 6+ hours to fix it all up until 7am, just to followed by insomnia. No sleep for the entire day, worked a couple more hours, just to get more support calls and issues that I had to face. Another database server died shortly following that, more work, more freaked, at the end I was having a hard time breathing properly and my limbs were shaking. It wasn’t until 2 days later that I was able to sleep properly again. Luckily this past week was quiet although everyone was out on vacation but me.

Finally it’s X’mas Eve and I get to rest up a bit. No work today! Just espresso, cake, browsing pictures, and calling Logitech to get a replacement of my VX Revolution mouse. They are going to send me a new one! The Anywhere Mouse MX. It’s a $99.99 retail value one, still doubt it’ll really happen but looks like it will. Going to be a nice, free X’mas gift!

Nothing much that’s going to happen this X’mas. Going to set up my Macbook with iPhone SDK hoping to learn a bit about the Objective C language and mess around with XCore (dev environment) a bit. I have a week of free time next week, hopefully I can accomplish something that I haven’t been able to during the past damned year.

I worked hard today, spent 9.5 hours trying to figure out this piece of code - ASP.NET Ajax Timer control to be precised. And I failed. I had to remove all the code that I’ve written and all the time I spent went straight to the sewage. I’m feeling pretty shitty now, not that it didn’t work plus I’ll have to re-think how am I going to tackle that piece of functionality. Sometimes I really hate web stuff.

Well, at least I got this new iPhone game called Zen Bound 2 that I really got addicted to playing. There are wooden figures that you have to tie up with a rope, and the trick is to make sure the rope touches every single pane/surface on the wooden block. It’s very challenging yet fun. It’s got nice graphics, easy controls, and awesome background music (very zen feel). I’m going to play more now to forget about the shit code I had written today.

I’ve just had an entire month of nonstop work days, and another 3 weeks to come. It’s so crazy that I barely have time to do anything else that I had planned to do. Well at least I managed to complete all the bookings for the accomodations for the trip, and took all the necessary vaccinations. Also got some supplies like some long sleeves nylon shirts, mosquito net, sleeping bag, pillow, mosquito repellent, hand sanitizer/wipes.

I pre-ordered the Olympus E-5 but the worst had happened - Vistek.ca doesn’t have stock and they don’t know when are they coming in. My order is in “back order” now. If they can’t ship it next week I most likely will have to cancel the order I really want to bring it to Africa..it’s going to make so much difference.

Halloween today by the way, although there isn’t really anything festive going on in my world - well maybe will go see a free fireworks tomorrow. Edited this picture of the ruin a the Rhyolite Ghost Town, I thought it was a little creepy.