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| Aiya! A little over a month has passed since the last entry and while a decent amount has transpired I'll just make a note of this past weekend's activities.
Wednesday night I flew down with Mike Wang, one of the producers for NBA 2K7 and Dave Washburn, the mocap supervisor (hereafter known as "the sup", and my boss) to Los Angeles to House of Moves for a PR mocap shoot with NBA players.
That night Mike, Dave, and I went to K-town to get some Korean bbq, and I suggested we go to Manna. Their bbq is good, and at $15 for all you can eat, it's a really good deal. The Craw joined us, and needless to say we stuffed ourselves silly, finishing off 6 platters of meat between the four of us! Buncha fatties, I say ...
The next morning consisted of the PR shoot and demo of NBA 2K7 on the PS3. The PS3 looks sleek, and the game plays pretty well. We got the PR and the data we needed, but the shoot came to a premature end when Atlanta native and rising star Dwight Howard rejected a shot and sent the ball flying into the camera truss at a high velocity. All in all, it was fun to rub elbows with some rising young stars. I found Dwight to be like a kid in a candy store, but he's a rather big kid at 6'11", 265 pounds! When I just looked in awe at his height he just grinned at me and said, "Hey, man, it's the shoes." We got to talk some ATL, and when I saw him dancing in front of the cameras and called for the Bankhead Bounce he grinned and gave me a high-five. Here's a shot of me and the fellas:
From left to right we have Out of Shape Fatty, Shaun Livingston, Corey Maggette, Dwight Howard, and Andre Iguodala.
Buy NBA 2K7! It's a far superior game than NBA Live! If there's any doubt, look at all the reviews. IGN gave NBA Live a 6 (their Xbox version got a 4.9!!!) while NBA 2K7 got an 8.3. Now if only that would also translate into market share ...
After the shoot I headed over to Alan's house. Yes, Alan Chen, former roommate extraordinaire, and all-around lovable dude. Man, it's been almost 4 years since I'd last seen him, and he hasn't changed much, except he's got more hair these days. Thursday night was spent chilling and relaxing. Friday during the day I spent "working", taking a trip out to Camarillo to install some software for the guys at Kush Games. They make NHL 2K7 and will release MLB 2K7 in the spring. NHL 2K7 plays very well and MLB is looking very, very good.
Friday night I got to hang out with Jeffrey. I picked his butt up from Fobhambra, er, Alhambra, and we headed down Melrose to do some sightseeing and shopping. We later met up with The Craw and grabbed dinner at a yakitoriya, which was very, very good. Why is it that every ethnic restaurant is done better in cities other than Atlanta? Later we headed over to Alan's place to hang out.
Saturday Alan, Claudia, and I went to the beach. It was so sad; Claudia went running, and every 5 minutes or so she would call to ask where we were, and every time she called we were stuffing our fat asses:
Claudia: "Hey, I'm at such-and-such point. Where are you?"
Us (high as a kite): "Uh, we're eating funnel cake!"
5 minutes pass.
Claudia: "Hey, I'm at such-and-such point. Where are you?"
Us: "Um. We're eating ice cream."
5 minutes pass.
Claudia: "OK, I'm heading back. Where are you?"
Us: "Yeah. We're eating corn dogs."
Afterwards we chilled in Alan's jacuzzi. It was so nice! After showering, we decided to go to a hip-hop club that played old school hip hop. Man, it was awesome, listening and dancing to GOOD hip hop, not crappy radio junk (Holla Back, Bootylicious). The crowd was awesome, too. All in all, a very good and fun night.
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| Work has definitely steadied out; there's still the occasional drama between group members, but that happens anywhere you go. Still though, it's tough to get caught in between and have to listen to both sides, particularly when neither side is right OR wrong. But, that's human nature.
Thursday I arranged for a very gooky kind of event; I rounded up my Korean friends Kelley and Steve (yes, another Korean named Steve) and headed to the Asian Art Museum in downtown. The exhibits were pretty cool, and it was amazing to see how some of the pieces still looked well-preserved after almost 2,000 years! The sad part, however, was the Korean exhibition, with very primitive-looking pottery and very recently-made hamboks. Interestingly, a large gap existed from around 1600-1900 for all the collections, regardless of country.
After the show we decided to go to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The place looked like one of those froo-froo shi-shi places that I hate with all the neon lighting, all-black modern (and uncomfortable) furniture, square plates, and thumping house music. We ordered four dishes and surprisingly, all four were very good. In particular, the chicken tom yum and the bean paste noodles were excellent. I'd definitely hit that place up again.
Friday after work I came home pretty beat. Throughout the day, however, I had sent out emails, voicemails, and txt messages to the various friends I had, hoping to get some hangout time somewhere in the city. At some point I'm going to create a graph and figure out how I met all these people. As it turned out, however, I didn't get any holla backs from any of the lady friends I had tried to contact: Kelley, Mina, Katie, Rachel, and Angella. I was batting 0-5 and it was looking grim. The night turned out to be pretty chill; my roommate Ryan and I went down to our local pub and sucked down a few beers at The Bitter End while conversing over life's mysteries. We then headed over to The 540 Club, another local dive bar across the street. It's a pretty cool and chill place with a very hot bartender! The clientele, though ... well, you've heard my rants about the city.
Saturday was full of excitement. One of my soccer teams had the end-of-the-season playoff tournament at 1:30. My team finished 2nd overall, so we played the 3rd place team while the 1st and 4th place teams clashed. We handled the 3rd place team with surprising ease, sending them packing with a 5-2 win. The 4th place team, however, defeated the 1st place team, but the 1st place team continually complained to the referee about their overly physical play. Well, they were right; when we played them we noticed they were extremely physical, to the point of being dirty. They had several fouls called on them and even had a player yellow-carded. Through sheer luck they managed to go up 2-0 on 2 straight own goal deflections off of free kicks. Well, we fought back and eventually were only down 3-2 at the half. Unfortunately, the second half brought more of the same as they scored on yet ANOTHER own goal deflection, putting us down 4-2 with about 15 minutes remaining. We scrapped and scrapped and eventually pulled level with about 4 minutes left. They were getting tired, and we used that to our advantage when we sprung a counterattack on them with our two speediest players working a beautiful give-and-go. One of our better players, Andy, got the return ball and about 25 yards out faced a 1-v-1 with the opposing keeper. He feinted one way and the keeper fell for it - literally! With the keeper on the ground Andy fired home the winner to put us up 5-4. We struggled mightily with their desperate attempts to equalize, but time finally expired and we were crowned champions!
Around 5 I got a message from Angella, who said she was free to hang out. I knew Kent and some of his friends were going to a Jazz club called Shanghai 1930 so I invited her out. Around 10pm Kent and I picked her up from her place in Nob Hill and headed to the club. Inside we met up with a few of Kent's friends, this guy Kenny, his gf, and two of her female friends. We chatted for a bit, and since everyone there was Chinese but me I had to resort to my faux-Chinese in order to stay in the conversation. Angella actually remarked that she was scared that I actually spoke some decent Chinese. Hao-le!
After sitting down at a table Kenny's boss from work came up and bought us two bottles of champagne. Then he asked us to their special cigar room where he shared two Cuban cigars and a bottle of single malt, 18 year-old McCallum scotch. He really knew how to take care of people, and believe it or not, he didn't ask for a dime in return. He just said, "Hey, are you having a good time? Good." I guess it's good to have money. Lots of money, considering the Cuban cigars were $150 each and the scotch was a couple hundred bucks!
We left the Shanghai and headed towards the Mission. We ended up at a really crammed dive called "Beauty Bar" whose claim to fame was an on-site manicurist. I guess it's important to get your nails done while you're getting sloshed. The place was tiny and absolutely packed, so after a round we decided to head to my favorite place, Medjool. We got there right as they were kicking people out, but somehow Kenny convinced the bouncer to let us in. Afterwards we headed to Taqueria Cancun for Mexican food. All in all a pretty good night.
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| You knew it wouldn't be long until the poker blog started back up. So ... fair warning: lots of poker-riffic talk ahead!
Made an effort to try to win my way to the Aruba classic this year. It's a poker tournament sponsored by UltimateBet.com, and is one of the few World Poker Tour (WPT) events that is not on US soil (The Aviation Club of France is the only other one that I know of).
I have in my hot little hands 5 TECs, or Tournament Entry Chips. Each one is worth a free buy-in into a $100 tournament. I won those by winning $5 tournaments eons ago and finally decided to try to use them to qualify for Aruba.
So here's how UltimateBet's Aruba qualification works:
1. you can buy in (or use a TEC) and play a $100 tournament. For every 10 players, 1 entry is awarded into a $1000 qualifying tournament.
2. You can buy into the $1000 tournament directly, or you can win one of the $100 tournaments from #1. For every 10 players, 1 prize package is awarded to Aruba. Airfare, hotel, spending money, and the tournament buy-in ($5200) is completely covered.
So ... last Saturday I played in one of the $100 qualifying stage 1 tournaments, hoping to win a seat into the $1000 tournament. Unfortunately, I couldn't get much going and lost all my chips when I called a raise on the button with A-K. The flop came A-3-3. My opponent went all-in, and I figured him for either Kings or Queens, or (more likely) a weaker Ace. I called, and my opponent showed Q-Q. A Queen on the turn dashed all my hopes. Lousy two-outer.
Monday, after an incredibly long and tiring day at work I decided to play in the 9:15 pm (12:15 am EST) $100 tournament. As a side note, we had a mocap shoot with our NFL team scheduled for 7 am. I got to work at 6:15, the talent got there at 6:30, and for the next hour and a half we waited there for the NFL game programmers to show up. They finally waltzed in around 8:15 with their coffee, commenting on how they "forgot" that they had a shoot. I wasn't too happy with them.
Anyway, back to poker. I logged in and signed up, and it turned out that 27 players total signed up. That meant the top 2 won seats into the $1000 event, 3rd paid out $450, and 4th paid out $250.
For the first few minutes I increased my starting stack of 2500 chips to around 2800. A few hands later I called an early raiser with sixes in the hole, and the flop came K-K-4. I checked, my opponent bet, and I check-raised him. He called, and I knew I was in trouble. The turn was glorious: a six. I checked again, my opponent bet, and I just smooth-called, hoping he had a King. The river was an inconsequential 8, and again I checked, hoping to check-raise. My opponent, to my disappointment, checked behind me, and showed down Aces. When he saw my sixes he went ballistic. I was now up to around 3800 in chips and doing very well.
Exactly two hands later I picked up two red Kings in the small blind. The very same player who had his Aces cracked by me raised again. I re-raised, and then he moved in. I called, figuring him for Queens. He turned over Aces AGAIN! Well, I lost that pot and he wrote, "Finally some justice. Idiot." Geez ... getting Aces cracked sucks, but he doesn't have to berate me like that.
So now I'm short-stacked, down to about 700 chips. Fortunately the blinds are still pretty low (15/30), so I have a little bit of room to maneuver. I worked my stack back up, and in the process cracked Aces again with my pocket 9's; this time I flopped a set and he moved in on me. The rest of the way I was pretty up and down but worked my way back to around 3300 in chips when the blinds hit the magical 50/100 mark. As most of you know, I feel that when the big blind is 5 to 10% of your original buy-in it's "gambling time", which means I'll start calling All-Ins hoping to accumulate chips. This strategy again had me up and down, and unfortunately I was unable to make any headway. I was up to around 5800 at one point, but then lost a coinflip when my A-J suited couldn't hit against someone's pocket 4's. Now down to about 3300 with the blinds at 100/200 I began to get worried; I'd have to gamble much more recklessly in the hopes of doubling up. We went on break, and when the break resumed I'd be under the gun with the blinds now at 150/300. Yikes!
I recall saying aloud (I tend to talk to myself when playing online), "I could really use Aces or Kings under the gun right about now" as I paced back and forth. The break ended, and play resumed. The first card I was dealt was the King of hearts. "Come on! Come on!" I again said aloud. The next card was dealt to me, and it was, believe it or not, the other red King. Perfect! I limped in, knowing that the rest of the table was super-aggressive. Sure enough, someone raised to 900 and the chip leader moved all-in for about 13,000. I gleefully called, putting the chip leader on Queens or A-K, and sure enough, he turned over A-K after the initial raiser folded. My Kings held up, and I had around 8500 in chips and the chip lead.
We got down to the final table, and I was in the middle of the pack. I got into several big hands:
1. a player named "GoGirl" was chip leader, and raised every time she came into a pot. I called one of her raises with 10-10 from the SB, and the flop came with ragged undercards. I checked it to her, she bet the pot, about 2800, and I moved in on her. She wrote, "Spade draw?" and folded. I really didn't want her to call because I figured she had overcards on me (K-Q, Q-J, A-Q) and didn't want to get unlucky.
2. Lost a gigantic pot immediately afterwards when the donkey at the table moved in for about 6500 in chips (I had about 14,000 at that point) and I called with A-K. My opponent showed K-J. Domination! At least until the flop, which came J-J-6.
3. Bashed heads again with GoGirl when she raised triple and I called with A-4 of spades. The flop came J-8-4 with one spade. I checked it, she bet the pot, and I got suspicious. I didn't give her credit for a Jack, so I smooth-called with the intention of moving in on her on the turn if a rag came off. The turn was the 3 of spades, so I moved in the rest of my chips and hoped she wouldn't call. She thought and thought and thought, and just as the warning buzzer went off she called and showed A-8. Uh-oh. I had to catch another 4 or a spade in order to win! I held my breath, and the river saved me with the 6 of spades, giving me the Ace-high flush! Being the considerate player I am (yeah, right?), I wrote her, "That was a heck of a call, sorry you got unlucky." We conversed for a bit, and she, while noticably upset, wasn't taking it personally.
4. Well, you knew it had to happen. GoGirl raised double, and I called from the big blind with K-10 of clubs. The flop came with three clubs! I checked, she bet, I called. I wrote, "here we go again!" The turn was meaningless; I checked, she bet, and I check-raised her all-in. She called INSTANTLY. I immediately thought that I had run into the Ace-high flush, but to my delight she showed down two smaller clubs (something like 8-6 or 7-4). I took her chips and knocked her out.
5. I eliminated the best player remaining at the table, the same fellow who moved in with the A-K when I had Kings. He raised, I re-raised with A-9 of diamonds and he moved in. I called in a heartbeat, putting him on a straight steal. He showed down 5-4 of hearts! Very fortunately for me, I flopped an Ace and ended the silliness then and there.
At this point we were now down to 3-handed; the K-J donkey was to my right and a rather novice player to my left. This novice player repeatedly moved in; he never raised, never limped, he just moved all-in. At this point I had about 38,000 in chips, donkey had about 12000, and novice had about 14000. I was in the big blind with A-7 of clubs when novice, on the button, moved in again. Donkey folded, and I figured novice might be on a steal. I called, and this time, my read was wrong: he had A-Q. I said to my roommate (who happened to wander in and watch me eliminate the last 3 players), "Man, I'm gonna need a 7." A 7 came on the flop, and now the roles were reversed! My suckout held up, and donkey and I finished 1-2 to qualify for Saturday's $1,000 tournament.
I hope my suckouts continue all the way to Aruba! | | |
| ESPN came and some local TV crews came for our J.J. Redick shoot last Wednesday. My one moment of glory came when I started velcro-ing these straps to his butt and crotch area and the cameras ram-cammed in. So, at some point in the future you may see yours truly playing with J.J.'s crotch area. That's so no bueno!
Friday turned out to be interesting; Dave, Steve, and I went out and did the "asian thing" by going to only asian bars that night. We ended up at Flow and I saw "Mongolia", the nickname Lance and I gave the cute Mongolian bartender there. There was another bartender there that I hadn't met whose name was Genevieve. Imagine a cross between my old roommate EJ and Jenna Haze but with very large, uh, mammary glands. And by "large" I mean 36D. She was mad cute, tho, and really cool. By her own account, she's a norebang queen. Met this one girl Victoria there that night, who pretty much just plopped herself in front of me and started up a conversation.
Saturday night I went with my roommates to the local bar in our hood, The Bitter End (how fitting for me, huh?). It was jammed with lots of people which was a bit surprising, but I heard that as school gets back into session it turns into a college bar (SF State is close by) most nights. My roommate Andy and I were leaning over the railing on the second floor overlooking the bar and I remarked to him, "Hey, those two girls look like they could use some company. One's asian, and one's white. You take the asian girl, I'll take the white girl." He kinda hemmed and hawed, and I don't think flying wing was his thing. "OK" I told him. "Let me get you some liquid courage down at the bar." So we went down to the bar and ordered him a beer. He had a sip and I said, "Ready?" And he replies, "Sure." And the two girls walk right past us out the door. We just laughed, because the timing was so perfect. It was a good night, though.
Sunday was a soccer-rific day. I played a 9AM game which we won 4-0. We're the #1 team in the league right now; we're very fit, play well together, and have an excellent sweeper (Jim) who reminds me of Hong MyungBo because of the aggressive way that he clears balls out of the area. We were missing 3 of our regular girls, so another girl that our captain knows has been filling in and she's awesome. When we asked our captain about her he said, "Oh, yeah. She plays varsity for UC Irvine. And she's only a sophomore." Nice.
I joined another team that played at noon, and boy, it was like night and day. This team needed help. Both teams are co-ed, and everyone knows that if you play co-ed soccer the winning teams ALWAYS have the better girls. Our 9AM team has the best girls in the league hands-down, but the noon team had some real useless ones. Well, when the dust settled we lost 6-2 and I ended up with a huge bruise on my left shin from a guy who kicked me when I blocked his shot on goal. Interestingly, they asked me to play sweeper, then handed me the #20 shirt. Visions of Hong flashed through my brain, but needless to say, the result didn't exactly fulfill the promise. But hey, only one goal was my fault, and that was only because I couldn't motor onto a ball quick enough and had to take a guy down in the box. But it was already 4-0 at that point anyway and I was going down swinging ... to the bitter end.
Was supposed to meet up with Victoria, Steve, and NaNa for dim sum afterwards, but Steve sent me a txt saying he wasn't going to be able to go since he just woke up at 2, and Victoria didn't reply to my txt message or voicemail. So sadly, my Sunday afternoon was spent hobbling around on my bad leg eating tuna fish sandwiches. Stupid Hong MyungBo #20. | | |
| Today I spent the majority of my time processing some data we captured about a month ago. The cheerleading team from UC Davis came in for a shoot and audio session for our College Hoops basketball game. We recorded a fair number of takes, and the long, arduous process of getting the data ready for animation is quite a pain.
I got the 3D model of the cheerleader from our modelers, and, while I guess I'm not surprised, I am a bit, well, surprised. The 3D cheerleader model was wearing a tight halter top with short shorts and stiletto-heeled boots. Um, have you ever seen any college cheerleaders wearing outfits like that? Additionally, she was rather well-endowed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but none of the cheerleaders who came that day looked remotely like our model. Nerds have quite an imagination, yes? I can just imagine the modeler sitting there at his computer creating his "dream woman", and then a whole horde of nerds around him encouraging him to "make them bigger!"
So tomorrow J.J. Redick from Duke is coming for a "celebrity" mocap shoot. I heard there's going to be a media circus, although since this is only a college-level celebrity (as opposed to Derek Jeter or Shaq) I don't honestly think that anyone's going to show up or care. I asked the other folks in our department how the previous celebrity shoots went and they said that they were all circus-like. In fact, when one of the reporters asked someone in our marketing department how our equipment worked he told the reporter, "Oh, the cameras shoot lasers and store terabytes of information!"
Right. Read the wikipedia entry again and you'll see that he's so wrong he could only be a marketing person. While I will freely admit that our cameras shoot red light, they're definitely not lasers. And the re-constructed 3D data is rarely over 5 megabytes, let alone a gigabyte.
After work I went on my daily jog around the small park that's near my house. They have public tennis courts there, and as usual, there were several attractive women there playing tennis. Is there anything hotter than an athletic woman? I'm going to have to take up tennis, but I'm going to need lots of practice; Maria Sharapova could beat me right now - even after I tied her up and drugged her with a roofie.
So after my jog I showered and went to my new favorite Tuesday night event: trivia at The Bitter End. The trivia is quite good, and the comraderie of our team makes it a very enjoyable weekday excursion. The team with the best name wins a round of shots so there's lots of creativity. I'll admit, however, I was pretty surprised at the team names. It seems the cruder and more vulgar the team name, the more readily accepted it is, and this only surprised me because I thought San Francisco was a very uptight and politically correct town. Teams that make fun of the trivia host's mom really go over well (the host's name is Tim - a really nice guy).
For example, our name tonight was, "If your team name makes fun of Mel Gibson then you're a warmongering Jew." (In our defense, the lone Jewish guy on our team came up with the name) In fact, most teams took advantage of Gibson's recent plight.
We finished in 3rd tonight, for the second week in a row, netting us another $10 in cash ($30 for first, $20 for second, $10 for third). A bit disappointing, since we typically finish in first! We've got a good team. Think you got game? Here are some of tonight's questions:
1. What are the 5 remaining Communist countries?
2. What two state capitals have the same number of syllables and rhyme?
3. What is the chemical compound CH4?
4. Into what bodies of water do the following rivers empty? a. Mississippi b. Jordan c. Volga
5. Which two teams played in the 2004 Super Bowl and what was the score?
No sharing of answers, and no looking them up on the Internet, either! | | |
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