More Indians please

I love the community I live in, at least 30% of the people owning a home are of Indian nationality. They make the best neighbors - no loud, obnoxious dogs that bark all the time, no stupid toys like off-road motorcycles that are "tested" in the community at high RPM, no "white trash", no beer cans on the lawn, no loud BBQ in the back yard, and so on. Absolutely the best neighbors! Now if only the other 70% of the turds could leave, that would make this community something special.

Unnecessary Costs

The passenger side window in my car is no longer willing to go back up. Damn it, I hate when things like this happen. I've made a solid plan for a 3 week trip overseas and now I need to worry about spending money on the car when I come back. Luckily the driver side motor died while the car was still in warranty - why couldn't the other side do the same!

Good earthquake yesterday

Every so often we get earthquakes, which I personally LOVE. Why you ask? Because it drives people AWAY from California! I've known people who were "traumatized" by the Northridge earthquake in 1994, packed up their shit and left the state - moved to Atlanta! More people should leave after this one - see ya!

My brother is a pathetic cheapskate

I no longer care about my brother as of yesterday. He is 30, decided to "live his life" until now by drinking, using drugs, partying, spending all his money, etc.

Because of his drug use, he needed throat surgery. Since my parents left California for Las Vegas a couple of years ago, I was instantly thrust into the role of caretaker - WTF! Although I refused to take him to the surgery (sorry, he fucked himself up, why should I help him), my father called and forced me to take him as a "favor for my dad". I hated it because I was in the middle of a product roll-out, so I crashed that night around 3 AM, had to wake up at 5:30 so that I could pick him up at 6 AM to make his 7 AM check-in at UCLA. I drove him to the hospital, dropped him off and drove back home to crash - he wanted me to stay with him, I just found out! Fuck him, next time don't do drugs and SAVE YOUR CASH!


Last year he broke his ankle, so again I was the one who drove to pick him up from his apartment, take him to the doctor, drive him back. I even drove to pick up his medicine a couple of times, bring him water, etc.

In December he found the "love of his life", they moved in together a couple of months ago in a $1,700/mo apartment. He bought himself brand new appliances, and I mean everything - all on credit of course. Got himself a flat big screen TV - on credit as well. And he just returned from Las Vegas where he "partied" with his girlfriend. Oh, and he is leasing a Cadillac CTX, because, well, he has to look cool.

I never once asked him for a favor. Since I am leaving for a 3 week overseas vacation this Thursday, I decided to ask him for a ride to the airport. He actually had the audacity to ask for $20 in gas money, because his girlfriend's Jeep is a gas guzzler! Found out through a long (and very heated) email exchange that they are broke, living paycheck to paycheck on a budget - oh yeah, she is now 4 months pregnant! Poor kid, I feel sorry for him already...

Shopping for shorts is painful

I am officially a "mutant". When companies are designing their shorts, this must be their line of thinking:

White people should be skinny with no ass so the Levi's 550 shorts would fit perfectly
Black people, since they have an ass, should wear ROCA wear and Sean John shorts that reach their ankles and be really baggy

So if I want skinny with an ass and not longer than my knees, I am OUT OF LUCK! Oh and God forbid you exercise, run, play soccer and have developed thighs - because then you MUST go baggy. Loose fit is definitely NOT FOR YOU.

This weekend sucked

It started as early as Thursday night, see my previous post. I've tried previously to apply Service Pack 1 (SP1) to my Vista laptop, but it failed - didn't investigate why, I was happy it rolled back and I was able to continue working. Well, Friday I tried again, this time downloading the SP1 file from Microsoft. Same result, unfortunately. This time I investigated and found out that the file the SP was trying to overwrite was corrupted (and locked I guess), so the update failed. I tried the restore feature, but this time, the laptop had different plans and I was out of luck...

So, had no choice but to reformat and re-setup everything from scratch. That took all night Friday, all day Saturday and a couple of hours Sunday. Let's just say I have a lot of software that I use and each has updates and service packs and security updates, etc. I feel exhausted! But, it's actually not a bad idea to reformat and re-setup everything about every 2 years or so, since computers do become slow over time as additional updates and new releases are being applied. It just so happens that my laptop turned 2 years old in May.

Damn, I was really looking forward to India

Somewhat late on making this post, more on that later. I found out late Thursday night that my business trip to India got canceled. This sucks on many levels - I won't be seeing India for the first time (although I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunities since I work in IT Services), I won't be making the money I was planning on making, and so on. But none sucks more than missing out on spending a couple of days with my Malaysian friend. It fucking blows!