i don't get where parents get the patience to not lose it in public over impatient/ rude/ etc children; with the patience i have right now, i'd probably lose it, yell at them to be patient or not do what they just did, backhand them hard across the face, then watch them get carted away to an adopted family while i have to deal with soap on a rope.

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fate/ unlimited COMBOS indeed...

like anime, people can change into something they weren't before. something more powerful, stronger, etc.

unlike anime, that process isn't instant; it takes time, hard work, investment, etc. there are no magical spells, if you didn't change, it wasn't because you didn't have enough mana, or magic circuits, etc. oh yea; you can't merge your soul with someone's else's into a new body.

hardly a revelation, but yeah, i wanted to get this thought off my chest.

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i suck at full step bends on the electric guitar. i'm getting better at it, but it's still a work in progress. maybe my fingers are just really weak; i even contemplated using 2 fingers to bend the string. there's a buncha things i thought about trying to help make it work, but yea. at least i look kewl when i do it now, cause of the techniques i try to use. on the plus side, nothing gives you electric guitar calluses faster than doing vibrato and string bends on your axe.

i dunno if what i've done is called real guitar practice. yea there's a buncha stuff i've started to do, but i still haven't gone onto lesson 2 in my guitar instructional booklet.

i'm happy that fall quarter's finally over, but i'm still disappointed about the way i carried myself this quarter. i definitely need to learn how to better study.

i wonder what precisely makes it so hard for me to study?

when's the last time i ventured here?

hmmm...

seeing that kid on the tennis court who threw temper tantrum after temper tantrum reminded me of when i was little. but it didn't make me sympasize with him, only dislike that type of attitude even more. why? because that type of attitude was childish, and had no legitimate reason for being there.

fate stay night's pretty cool. i guess i must be a type moon fan. maybe if i looked at the fighting game a bit longer, i might like it too; initial impression turned me off though; attacks and combos did so little damage. i don't want to play a fighting game where i need to land 50 solid hits to get the K.O.

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john petrucci's alternative picking technique is so killer. maybe that'll inspire me to do something again on the guitar.

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i'm glad i got the behringer micromon. now i can practice on the electric guitar, while hearing the cd play, and not disturb my mom. ie, it'll be easier to practice when my mom's sleeping.

my above-average iq is both the greatest blessing and curse i have... like treasure in an earthen vessel, it's not always used properly; sometimes the form of the vessel taints the beauty of the treasure.

if i use it to study the truth, and to keep searching for it, i sincerely believe that there will be things that i come across and come to believe, that will put me at odds with everybody else (in part because other people don't spend the time to think about the truth in their free time). i already see that (like how i believe killing somebody even in self-defense is wrong, or that even if you kill somebody when God tells you to, that is sin), and if i were to open my mouth and express those beliefs a bit more vocally, it would put me even more at odds with everybody else. you see, the more time you spend thinking on why certain things are like they are in the world, the more you begin to peel apart the layers of perception that appear to be true, but just aren't. but there are going to be a lot of people who don't do that, and everytime you have to explain the end-all of what you believe, you have to go through a mountain of explanation to get to what you want to explain; along the way, they're probably not going to believe everything else you said and believed, making the conclusion moot.

so you inherently develop this sense of pride as you progress along and hone the ability to determine what is truth and what ie perception, because you simply know more than the average person, and courting the frustration built up from them not believing what you said (sometimes you just want to say, "just shuttup; i've done more thinking on this than you have, so just believe me," but you can't, you just can't). and that pride issue sucks, so you always have to keep it in check, which gets tougher and tougher the more you study and seek the truth. but you can't allow yourself to be humble either, if it means you have to be ignorant too; the Lord calls us to be humble yes, but he also calls us to "prove all things; hold fast that which is good," and Paul repeatedly told his readers to not be "ignorant".

so, like joe dumars trying to win a championship for the pistons now with the vets, but building for the future with young players, as a God-following "truth-seeker," you're trying to do the impossible; be a humble, yet knowledgeable person. i'm starting to think these two, though not exactly antonyns, might be polar opposites; you act humble because you realize your limitations. but when knowledgeable, your limitations have become smaller (on paper).

oh yeah; the other part of the equation; it doesn't help that i'm probably really emotional inside, on a frustrated/ angry-type level most of the time. so that compounds the process of explaining what i know to others. also, i'm really lazy sometimes. that doesn't help either. neither the fact that i'm shy too.

today's international caps lock day

ZOMGITSSOAWESOMETOTYPELIKETHISONCRUISECONTROL!?!?!?!

seems prop 8 will pass; most of the ppl supporting it are asian.

i was driving to cupertino library today after tennis, and buncha asians were picketing for "yes" on it. there were "honk if you support tradional marriage" signs, and ppl were honking like crazy.

i wonder why not as many ppl are on that prostitution thing?

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regarding racism (ie some sunday school reflections): it becomes racism when you start tying in culture with race. the ability to distinguish between one and the other is key. (i think) differences with people basically have less to do with race, and more to do with culture, but when you tie the two together, and assume the culture and personality of a person based his race (whether you believe that person is good OR bad), that is racism.

there's this one quote i'm trying to remember, but can't; it's basically saying that the only difference between the geniuses and those who aren't is the ability to see the same things, differently. i believe i saw it painted on a wall in a science lecture room while i was at UC Davis. here's two that it "might" have been:

"Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle than his fellows."
-Havelock Ellis

"Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and where the man of talent sees two or three."
-Ezra Pound

you stay classy, UCD band-uh

in this world, you have to screw stigmas. but you have to check yourself to make sure you don't go overboard.

I’m sure the original author on the Blazers’ blog, regarding playing basketball defense, will bring it up in his part 2, but another really important facet of fighting games is making your opponent think he can control space so that he does his thing, but then actually setting him up so you control space. One great example is the fireball trap that Ryu possesses; contrary to what the uninformed believe, Ryu players actually want to not be fullscreen when they’re chucking fireballs; they want to be at the range where if you jump in, they can hit you with a dragon punch; that puts risk into their fireball game, but also means now they can lure the opponents into jumping over a fake fireball so they can dragon punch them. That’s why a lot of high level SF2 matches involve Ryu players whiffing a lotta standing fierce punches at midrange; they’re not actually screwing up the fireball motion; just trying to fake the opponent into jumping. Another example is to make your opponent think they can sweep you at max range, then back up ever so slightly so it misses, and then sweeping him as he is in recovery of his whiffed sweep (otherwise known as footsies). Your first goal in fighting games is to control space; shut down your opponent’s abilities to control space, and impose your ability to control space. Make your opponent scared, afraid to press buttons, and then in that moment of hesitation, you can do things you usually won’t be allowed to do; in the SF2 games, once you controlled the footsie game, and your opponent became afraid of pressing buttons at midrange, you could use that moment of hesitation to close in and do a 2-way mixup game, which would do more damage than standing at midrange playing the footsie game; as Ryu/Ken, you could throw them, or dragon punch. As Zangief, you could 360 throw or sweep. Etc. Once that happened, go back to the footsie game, and try to dominate again until you get another opportunity to do another mixup game, rinse and repeat.

It’s kinda how I play my help defense on the basketball court. Many of you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I actually don’t consider myself that good of a help defender (I would rate myself like a B-) in terms of blocks and the whole vertical game, because I don’t gamble a lot; I think Bob is the best help defender in that regard during pickup (of course, Bob has the luxury of coming from behind more than I do, but I still think he’s much better than me, because he gambles a lot more than me, but his success rate is still high). But I consider myself very good as a lock-down defender, and use that to my advantage in helping. So the way I gamble for blocks as a help defender is that I stay on my man as long as possible until I know the opponent is going to shoot, then come over very quickly and try to block the shot; many times I don’t come over at all. Done this way, I don’t get that many blocks. But it also prevents the opponent from dishing off the ball to the person I’m guarding, and usually ends up with them shooting the ball with me coming over; for me, I believe it’s better to come over later than earlier; come over earlier, and you’ll get burned with a pass everytime; when I first started playing at Terman Park, I used to gamble like crazy, come over super early, and I would pay the price everytime; my man would always be open and hit with a pass. But if you come over late, you might not get the ball, but they’ll usually never pass because they are almost finished with their shooting motion, and still get slightly distracted by your wingspan and jumping, especially if your height and wingspan relative to the people you play with makes you a big man. IE, make them think they can control space their way, give them an open lane to the hoop and don’t come over, make them “stick out that sweep,” and then shut it down at the last moment by your space control. So my help defense is a lot like how you play footsies in fighting games; I hover between that “too late” and “just in time” timing when coming over; you don’t think I control that particular area of space, but I do.

On that regard, you will notice a lotta times when somebody slashes into the lane, I’m one of the last people getting there to help; it’s not because I don’t know they’re coming, but it’s because of this principle of helping that I’ve got. I’ve got my back turned towards them, arms raised to prevent a pass to the man I’m guarding, but I’m really trying to make my body language look like I can’t see them at all, while my peripheral vision is totally on them, and judging distance and timing, judging when or if I can gamble, Not to mention I know everybody else has already crowded the paint, so I don’t need to go over just yet. :D

Look, it’s not that I don’t like getting blocks when playing basketball; I HEART them. They make playing defense fun. But it’s more important that you put yourself in position to get maybe 3 blocks in an afternoon, but safely alter 10 more, than it is to get 10 blocks, but leave your man open 30 times. Or something like that. Bill Russell once said something to the attitude that it’s not about trying to block every shot, but making your opponent think you might block every shot. My help defense school of thought is like 180 degrees different than his; I’m trying to make my opponent think I might never block his shot.

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On other notes, a lotta things the BlazersBlog article talked about I’ve heard before (not just the controlling space part), but it was good to hear them reemphasized again. Like the mentality thing; one of Dennis Rodman’s quotes from his book describing his attitude on defense was essentially “I used to look at the guy I was guarding and think, f... this, I just decided something; you ain’t getting s....” When I get into a really serious shut-down mode playing pickup basketball, my intensity inside is very similar; “I am not giving you anything today,” or the like.

Also, I think I’ve realized beforehand that offense beats defense too because offense is dictating, and defense is anticipating; I don’t think reacting is a good word choice for defense (though it can be for offense); the difference between anticipating and reacting is that you need to think ahead that so-and-so move is what the offense is going to do. Reacting on defense would mean you could just go on autopilot and whatever the opponent did and you saw, you countered clean. That is b/c in fighting games, most people need to anticipate said move to counter it; ie, bait it. The really scary players are those who can REACT to said move; they only need to see it, not guess when it’s going to come out. So they never have to tire themselves out second-guessing whether the move is going to come; if it comes, BOOM they got it.

Anyways, though offense is supposed to beat defense, defense is still more important than offense because it’s consistent; offense isn’t. This also is consistent both in team sports, and fighting games. You can’t be offensive all day; it just doesn’t work; some days you’ll just roll over your opponents and you won’t need to defend, other days nothing will work. But your defense is going to be there regardless. I used to believe if your defense was tops, you could have a junk of an offense and still win. That’s not true; your offense still needs to not be suspect, and this game is still won by who scored more points than the other team; even if you many to somehow deny your opponents to 0 pts, if you scored nothing as well, you don’t win. BUT, your offense doesn’t need to be tops if your defense is. IE, a team with solid offense, but great defense wins over a team with great offense but solid defense most of the time. I mean, you need not to look any further than the 2008 NBA Finals; that was a great example of a solid offense, great defense team (Celtics) vs a great offense, solid defense team (Lakers). 2004 Finals was also a good example, with the Pistons being that defensive-minded team, and the Lakers being that offensive-minded team.

this news article has too much lol

yeeesh; niners win; willis for t3h 86 yd td as well...

giants and packers just killing it on the road. sick.

i think the preference ppl have for mac n' cheese really is a kid thing; they liked it as a kid, and kinda blossomed from there. i don't ever really think i HATED it, probably liked it at one time, but it's just something that i look at now, and go, why would you want to eat that now? shouldn't we be hooked on pasta alfredo or something like that if that's how it is?

anyways, i brought up THAT, in order to bring up some peculiar foods that i like now, PROBABLY because i liked them as a kid:
-cottage cheese (actually, all types of cheese, but i have no problem eating this with nothing added, which might surprise a bunch of people; i don't think it's disgusting; it's basically got the same flavor as tofu, ie bland, and it's really good health-wise, which is a surprise, because it's a cheese, but the truth is that body builders love it because it's a very good source of high quality protein with low fat, and tends to have very little additives.)
-avocado (again, don't have to add anything to it)
-vienna sausage (this one's weird, but i always loved them)
-pound cake, frozen, sliced, sara lee (again, childhood thing, but it's pretty good i THINK when you eat it this way; sometimes my mom would give this to me for breakfast)

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my body's weird; it tolerates ALL kinds of weather; cold, hot, whatever. but the initial adjustment from one extreme to the other kinda bugs me. like right now i'm still in "hot summer" mode, so the beginning of this week and the end of it are both going to kick my ass.

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i think i just wasted 15 minutes of my life idling on blogger trying to decide if i could write any more.

The NFL started yesterday! JT O’Sullivan, please make UCD proud (or at least less ashamed, as Abe Simpson said to Homer), and not that 5 TO effort! Ah yes, the 2K Niners; where they get the high draft picks that the Warriors can’t get, but still royally screw things up. Nevertheless, I’m still psyched for football. That season-ending injury to Tom Brady's gonna make things interesting.

Congrats to Serena Williams for winning her 3rd US Open. I was pulling for Jelena Jankovic (did I even spell that right?), but Serena did a great job. The commentators loved how Jelena smiled after every long rally she won and looked at the big screen to look at herself. Oh yeah; did a lotta splits trying to hustle her ass off (I think I heard a lotta “I love you Jelena!” right before each serve). I guess putting on makeup really did put her into the finals. Very entertaining women’s finals, but Serena’s stroke power and serve power was just too much; I actually predicted as such when I was watching.

And I’m really bummed Rafael Nadal could not meet up against Roger Federer for the US Open men’s championship; I really think Roger Federer’s going to eclipse Pete Sampras’ grand slam total; he’s only 2 away; I think Pete might’ve quit early because he was just bored; funny how the greatest players who just roll through their sports always quit when they’re bored, not when they can’t play anymore; it’s when their playing dips ever so slightly, or when they’re bored. Not when they absolutely suck. Like MJ could’ve had 8+ titles had he not gotten bored midway through the 90s. And he probably still couldve kept playing after 98, although he mightve not won anything anymore. Jerry West mightve won more than 1 had he stuck with it, but he admitted after the NY series that he felt he couldn’t play at a high level any longer, so that was it for him.

do you fight the battles you absolutely know you can't win? i would actually say yes. because effort does not get wasted, whether you believe it or not.

i ARE so hyped for the nfl. go to imeem and listen to the e.s.posthumus - posthumus zone song, and pump yourself up; it's the nfl on cbs theme song.

jeremy is right; doubles matches in tennis end so quickly. i still can't believe the bryan brothers have played 703 consecutive matches together.

good for both hakeem and ewing to enter the nba hall of fame. i srsly gotta consider ordering the dvd boxset for the 1994 championship season.

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i considered yesterday, after leaving church, and seeing a black cat with some white splotches in the church parking lot, and carefully going up to it so i could pet it, that cats are "smarter" than dogs, in that they are less naive, and test the waters a lot more (which may also be why though i like both, i prefer cats more). walk up to a dog, and it will get excited and bark and run to you, etc. even the really midget ones. walk up to a cat without a care, as i did initially, and it will get ready to run away. i had to slow my movement, crouch, stop a few feet from it, and extend my hand the rest of the way to meet it; it proceeded to arch its back, etc, roll over. ppl talk all the time about how cats suck because they're not as friendly as dogs, etc, well, maybe if you checked how you acted before you approached it, like not run full speed at it, it might not take off (but nooo, it's never my fault, it's the animal's fault). sometimes ppl act too much like dogs, and then are surprised when they get betrayed. acting like a cat goes a bit more in line with being "wise as serpents, harmless as doves," as st. matthew once recorded, which is why i also tend to like cats a bit more.

it's gonna be hot this weekend. guess i have to sleep on the sofa downstairs for a couple more days. it better not be unbearable when i go to practice on the drums tomorrow.

looks like i'm gonna have to play pick-up bball this sunday instead of tennis. that is, if it isn't too hot.

i love when walgreens has clearances; their stuff is so cheap. right now they're trying to just get rid of all their school supply stuff to make room for halloween, so a lotta school stuff is on discount. i got a pentel energize mechanical pencil for 2 dollars, when it was 5 dollars regular. very good pencil; the tip is retractable, the grip is very good, and the eraser hides away pretty well too, while still being able to be easily pulled out. included extra leads and erasers too.

i watched part of the republican national convention yesterday when sarah palin took the stage; pretty good. she seemed like she knew what she was doing and saying. we'll see if john mccain knows what he's doing tonight. btw, they kept saying john mccain is a maverick; everytime i heard the word i kept thinking of two movies; top gun and maverick, lol. "i'm too close for missiles! switching to guns!"

aaaand... i should go jogging at least once every week. the fact that i played very little exercise activity for about 1 month, then played tennis with eon and felt my knees slightly sore afterward (which has never happened to me when playing tennis) should give me a sign.

i feel whatever tennis i play with eon or bill never really makes me better. i still can't do a topspin properly; most of the time i do it, i either hit the ball too high, or whack it straight into the ground. and i mos def need a new racket.

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going throughout life without ever taking a conscious effort to think for yourself is being somebody else's pawn. thinking for yourself takes time, effort, energy, resources. but it's worth it, because you really don't know who you can trust in this world.

here we go; another text dump:

I used to wonder why people kept saying that if you overslept, your life span would decrease. But people do say that if you tend to sleep a lot when you are a kid, you tend to grow a bit more (in height; I do remember struggling to get up early, wanting to go to bed early, etc). If sleep helped you to grow faster when you were young, why wouldn’t it do the same if you’re older? Yea exactly.

Why is it that people choose to brush their teeth, THEN eat breakfast in the morning, and when going to the restroom, take a piss/dump, and THEN wash their hands? Both of these events seem like it would make more sense to be done the other way.

Open Office – Draw is really useful for doing slash recall patterns for notetaking.

I wonder why Lincoln Brewster couldn’t just say “Today is the day [the Lord has] made” in his new song; are those lyrics copyrighted?

One of my favorite things to do when driving a stick shift is not shifting up when accelerating (or holding gears as long as possible for that matter); that’s fun, but basic. Neither is starting from a standstill. It’s braking while going into a turn, and then downshifting a notch or two before flooring it as you're coming out of the turn; making the techometer jerk up while the car jerks slightly from downshifting is fun, and makes you feel like you’re on top. If you want to know why I still like driving a stick shift (other than the false sense of security that doing so somehow makes me more of a man than the guy who only knows how to roll with an automatic), that might be it right there.

I am getting tired of everybody at Kaiser who is Chinese asking if I speak Chinese. I understand that being that I look Chinese, I have a pretty high chance of speaking Mandarin. It's still annoying.

i have a feeling ppl who browse my imeem page are gonna wonder why i list so many classic rock and hard rock artists as my favorite music, and yet have japanese music as so many of my favorites. first off, many of those are anime tracks. also, i tend to only favorite music tracks which i DON'T have.

gael monfils is kewl.

i have all these videos of retreat, catherine's surprise bday party and mike's SUPPLIES! on my cpu, but no iD33R how to upload them b/c gmail takes toos long, i am not putting a grainy video on youtube so that it becomes even grainier, and not everybody knows my facebook account.

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i must suck to try to be open-minded in order to get better musically, but not really dig "the police's" best of album. although, i've heard of "roxanne" and "i can't stand losing you" before.

although the sammy hagar cd i reserved is now available; that'll be fun.

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drive-and-kick is probably my least favorite half-court offensive play in bball. pick-n-roll also kinda comes close, depending on how it's done. basically "yay i created a three pointer" plays are boring to me.

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i'm going through charles barkeley's book, and i love it. he really puts thought into what he is going to write about.

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going through the journal entries i wrote on my cpu really makes me wonder just how much i've learned each day. and how much i actually put into practice. there's some sick gems on there.

i'm pretty sure the iq test i took should've been a lot longer in content, giving me more chances to mess up, hence, the ridiculously high score; the one i took in college was a lot more accurate; i got like 137 or something on that one. i know i have an above-average iq(hence the taking 6th grade at miller jr. high, instead of regnart elementary school), but seriously, it can't be 150+; 150+ is genius level. like doogie houser m.d. level. like bruce wayne level. and i know i didn't just gain 13+ pts of IQ by doing nothing for 2+ years (uurrr did I?)

i hope shawn kemp does well in italy. really, i do.

i need to figure out how to take pictures with a digital camera better. retreat was the 2nd time that i took pictures and videos en masse, but i think i could've done a much better job.

my left fingers are really starting to look and resemble like a guitarist who has been spending a lot of time on his axe. my middle finger and ring finger especially; firmed up on the tips, and you see that skin is starting to peel off now. but i haven't touched my guitar yet, lol? i'm hoping that changes after this week. the combination of using the gripmaster with the caps on it, plus taking long showers did it. i was thinking of grinding on the gripmaster with the caps on my right hand, but i don't use the bass guitar. still, it might be useful, for when i play arcade games.

i really wished i recorded an .wav of the 1st praise session during retreat. the only song i felt i played during retreat where i was allowed to cut loose.

i'm gonna miss sleeping on the futon on the 1st floor... well, tonight's the last night i get to do it for some time; it was fun while it lasted...

...as well as eating dinner whenever i wanted, instead of having to wait until 9:30 each night.

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i've been driving a lot slower these days, specifically, it's been almost the same speed as the speed limit, sometimes even a bit below it (i usually drive 5-6 above the speed limit), and i think the mileage has been piling up a lot more.

(sucks that i can't watch the olympics; used to watch them so much growing up; get dat money, michael phelps!)

i need to wash my car.

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call it a desperation move on the new york jets' part. i think the packers made a good move on that sort.

this news article doesn't really beat the one where the guy tried to cash the check...

but it comes pretty damn close.

har har har...

fry's electronics carries it btw; still too expensive (3.79 =/= cool), but if the price dropped or i couldn't stand it any longer, i might buy it. it's kinda cute. according to eugene though, that thing tastes like mouthwash. mmmm... mouthwash.

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that westpoint nfl player got gyped. wut crap.

this series of entries will all just be grab bag.

my taiwanese lacks the choppiness, sing-song-ness of natives.

i'm lol-ing so hard realizing that my mom has a dvd of "terminator 1: judgment day." CHINGLISH FTW. i must bring it to community group.

lol, my fingers are still pretty sensitive because of the ruff rider callus caps + gripmaster combo. i've got the calluses now, but for some reason, they just hurt today during the entire afternoon.

just finished beck: mongolian chop squad; great anime about a rock band. i'm hoping that maybe it'll give me incentive to pick up the guitar again. there's like one guitar workbook i'd like to get first though. and a music stand light.

i might have to buy new 7a drumsticks soon; i find it hard to believe, but if i keep going at it on the drumkit (and especially the cymbals) the way i did last friday, they might break. especially now that i've figured out how to not get splinters/ blisters on my thumbs when using them, and wear earplugs now. or maybe i'll just do the neil peart and use the butt ends after the tips break.

neil peart's "drummer" solo on the rush 30th anniversary dvd was awesome.

i still can't see my future, don't see where i'm going, but maybe i'm just stressing out too much.

dat madden curse acting again...

my left fingers are gonna get some nasty, nasty calluses after i'm done with the ruff rider callus caps i bought.

the new ear plugs i bought are awesome. now i'm gonna hit harder on the drums.

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i wonder if the new state stuff on the state workers affect workers at the library; hope my mom doesn't get hit too hard.

internet at the library's pretty iffy today; i can only log in for 5 minutes, then log out, rinse and repeat. the only reason i'm still here is because of two things:

1)trying to register for classes this fall; registration date's today for me.

2)trying to hook up w/eugene.

some middle-aged asian woman pissed me off on monday as i was driving because she was riding a bike, and decided to bike right at me from the front, then cut across the road VERY SLOWLY as i was pulling up to the traffic light. IDIOT; DO YOU WANT TO DIE?

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i haven't gotten good sleep so far this week; since my mom is in southern ca, i thought i would try to cook dinner early and go to sleep early so i could get up earlier as my mom takes too long to cook dinner, but something always keeps me up when i hit the sack; sun and mon i tossed and turned when i got to bed, so i couldn't fall asleep and get 7 hrs of sleep like that. tuesday i woke up in the night to some faint buzzing sound and was itching all over my forearms. i finally got myself to get up, turned on the lights, got my flyswatter and killed the 1st faint-colored insect that i saw near my bed on the wall. when i saw splattered red color after i killed it i knew exactly what happened. now both my forearms itch all over. and i still can't figure out exactly how that insect got into the house; maybe one of the window screens has a hole in it.

on that same note, i'm still getting used to cooking again; i think my stove at home just heats up a lot faster than the one at the apts at davis, because water boiled in a pot so much faster when i was at home. and some of the frozen meats in the freezer i just can't tell what's inside, because of all the frost.

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i'm still thinking about that luke passage on sunday. all my notes like all my bible notes are still at home, but i was able to come up with some stuff during my insomniac time on either sunday or monday and put it down; off the top of my head:
-the love of mammon, ie, love of money, is the lord of this world, and the root of all evil(3 bible verses), the root of all evil; Jesus hinted at this, because he starts talking about serving only 1 god after he talked about making yourselves friends of mammon of unrighteousness. as long as we are in this world and tied to the lord of this world, use our gifts, our influence, to lessen the burdens that the lord of this world places on others, in order to build up gifts for the next life. because when we die, nothing we have in this world can be carried over to the next life, much like how once a steward is fired from a rich man, he no longer belongs to him. that's a really quick runthrough of essentially what i typed down in length at home.

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mind's blank, so i'm gonna stop.

"bad as a wanna be - dennis rodman" is a neat book; i'm kinda going through it right now, and if you can get past all the profanity and the lewd cover, i think it's a great book. he does not seem as bad a troublemaker as the media portayed him to be once you try to read the book. i also learned a bit more about how he rebounded by reading it, although, with all basketball player biographies, they don't stuff their book full of everything they did, more-or-less inject snippets as they go along. a lot of the stuff he said sounds like it could've come right out of charles barkley's mouth, and that guy is very contraversial, but a lotta the stuff he says makes a lotta sense; it's kinda that way with dennis rodman too.

seeing jonathan, as in jonathan and oliva at cupertino library on thursday was weird, but good i guess. he's still studying.

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ykno how i had "semi-charmed life" by 3rd eye blind nearly on loop when it was still checked out? almost did the same with incubus' "pardon me."

yes, triplets are not hard at all; great. that is, i have no trouble with a trio of eighth notes. but i would love to be able to do a trio of quarter notes without a hitch; whereas doing a triplet(or two) of eighth notes sounds like you're speeding things up, but not fast enough like 16th notes, a triplet of quarter notes sounds like you're slowing things down into the next measure, a very nice way of transitioning.

also bought special earplugs from amazon.com, the ones which lower everything, instead of making everything feel like a dullish, deadish sound; with john tang encouraging every drummer to stop using lightning rods and switch to 7a's, i think i should protect my ears, since i intend on occasionally using 5b's as well. and when i come to the church to practice during the weekdays,

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it's gonna be neat for the next 2 weeks. i get to cook again!

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i should add more videos to my youtube account; haven't really done that in a while.

edit: it's gonna be fun trying to play triplets and tuplets on the drums... i didn't finally get how until listening to joe satriani's self-titled cd. polyrhythms might be a bit fun.

edit: i wonder if the speed limit will indeed be cut back to 60 mph. actually sounds like a good move.

edit: i don't like how brett farve has handled his stuff in the off-season, but packers management aren't going about this the right way either; if they want to let brett farve go, they should cut the contract.

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i have so much flatulence today... i think it was the beef...

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saw a white male - chinese female couple at kaiser yesterday with 2 daughters... the kicker was ALL of them spoke fluent mandarin. pretty good.

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and on that same note, some old asian woman at kaiser thought i was philipino, or at least thought that i could speak their tongue. me? philipino? if the fellowship at davis could recognize that i wasn't korean... yah.

lesse here...

"russell rules" is an excellant book; i've gone through 70% of it yesterday, and it's an excellant book by bill russell. it's designed in a leadership success type book, but he still gives a lotta examples from his boston celtics days, which was originally why i picked up the book in the first place; to know how the man thinks.

the nba finally released a san antonio spurs dynasty/championship dvd set. needless to say, it might be the best boxset i've seen for the nba. basically, it's got all the games from the nba finals that they won. so, 16 games in all, all 4 championships, more than the other franchises' "1st championship" sets or "dynasty" sets. very impressive. costs a ton though; it was 80 dollars at fry's. i still like being able to view all the games of one series though. well, i guess technically the 2007 finals is in its entirity.

and the 2008 boston celtics dvd's pretty good too; features entire 4th quarter against cleveland, game 7 and detroit, game 6.

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i'm trying to discover how to get myself to study harder and more often on the pcats, by thinking about how i can discover that joy of wanting to learn more about science.

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all i've done since i've checked out the "third eye blind" cd from the library was put track 3, "semi-charmed life" essentially on repeat. ad infinitum.

life is so meh sometimes...

there is a market in mountain view called "teh market." now if only the e were a 3.

so i was figuring how i could measure my typing speed in order to put it down on a resume, since the kaiser permanente pharmacy clerk job required that you type 60 wpm.

bingo.

actually, fyi learned today that they took off the job from the internet before i applied. BUT! there's some good in it, because it actually forced me to try to create some form of a filled out cover letter and resume. AND, when i visited rite aid yesterday, i had to do a double take, because there was a sign in the window saying they wanted a pharmacy cashier. so i'm going to have to finish these 2 things and get there sometime by monday i guess.

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i should get a tie clip.

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the biblical "schoolmaster" example: explains why we get inferior situations many times in our lives before the real deal comes along which makes us happy.

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i'm slightly bummed that i can't watch the olympics this year.

rafael nadal's the man. wished i watched; some (like macenroe) are calling this one of the best tennis matches in a long time. taking it to tiebreaker before beating federer on grass for the championship? priceless.

and shame on channel 4 news' ticker for misleading me. what did they print? "warriors offer 5 year $90 mil deal to elton brand." see how ambiguous that statement is? doesn't matter; warriors don't seem to know how to do things correctly sometimes. and by sometimes i mean all the time. i don't care if they don't win the championship in my lifetime(really), but some gradual forward progress would be nice.

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phil's the man for both mailing me a 2-dvd rush music video set and the entire dvd collection of chappelle's show. i gotta thank him soon.

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i mustve forgotten how funny full metal panic anime is as a whole, because i was dying on monday. "no problem." "THERE IS A PROBLEM!"

lol at jt's suggestion of drum fills to "just keep hitting something." it's true though. i did it once. and a nice lol to the fact that he thought isabel tried to do triplets.

i did get the idea though of doing something similar after i heard some pearl jam song; forgot which one it was though.

the trick i believe to doing really nice sounding drum fills is to make the stuff sound almost like you're slowing down or speeding up when you're not playing in a different tempo at all; creates some contrast and mixes it up.

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i'm glad i went to brandon & cheryl's wedding; long time no see other msm peeps.

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had no idea the mountain view library had beck: mongolian chop squad.

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the notes i write to myself about basketball moves and techniques runs some 25 plus pages deep. "those who can't do, teach" apparently, lol.

this news article is just too weird...

love what one of the accomplices was carrying...

oh yea, and you HAD to leave with that.

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i'm just glad most sports fans aren't francise gm's or presidents, because many of their ideas just plain suck.

i did not take a single shot created by myself on sunday, but when i was shooting around with brian waiting for other people to show up, there was this one shot off of the low post i was practicing which made me almost say to myself later "i can't seriously be making this shot at a ridiculous high rate; i must be cheating." (and i was seriously missing everything the way i usually do) what was it? a: pivot into the paint, then a banking turnaround fadeaway. while my hook shots are bad overall, my right hook shot just has no control whatsoever, so i was struggling to figure out what i should go for as a money move on the left block. but then i remembered sheed never took hook shots, but instead fadeaways whenever he turned around into the paint. one thing led to another, you get the drill. it's just that i discovered on sunday that if you try to bank that shot instead of going for a swish, it's so much easier (and actually still looks nice, because the bank is so soft, not hard). but i never posted up on sunday, so i won't know if it was just a miraculous practice juke or not.

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virtua fighter 5 r looks really sick. taka looks incredible. graphics look so much better.

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my mind's blank, so i'll stop for now.

some dude walking into kaiser up to the information desk where i help out, and while my fellow volunteer was already good on giving him help, i had to give a shout out when he was leaving of "i like your t-shirt" because it was a sportscenter t-shirt.

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starting july 1, 2008, california police will now stop you and give you a ticket if you are caught talking on your cell phone(hands free is ok) when you are driving. about time; i keep getting pissed everytime a person(hinthintasian) is holding everybody up. 1st offense is 20, then 50 afterwards. i think the penalty should be steeper.

btw, you might want to consider going to freeheadset.org. according to a speech a person in my communcation class gave, that site will give you a free quality wireless headset to use for your cell phone; you just pay shipping and handling. they don't have my model yet, but hopefully it won't take long.

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one of my favorite all-time quotes:

"liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to be able to do what we ought." (or something like that) -lord acton.

i actually thought of something similar before i even saw that quote. the premise is this: if the founding fathers of the usa realized we were going to abuse the freedom of speech or action the way we do today, i truly believe they would not have rebelled against britain and formed the usa. the freedom of speech is not given so we can say stupid crap(internet forums ForTheLoss), but so that if we see something wrong with the government, we can stand up, speak out, say "that's not right," and not get punished for telling the truth. etc, etc. the liberty given takes the power out of any single individual, and puts in the hands of the people, who *hopefully* are wise and discerning. (i could say that regarding what is right, would be something similar to "something that does not take away from the rights of others.")

and on that similar note, that is partially how the usa parallels christianity, how it was essentially a christian nation overlooking many of the founding fathers having a belief in God. the president of the usa does not hold the ultimate power in the country; the constitution does; a single written document by which all are held to. likewise, a single person in the world does not hold absolute power in christianity; the word of God does.

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WO is such an impressive cvs2 c-ryu player. i just went through a couple of match videos this morning i had on archives on my external hard drive, and was blown away by his solid ground game. and ryu is supposed to be a mid-tier character too.

just did a massive pic dump onto my facebook account. i didn't add the leon powe rookie card pic though, but the kg bobblehead's on there.

this sounds like something straight outta a cartoon

2 down, 2 more left to go. or more like 1.5, or 1.

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a lotta ppl talk about how paul pierce really showed how good he was this year because of his improved defense, but i'm surprised nobody talks about how he stopped taking jumpers at the 3 pt line and started driving to the hole every single time; prior to this season, he spent so much time on the 3 pt line. i'm a big fan of in close shots.

"annnyyythhinnngggg's poooossssiiibbbblllleeee!!!"

including not winning next year

[/end quote]

goodness, that was way too funny when i read it on a forum.

i remember when i watched game 3 of the 2002 ecf finals, and paul pierce and antoine walker led the celtics to that ridiculous comeback. it was a special game, and one of my favorite all-time nba games i ever watched in person (partially because of the dramatic change in offensive strategy to start the 4th quarter; no more 3s; all layup attempts)

well, this probably topped it. i'm impressed. too many things to list.

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y'kno, one of things i hate is how everytime ppl who try to justify how kobe is allowed to do what he does, is they play the jordan card, but the one that ticks me off perhaps the most is how he's allowed to be a team leader the way he is, arrogant, not really friendly, etc, "because jordan was like that." look, can we just admit jordan was a really unique case? yes, let's all do small ball and have average centers and have 2 and 3s who are arrogant as hell for our team leaders. that'll give the teams we root for 2 3-peats.

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i'm really bummed that all the trade rumors i've heard for the pistons almost always involve tayshaun prince. i really guess he's not going to play all his days as a piston; i really wished a lotta good all-around players played their entire days on the same team that drafted them; like pierce. there is one SMALL plusside to this though, that maybe they'll have piston tayshaun prince jerseys for really cheap after he leaves. always wanted one of those.

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control your emotions, and you control yourself.

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2 more weeks. i gotta quickly figure out what to do.

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that's it; i'm checking http://ecanaan.org/calendar/ every week before i practice on saturday; i'm getting tired of driving 15 minutes only to find a workshop is taking place in the sanctuary.

hahaha: "Police: Man in DUI Crash Said He Was Driving Around to Sober Up"

what's up with democrats FINALLY trying to impeach bush?

the baron davis and adam sandler tv commercial where they parody the nba "there can only be one" commericals with zohan and b-diddy cracked me up. "nooo... you haffF a dWeEaMn..." and then they cut back from cuts of the movie to b-diddy wearing the same clothes as zohan.

i bet i'm not the only one who is wondering why kg is not parking his ass on the low block. but yes, that 2-handed putback was golden. loved how the crowd erupted when paul pierce got back on the floor and nailed back-2-back threes. (but where was the love for perkins when he made it back?)

also props to ray allen; if yesterdays' game is any indication of how he's tried to change his game to complement his teammates this entire season, i admire what he's done. guarding kobe(although rivers prob wanted to do that more to keep pierce out of foul trouble). choosing to drive and pass to teammates most of the time rather than take the shot and spot up. getting 6 boards. etc.

new season, improved bench, same coach, same result. i seriously think game 3 was the deciding factor in this series.

welcome to die, pistons (and piston followers).

it's stuff that makes me glad i have multiple hobbies, or i'd be constantly bummed every june.

not that i hate the c's; i pulled for them during the 2002 ECF's. here's hoping they get the chip.

news article: japan woman lived in man's closet

lol at japan; ninjas to the core

if it's true what sheed said, then yeah, the league must REALLY be willing a lakers-celtics finals.

well, can't really say it's over til it's over.

is it wrong to have a negative outlook on life, so that when bad things happen, you're not surprised by them? cause everytime i hope so hard for good things to happen, and they don't happen, that drags me down so much. or maybe it's possible to EXPECT bad things to happen, but always hope for the good?

guess the celtics finally have to win on the road; i'm hoping the pistons don't go easy on them; ride DAT home court advantage. seems like the guys at need4sheed kept making fun of sheed and chauncey rocking the tights in game 1; maybe that's why they lost. and i keep thinking it, but somebody finally beat me to putting it on paper or audio: rodney stuckey is sorta like dwyane wade. in that case, you COULD say joe dumars corrected his 2004 draft mistake; remember that he could've gotten dwyane wade, but passed him up. stuckey's just been incredible in the playoffs. the other thought somebody beat me to on espn.com was that rasheed wallace and kevin garnett really are the same type of player; defensive-minded, likes deferring to teammates and not taking low-post shots but when they do, have an unblockable turnaround, etc, oh yeah, both are kinda emotional during games.

i've been keeping an anime journal on my desktop; not so much a journal and review and critique, but more just a list of anime i've watched and completely finished as well as how many volumes there are, anime i'd like to watch but isn't at the library, anime i'd like to watch, and is at the library (cause i'd like to believe eventually someday down the road i'd like to buy a couple of different animes). it's kinda long, lol. i always have some anime volume on request by reservation at the library. i'm planning to eventually put up the 2008 list at the end of the year.

along those lines, i wanted to do something similar; start a music journal, but when i listen to music i check out at the library, i usually don't always get through the entire album; listen to a couple of songs, then return. i started the anime journal before 2008 rolled around, but i didn't do anything at all for the music journal, so it's very tough to recollect all the music i went through. fyi i'm going through a couple of pearl jam and goo goo dolls cds currently as i speak. pearl jam's clearly one of my favorite music groups; top 5 i'd say. listening to their greatest hits album, rearview mirror, was like a trip down memory lane. i already have the "ten" album, but i'd like to get the rearview mirror album someday. i also went through a steve vai cd prior to that(actually went through the entire album). basically, unless the album's an artist i REALLY like, chances are i won't just push play on the cd player and leave it.

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i am really kicking myself mentally for realizing i put down wrong entries on my midterms. it sucks. and i think i still gotta figure out a better way to study. that's the one thing i hate about myself; i just haven't found that one best method to study that enables me to not have to be very very tired because of having to stay up late at night the night before. i think it has to do with the flash card software i have(jMemorize is awesome, it really is; you should try it sometime), that much i know, but i'm still working on the other components of it.

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sometimes if your brain is smart, you end up discovering methods and things others don't really get; here are two things i've discovered:

1. How to avoid static electricity when reaching for a door handle: take the bottom palm of your hand and touch it to the door above the handle, before touching the handle. works because the skin under your palm is a lot thicker than on your fingertips(horray for somewhat learning something during science classes at uc davis), so even if static did hit your hand, you won't feel it as much, plus your fingertips are very sensitive, compared to your palm. as for touching the door as opposed to the handle? dunno, just seems to work better that way. when i do this, i never get static shock(drum fill for referencing the cartoon). happens all the time when i'm rubbing my hands on my jeans, which i tend to do often. i still get shocks from all other different stuff though, because i'm not always touching other stuff with the bottom palm of my hand. guess i should start touching my car handle the same way.

2. How to do a "natural smile" for a camera shot: i'm not good at smiling on camera, but i more or less discovered what you need to do to give a natural smile a few months back, the few times i had to interview for a job: show teeth, but leave a tiny gap between the upper and lower teeth. also, squint your eyes a little. those three tips usually tend to do it; should make you look like you're giving a shy smile; but it looks natural, like you're half-chuckling from a joke. my most recent photo is the only one which i use this technique, but it looks completely natural: my de anza id card.

3. How to low post. (LOL) I gotta head back to work. So i'm not gonna list it here now. But I will say if you memorize the number 24 or 222, you will be able to figure out what moves to use, what counter-moves to use.

that recent page 2 article scoop jackson wrote about the pistons is so spot on... so spot on. i was so impressed in 2004... and then, from there on out? it's been all up and down. up and down. but you can't ignore them, can't turn away, cause they're so unique, and have that feel about them making them so unlike any other team in the league.

you do realize that david stern's worst nightmare OR sweetest dream could occur this june? there's a very good chance the spurs and pistons play each other again, or the lakers and celtics.

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i'm gonna be a dead man walking by the end of this week; just midterm after midterm, and not enough time to study.

youtube video is blurry, really blurry at the library, but it was good enough for me to finally watch the lebron dunk. that was impressive. i guess iso plays for players who have speed are now done everytime at the top of the key as opposed to the wingside, eh? the head fake james threw at posey was probably what was most impressive during that sequence.

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if you've wondered where michael cooper was after that awful stint trying to coach the denver nuggets and trying to get them to play defense only(good luck), the answer is... the los angeles sparks' head coach. i was taken aback when i saw it.

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i see james lin everytime i volunteer at kaiser; cool eh?

i genuinely thought before i left the library yesterday that the cavaliers were going to win game 5. celtics don't look as complete a team in the playoffs that they looked in the regular season. you HAVE to be able to win on the road. maybe not all the time, but have to at least 2-3 times during the journey to the magical number of 16 wins.

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i didn't say this, but the pictures that show tayshaun stopping hedo's dunk look a LOT more like he's getting posterized because his head is back, lol(maybe the cameramen shouldv'e taken the picture earlier). thank god that wasn't what happened.

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*sigh* i'm not gonna be having a lot of fun this weekend and next week.

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i wonder how much drive i have. couple that with my above-average IQ = ?

the prince of the palace doing his thing on d

all-defense team:

1st:
"G": kobe, bowen
"F": duncan, garnett
"C": camby

2nd:
"G": bell, paul
"F": tayshaun, battier
"C": howard

my only main objection is that camby should NOT be on there. at all, 1st or 2nd. not closing out on shooters so you don't give up rebounding position is not good d. move howard to 1st, put tyson on 2nd. debatably, bell shouldn't be on there either; shaun marion was clearly the suns' best defender, but now he's gone.

i so wanna see a video of that dunk lebron james put on garnett after blowing past pierce and head faking posey outta the way.

(yea, yea, i know, rich, how can you like the cavs-er, i mean, lebron, if you're a die-hard pistons fan?)

(and why do the best dunks always seem to come during blowouts?)

that drive to the floater that tayshaun made to win game 4 so reminded me of what he used to do all the time during the 2004-2005 season; get the ball on the wing, fake a shot, drive and put up a floater in the paint. just pretty.

and lebron james' blocks and passes are just amazing.

showing some love for tayshaun via need4sheed:

turning the corner off of the pick n roll

throwing the oop to sheed

impressive list of 75 things every man should be able to do

now i get about 7 days of no tests, but i gotta keep up.

got a buncha cds from best buy thanks to their 4.99 cd sale. gonna be listening to rush and soundgarden in about 1 week! the spirit of radio is one of my favorite rush songs, maybe one of my favorites of all.

i love how rasheed wallace loves dwight howard. if you keep up with various news, you'll notice that rasheed wallace always pulls dwight howard aside and whispers in his ear at various times, but it's always stuff about how to get better, not where to eat, etc. the reason? rasheed likes how dwight howard is not concerned about his fame and money. if you read the article on espn a bit back on sheed(which was good, btw), you'll notice how much rasheed wallace is not into money, not into fame. he was unwilling to do a photo shoot with espn the magazine for his article, and kept looking down and not maintaining eye contact during the interview. and if his teammates wears something stupid from their money they get(i'm thinking rip hamilton's furcoat with the foxheads count here), he pins it on the blackboard, and writes a big ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! on it. rasheed wallace states himself that he's old school; i believe him.

(i will say that the love is reciprocal; during the 2005 season, i think dwight howard pulled for the pistons to win the championship, because he said that if he did go to college, he would've gone to unc)

this news article has LOL written all over it...

news article on tayshaun playing the 1 / being more aggressive on offense

-and didn't joe dumars step out of the shadow of the other bad boys to win finals mvp when they won their 1st title?
-to elaborate, i think tayshaun needs to step out of the shadow of the other dudes and demand the ball more; dude's a walking mismatch, and could probably get a shot in the paint almost anytime he wants. i just hope he's not iffy when he does it.

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i was KINDA right on the spurs-suns. suns didn't represent the west. but i still stand by the fact that spurs' key to victory was their backcourt. guess that marion for shaq trade didn't work at all.

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dwight getting almost a 20-20 every night the magic win is ridiculous; even the sole loss numberswise he was still pretty good. admirably ridiculous; don't even forget about the 3-6 blocks he gets on the side. i think the east conference matchups look good 2nd round in anyway that it's cut, really.

in fact, 1st round's been kinda good i guess too. nobody expected the hawks(al's apparently VERY good and has a very high IQ) and the sixers to give the other two teams that much trouble, everybody loves dwight and the washington-cleveland series has been full of drama, if you're into that.

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maybe being more right-brain dominant leads to more visual learning strength? i wonder about that one. but if it's true that information zips between the 2 hemispheres via the corpus callosum a lot, then is it the brain leading to the person being lefty or the dominant use of the left hand and feet leading to the right-brainedness?

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lol at lucky star anime finally being decided to be released in the us by bandai visual; i really thought they would never do it, y'kno, with all the ridiculous anime references and etc.

sometimes i wonder why i watch anime nobody else is watching. ie, why am i NOT watching initial d, bleach, prince of tennis, naruto, inuyasha, dragon ball z, etc. well, ok, the last 2 are kinda weird. does devil may cry count?

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1 midterm down this week, 2 more + 1 project's hw to go... i think i did alright, but i'll have to wait and see.

i wonder why today's felt like a thursday the entire day to me. maybe i'm just subconsciously wishing the week would end tomorrow.

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guess i have to STILL wait another week until i actually do stuff at kaiser...

blessings in disguise today i guess...

b/c of the power outage, i get one extra day to study for the midterm, which is good, because i felt i wasn't ready.

and the group presentation gets moved to tuesday.

although i feel like crap today because i feel so tired.

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sixers = warriors of the east? although no jacking of 3s(which i like better). still want pistons to advance, but the way recaps are, they seem to be like a high offense team with scrappy defense. pistons would be so much more worse than they are right now if mcdyess was not playing HORD and tayshaun was not locking up iguodala.

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go sharks i guess; i should really pay more attention to nhl boxscores.

if the fellow students in my world history class are all going to be that idiotic when discussing topics, i might end up getting some type of cancer very, very, soon; my blood's boiling too much; the professor allows us to discuss stuff, but people are just too moronic:

-everybody interrupting everybody when talking, trying to get their point in(leading to a lot of times of absolute unintelligibility).
-people talking for the sake of just talking, as opposed to trying to say something RIGHT(one guy in particular). (this one probably irks me the most)
-doesn't help that i get the vibe that in the class, most people seem very anti-christian, including the professor(if you know me, know what i've done during college during my spare time for about a year or two, you'd understand)

this feels worse than all the discussion classes in various philosophy classes i had to attend at davis.

but, i have to take this class in order to go to pharmacy school. so i might as well try my hardest to just endure this, and deal with this class this quarter.

at this rate, i'd probably have to enter deep prayer every time before i attend this class on monday to keep my sanity. and then throw up a couple of short prayers during the class every now and then.

[/vent]

aw man, i wanted to meet metallica...

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the phoenix suns are actually my pick to represent the west(and this isn't like the east, where i would like detroit to represent, but boston is somewhat of an equal for them; i think phoenix is right now the clear cut best team in the west). it's not what shaq does, it's how much pressure he's taken off of amare (kinda like how cwebb on the pistons last season wasn't so much about him, but how dice suddenly rediscovered how to play). scoop jackson said it best; you double shaq, and amare is going to get 40 and 18; there's not many teams that have the frontcourt balance to contain both shaq and amare. and normally i wouldn't buy into shaq being a team player, a role player, but if he's doing really well this way, i can't argue against that.

lakers, if they were at full strength, would probably be the best team in the west, but they aren't(i think?). the best team counter to the suns in the west imo would be the spurs, because they have more than 1 great backcourt creator. now that phoenix does not have shawn marion, ginobili and parker have to step up even further and expose that backcourt "weakness", because duncan's gonna have his hands full guarding and being guarded by shaq. although they do have thomas though, so maybe that'll take pressure off of duncan guarding amare or shaq.

to be honest though, western conference doesn't really excite me though(even though it's gonna be hecka competitive from the 1st round in), but i do like the hornets. that's just because i grew up liking more eastern conference teams than western conference. i'm just waiting for the results of pistons vs celtics. celtics and cavs are gonna be good too; lebron has stated he dislikes the celtics.

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spielburg is going to be directing a 3D "Ghost in the Shell" movie; are jews gonna be in it?

at least it won't be as cheesy as the new street fighter movie including kristen kreuk from smallville playing as chun-li; wth writes a street fighter movie with chun-li as the main character? i'll still watch it though; it just better be sloppily hilarious, like the 1st one.

i can just hear how much whining western conference fans are gonna make about how eastern conference seeding isn't fair.

that being said, every team sport(baseball, football, basketball, hockey? soccer?) has never done it by the top teams directly. it's usually the top teams in each of the two conferences, whatever the conferences may be.

not that i'm not disappointed, but still...

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the drum loop software i have on my laptop can't do 3/4 timing. which sucks.

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i have the best idea about what i want to do for phil's upcoming bday, seeing how i love pulling semi-gags on him whenever i send him gifts. this might be my BEST IDEER EVAR.

i can't believe i had to attend a world history class on monday night instead of watching one of the best final four games in recent history. hey, the jayhawks won, and did so in stunning come-from-behind fashion. when i watched the jayhawks a few weeks back playing against the longhorns i believe, i was really impressed with their atheleticism on help d and their balance. mario chalmers was probably their best defender, and i was impressed by how many times he came from behind and got a free swipe at the ball. ditto when i watched them play and beat unc. so i wanted them to win this year.

i are a student again...

today's engrish.com(april 7) made me laugh too hard. definite keeper.

for the really sparse times i play nba 2k8, i think i know how to play a lot more now. lol, when playing w/the celtics or pistons, just select rondo/billups, dribble close to rip/ray, and playcall for them to get open. playing against the suns is tough though, at least defensively; cpu always goes to shaq down low, guarding amare is always a handful, and i still can't completely figure out how to use the shot stick on defense; the actions always change relative to where you are. i was able to blow out the lakers playing as the warriors, but kept losing to the suns when i was using the celtics by 10 or more, until i got tired of playing and decided to see what else bill, eon and brian were doing inside micro center.

here's hoping kansas wins it all tonight. i won't be able to watch the game because of night class. i loved the saturday game. hooking up white guys on alley-oops? their freshman big man getting his block on? sweet.

dis warriors playoff run is absolutely MADDENing. DIS ISH MADNESS! (awaits THAT comeback remark)

i've been listening to rush(live) - stages a lot in the car now. that was essentially phil's favorite musical group growing up, so while i can't say they're my favorites, obviously there's a lotta tunes that i recognize and kinda like because he'd always be playing those songs on tape/cd and trying to play them on the fender stratocaster.

lolol...

life is one huge timespan of repeatedly looking at glasses of water, guaging whether they are half-empty or half-full. in other words, humans are ridiculously selfish, and only interpret things based upon how they affect themselves. sports are a perfect example(and it is for this reason though i love sports, i hate sports fans; to the selfish bastards, everything is only relative to themselves); one sports fan's "good play" is another fan's "bad play," but nobody cares. one sports fan doesn't care at all if his team sucks on defense, laments how boring it is, until the team he follows get a great defensive player; then all he can do is talk about defense(exhibit a: sacramento kings' announcers after it became official the maloof brothers would sign ron artest). etc, etc, etc.

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something to think about, but that i've come to realize; the gained knowledge that adam and eve received from the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil wasn't bad by itself. but the fact that the knowledge gained was finite, and that man has lusts, which God does not have, was what caused their downfall. (this is why many humans sin despite knowing in their mind what they need to do. or why they sin because they don't have a full picture, ie complete knowledge.) that, on top of the obvious "they just disobeyed God." that's just the bare bones of it; i've spent a lot more time writing on it at home, but all my notes are locked away on my external hard drive.

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though it's been a while since i've checked some animated film/tv series out from the library which wasn't japanese anime in some form(afro samurai doesn't count), i HAD to check out superman: doomsday when i realized it was sitting on the shelf. ie, "the death and return of superman."

speaking of which, i watched afro samurai a few weeks back, and i think that mightve been the most bloodiest cartoon or anime i've ever seen. it's like samurai champloo with some kill bill mixed in, and a lotta blackness. oh, and samuel l. jackson is the voice actor of Afro in it.

imagine that... my favorite player in the nba could've been a pacer(but then i wouldn't have ended up liking him, because he wouldn't have been teamed up with ben and co). according to an ny sports article linked off of need4sheed.com, donnie walsh orignally wanted to select tayshaun prince during the 2002 draft, but instead decided it wouldve been better to allow then ex-coach isaiah thomas to make the decision. and isaiah chose... fred jones. it probably hurts even more to pacer fans, when they consider that of all the things tayshaun did(1 chip, a couple of all-defense spots, etc), had to be THAT BLOCK on reggie miller. while fred jones won... a slam dunk comp because jrich didn't try a sure-fire dunk to win it. yippie.

(here's another thing to think of)... although i wouldn't have liked tay that much if he weren't a piston, if he ended up on the pacers due to the draft, it's quite possibly he could've ended up playing for the warriors last season, carrying onto this season, if you get my drift. after all, the warriors broke the drought by trading for a couple of pacers. then again, it was for a pair of veterans and that cheerleader.

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i wonder if every easter sunday i'm going to contemplate why i still firmly believe jesus died on wednesday morning and arose on saturday night, but never told many people, aside from bob a while back?

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my drumming was awful this sunday. missed beats all over the place(wonderful; it was easter sunday too; wondered how many newcomers were turned off?). when i relistened to my performance, it was a bit harder to hear all the mistakes, but i knew i made them. the splash cymbal just seems in a place that i'm not used to at the moment(between the tom-toms), so many times i either missed hitting it completely, or hit it too softly. plus, it still has a different sound(less shimmery, but a brighter sound), so i'm still getting used to when to use it.

worship's never about the accuracy of the music(and as long as people feel moved by the Spirit, i'm cool w/it, though it's a bit hard for me to guage that every sunday save by asking everybody), but i still wished i could've played better. just too over-excited, and it probably carried onto how i played.

and the cowbell still sounds a bit weird; i will mos def bring DAT cowbell more often, but i couldn't help but think ppl might be giggling when i played it. cowbell IMO can sorta be treated like a ride cymbal, except used during verses; has the same type of tone closely enough, but doesn't shimmer.

my, oh my...

damn... it would take me 59 min to get to oakland... w/o traffic... 53 min to get to alameda... w/o traffic.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

i found this news funny

something's ridiculously wrong with my laptop; it can still work if i use really basic stuff(word, etc), but now if i plug stuff into the card bus(to use wireless), i get the blue screen of death pretty frequently now. usb seems alright though. and i'm not even using the wireless at home to steal; i try to use it at the library. reformatting doesn't seem to do anything; gonna try again today. i should really look into getting a new laptop soon. but t3h guitar comes first.

luv how joe d's on the list of espn.com's top 10 2's of all time. jerry west is real good too.

this week's gonna be fairly busy.

wonder what anime i should try going through now, now that i've more or less finished full metal panic, seasons 1 and 2? the library doesn't have beck.

been mulling over how to pray...

this might be good for peeps who don't have cable.

list of what white people like

front page

list is pretty funny [and accurate!] overall(i just finished the soccer and threatening to move to canada entries and can't stop laughing, the assists one is pretty funny too), but let's look at one in particular:

#53: dogs

i think you know where i'm going w/this; you know why michael vick got so much hate. and that recent thing with the us armed forces youtubing themselves throwing a DEAD dog over a cliff. a lizard wouldn't get this much publicity. stupid white people.

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courtesy of hamlin's advice, started looking into this comic:

piled higher and deeper comics

"I kind of tried to grab him, and unfortunately grabbed him around the neck. Things went so fast, I didn't mean to grab the neck, but I just tried to hold him so he doesn't score. I happened to grab his neck and it was a bad fall."

lol... "is dirk nowitzki gonna have to choke a b****?!?!?!?" mightve been literally the 1st thought that came outta my mind when i read that quote.

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i keep underestimating isaiah thomas as a point guard; yes, magic johnson, john stockton, oscar robertson are all up there. but after that, you need to put isaiah thomas there; i just keep forgetting how good he was as a player. when i was rewatching one of the ECF games during 1988-89 last night(game 4, when rodman had 18 boards), i needed to remind myself how good 1-on-1 he was, and how he delivered come playoff time; could drive into the teeth of the defense, pull up at midrange, or go for the 3. he nearly had a triple-double in this game(about 2-3 assists short), had 2-3 really good steals too from what i remembered, and scored the most points out of all the pistons(this, with jordan being the primary defender on him).

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magneto in real life!

lol... "playtime... has ended!!!"

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boobies save a life

LOLOLOLOLOL.... or as a srk.com member put it, "if the tits don't fit, you must acquit."

newgrounds: flash videos:

x-men
x-men 2
x-men 3

lol at psylocke. and wolvie's accent.

guess you get some payoff for having a bday on 02/29th.

street fighter online: mouse generation

english article about the game

youtube video of demo play

not exactly sf4. but might be fun to get once it comes out. seems a lot like the marvel, vs games that capcom made. using joy2key and a joystick might be totally key.

japan be doing t3h lolis wrong?

sexy no jutsu not performed correctly?

maybe that coke machine no jutsu could've come in handy for the schoolgirls...

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nba top 10: february 24, sunday

really good top 10... number two and one are just disgusting... lebron james with the pump-fake reverse layup into dunk and dwight howard powering up over 4 kings players surrounding him[listen carefully; they play the superman theme after he dunks on them]

*sigh* i just don't get why i get so hungry so quickly.

i'll elaborate on the topics below later in the week; just so busy with studying for the gres, for the verbal section; with math, you kinda know the limit you need to study. but with verbal, it's always "best way to increase the score is to improve your vocab," so it's basically limitless. ugh.

there was an interesting debate thread a while back on srk.com about football vs soccer, and one of the points brought up was how kids could get into soccer because of the low risk of being singled out (more on this to come)

i really like the intro bgm for the full metal panic series. i think it's "mikuni shimokawa - tomorrow" it's on imeem.com. i've listened God knows how many times trying to glean the exact drum fill the drummer was using at the beginning; it was long; like 2-3 full measures right before the verse, but kinda cool.

speaking of which, i don't hear notes and beats when i listen to music intently; i actually see a musician playing the said instrument during the song. i know, i know, i like metal/alternative/rock/pop so much, so why? it's not because i'm a dumbed down version of beethoven; it's cause i'm a visual learner at heart. it's like a music video going off in my head during the song. (elaboration to come?)

lol at eric h. not catching the slowest pop mistakenly aimed at him by yours truly.

tekken 6 is looking more and more like competitive fighting game trash the more i look into it. so disappointing. they might as well just re-release x-men vs street fighter in the arcades; it's essentially the same thing.

i remember a calvin and hobbes strip where calvin asks his dad what's the difference between being a kid and an adult. dad responds nothing much, except you become more attached to your toys. he's polishing and fixing up a bike as he's saying this.

some not-so-expensive-as-the-electric-guitar-i've-been-coveting but-would-be-cool-to-get toys i've been thinking of:

1. reaction ball. basically a ball that bounces in unpredictable directions. it's very useful for honing many different applications in ball sports. most descriptions suggest you can use it for fielding practice and baseball, but i would imagine it works great on practicing rebounding in basketball if you have a wall and just toss it at it at an upwards angle.

2. behringer ma400 headphone amp gonna have to wait a bit before i order; most sites have it backordered. and will probably need to get a 1/4" to female xlr and 1/4" to male xlr adapters. but basically, will enable you to use it as a private monitor if you have headphones, but still send the signal out. and it's a lot easier than lugging an amp around. yet it's only 20 dollars; most others i've seen are around 50+. probably not the highest quality tool for the job, but it's dirt cheap compared to everything else(i got tired of not being to hear myself when i did lead guitar for worship during high school, but didn't know how to solve it without turning up my volume or bringing an amp; now i know)

gonna have to wait til full metal panic arrives at the library; watching futurama volume 4/4 as this is going down. finished the fullmetal alchemist series though.

songs i remembered this week that are cool:
sammy hagar - mas tequila
ozzy osbourne - mama i'm coming home
(anybody who's listened to classic rock knows that ozzy osbourne actually sounds pretty darn coherent when he's doing a rock song)

somewhere, byron and chris are dancing a jig for 2 belated xmas presents. bob too i guess for 1. well, ok; maria too.

marion for shaq? i really have nothing against shaq; gotten to the point where i don't like or hate him; used to be all hate. but this one makes no sense; i'll have to wait and see. the suns wanted to get good post-defensively, so they bring in shaq?

don't also forget that you gave up shawn marion, who was primarily responsible for guarding tony parker while raja was trying to swarm over manu during the postseason, so even if that takes care of tim duncan, that still leaves one of the other spurs' penetrators free to do damage; i'd imagine barbosa stepping up as a decent replacement, but still. shawn marion is like tayshaun prince, but on the suns; his value is everywhere, and you really don't know how badly he helps your team until he's gone.

and somewhere i'm imagining jerm has now made the suns his team to hate. he already somewhat disliked raja bell for clotheslining kobe(who knows why).

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guess that means golden state is now the only fun-loving team in the nba. (but please cut more)

wow, what a good super bowl game. i can't remember the last time i actually watched a really good super bowl game AND KNEW WHAT I WAS SEEING. (of course, seeing the giants win by eli manning's clutch plays and their defensive linemen sweetened the pot)

of course: this will make it into highlight reels for years to come . i mustve gone nuts after that play went down.

concerning the possibility of c-webb returning to the warriors, i'm not quite sold on it, for a couple of reasons:

1)offensive styles don't really mesh: c-webb's biggest contribution to any basketball team is that he is one of the best passing big men in the nba. rather than contribute by backing down and low-posting up, he chooses to remain on the outside on the high post, and chooses to fire passes to cutting perimeter guys to give them easy layups. and well, golden state NEVER cuts to the basket or utilizes off-the-ball movement. ever. LOL. DEY LUV DAT 3 BIZ-ZALL.

2)slow feet: though golden state already plays a lot of zone/double-teaming w/rotations, which helps to hinder any one player's defensive woes, webber's slow feet hurts them both by the fact that it'll be hard for webber to constantly rotate on defense, forcing him to remain near the paint(which hurts even more since he's not considered that great of a post defender to begin with), and that golden state loves to run, which would leave him constantly behind.

i think c-webb contributes best to a team that likes to grind it out on offense, and utilizes a zone defense. incidently enough, that makes him a good fit for the pistons, but also the mavs, and possibly spurs, along with a few other teams. but pistons recently thought they didn't really need webber(his slow feet mightve hurt them more in the postseason in the cleveland series than i originally thought), and they are having the best regular season under flip saunders so far(without relying too hard on their 5 starters), after ditching the mentality of trying the last 2 seasons to tweak their offense, instead just going in this year and trying to shut ppl down(their improved bench helps too).

of course, i could be completely wrong about webber. i just don't think all 4 warriors on the floor are gonna suddenly cut to the basket with c-webb on their team, if they never cut to the basket to begin with.

i actually like that weird hybrid of weather when it's raining semi-lightly, but you see the sun out shining hard; sorta like today around 1:50. it's kinda cool not feeling cold, yet feeling rain droplets on your face and seeing it around you. sorta like a casual water gun fight in the middle of spring heading into summer.

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sweet, go eli manning and the giants.

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albums listened to recently:
candlebox - candlebox
joe satriani - surfing with the alien
led zeppelin - the early and later days(best of)

wow...

giants and chargers doin the impossible...

wished i watched on sunday.

new footage of sf4 courtesy of famitsu:

http://www.famitsu.com/fwtv/?51212893

sick.

LOL...

in the words of one srk'er:

"LOL@ Force Push.

ROUND ONE! FIGHT!
RING OUT!
ROUND TWO! FIGHT!
RING OUT!

Vader: "*heavy breathing*""

and oh yea; how are ppl going to be able to hit yoda? that sounds too broken.

does this mean bob will try to buy and learn how to play soul calibur soon enough? i sense namco is getting desperate with their gimmicks in their soul calibur series.

(i'm still assuming masters of teras kasi was a terrible competitive fighting game, since i can find virtually no advice on playing the game online)

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this will be the theme song ala street fighter 3: 3rd strike style

i have to watch this vid later, since there's no sound at the library

expensive, but really good guitar effects pedals(hopefully i'll get these eventually one of these days):

ibanez ts808 tube screamer - gives good lead tones, makes your guitar sound like joe satriani - ~ $170 (fyi, do a search, and you'll find that this specific effects pedal is indeed one of the most coveted effects pedals)
digitech whammy - like having a whammy bar/tremolo bar w/o screwing up your guitar's tuning - ~ $200

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funny big 3 celtic espn commercials:

hoosiers
nicknames(found a better version of the same video)

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w00t! r@in!

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princess mononoke and spirited away are both great anime movies. just watched both.

oldie but goodie...

ps the book is awesome too.

"A Handicapped parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there."

"Chuck Norris originally appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch.""

"In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room itself."

"Chuck Norris was the fourth wise man, who gave baby Jesus the gift of beard, which he carried with him until he died. The other three wise men were enraged by the preference that Jesus showed to Chuck's gift, and arranged to have him written out of the bible. All three died soon after of mysterious roundhouse-kick related injuries."

"Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas."

"Chuck Norris once worked as a weatherman for the San Diego evening news. Every night he would make the same forecast: Partly cloudy with a 75% chance of Pain."

"Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding"