I am not prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to obtain that which I desire, and thus I am undeserving of having it in the first place. =/

(I originally meant the above statement in reference to obtaining a perfect physique (while still wanting to eat like a glutton), but come to think of it, it's really kind of a broad overarching statement with regards to ALL aspects of my life.) I know what it takes, I know what to do and how to get it; yet if I can't bring myself to do it, I don't deserve to have it. I am unworthy of having anything I desire. =( "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" uggghhh... it's hard to say sometimes, and failing hurts so much more than not trying. Maybe I need to lower my expectations. =/

Henchmen in Training. So Bee took me & Michael to the shooting range, Bullet Trap, over on Park & Ave K. It was the first time I'd ever been; (well, if you don't count shooting the M-16 in Vietnam, but) this was the first time I'd ever shot pistols. Bee brought his HK USP(?) that shot .40 S&W's, and his Springfield XD9 shooting 9mm Lugers. Michael brought his dad's .38 revolver.

But yea, the recoil was a LOT stronger than I imagined. Like, you play those arcade games like Time Crisis and Virtua Cop, and you think you're such a hotshot. The truth is, it's (relatively) easy to put the sight on the target, the tricky part is holding it there while an explosion is (literally) going off in your hand. Yea, actually doing it and seeing how hard it is to hit a target kinda puts things in perspective. You kinda feel for those evil henchmen in the movies, when the boss tells them to kill the hero, and they're all shooting, but the hero manages to escape unscathed... it really IS hard to hit stuff... You gotta spend a looootta time at the shooting range if you wanna hope to ever kill the hero, heheh. *le sigh* Good henchmen are hard to find. =P

I probably shot best with the 9mm, since it kicked the least. The grip on the XD9 felt too short except with the extended clip though. The .40 wasn't too bad either. I was pretty awful with the revolver though. It had a double action trigger, which means that pulling the trigger both cocks the hammer and shoots. The really long trigger pull required to do this always made my aim awful. I tried it doing the single action thing too, cocking the hammer separately before pulling the trigger, and that made things a little better, but not much.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun, and vaguely kinda addicting. Like, I don't know, afterwards, I found myself wanting to own a gun. This, despite my usually vaguely favoring tougher gun control laws. I mean, when it comes down to it, I can't really think of a real life situation in which I'd actually shoot someone (; in a self-defense situation, I'd like to think I'd opt for fists, feet, and maybe a knife or two). But I guess I can't begrudge other ppl having 'em for self-defense. After going shooting, I spent like the whole evening reading about handguns on Wikipedia, haha. Anyways, yea, I can't honestly justify getting myself a gun, but I can't deny that I want one, hahaha. In that sense, I guess it's like me and the whole getting a tattoo thing, haha.

Bulking Up & the Epic Two-Hander. So I've been working out a lot more ever since the Fall- vaguely out of desire to improve my health, but mainly more out of boredom than anything else (especially in Plano, before ppl started coming back for the holidays). I mean, working out's alright, I guess... I don't mind doing it so much, and when I don't, I feel like I should, but it's not really FUN in the true sense of the word... Just a way of killing the time. On the plus side though, I guess I'm arguably in the best shape of my life (until the holidays rolled around, hahah).

Anyways, so back in Austin, my muay thai instructor Randy commented on how I was more beefed up than before, but also how I was slower and swung my punches more wildly. And that got me thinking a bit about how muscle mass factors into fighting ability. Bulking up is really kind of a tradeoff, cuz the sheer physics of it say that more mass = more inertia = slower, but also = more force.

So to make a gaming analogy, bulking up is like opting for a two-handed weapon as opposed to say, dual wielding: you hit slower and fewer times, but when you do, you deal a lot more damage. Damage up, attack speed down. And in a fight, it's often worthwhile to trade taking two or three weaker blows to get in one good shot of your own. But also, in real life, slower/stronger blows are easier to dodge but harder to block: opponent obtains increased dodge but decreased block percentage. In addition, having more bulk on you also acts as an increase in hp (hit points) and AC (armor class): you can take more damage and are harder to knock out. (Actually, I would argue that armor class in a fist fight really amounts more to pain tolerance than anything else.)

And when working out to get bigger, I guess you just kinda gotta gauge the relative gains/losses, and see if the increases in dps (damage per second) and hp/AC are worth the decrease in dexterity and speed. You know in Kungfu Hustle, where the bad guy is like "in fighting... speed is EVERYTHING." Well, I suppose there's some degree of truth to that: if you can incapacitate your opponent before he can react (like a pounce/backstab in WoW), you're golden. But in practice, one-hit knockouts are rare, and you should probably expect them to put up at least a little fight. I'll tell you this though: all other things (e.g. level of training) equal, the bigger guy usually wins in a fight, hands down. (That's why they bother with the weight classes in boxing, wrestling, UFC, etc.) Though I guess slimmer guys also have increased success rates for running away, ahaha.

*On a related note: how many pounds do you think a year's worth of training is worth in a fight? I'd say the first year is worth maybe 20 or 30 pounds over a complete noob. (Like if you were 150 lbs and trained for a year, I think you could probably beat a 180 lbs guy with no training.) Successive years are worth maybe like 10 pounds or so a pop, with diminishing returns. So yea, averaged out, maybe like 1 year ~= 15 lbs?

So my parents bought me a new car- a silver Honda Fit sport. And yea, it was nice of 'em and all, but I dunno, at this point, I guess I just don't really feel deserving of such nice things yet. I feel like I really oughta be earning my keep a bit more, rather than just having all these toys handed to me on a silver platter. (Probably a result of my recent coming to terms with the fact that I'm spoiled.) But at the end of the day, I'll suck it up and drive the new car, HAH.

Well, 2 of our previous cars, the van and the Lexus were breaking down, so my parents wanted to trade 'em in anyways. They traded the van for a Toyota Highlander, and the Lexus for the Honda Fit. And somehow or other, it was decided that my mom would take my old Camry, and I'd drive the new Fit. It's the first Honda made vehicle our family's ever bought; we'd been pretty loyal Toyota consumers up till now- I don't think cuz we necessarily are die-hard Toyota fans, but we had to admit they make pretty good cars. But yea, my mom's friend had bought a Fit, and my mom really liked it, so we went and got one of our own.

Known as the Honda Jazz in other parts of the world, it's a hatchbacked subcompact along the lines of the Scion xA. Had to get the sport version cuz the regular didn't have cruise control, and that's kind of a big deal for my family. Anyways, I wasn't initially very fond of the body styling, but it grew on me a little. I did a bit of research on the web, and the Fit is apparently one of the highest rated subcompacts on the market. Airbags up the wazoo. It gets good gas mileage (EPA estimated 31/37 mpg) cuz it's really light and has kind of a wimpy little engine. =/ It has decent pickup from a standstill, but its midrange acceleration is kinda blehh. Oh yea, and the sport version has paddle shifters so you can pretend you're driving a manual; I gave 'em a whirl, but I suck with them. The handling's pretty smooth though. And the interior feels a lot more spacious than the outside would lead you to believe. And the CD player can play mp3's, so I made a CD with like 200 songs and have been jamming to that.

A Few Gripes. Toyota cars have a nice soothing tweet of a beep when u lock/unlock the doors with the remote. With the Honda, you either have no sound, or the sound of the horn honking, bleh. No auto-off headlights on the Fit! No outdoor temperature guage either. And the Fit doesn't have an armrest/compartment thing between the front seats. And why didn't they build the radio antenna into the back window? And maybe it's just new car syndrome, but I have a hard time getting smooth stops and starts (or maybe that's just the difference between disc brakes and drum brakes).
*Also, the fuel tank is real tiny (like 10 gallons), so it feels like you gotta fill it up all the time.

It is done... I've signed with a company, and my one-year search for a job is over and done. It's with the Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC (or BSC) out in Las Vegas. I'll be working on the (in)famous Yucca Mountain Project.

So what is the Yucca Mountain Project? Well, in a nutshell, many years back, our government rounded up the best & brightest minds they could find, and after a bit of deliberation, it was decided that the best long-term storage solution for our nation's nuclear/radioactive waste was to bury it (ALL of it) inside of a mountain- Yucca Mountain. And yea, I dunno how I personally feel about the environmental implications of this undertaking, but I agree that it's a better solution than just leaving the waste where it is. I fit into the equation by running thermal/stress analysis on the nuclear waste containers.

So anyways, this mountain's about 100 miles out from Vegas on government land (like a former military test site, I think). And the office where I'll be working at is about 15 miles northwest of the Strip, in the suburbs. My start date is January 8th, so I'll probably fly out like a couple days before.

But yea, this whole job is so far removed from anything I had envisioned myself ever doing, so I'm not completely sure what to make of it yet. But well, I figure I should at least give it a try? *le sigh* The initial reaction of most ppl when I tell 'em that I'm working with nuclear waste is laughter, shock, or disbelief. Michael was like, "yea, I dunno about that job, man, not if you ever wanna have kids," ahahaha. Heh, but in all seriousness, I'm hoping I don't ever have to be in the direct vicinity of any actual waste. I dunno, we'll see where it all goes. By strange twist of fate, I found out that the Mouse's dad actually works for this company too, so I guess things are kinda looking up. Hope for the best...

Starcraft Marines and Missed Opportunities. You know, when I play a RTS game like Starcraft, my natural tendency is to not wanna build a whole lot of units until I can build the ultimate unit. Like, why settle for basic marines when if I wait a liiiittle longer, I can build siege tanks? But of course, in game, things don't always go the way you want, and more often than not, I get rushed and killed off before I get much of a chance to build anything. If you take this situation a little, and extrapolate to the broader context of life in general, you'd have a pretty good idea of how I think.

But I'm sick of holding off and getting pwned all the time in life. So here I am this time, settling to build marines with my life. Not as glorious and prestigious as the siege tanks I was hoping for, but at least I won't be dead. But the flip side of it is, when I build those marines in game, I always wonder how things would've turned out if I'd just held on and waited for the siege tanks. =/ What if? I dunno, lose-lose situation is what it sometimes seems like. Grass is always greener on the other side.

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."
~U.S. Marine Corps

Summer/Fall Recap. Yea, I haven't been keeping up real well with the whole blogging thing this past year or so, so here's like everything I can remember happening.

Taiji Legacy. (7/21-23) The annual tournament my old kung fu school hosts every summer. I hadn't been in a couple years cuz I'd been out of the country several summer's in a row, but I was back for this one, and I went and volunteered. I guess after doing it for like, 8 years or so now, they've kinda ironed out a lot of the kinks, cuz it was a lot less stressful helping out this time. But yea, it's kinda weird seeing the noobs from back in the day now that they're getting beastly. Maybe even a couple that you had a hand in teaching way back when, and now they might even have surpassed you. "The student has become the master" kinda stuff, hahaha. But on the flip side, it seems that the school is kinda going more towards contemporary wushu these days and may be losing its traditional roots. Danger lurking on the horizon, the dark side, haha.

Went down to K-Town with Irene, John S., and Michael for drinks one night back in the summer (5/29). We went to this place called Bar A that had this amazing yogurt soju drink. The fruit soju's with jello cubes were pretty good too. We went karaoke-ing afterwards. Good booze, good friends, good times, hahah.

I got my first traffic ticket ever back in September (9/10). It was for something real stupid too. So apparently if you're cruising along the highway, and a cop's got another car pulled over on the shoulder, you either gotta move out of the rightmost lane or slow down 15 mph. Yea, I mean I guess it's the polite thing to do and all, but I am 100% certain they NEVER taught us that in my driver's ed class. So yea, I got ticketed for "failure to yield to emergency vehicle." I ended up taking a defensive driving course online to get the ticket dismissed. (I probably had to shell out the same amount of $ for all the paperwork involved, but at least it won't be on my record.) Yea, it says it's only supposed to take 6 hours, but if you read everything through, it takes closer to 10 or 12 (well, if you're AIMing at the same time too, heh). But yea, a lot of the course was common sense, and the rest is statistics and figures that you'll probably forget in a month.

Austin City Limits. (9/15) So it had been on my list of things-to-do in Austin to go see more live music, and ACL was as good a chance as any. I got a one-day pass for only the first day of the festival and stayed there for like the whole day. My favorite acts I saw were Gnarls Barkley, Thievery Corporation, and John Mayer. But yea, I was coughing a lot the whole day (and the day after) cuz it's held in Zilker Park, and so much dirt and dust gets kicked up by all the foot traffic. (I hear by the third day, the air is orange from all the dust in the air.) Anyways, so it was a fairly enjoyable experience, but the kind that I'm in no rush to do again. I came home really physically exhausted. And I think it'd have been a lot more fun if I'd gone with a friend or two.

Living in Austin. I was back in Austin for most of the Fall to utilize the ECAC resources for job hunting. So I crashed with Tony for about a month at his place on Yager Ln. up by the Round Rock border, until he up and decided to move to California. After that, I moved in with Flash over by the Days Inn on I-35 & 32nd St., on the "wrong side of the tracks" (and by tracks, I mean I-35). I crashed in Flash's living room, which was rather ironic, cuz we tend to call living out of someone else's living room "pulling a Flash," since he pioneered it among our crew. Anyways, it was nice moving closer to campus, but Flash didn't have internet as his place, which was definitely [trying] at times. (Oh yea, so little by little, they start disabling your on-campus internet privileges once you graduate. First, I couldn't log into the library computers. Then a month or two later, I couldn't log into the wireless network with my old EID. Then finally, they terminated my ENGR account.)

World of Warcraft. So Tony bought the game for me cuz they slashed the price in anticipation of the release of the expansion. I was hooked for like a month before the initial craze kinda faded. But yea, at one point, it was an addiction in every sense of the word, hahah. I was over at Allen's place playing like every night (and on campus by day) cuz of the no internet at Flash's. But you really have to kinda stay close in level to your friends, otherwise you can't play together very effectively. And after much deliberation, soloing kinda blows... kinda blows a LOT. But yea, I rolled a Night Elf Warrior and play on FrostWolf. Lemme know if you play (Alliance) on that server, I guess.

Tuaca Body Art Ball. (9/24) This was a show sponsored by Tuaca liqueur of dance and various other performances by actors in body paint. John S. was touring with the show doing martial arts, and he hooked it up with tix when the show came to Austin. The event was held at Element and was quite amusing overall.

Mavs vs. Wizards. (10/23) So Cali got these amazing tickets for a Mavs preseason game from her work, and I got invited along. I hadn't been to a Mavs game in years; not since before we got good (when Mark Cuban took over). But yea, we were literally like the second row on the floor I think; the price on the tickets says $295 per, which is like crazy. It was a really cool experience, being so close to the players, but it was like, kinda surreal... like they seem less... [larger than life] in person than they do on tv, though they ARE pretty freaking tall. It was preseason, so I dunno if the players were going all out, but we won, so I had a lot of fun overall.

Lost Luggage. So I flew up to Kalamazoo, Michigan for a job interview (11/7) and they LOST my freaking luggage! Grrrr... United Airlines. >=O I flew from Austin and connected through Chicago, and my bag (with my dress-up clothes) got left in Chicago. So me & the other two guys from UT were visibly the most underdressed guys at the interview. -_- But yea, at least I had the foresight to wear my suit jacket onto the plane cuz I thought it might be cold. That turned out to be my saving grace (though, I guess it still didn't help enough, cuz I didn't get the job =/). And my hair was gelled from the day before, but my gel was in my checked baggage too, so I didn't wanna wash my hair either. Blehh, it was just a baaaaad experience all around. Man, you always hear the stories, and you never think it'll happen to you, but blam.

Etc. You know those bumps (not speed bumps) they put in parking lots in front of parking spaces so you don't pull too far forward? Well, I drove over one by accident. It's the second time that's happened to me. =/ At least I was able to just reverse over it this time; last time, I had to ask my passengers to get out and help me push the car back over- soooo embarassing. But yea, that canNOT be good for the bottom of the car. Been playing golf a lot recently, and I FINALLY hit my first (and second) birdie- I didn't even see it (the 1st) actually. It was a chip in on a par 3, and after it started slowing down, I stopped looking cuz I didn't think it'd actually go in, and then it did. Only my brother and my dad saw it I think. (*The 2nd was a month or so later on a par 4.) Oh yea, and my brother ran over my foot with a golf cart. Not only ran over, but got half way over, I yell, he slams on the brakes, and the cart stops ON TOP of my foot. Hurt for like 10 minutes afterwards, but no permanent damage. Yea, reminds me of a time back in I think middle school when my cousin Jack nearly ran over my foot with a real car; my shoe got wedged under the tire, but luckily he stopped before running over my actual foot. *whew*