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Hello,

I wanted to get my predictions for the next iPhone announcement ‘public’ before it is released, just to see how accurate I was. Since it is going to be revealed in mere hours, here are my predictions (and a few for further in the future):

iPhone 5:
16 and 32gb, A5 dual core, NFC, 8mp camera, design similar to a small iPad 2. 4 inch screen, same 960×640 resolution (future prediction – unifying res with iPad – for example 1024×768 on a 4 inch screen results in ‘retina’ resolution of over 300ppi). Black and White front, silver aluminum back. 1gb of RAM.

iPhone 4S: Nearly identical design as iPhone 4, 8gb, black and white, NFC, single core processor but faster. Everything else identical to iPhone 4. Antenna issue ‘tweaked’.

Oops, forgot an obvious new feature: 1080p video recording @30fps. Both models. 4S will be single core but faster than original 4.

Lets find out soon!

I’ve noticed a sharp decline in my twitter, facebook, youtube, and blogging activity lately. Well, probably since roughly May 23rd. That would make sense, since I just started working a full time job, something I haven’t had for a while. Its actually a pretty cool job, but work is still work. My bosses are really REALLY cool, and that is very important. I believe this Friday will actually be a sorta half-day (I’m actually not sure what to expect yet…) as I’ve been informed that we will be going golfing. I’m looking forward to it, not because I like golfing (although golfing is fun too) but because it’ll hopefully be just a chill Friday, which is always nice.

So as you guys probably know by now, I’m really into Apple gear. There are possibly 2-3…but at least one technology related thing I’d really like to buy in the late part of this year. Let me list them:

1. Xbox 360 or PS3
2. A high end smartphone such as iPhone 5 or Samsung Hercules (both unreleased).
3. A new computer.

Honestly, I wish to curb my materialism, and getting a new high end smart phone is definitely unnecessary consumerism considering I already have an iPhone 4, which is without question still a very good and high end smartphone. In fact, since the iPhone 4, Apple has pretty much added anything I could possibly want in a smartphone such as great camera quality, 720p video recording, great battery life, great design, and a great screen… I’ve only ever had one thing more I wanted from it, and that is a BIGGER screen. To be honest, even that is trivial. I really should be content with the iPhone 4 for a long long time, yet I have a craving for the latest and greatest iPhone or Android equivalent. Whats so bad about this is that the next iPhone may not even have a bigger screen – the one thing that I wanted in a new phone – and yet I may upgrade anyway and forget why I wanted to upgrade in the first place.

My other 2 items I wish to buy – a 7th gen gaming console (not the wii) and a new computer, I think are more reasonable purchases should I end up buying them. I have not bought a gaming console since the PS2 which must be at least 5 years ago, and my computer is equally old at 5 years – and it has gotten to the point where it does not qualify for the new Lion OS that Apple has released. Moreover, unlike a smartphone upgrade, which simply brings a slight performance bump but nothing truly new, a 7th generation console brings the ability to play 7th generation games – a feature that simply does not exist with my current possessions, and a significantly different gaming experience. Similarly, for me upgrading to a current generation computer would bring enormous performance gains that I feel could justify the purchase – not to mention the ability to run a brand new OS that was previously not supported on my older computer.

Whatever, not terribly exciting for anyone else to read about I realize. What else has happened lately…

Hopefully if I keep working I can finally buy another car (with a manual transmission!!). I haven’t had a car with a manual for a couple years now and I miss it DEARLY. The cars I like haven’t really changed much, its still MR2, Z, or Subaru quite the same as many years ago. Maybe now I can throw in a couple higher price tier cars like the Altezza and Supra. I also like the Honda Fit. Perhaps I should control myself this time around and buy the practical car FIRST, then get the ‘fun’ car later on…priorities…ugh…

Last month I went on a trip to LA with my friend and we carpooled with one of his coworkers who gave me a lot of new perspectives on investing. I am now actually considering more stable investments in oil companies like Chevron, and make a bit off the dividends as well. Slow but steady, so to speak. What he said makes a lot of sense. Instead of investing in stocks with high returns but big risk, get the super stable stocks like oil that are safe and give out consistent dividends. That way, the more money you make as your career progresses, the more money you have in these ‘safe’ stocks, and you are guaranteed a percentage of your savings as dividends, which are taxed at only 14%! So the more you save, the more “automatic” extra income you make. If you for example buy Chevron (a very good stock for this purpose at the moment IMHO) you get 3% a year just in dividends, PLUS whatever gains the actual stock may make (which is pretty stable and ‘safe’ – at least as far as stocks go).

Have to admit though, I like those volatile high risk high gain stocks. They are more like gambling, but it never fails to put a big smile on my face when I gain 5% or more in a single day . I’ve been quite successful with those types of stocks as well, so its hard to leave them.

So at 5:50pm I pulled past a green parking space to prepare to reverse into it. It is COMMON for people to reverse into a parallel parking space. There is a red space just in front of it with a fire hydrant, which it is NOT ok to park, but a green space is OK. A green space in San Francisco basically means it is 10 minute parking between 9am and 6pm or something very similar. Sometimes the hours or duration are different, but generally a green space means you can park there for free for a very limited amount of time during business hours. Businesses usually buy the rights to these spaces during business hours from the city so their customers can use them DURING BUSINESS HOURS. The hours are also CLEARLY labeled on the sidewalk. What this also means is on hours NOT between 9am and 6pm, parking is unlimited. This is common knowledge to anyone who has driven in San Francisco. As I’m preparing to reverse, a white BMW pulls up behind me and poorly parks and blocks half the space (while my reverse lights are on, trying to back into the space).

After the car pulls halfway into the space, they decide to wait in their car for around a minute, almost as if they are waiting for me to move, despite my REVERSE lights being on. I guess it never crossed their mind that I might be trying to park in that space, but whatever. They then LEISURELY get out of their car and walk in to get their dry cleaning. Fine. Its raining pretty hard at this point and I figure its pretty rude to go in to ask them just to move their car 5 feet back when they might be back out in 2 minutes. It is also true that I’m not a customer of the business and they are, so I figure this is reasonable that I yield until 6pm (not necessary, but a nice thing to do considering the circumstances).

Keep in mind I have every right to park in said green space at 5:50pm and leave it until 9am the next day due to the 10 minute duration making it OK until 6pm, and the rules not applying after 6pm. Also, despite the business owner buying the rights to the space, there is no rule that non customers are not allowed to park in these spaces; yielding is a COURTESY, not an obligatory. Despite gas being around $4.30 a gallon, I also decided to leave my engine on. My car is an old car and every other time I start the car I need to open the front bonnet of the car to wiggle the battery, only right now its raining…HARD.

They ended up taking 10 minutes until they leisurely walk back to their car with their dry cleaning, then proceed to stay half in the space talking on the phone. So, I decided to pull up a bit, turn on my REVERSE LIGHTS and slowly back into the space and stopped short of hitting their car, hopefully hinting them to back up a bit. They clearly had no interest in the space and were merely there to pick up their dry cleaning. Getting no reaction, I finally decided to hand signal them to move back a couple feet (instead of honking) so I can park. They decided instead of moving to open their window (in the rain) to exclaim in an annoyed tone:

Driver in BMW: “What are you doing!?!?”

Me: I want to park here! (only shouting so they can hear me).

Driver in BMW: “Thats not a proper space! Its red!

Me: Its GREEN, you’re in half the space so I can’t park! (This time I was shouting in annoyance).

They didn’t say anything, but a minute later they drove off.

People are not stupid just because you don’t understand what they are doing.

P.S. Before I turned the engine off, I looked in my side mirror and saw a much better space free down the block. I made a quick U and parked there instead, right outside my house . No hard feelings to BMW driver.

So, as some of you may or may not know, I’m currently unemployed…. Admittedly, I have enough income to live without working. OK, so thats not going to last forever…probably. My income source is actually investing. I’ve been successful at investing enough that I’ve been able to support myself and break even for the last 10 months or so. Although I could be watching streaming stock quotes, I would really like to get a proper job soon. I have been looking for a proper job, but I think I need to turn it up a notch and apply to even more jobs.

So I took a break from the computer today to go out for a walk. I really should be taking advantage of my area more, since I live in a REALLY nice area in my opinion. Today I was walking around and I saw a fully electric car called the Tesla Roadster. I snapped a couple photos of it, one of which is below:

The quality of the iPhone 4′s camera never ceases to impress me. I mean, for a phone camera, that is. It is not as good as a dedicated point and shoot, but its still pretty darn good! Oh and if you look carefully, you can actually see me in the reflection of the bumper taking the snap. You’ll probably want to click on the photo and see the full size version for that, though.

Finally, I just had this thought today as I was trying to find an anime I wanted to watch. The problem was, even if I wanted to pay to watch the anime, there was nowhere to do so, and only DVD’s to order from online stores. On the other hand, I was able to find a link to download the anime with excellent quality in both video, as well as subtitle quality for free in about 5 minutes. So basically, it is MUCH easier to pirate content than to purchase content lately, at least for some things. I don’t believe its the worst thing you can do to pirate content that is otherwise not even available for sale in your area.

On the other hand, if you COULD purchase something (such as a program or movie), but instead spent 10 times as much effort to get it for free, then maybe you should reconsider things, not to mention you’d be doing the ‘right’ thing.

Oh, and Nintendo seem to have started feeding info to the public about a successor to the Wii. Not enough info available at this early stage to make it interesting to me. I’m still waiting for Final Fantasy 13 Victorias Secret edition (Final Fantasy VS 13) before I decide which 7th generation console (360 or PS3) to purchase, if at all. The 2 games I’m looking forward to the most are FF13VS and Dragon Quest X. Even though Dragon Quest X will be a Wii exclusive, I may be able to get away without having to buy the console using the Dolphin emulator, which I hear is actually amazingly good.

So, this week or two has been a good lesson that newer is not always better. I’ve actually known newer is not always better when it comes to software, but it happened once again. A couple months ago, when adobe flash player was updated to version 10.2, I jumped right on because I heard it has hardware acceleration enabled for macs (reduces CPU consumption). I know this is getting a bit technical so let me just inform you that when I watched Youtube videos afterwards, my full screen became extremely sluggish to the point it was unwatchable.

Problem being, I didn’t notice right away, so I didn’t figure out it was Flash 10.2 that did this for a long long time. Well, just a couple days ago, I decided I’ll track this down and finally figure out how to fix it, so I scoured the net using Google, which didn’t help much. Instead I decided to try to figure out exactly what was causing the slowdown in full screen mode. Long story short, I ended up looking for an older version of Flash to install and see if that would fix the problem…and it did!

On a similar note, I had recently ‘upgraded’ to Google Chrome 10 by force. It was actually really sneaky, I got no notification and before I knew it, I had the latest version of Chrome. I immediately began noticing small but annoying bugs, such as having to press enter several times after typing in a web page address such as www.youtube.com. This time, I noticed right away and immediately blamed Chrome 10, so I set out to try to figure out how to install an older version of Chrome, which was harder than I imagined it would be. Eventually I found a 99% similar browser called Chromium, and I installed version 8 as well as version 9 and tried both with several different versions of Flash. Finally, I settled on Flash 10.0 combined with Chrome 8 to feel the ‘snappiest’. Now, my web browsing experience feels a whole lot better! If I could, I’d remove Flash completely, but I cannot live without Youtube in my life (and the HTML5 option is not ready for primetime…trust me).

For that matter, I recently decided I would sell my iPad 2, as I found I don’t need anything newer than an iPad 1. The iPad 2 was to me, 99% identical to iPad 1 but nearly twice as expensive. I’ve since put my iPad 2 up for sale, although I don’t know if I’ll be replacing it with another iPad 1.

Finally, I was reading about this fragrance (cologne) that is a limited edition (seen above). For those curious, its called Windsor and it was released in a limited quantity in 2009 (right 4 bottles are 2009 edition). Apparently, it got rave reviews from the very few people who were able to try it. So much in fact, that it was re-released in 2010 (left 2 bottles are 2010 edition), but when people started sniffing and comparing the 2 different releases of the supposedly same product, almost everyone was able to tell the first one smelled a little different (and it is generally considered better). The maker of the cologne (Creed) apparently admitted that the cologne was reformulated! WTF they are selling a reformulated product and claiming it is the SAME product if that is true (and one thing for sure is the color is different as you can see, suggesting this is true). Seemingly off topic, I know, but just another example of an older version of something being better.

In other news, I have been fairly successful with investments lately, which is always good. One thing that kinda sucks though, is that in 2010 I bought a big batch of limited edition colognes as an investment. I found them at a good price and I knew they would soon be sold out and not reproduced, plus the cologne had rave reviews so no doubt the value would increase, right!? Well, same thing happened to this cologne (Thierry Mugler’s Pure Malt, pictured above in the re-release ad), they decided it was so popular that they had to re-release it to make more money. I sorta understand the need to make more money, but this is a fine line that could be considered lying by saying it will be a limited edition. Ask any Lamborghini owner if they would be pleased if Lamborghini decided to make a limited 20 car run into a 2000 car run and suddenly their expensive car was not only 100 times less exclusive, but also lost resale value? Well, if you bought the original Windsor cologne mentioned earlier in this post, at least the newer re-release doesn’t hurt your resale value too much as it is not the exact same product, but in my case, it seems as though the ‘Pure Malt’ product re-release is EXACTLY THE SAME, thus hurting the value of my investment. It can be kinda annoying sometimes.

The good news is, if I sold my batch of Pure Malts now, I’d still make some money, just not as much as before the re-release announcement. And for the record, it actually is quite a nice and very unique cologne.

I’ll try to write a less technical blog soon.

Hey, got a little frustrated today.

First of all, I got up at 8:30am, which is pretty early for me. The reason is I was actually planning to sell my shares of BIDU and reinvest in YOKU within a few minutes of market open today. This is not “considering” or “sorta thinking about”, I was REALLY planning to do this, but I overslept. While BIDU didn’t tank exactly (actually gained roughly ~1%), but in the same time, YOKU gained ~6% (so far today). 6% is a big amount to miss out on. Suppose you invested $1000 in YOKU, you could of made $60 doing NOTHING but predicting correctly (which I did, in this case).

While you can’t buy stocks one day at a time and expect to make any consistent money, people who know me know I’ve wanted to switch my investment to YOKU. With BIDU steadily rising the last few days, and YOKU dropping for 2 days in a row, it was a perfect time to switch over, so I just feel frustrated that I missed a really good, clean timing for the swap.

Eh, can’t be helped. Not like I lost money I suppose. You snooze, you lose!

I figure its time for an update. The last time I posted was also when I updated my tech blog as well. Perhaps this will turn into a good trend for frequent updates. While I wanted to update every week over there, I feel I did well by not spilling over 2. Hopefully next time it’ll be 7 days or less, although I don’t want to overexert myself at the same time. Perhaps I should instead update once a day, but with smaller updates. Tech moves along fast enough that a summary every week may not be enough.

I’ve decided to try to get RSS feeds working on my blogs. I don’t know as much about RSS as I should, but I am pretty sure it is a method of “subscribing” to updates – which would be a useful way to keep an audience alerted of my site should they choose to do so. I am hoping I would make it easy to understand how to use RSS to my readers, as well as make it easy to subscribe to my feed. Hopefully I’ll start implementing this later this week.

While I was driving, I saw a double rainbow!! Sorry I forgot to take the video in landscape -.-

Still cool though!

I’m thinking of selling my iPad soon, since the iPad 2 is imminent, and I think it would hurt the market value of my current iPad. Hopefully I can sell my current one for nearly what I got it for and then hold that money and use it to pay 80%+ the cost of the next iPad. I was really looking forward to the double resolution screen, but in all honesty I think it’ll be unlikely until at least iPad 3. Nonetheless, I know somehow Apple is going to make me want the iPad 2 so, might as well get ready. For what its worth, I am also planning on selling my iPhone 4 in May, although that one is a bit harder to work with, since I would have to wait for an unlock again, it is a device I use everyday, and the iPhone release cycle is a lot more famous so everyone knows to expect a new iPhone around the June/July timeframe.

I’m also excited about Final Fantasy Versus 13! I don’t even have a PS3 but I haven’t been this excited about an upcoming game (far FAR in the future) since Dragon Quest VI! I remember for Dragon Quest VI, I used to have a world map torn out of an issue of weekly jump magazine in Japan and just take it out and study it in anticipation of the game. I even had my grandparents in Japan stand in line and buy it for me as soon as it came out so I had it within a couple of week of release! If you didn’t know, Dragon Quest realeases cause hysteria in Japan and VI was no different. I believe the game was one of the most expensive I have EVER bought, at around $120 at the time (12,000yen) which back in 1995 was quite the sum of money for ONE SNES game. Granted, games in Japan cost more on average than SNES games in the USA, with the most expensive SNES game in the USA that I could recall was Chrono Trigger for $79.

Anyway, I am very fond of RPG’s with beautiful graphics, especially scenery. Not to be mistaken with detail, beautiful graphics usually mean nice colors and expansive environments. My current favorite RPG of all time in the graphics department is Dragon Quest 8. The world map is simply stunning and better than any other world map I have ever encountered (exclude MMOs please). It is truly fun to walk around and explore the vast world of Dragon Quest 8. I Final Fantasy Versus 13, I am expecting the same, since one of the people familiar with the game described the world map as “truly vast” and expansive, with tons of exploration. Recently, Square Enix (the developers of the game) released a new trailer that shows off some of the world map, and I was beyond impressed! It feels like a more realistically colored and updated to be more detailed map compared to Dragon Quest 8, but otherwise similar to what I was hoping for! I really missed the world map in a lot of recent RPGs such as Final Fantasy X. They probably do this because it is much more difficult to create a full 3D world map compared to back in the days, but it is still sad that there is less environments to explore because they are harder to create. Anyway, I’ll embed the new trailer below:

I am still deciding whether to buy the Xbox360 or the PS3, with the Wii as a very distant 3rd possibility. The PS3 is recently leading, as I found out that Sony will probably offer a premium PSN service. One of my main concerns before was the lag I experienced playing Street Fighter 4 on PSN at my friends house. The same friend told me there is much less lag on the Xbox Live network, which costs money to play. To me, Street Fighter 4 is not as big of a deal as Final Fantasy Versus 13, but it was the only difference between the 2 systems since both systems have every game I want so far (Versus 13 is still up in the air, though it is confirmed for PS3). The Xbox360 also has the Kinect, which is considered the best out of current generation motion sensing technologies, but again I don’t think this is a huge deal for me, and PS3 has the guaranteed eventual release of Versus 13, which is a key KEY game for me.

Another reason I leaned towards PS3 lately is because I realized in Star Ocean the last hope, there is several DVD’s for the game that you have to swap once in a while as you play. In the PS3 version, you have one Blu-ray disc that contains all the data, eliminating the need for disc swapping. And finally, my friends all say the PS3 controllers are better, and I prefer the design of the PS3, plus I am Japanese so I feel ever so slightly better about supporting a Japanese company. Plus, the PS3 seems to be better hacked at this point, which may be interesting at some point. All of these recent thoughts have tilted my current preference towards the PS3, for now. I won’t actually be buying a 7th gen console until I can get a solid job, though.

Last Sunday I walked downtown with my friend after we parked a good 20-30 min walk away. Partially for exercise, and partially because there was no parking in downtown. At one point, we walked by a house with a VERY RED paint job, so we both took cell pics (below). We ended up eating at Ajisen, a respectable ramen chain in Japan that has recently made its way to the Bay area. Or so we thought, the Ramen was most disappointing. The strange thing is that I just had Ajisen ramen a week prior to that at the Fremont location and it was A LOT better, and I recall being very impressed with that one. I guess the taste is not consistent in this chain.

Note: The photo above is from Tokyo Shinjuku Ajisen.

At the end of the day we saw a real life Seinfeld as 2 cars were fighting over a parking space with both refusing to budge. One was halfway in the space and so was the other, just as you would picture it, at the end of a block. We didn’t stick around long enough to see the exciting conclusion, but there were people in their apartments yelling their votes “Hooondaaa!!” and such.

Until next time.

Hey everyone!

Today is Friday! What did you do today? As for me, I started the day by getting up at the sane hour of 10am. Since I am currently self employed only, I’ve gotten the bad habit of getting up at noon or even slightly later. I feel like 10am is a more reasonable time to get up and be fresh and productive with plenty of sunlight hours.

That said, did I really get much done? Short answer is yes, but only because of the big update post I just finished on my tech blog. Gonna just do a quick day recap.

Started the day a bit earlier than I’m used to, read about the market for a couple of hours on finance.google.com (probably one of my most frequently visited website lately). I’ve been eyeing this one stock called YOKU which recently IPOed. Long story short (long story available on the very same post I just mentioned), I ended up buying them and am now part owner of Youku.

Discovered that if you wake up earlier than you are used to, you still get hungry earlier than you are used to. Made myself my favorite avocado and natto with rice dish. I must of been either really hungry or out of it, because before I knew it, I ate all the natto mixed rice without even touching the avocado, which I must say is a rare occurrence for me.

Was gonna go down to SOBA today (SOBA = SOuth BAy A.K.A. San Jose area) but had a sudden change in plans, so ended up staying home. Good thing too, since I checked my books on half.com to realize 2 of them have been sold now for over 4 days lol so I rushed out to send them today (I should ship within 3 at the latest, at least normally…). The good news is I sold a couple book that had no value to me whatsoever and will get ~80% of the selling price (the rest goes to half.com commission and postage since their postage compensation is NEVER enough and they even take their 15% cut OUT OF THE POSTAGE!? I THINK!? I’m pretty sure they do!

My awesome packaging:

I also applied to go back to school. Thinking about taking ethical hacking course for beginners. I took the instructor before, and he is awesome. Problem is, I JUST applied to go back today, got confirmation too, but the semester has already been started for nearly 2 weeks…HAHA! Hopefully there is space in the class because if there is, technically I would have only missed one class if I go tomorrow (and will be a bit more than that behind in obtaining the textbook, unless the book is purchasable as an iPad compatible ebook). The class I want is a Saturday morning class so I really should be sleeping like…1 hour ago LOL this is bad.

Ok bi.

I want to share with you guys a few early new years resolutions I would like to make:

Honestly, overall, 2010 has been a ‘slump’ year for me, if that is even possible. You know how you feel as if some years are better than others, whether it be because of something you accomplished, someone(s) you met, or just a plain hard to explain feeling good about yourself over the year. For me, 2000 and 2001 were notable good years, and so was 2006. That doesn’t mean the others were bad, but I feel like those were good, and I happen to remember thinking that during those years. As it is now less than one moon to ending the first decade of the millenium and about to begin the next, I feel as if I need to take it upon myself to get myself out of this feeling of minor life slump and back to extremely awesome as usual.

One problem I’ve had at many points in my life is confronting other people. What does this mean? And no, I haven’t seen a double rainbow recently or smoked a pillar sized joint either. What I mean by confronting people is just simply approaching them or engaging in an interaction – whether its just a nod, a “hi”, or starting a short conversation. I often think twice about engaging with another human being. I avoid making phone calls for no reason I can think of, sometimes I don’t ask for something I want, don’t ask for directions that I need (which stereotypically is a male problem as well), don’t IM or post replies to people if I feel like I don’t know them well enough, and sometimes don’t talk to girls that I want to talk to. Admittedly, I KNOW for a FACT that the majority of the population is like me, especially if you’re a guy wishing to converse with an attractive lady(ies). That doesn’t mean or excuse me from not being like that. So I want to new years resolve (??) that I will engage interaction with other people whenever and wherever I feel like. There is no reason you should be afraid of other people in normal situations unless you feel a physical danger by engaging in interaction with them, since they are people too. The one exception I can currently think of for this if you want to make a good impression to a lady then the fear of failing will scare people. I think this is similar for the ladies as well, but seriously, no guy in their right mind should NOT want to talk to you unless you are a stuck up bitch. How often do you see a guy bragging about how few women they know? And if they are, they are generally failing at life. Just sayin’

You know, I may just make this a topic theme for December blog posts, since I can already think of 1 or 2 more resolutions that I would like to …resolve (is that even correct!?).

While I am at it, I would like to resolute another thing, and that is fitness. For people that know me well, you probably know that I do not like going to the gym. Its boring, and it smells bad, and you have to change clothing because you would look silly working out in street clothing…maybe. I’d still do it though because I just like street clothing and I don’t believe there is a rule against working out in street clothing at a gym. Anyway, point is, I’m very unfit right now. That doesn’t mean I want to start going to a gym, because I really don’t. I don’t desire to have guns the size of sewer pipes, as long as they are bigger than my buff lady friends, thats good enough. My arms are a pretty sad size right now, but they get bigger really fast. If I did 20 pushups once a day for a week, they would grow substantially. Thats all I desire in terms of ‘guns’. I do however, wish I was more aerobically fit. That means I want to be more cardiovascularly (real word?) fit, and activities I like to do that would probably make me more fit in that area is virtually any active sport (not golf or bowling, although I enjoy those as well) but what I mean is sports like basketball, snowboarding, tennis, biking, and even just power walking. I used to be EXTREMELY fit back in my senior year of high school. I don’t need to be that fit, but I’d like to be fit enough to where I could confidently say that I am fit.

Being on time. Ever since I became responsible for my own on time arrival to anything, I’ve had a chronic, dare I say genetic problem with being on time. I say genetic because my dad is just as bad as me at being on time to anything unimportant. Yes, I actually can be extremely prompt to anything important, such as a job interview or…a job, or to a very strict professors lecture. I don’t see that changing, because this is not only been a new years resolution for me nearly every year of my memorable life, but probably every week of my life. Nonetheless, it would be a significant accomplishment if I could achieve noticably better on time performance for non critically important things, such as meeting friends or sticking to a schedule. Actually, scratch the schedule, since I never make schedules. And I’m OK with that, no need to resolve there. I wish I was more on time in the interest of convenience to those that expect me to be somewhere at certain times, and to improve my own image as someone who can be depended on to keep his word. While I do consider myself to be extremely responsible at keeping my word (and I am careful to not make too many promises that I may not be able to keep), one area I’ve always (and constantly) wanted to improve is my on time performance. Which brings me to another point…

I have obsessive compulsive problems that make me take longer than another person may at things. A very good example of this is that I often write extremely long blog posts (such as this one) and then go back and correct things I want to say way too much in the interest of self satisfaction and quality of writing. The issue is this: THIS IS A BLOG, NOT AN ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA ARTICLE. I should ignore minor typos and gramatical mistakes I discover later and spend waaaay too much time correcting or tweaking. What I want to get to at the core of my OCD is this: I want to be able to keep 80% of the quality of my work and do it in 20% of the time. This is a ratio I actually learned in a book by Tim Ferris called “The 4 hour work week” which btw is a New York Times bestseller, and I personally think it is a fantastic book that possibly has changed my life. In fact, it is only 1 of 2 books I have read all year since I graduated college in a PREVIOUS year. The other book, for those curious, is called “The Game”, but thats another story for another time.

I wish I was more motivated and more competitive. As it is, I don’t care whether I win or lose at ANYTHING. Ok, thats not even close to true, but it IS true that I am MUCH less competitive than the majority of the population. I’ve always taken this as a strength in my being that I don’t feel I need to prove myself by being better than somebody else at something, and I think that is true, but nonetheless, being uncompetitive leads to less motivation to accomplish anything. And I happen to like accomplishing things. I like to believe that I am REASONABLY good at a LOT of things, but not exceptionally good at any one thing. If I had to choose one thing that I felt I was exceptionally good at, it is building and maintaining computers. I also believe I am extremely approachable and likable online – in other words, I am ‘good’ at chatting…if that is even possible. I am equally capable of being the same person in real life, since this is not some false alter-ego I created to try to be cool and accepted. Online I be myself and in my experience, people flock to me. Somehow I am not as consistently ‘this’ me in person, but it is there and it is still the real me. Did that make any sense? I believe (and adopted this belief quite recently, I might add) that everything is good in moderation. The same goes for competitiveness. I think being TOO competitive is bad, since you’ll go nuts if you are not better at something than someone, and there will ALWAYS be someone out there that is better than you at any one thing, since there is so many people out there to begin with. The odds are against you! Similarly, and back to my problem, is that I am too LITTLE competitive (caps is for emphasis, and has very little to do with ‘little’. If anything, its an oxymoron, and I think I know what oxymoron means, and I think I’m using it correctly). I think its healthy to be a little competitive and genuinely try to be better than someone else at some things. The crazy and hypocritical thing about me saying this as one of my resolutions is that I’m already at a 1600 word count on this post (or more), it is 5:20am as I type this, and I just thought of one more resolution that I wish to resolute in a following paragraph. Sigh.

So, I going to try to make this my last resolution of tonight before I hit the bed, and that is my desire to…have better sleeping habits? While that is true, that is not what I was thinking of. I have actually forgotten! Haha! I also want to swear less, and cut down on using the word ‘gay’ negatively or the word ‘god’ particularly in the phrase ‘Oh my god!’. But again, neither of those are the one I was thinking about. Gosh! I wish I could remember!

Never mind then, I’ll save it for a possible future post, if I ever recall it.

I’d ask you what you plan on for your new years resolutions, but I actually think new years resolutions are better prepared when you want to prepare them, and not force yourself to make them at new years or when people ask you. The same way I believe presents should be given when you want to give presents, and not necessarily on birthdays, valentines, and of course, Christmas. Although, I actually think its nice to give and receive gifts on Christmas. By the way, I remembered one of the resolutions I wanted to talk about. I think it was the final topic I wanted to cover, but it might be an alternative. Either way, I want to talk about it and funny enough I talked myself into remembering, because it is about consumerism!

As my hopefully final resolution I want to mention tonight, I want to become less of a consumer. Sure, it is said that consumerism is good because it helps the economy, but I still think not being too drawn by material goods that we likely do not need has many more benefits as a habit than loving to shop. I like to think I’d rather spend money on experiences than material goods. I have too much crap as it is (borderline swear, but I think its okay…) and I’ve been on a selling FRENZY in the last couple weeks. My reasoning is this: The earth has limited resources. The population is ever increasing, and almost everybody wants people to spend more and more money so that the economy gets bigger and bigger. Notice I didn’t say BETTER just bigger. As the stock markets reach new highs and we supposedly make more money from the BETTER economy, the cost of things increase as well. Suppose we made $10 an hour 2 years ago and that was the cost of going to a movie. Now that the economy is better, we might make $12 an hour, but due to inflation, the cost of a movie has also gone up to $12. Is this really a BETTER economy!?!? Of course, its only a theory, but just tag along and hear me out here. To increase the economy, we are supposedly getting people to spend more money. Sometimes it might be that we are getting people to pay more for the same goods (inflation?), but sometime it may be because we are selling MORE MATERIAL GOODS (and of course, services, but services on their own do not use resources). If a woman had 120 pairs of shoes (sorry…lol) that were made of plastic (just imagine okay?) and that helped the economy, that also means we created 120 pairs worth of plastic to make those shoes. If the shoes were perfectly bio degradable, I’m sure it’ll just go back into the natural cycle of resources, much in the same way that it rains, we use water, and it evaporates to rain again. The problem is the products we created (and we do create a lot of these type of products) that do not go back into the natural recycling system for hundreds if not THOUSANDS of years! Anyway, this is not a carefully planned out paragraph and is basically typed out on the fly from ideas I get as I’m typing, but don’t you see some truth in that? Rather than spew more unorganized points at you, let me link you to a fantastic and inspiring video I have seen on the subject, which was pointed out to me by a beautiful and very awesome person that I am a fan of on the internet named Shelyn (If you ever read this Shelyn, thanks for tweeting this!):

Good night.

…Aaaand actually I’m not as excited as I thought I would be. I was really into the Giants playoff run back in 2002 (which they were SO close to winning…sigh…) and I honestly think I would of been excited out of my mind had they pulled it off 8 years ago. I am happy they won this year, but the excitement I feel is really already died down. Its probably because I gave up on the giants and all bay area sports in general after an abysmal last 2-3 years (and don’t even get me started on the Warriors…). I generally can watch almost any sport and enjoy it (exceptions off the top of my head being golf, billiards, and bowling…which I have heard they pay the audience to make noise). I only started to notice the Giants very late on in this year when they started seriously chasing the 1st place spot. At the time, it was a long shot that they would make the playoffs with so much competition and down by a lot. I guess you never know.

I’ve been wanting to build a new computer lately. I guess I should say GET a new computer, since I might get an iMac – which is an all-in-one computer. Basically, its just a screen and everything is inside, no separate boxes, as shown above. While I think I won’t mind a little bit more clutter from wires, the iMac also can be controlled by a nice compact Apple remote, and has the camera built in. I also wouldn’t have to do any hacking, since it is a Mac. The downside is that the iMac would require extra money costing gadgets to be able to play Playstation on the same screen, and also that the screen is SO SHINY that it bothers me. I don’t even know how to ask for advice since the pros and cons are so opinionated.