will the rain ever end??

i just took a peek at the weather forecast and it looks like it is going to continue raining the next couple of days! rain is my least favorite weather, it's so gloomy and dreary. ugh. i guess a plus is that it means it is snowing in tahoe, although who knows if i'll have time to go boarding this year! how sad.

anyhoo, i'm back at work, there's not many people here, it's sorta nice, i think i'm going to leave at 3, heh. come in at 10, leave at 3. i love working during holiday week =P

hmm, i don't really have anything interesting to say. hmm, i need a new manicure, the last one i got (at this place right next to my apt that i walked to...SUCKED!!) it started chipping the next day (on my hands AND toes!!). toes usually never chip til at least two weeks or so, and my nail polish on my left hand COMPLETELY chipped after five days. what a BAD place. i was so happy too to find a place so close to home. ah wells. my search for a good cheap manicure place continues.

i saw ocean's twelve, throughout the first 7/8th movie, i thought it was good, but the ending was a real letdown. but overall, the movie isn't bad. but i guess the first one is better. i want to see the aviator and phantom of the opera.

enjoying the time off

it has been nice to have a week's break from work. since i've been so busy with work, i have not been able to enjoy or appreciate christmas. it was more like a normal day -- didn't do anything special, but i've definitely enjoyed lounging around and eating/sleeping/hanging out. i dread going back to work, especially going back to tucson again, ugh.

we went to vegas for christmas weekend with julian's family, we stayed at the bellagio. very nice =) his aunt got the room comp'ed so we crammed 6 people in one room. and we got to wait in the special line for the bellagio cafe and buffet hehe, saves lots of time waiting in line for food. i think bellagio definitely tries to cater to its asian customers, they had like 4 asian channels in the room! it's always nice to visit vegas, you get to see all the nice well dressed richies walking around. most of the time we just spent indoors, we didn't go really go walking around outside, cause it was coooold. it was sooo dry and static-y too, ugh. i lost $250 gambling, sucks. it was just not my weekend. we did see zumanity, his dad tried all the other cirque shows (O and Ka) but they were all sold out. zumanity was ok, it's like the sensual cirque, heh. i was so glad we only stayed for the weekend, or else i think i would have lost more money hehe. soo, i'll be happy not to go to vegas for my bachelorette, miami is good!!

i've been pretty productive with the wedding planning while I've been on vacation. i've booked the florist, my makeup artist, and the harpist for the wedding. soo, now just need the DJ, the cake, and bridesmaid dresses. =P i don't really feel too stressed at all, but the wedding is still 8 months away. still seems sooo far away heh.

work bites

Three reasons why work sucks:

1. On Thursday my manager asks if I can move my vacation 12/20 week to 12/27 week. Since I had not planned on doing anything, I said ok fine. So I moved my vacation M, Tu, Wed vacation to the following week, but still taking Th and Fri (holiday) off.

2. Then, she asks me if I can go to Tucson first two weeks of Jan and first two weeks of Feb. Of course I did not want to go, but of course, not really having a choice, I said, fine I'll go. I had to drop one of my SCU classes, but I didn't really want to take it anyways.

3. On Sat, my manager calls me and asks if I can work on Sunday! ARGH. So here I am, working. At least it's from home.

Work sucks. So, I'm waiting to see what I get for my end of the year review (which our bonus is based on) Of course I'm not stupid and am not expecting the highest score (because I know I am not an over-acheiver) But I am still expecting a pretty high review, and if I do not get a good review, I am going to start updating my resume. Next, when raise time comes around (in May) if I do not get a raise, I am definitely going to start looking for another job. Weekend work is going to continue til the end of Feb!! I think a lot of people are unhappy like me so I really have no idea what management is planning on trying to keep us happy before we all leave

On a happier note, my sister got some fake acrylic nails in berkeley, and hers were airbrushed!! The lady told her they would last a month! They look pretty nice, she didn't get very long ones, so they look pretty natural. I think the nails looks really bad after you get them taken off, but not sure. Her friend said she thinks there's a place next to Trader's Joes (near Westgate) that does airbrushing, so maybe I'll call and ask if they do! Airbrushing seems neat =)

dinner party

last night the VP of Storage Systems Development invited us to her house for dinner. it was interesting to see a nice house in Tucson, it was in the foothills, and it's exactly like Saratoga. very dark, can't read road signs, no sidewalks. probably cost maybe $300-$400k for a nice 4 bdrm house. I don't really know how much it costs, i'm just guess-timating. She invited all the other people that are here supporting the two storage products that are coming out in Dec, so we met people from Beaverton and Haifa (Israel). It was pretty cool, now when we go eat breakfast we know who is here for IBM and who isn't, haha. I guess the Radisson is the IBM hotel or something.

My manager asked me to come back to Tucson the first two weeks of Jan and Feb!!!! AHHH!!!! Can someone help me find a new job? please?

bored

i asked my coworker that is here in tucson with me where she gets her nails done, and she says she gets them airbrushed! wow, who knew that they airbrushed french manicures?? her nails are always french manicured. and she says she thinks they last longer, plus it doesn't take as long. i have never seen a place that does airbrushing nails! so weird, but she gets them done in salinas, so dunno if there is any place that does it close to home??

it is sooo dry here. my skin is so dry, my lips are chapped, it sucks. i slather on the lip balm but after like 30 minutes it's gets dried up. yuck.

i just realized that our group is basically the only one left in SJ, there is also a little bit of hardware in SJ, but everyone else is in tucson. bad sign. and since most of the program is in tucson, they get treated WAYYY better than we do. there is dinner EVERY night after 6pm. they get paid to work on weekends (the test people at least...not sure about the developers). their weekend lunches are a lot more organized (they have a database where you can sign up for what you want...you get to pick) in sj, we basically just eat whatever gets brought in, no choice. soo, i think eventually our group will definitely get moved to tucson since that's where everyone is, but it is highly dependent on how successful our product is... it could be that it sucks so much they'll lay every off! heh. =)

ok people, please update your blogs, so i can have some interesting stuff to read!

weekend in tucson

unluckily, i forgot to bring my camera to tucson, so i can not show you guys what tucson looks like. it's actually not what you would imagine a desert to look like. on sat i went to the desert museum which is close to saguaro national park. the drive there was very scenic, the hills were lined with saguaro cacti. it's actually quite odd because it's FILLED with cacti, cacti are like their trees. the desert museum was basically a zoo filled with desert animals, insects, birds, flowers etc. it was pretty cool, it was all outdoors though, and it was HOT. about 80s i would say, and of course i did not anticipate such warm weather in tucson so i was wearing a long sleeved shirt. saw some cool animals.
in the afternoon went to a street fair, browsed around, ate roasted corn. went to downtown Tucson for dinner, which is right next to the university. we went to this place called Gentle Ben's which is a brewery, similar-ish to Gordon Biersch and BJ's. Since it was close the university, the prices were so low! Everything on the menu was like $6-$7!! Like their pastas, chicken dishes, etc. crazy.
On Sunday, we went to Sabino Canyon, took a tram, looked at more scenery. Went into work (boo) and afterwards went to the a vista point on Mt Lemmon to check out the city lights at night.
Did a lot of touristy stuff on the weekend, it was just me and this other young-ish female coworker. I'm not sure how old she is (i'm guessing 30s, but i'm VERY bad with age) and i don't feel comfortable enough around her yet to ask hehe. she's from hawaii, commutes from Sausalito, very dark (tan), and ALWAYS has her nails nicely manicured. anyways, this is my very shortened synopsis of my weekend, i find that my entries are too long, so i won't bore you guys with too much details =)

one more week..

this is my daily schedule while i'm here in tucson:
7:00 am wake up
7:45 am go to breakfast (it's free)
8:15-8:30am drive to work
9:00 am finally arrive at work (takes forever not taking the highway!)
9:30am finally able to log in, cause the office i'm in only has one ethernet connection, so the tester that is usually in his office is on a conference call til about 9:30 and then he goes to the lab while i sit in his office heh. i feel bad, but what can i do, if they ask us to come, they have to provide us with internet at least! they actually have wireless here, but i don't have a wireless card, so that doesn't help. i guess i shouldn't even bother coming earlier, but supposedly they put in a request to activate the other ethernet port, so every morning i hope that it's been activated (it still has not...sigh.)
7pm leave work
7:30pm arrive back at hotel
8 ish dinner
11ish sleep time!!

it's a pretty boring life here in tucson, the only "night" life is bars. since i don't do bars, i usually read or watch tv after dinner, but there isn't much time to do those things either. plus m-w i've been getting headaches, i think it might be staring at my laptop screen for so long, dunno. but it didn't happen yesterday, but i took an advil in the morning, so i think that helped. tomorrow is my day off, so i might go explore tucson and see what's happenin' =P

interesting facts about tucson:
* their prime time tv starts at 7pm here
* the speed limit on their one freeway is 75 mph
* their gas is $1.89, so cheap!
* they do not go through day light savings
* their left turn lanes are first solid green, and if there are any cars left, it turns into green arrow

one more week til i'm on vacation! i'm counting down the days!! i want to get a mani/pedi !

greetings from tucson

my first day of travel to tucson was not so great, my flight from sjc to phoenix got delayed by an hour cause of the weather in Phoenix, so i was going to have to take a later flight from phoenix to tucson. we had actually boarded the plane, and wall ready to push back, but right as we were about to leave, the pilot says over the intercom that we would be delayed an hour! so we sat on the plane! how sucky. so after we finally left sjc, our plane got in early enough that if i rushed over, i could catch my original flight from phoenix to tucson, so that is what i did. By doing so however, I had to walk sooooo far and sooooo fast, it sucked. and i guess they flagged my luggage as well...cause it was not on the carousel after I deplaned. the flight was only 20 minutes! i was planning on using my layover in phoenix to eat lunch, but since i didn't have time at the phoenix airport, the noah's bagel i had for breakfast would have to tide me over til dinner.

got my rental car, got to the ibm site ok, sorta got lost trying to find the building (but not too lost, cause i had a map) but finding the office I got TOTALLY lost. the building was totally huge and like a maze. i could find the office on the evacuation map but i basically went the wrong direction all the time. i asked so many people for help and most of them didn't know which office i was talking about ( it was that big! ) finally i found some people who lead me in the right direction...i had walked around lugging my laptop for half an hour searching for the dang office.
around 6 went to the hotel (the airline delivered my luggage...thankfully!), ordered room service, and watched some tv.

on mon tucson was cold and rainy, it's like sj weather in the winter i guess. today was sorta sunny, but it got cloudy again in the afternoon. the office i am in has a window, so i can see outside. their cacti here are like 10-15 ft tall, it's crazy. and they're everywhere. i've never seen so much cacti in my life. it's not actually flat and barren here, you can see the mountains (the tops covered in snow) in the distance. and it's actually pretty green (green cacti mainly though =P ) i forgot to bring my camera so i can't take pictures to show you guys.

they basically only have one highway here, but i don't think anyone really uses it cause it's really south of tucson, you usually just drive local to get everywhere. i got lost driving to work this morning too, sigh. from the airport to the site, i took the highway, but the route from the hotel to the site you just take local roads and takes about 20-30 minutes. and i didn't have a very good map, so i got lost, but eventually found my way. i don't think i would do so hot on amazing race, haha. at least i can navigate myself around the office building now though hehe. the hotel i'm staying at is nice though, has wireless internet, free breakfast, exercise facilities. i got a chevrolet classic as my rental car (i've never heard of it before...) and it's ok for an american car =)

school is ovah...(for the quarter)!

yesterday i took the final and presented the first part of our final project...check it out below! fun eh? =)
still have to finish up the second part of our project, but we're almost done. after this quarter, i've completed 12/45 units. If I keep on this pace (8 units / quarter ) I should be able to finish by 6/2006. Can't wait!! At least the classes aren't too tough, I didn't buy the books and I didn't study for the final and my GPA is soooo much better than at Cal haha. So sad.

LA

since it's been really hard for me to get back in the groove at work, i'll post my recap of my LA trip. one word of advice, never ever ever leave for LA wed before thanksgiving at 4pm. there is MEGA traffic, we moved 2 miles in 30 minutes on 152E, so we decided to turn back and give it a go early next morning. so we drove to Valley Fair, shopped a little, ate dinner. it was around 9pm, i guess julian preferred getting to LA late wed night rather than thurs morning, so we decided to drive to LA then! the traffic on 152E wasn't so bad, but there was an accident! 3 cars involved in a head-on collision or something, luckily they were only blocking one lane and not both lanes, so at least we were moving. we got to LA around 3am, not too bad i guess. i was sooo tired though.

the next day we were having thanksgiving lunch/dinner, so we had to wake up semi-earlyish to help prepare food. his parents got a 23lb turkey!! for 7 people!! needless to say they had SOOOO much leftover hah.

on friday, i wasn't planning on doing any after thanksgiving shopping, but julian's mom wanted to go, and since she didn't have a car, she asked us to take her. at least she wasn't crazy and asked us to get up really early, we woke up at a normal time, went to fry's, old navy, the mall, and best buy. didn't really buy that much, i do not really enjoy shopping that much when it's crazy crowded.

on sat, we went to casino morongo (it's some new indian casino right next to cabazon -- my fav outlet of all time! ) julian and i weren't actually too keen on going cause last year we went to cabazon on fri after thanksgiving to go shopping and it was WAYYY too crowded plus it's 2 hours east of LA, but i guess it was like a "family event" his mom had planned so we went. his parents like to gamble for fun, but they only play slots. we gambled at the casino for about 2 hours, all the kids won (me, julian, julian's bro) playing bj, julian's dad broke even, and julian's mom lost heh. then, since we had driven so far, we went shopping at the outlets. it was still crazy crowded and still hard to find a parking space, but luckily we found one. we probably would have left if we didn't find one. i didn't really find too much, but i felt so rushed cause we only had two hours to go shopping and cabazon is sooo huge. i only bought a sweatshirt there =) afterwards, there was sooo much traffic leaving the outlet, it was unbelieveable. and there was sooo much traffic on the way home. it took us 3 hours! then we met up with some of julian's friends for dinner (brazilian churasscia -- i'm too lazy to look up how to spell it) but it's basically a meat buffet. they just keep on bringing a bunch of different kinds of grilled meat and slice it onto your plate. it was alright, i was stuffed, the cheese bread was good (for those that remember it when we had it before a musical...) and afterwards we went to see alexander. it SUCKED. it was such a horrible movie. usually i never think movies suck, but this one was pretty bad. plus it was soooo loooooonggggg

sun we went out to lunch at houston's (the restaurant i wanted to go to for my bday! ) it was pretty good...and then went home, hung out til about 6:30. then it was time to drive home. stopped by diddy riese, volcano tea, and coffee bean on our way out =P the drive home wasn't too bad, got home around 1am.

now here i am back again at work! some people are already starting their christmas vacation next week cause they have to use up all their vacation days...i'm so jealous!

vacation withdrawal

the vacation passed by toooo fast. on the bright side, only 3 more weeks til christmas break! wheee i'm hoping i get the last two weeks of dec off, that'll be so nice. all my coolio friends will be back so i'll get to spend some quality time with them. jody wants to go to tahoe, anyone up for that??

happy thanksgiving everyone!!

my long-awaited vacation has arrived! i get to take F-O-U-R days off this weekend! whoohoo!! look at this email they sent us though:

Team: Even though the program has decided to take Thursday and Friday off for the Thanksgiving Holiday, they are planning to restart testing on Saturday and Sunday. As a result, we need to provide coverage for those days, just like a normal weekend. Please select which day you would be available to support continuing development and testing support. Thanks in Advance for your help, and Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving Holiday.

Dude, I'm soooo glad i'm going to be out of town, it was a good excuse as to why i couldn't come into work!!!

Hope you all have a wonderful turkey day =P

PS It looks like I will be going to Tucson in Dec for two weeks, lucky me. so now I am working hard to complete my cool project and my final paper for school before I leave!!

fix it

i've recently been getting this stupid screen when i try to login to yahoo, it won't let me log in!! i have to wait a while and then try again, i need my email!!! ISHI, TELL SOMEONE TO FIX IT!!!


stupid yahoo

groan

i have a headache and want to go home, but i have class today argh.

on tues i went dress shopping during my lunch break cause there's this bridal shop near my work. it was NOT a good experience at all. the lady that was supposedly "helping" me was useless. she didn't help me find any dresses. she basically just told me to pick whatever dresses i liked, i was like..ok. so i picked a couple. and then we went to try them on, basically i tried on the first one and said i didn't like how full the skirt was. so she took almost all the dresses i had chosen and told me, ok, those are all too full, you shouldn't try those on. so i tried on two other dresses that were more my style, but were a little too beady.

the whole point of my trip was to find a particular Mori Lee dress and try it on, so i asked her about it, and she pointed to a dress that i tried on already and said that was it. but it didn't look the same and i didn't really like it at all, but you never know, so i was like ok. so when i came back, i checked the picture online, and i'm pretty sure it was NOT the same. GRRRR. basically it was a waste of an hour. PLUS she called me "miss thang" cause i guess she thought i was being picky or something.. i was like...ok, whatevers. i mean, i already have a style in mind, your job is to help me find dresses that fit that style and not call me miss thang!!?!!!! SHEESH! what great customer service!!!

gah

i might be going to tucson for two weeks in dec, from dec 6-17. i would have been totally ok if it had been just one week, but what the heck am i going to do there over the weekend?? plus i'll now have to take my final early and finish my project early! it'll be interesting to see where my future job is going to be....

happy birthday to me!!

i don't feel like working today! hopefully i can leave early, that will be nice =P the past weekend was fun, went dress shopping, ate soooo much. dress shopping is really fun, mostly i tried on those nice expensive dresses though, all of them were out of my price range. but i thought a lot of them were really pretty hehe. i can't wait to go again! it'll be so nice to have a wedding dress picked out, so then i can work on what colors my wedding will be. hmm. the melissa sweet one is SOOOOO nice. =)

i lied

here i am, back at work again. it's really disconcerting how i can never seem to take a weekend off! i even got called on saturday to look into a problem!! argh. luckily i didn't hear my phone ring (cause i leave it on silent all the time now)...plus i didn't bring my computer home, so not like i could have looked at it anyways. but this stressful environment is starting to wear me out.

only having one day of break in between 6 days of work, for the last 10 months, plus having school on top of that is very tiring. i think everyone here is very tired of having to work so much. i think the dark circles under my eyes will never go away and they seem triply dark. plus we're being micromanaged like crazy...there are status meetings every morning, plus our 2nd line goes around every afternoon around 4 or 5, asking for status again! ugh. luckily i don't have to attend those status meetings, i just tell my team lead what i've been up to.

my 2nd line actually works all 7 days, but i can not feel sorry for her at all. i blame her for why we're so behind. she hired all these contractors/co-ops. now all the co-ops on our team have left, and guess who has to take over their code?????? ME!!!!!! i now have to debug and test 3 people's worth of code. i seriously feel like i'm being taken advantaged of and i can not wait to either a) get out of this department or b) find another job somewhere else. i actually would just be happy to have my 2 day weekends back!!!!!!

veteran's day

i wish i got veteran's day off, that would be so nice. i can't believe thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away! i can't wait!! and christmas is only 3 weeks after that, craaazy. this year has flown by!! i have 4 vacation days left, so not much of a vacation at the end of the year, but i'll definitely enjoy it!

whew

i think i will not be having to go in for jury duty, yippee

i can't wait til this week is over! it'll be my first 2 day weekend in....who knows how long! i've lost track, it's been almost two months! if my 2nd line asks me to come in i'll be quite unhappy, gotta enjoy the weekend before my bday! =P and i get to enjoy it by going dress shopping! yay!!

jury duty

i'm scheduled for jury duty this week! *cross your fingers* hope i don't get called in! normally i wouldn't mind, but i have a lot of work so i don't want to go! thursday is veteran's day ( so the courts are on holiday ) so that's one less day! and i didn't have to go today, whew!