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2009-06-18T02:04:00.000-07:00

Keep steadfast in the battles you choose to fight. Think about the words you choose to say, more so on the actions you choose to take. Make up your mind, but realise that all that glitters is not gold, that trying to clear the smoke can be a conduit for a firestorm. Decide who'll be the fool by listening, and then you'll understand. What the heart speaks, and the mind understands, are sometimes different languages across changing tides of the water. Sometimes, the prize has already been won even before the games have started. Bring it all back down, and take it all out. This is all your one shot at life. Make it count - it's the least the each of us can do.

Our pride is a cross that we choose to carry. The only thing that we own, are our relationships with each other. And the only thing that other bitchez and douche bags in the world cannot take away from you, is your happiness.

2009-06-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

Depressed when I find awesome bands and found out they were at Coachella and totally missed them. Like the Black Keys.

I'm still debating about the naked wizard that got tazed though. That must've been for the books. Just like that time we seriously missed winning Carpoolchella by literally 6 seconds.

EDIT: Just researched, and they were playing the same time when we were shakin' our asses to Buraka Som Sistema. Life ain't so bad. Time to go to bed. Yikes.

2009-06-12T01:21:00.001-07:00

Starting to heat up the credit card. Just reserved an f/1.2L lens I'm planning to use on a wedding in a few weeks, and bought a new flyscreen on a whim for the Vespa in anticipation of a big trip.

So many things I want to get done, but there's never enough time in the world to do anything that you actually like doing. Maybe that's what makes it all the more tempting to achieve. Trying to reach the horizon never ends, even if you're already there.

2009-06-11T13:42:00.001-07:00

If I could replace my stash of Red Bull with 32oz. Acai shakes from Robek's Juice, I'd be a healthier man with many more years to live. Until that day, I'll have to crash and burn through each day like nobody's business. Watch out!

In the meantime, can someone get me a Nixie clock for my birthday next month?

Please?

2009-06-03T01:42:00.001-07:00

Two artists on top of my list when we get a record player for the house: Nick Drake and Grand Funk Railroad. Beautiful, in their own way. Just like the rest of us.

2009-06-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

My favorite part after getting lost in the noise, is the longing for silence.

You are complete, when you have nothing.

2009-05-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

Was totally smitten by the Maker Faire festival, which Kat and I attended this afternoon in San Mateo. It's literally a Disneyland for adults (AND for kids), without the sappy characters and blatant capitalism that makes you want to drop acid and/or kill yourself (with apologies to Disneyland season pass holders, just exercising my first amendment rights). Most of the day we were gawking at all the stuff people created - from kinetic doo-dads, giant metal crab robots, and other random crap like watching ourselves in 3D being broadcast on a projector. Kat is a very petite girl, and I had to catch myself from squeezing her arm and pulling it off in excitement.

By and far, my favorite parts were the Camera Obscura installation, and metal sculptures of polyhedra from Vladimir Bulatov. I've seen different iterations of a camera obscura before (of the pinhole variety), but this one totally blew my mind. I have never, in my life, seen an image reproduced in super high def, better than your dumb 1080p HD crap, and I will even say, better than what real life looks like. An image reproduced on a round piece of wood painted white, mind you. Very exciting. I've always had a fascination with polyhedra (hello dodecahedrons), and squealed loudly like a schoolgirl when I saw the Bulatov sculptures. ~~I'll try to post pictures tomorrow, along with overdue shenanigans from NY and DC.~~

Also, congratulations to Dan Portman for finishing law school and for being one of my favorite public defenders. Had an awesome (albeit too short) time meeting the rest of his family, and had to jet to the other side of the city to catch the showing of Up with the Bassholes. That movie, was really good. Point!

2009-05-28T11:10:00.001-07:00

Earning money - one hard worked dollar at a time.

2009-05-28T03:25:00.000-07:00

It's 3:25am and I'm still in the nerdery. Found this cool website EasyVMX! that creates blank VMWare images for you to play with. Now, all of this wouldn't have been necessary if my old printer is supported under Vista. Unfortunately, I am being forced to run a VMWare image running XP just to be able to print crap out. It seems wasteful to junk a perfectly good printer (HP Photosmart 1115) because a purportedly new and better OS (i.e. Vistacrap) does NOT support it. At. All. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.

Insanity.

2009-05-26T14:33:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is never an option, because today has already been too late.

2009-05-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

The room is in an eternal state of disorder. Tidbits and knick-knacks, strewn across all flat level surfaces. Boxes of half-finished projects (2 year old sun-jars, 3 year old floating picture frames), an ever growing to-do list, an anxious fur-ball waiting for a walk. I need some sort of personal time-and-priority management program, to start trimming some of the habitual junk (i.e. surfing the intarwebz) that's invading the precious waking minutes of the day. Such an easy excuse to blame the existence of a tomorrow, to put it off when your state of mind is a bit more willing to bend under pressure. Not when you're too busy doing absolutely nothing.

Behind all the signals, lie white noise. You'll miss the point, if you listen too hard. You'll forget the music, if you can't listen at all.

2009-05-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

"Today, I turn five. And tomorrow is always another adventure that life brings, always I wonder what it shall bring. To chilly camping in Yosemite, a boorish office day, or a leisure trip to the park. The best part really, is when my Mama Kat comes home from an airport called Burbank. Happy Birthday to me, the little furball with a black birthmark (on my balls). So come and visit me, ya'll."

Nick, you're the bestest friend anyone could ever ask for. Even if you have accidents and are a needy little bastard, I will love you for only another 5 years unless you start growing nicer hair that I don't need to brush every frikkin' day, prissy boy. Gosh.

2009-05-16T04:48:00.000-07:00

I'm online from the Bolt Bus, en route from NY to DC. It's 7:50am, and I'm running on a few hours of sleep with a barely manageable hangover. Yet, here I am, writing nonsense on this thing called the intarwebz while I remotely print payroll reports for the office. So, this must be the future. Pretty cool, but I must say, it's weird being online on the road - the jitters make me dizzy, and I can hear my mom in the back of my head saying that it's bad to read in a car, it'll ruin my eyesight. Maybe if I had another beer, it could numb the pain a bit better.

New York is a blast. To be honest, Kat and I were barely in the city for 48 hours but I am pretty certain we've milked it for what it's worth. A new quote came about this morning as we trudged our way out of Gus's apartment: "Party like a rock star, wake up like.. shit."

2009-05-06T00:26:00.000-07:00

The easiest path to success is to love what you do. Not because you are using it as a means to get somewhere, but because you genuinely love it for what it is. And once you start pushing yourself further along those hard pressed lines, the easier it will be the next time you try to go through the same path. The difference is made when you choose to keep fighting, when the rest of the world has given up on it (or even, on you). So keep those wide eyes open, keep your fires aflame. All the time you've spent, will always be yours.

2009-05-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

Happy times, are directly proportional to happy pants. Summer days are meant to be shared. Photo by Kat :)

2009-05-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

Leeching off Denny's Diner WiFi here at Sin City, Viva Las Vegas. Drove out yesterday afternoon with Ateneo friends Joey and Nino, to meet up with other friends watching the Hatton Pacquiao fight. Really curious how that'll turn out, since I've never gone to an event before and I think it should be really fun, and possibly epic. No tickets, but we're planning on plunking down 50 bones for a closed circuit viewing in a hotel with other random fans. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a riot!

2009-04-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

I took pictures as my sister went through a ceasarian section. I was afraid that all the gore would cause me to faint, and caught myself thinking twice after Fil and I had already donned the scrubs, booties, and face masks before entering the surgery room. What the hell was I getting into? The most surreal part about it, to be honest, was the scent of burning skin (from a cauterizing knife as Fil told me), and the intensity of the moving imagery. Team of doctors, my sister wide awake on the table, holding her husband's hand, silver tools gleaning under the lights, the palpable excitement and tension as baby Laila was slowly pulled out... the garbled voices, the soft cry of a naked soul coming out of her slumber...

Welcome to the world, Laila Olivia :)

2009-04-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

Act small, dream big. All the other castles in the sky that aren't your own, are also made of the sand between your toes.

In every day, lies a reason to look for happiness. To make sense of chaos, to accept the world without surrender, to believe without compromise, to let your mind wander...

They said that all good things must come to an end. Not so sure about that one. The real good things in life never end, because you never stop finding them. It's a dusty and uphill battle, but that's what makes it all the more worthwhile.

2009-04-22T01:17:00.001-07:00

Following a pretty bad Coachella hangover, I just realized there's a load of gigs around my area that need some attention.

The Whip apparently played a show on Monday and earlier today, I totally missed out. The initially free Depeche Mode street concert on Hollywood-Highland for Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday turned into an invitation only gig and of course I didn't get tix in time.

Lykke Li is playing at Masonic Lodge in Hollywood Forever Cemetery end of May, tickets are onsale this Friday. Phoenix playing at The Wiltern end of June.

Here's Travis when we caught them last week at the Wiltern, summing up how I feel:

2009-04-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

If you would like to receive random postcards, please leave a comment with your email address, and the postman will send you random tidbits through the mail. :)

2009-04-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

I find that my wheels turn faster in the dead of night. I had the (mis) fortune of realizing this back in my sophomore year of high school, where I learned to appreciate the gifts of productivity that total silence offered. The kind of quiet that the sandman offered was some sort of gateway drug. It was something that you can't bargain for during the day, where distractions were endemic even if you tried your best to avoid them. For me, at least. Instead of fighting a losing battle, I took it in stride to have the sleeping world work for me, and not against me.

And so I found myself grinding away the late hours where I could isolate myself from the rest of the world's clatter. When I wake up in the morning to forcefully assimilate myself in society's morning driven 8-hour rat race ethic, I am rewarded with poofy eyebags, a dazed disposition, and a perennially effed up body clock.

Time is never really linear. At the end of the day, aren't our perceptions of it a tad bit more important than the truth it supposedly belongs to?

2009-04-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

My self-portraits today:

2009-04-07T15:26:00.001-07:00

Vivid dream last night.

Best friend was starting a new business, with the help of his father-in-law, based on the distribution of medicines and pharmaceuticals. They were going to market 'gourmet' cough syrup, in the various flavors of black truffle, garlic butter, and crab fat.

If you're sick and need to get some meds, might as well go down in style. And then I woke up with extremely itchy eyes and a runny nose. Hmmm.

EDIT: And I just remembered part of the dream that someone stole my identity and racked up serious debt under my name. Ruined my FICO score of 757 down to 400. Should I play the lottery against those numbers?

2009-04-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Los Angeles.

I've decided that the increase in sales tax, the uncertain economic gloom, the declining real estate market and 101 405 intersection traffic are too much to bear. Business is bad.

And so my bags are being packed, along with the dog, to seek greener pastures in the Micronesia archipelago where the grass is green, the skies blue, and the clouds cry an occasional thunderstorm. Kat has also decided to pack up in a few months, and join me as we seek to get out of the California glow and turn Chamorro in Guam.

Feel free to send us postcards, and we're sure to do the same. :)

2009-03-30T22:29:00.001-07:00

Dear Microsoft,

Your software SUCKS. It is terribly inconvenient to disable VPN connections by default through your dumb stupid crap "OneCare" package that overrides any and all other system settings that should normally be configured in your control panel. This is simple design, I don't need to have switches and levers all over the place. Instead, you are totally obfuscating and constricting the usability of the entire operating system with no regard at all to your users who have shit to take care of, and don't have the entire day to weasel their way through your dumb pre-loaded crap that no one wanted in the first place.

Totally arrogant, totally unnecessary, and totally stupid.

I just pray the future comes here faster, because Linux (and Google) will kick your software into obsolescence, right where garbage belongs.

No Regards,
Paul Lovine