December 11, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

“The Problem with Buses”

This book is dedicated to Daniel Kim and his father, for showing us that there’s more to buses than just the ride. Special thanks to Joe Kim for, well… everything.

“… one goes and another one comes.”

We all know the bus system can be problematic. Everyone has their share of crazy stories. 20 things you should know about buses:

1. There are a lot of buses that will take you to where you want to go and you don’t need to make reservations.

2. Unless you’re crazy and promised to get on a bus, nothing’s going to stop you from taking another one.

3. They rarely run on schedule; expect to wait a solid half hour at the stop.

4. Conversely, they’re not going to wait for you when they’re ready to go, no matter how fast you’re running or how close you are to being in the door.

5. No pick-ups between stops!

6. When you want to get somewhere quick, just take a cab.

7. Regardless of where you’re going, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

8. Flat tires suck. I guess that’s true with all automobiles. I feel like it’s worse with buses though.

9. For the longer trips, you REALLY want one comfortably equipped.

10. It’s better when you’re the only one riding.

11. Bus trips out of town are NOT cheap.

12. And it’s not going to be cheap getting back to where you started either. In fact, sometimes it’s more expensive.

13. Stay behind the line. It’s there for a reason. It’s dangerous and unlawful to step past it. Plus, the driver’s going to yell at you.

14. The bus needs to go its own way, even if there’s a clearly better route.

15. Yellow school buses all look the same. It’s forgivable if you get confused and get on the wrong one.

16. Caution: When you’re wasted you might think any bus will do. This is certainly not the case.

17. Don’t be afraid of pressing the tape when you want to get off.

18. You’d think they’d be in the library reading books or something, but there are surprisingly a lot of nerds on buses.

19. Buses can be pretty dirty. I mean, you never know where they’ve been or who’s been doing what in them. Watch what you touch.

20. You can never be sure of how long a bus has been around. Maintenance is pretty good at keeping old buses looking fairly new.

Yes, we’ve had some pretty bad experiences, but at least we’re learning from them.

Posted in Randomness | 3 Comments »

July 15, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

Welcome to Loserville! Population: 6.6 billion. Home of the chumps.
I’m surfing the interweb, just doing the daily routine when I notice a small text ad for an online quiz. Now, I love taking these stupid quizzes. I know they’re fixed to make you think you’re a genius and give them money, but every so often you can find a rare gem that will tell you something different. Today I found The Loser Quiz. I already know I’m a loser, I just wanted to see how big of a loser I am. I mean, the town of Loserville, like any other city, works on a hierarchy. Wouldn’t it be great to beat the top of that hierarchy as the Mayor of Loserville? You’d be able to say you run a town full of losers that will do anything you tell them to. Anyway, back to my story. The quiz takes me maybe 5 minutes to fill out. Unfortunately, I realize that my answers aren’t quite as loserific as they could be. But hey, I’m not one to lie on a quiz [though, lying on a loser quiz must SURELY make you a bigger loser]. So I finish up my quiz and bring down my hopes to “Pathetic Loser” and click Submit. Then these jerks want me to sign up for some offers with their sponsors. Sorry guys, but I don’t think signing up for some scammy credit card deals are going to boost up my loser score. NO THANKS!

Seriously now, I’m not THAT insecure. But it really makes me wonder with all these online pyramid schemes and the like going around, how many people in the world get suckered in. Are you really going to pay to have a machine tell you either a) You’re an Uber Loser, you need to buy more iPods, or b) You’re an anti-Loser, give us money to help stop the spreading of loseritis?

Yeah, as usual, I don’t know where I’m going with this. What I do know though, is that the world is messed up.

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »

June 23, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

Because I want as many people as possible to hear this:

—

L: Why are you mad homophobic?
D: I’m not! Why do you have to be mad gay?

—

I’d love it if you shared this with everyone you know.  We told my boy D that we’d be spread it around.  I just want to see how far it can go.

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »

March 30, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

Someone needs to tell James that he’s not allowed to send me videos anymore. You don’t want to know.

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »

March 14, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

I know, I said I don’t like writing about what I did, but today was too overwhelming. It had a triple.

The single: 300. That alone is enough to warrant a good day. Literally had my jaw hanging open from disbelief for over half the movie.

The double: White Castle. The crave hit after catching Harold and Kumar the other day.

The triple: Kristine Sa’s Hopeless Romantic came in the mail today. This isn’t just your regular every day CD. There’s a reason I had to buy a physical copy instead of just downloading it. The packaging is out of this world. I haven’t seen anything like it before, and neither have you.

There were a number of other good things today, but nothing that would move the day up to a quadruple (unless you add them all up together, but of course it doesn’t work that way).

Real quick fun fact: I love the word double. It’s applicable whenever something happens twice or extra. Triple is about 50% better than double. The quadra is 33% better than that, and so on and so forth. The highest count I’ve ever gotten up to was a hexa, but it was something bad. To be specific, I believe I was measuring in units of crappy, so it was a hexa-crappy. Yeah, that was bad. I dream of the day I get to say dodeca-nice (that’s 12). Unfortunately, I have no idea what the word for multiples of eleven is.

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »

March 6, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

Early 2006, my guy Dave and I come up with this theory. I’m all about theories. Absolutely love them. So here’s the set up:

We’re all hanging out in my boys Phil and Dave’s room. And we’re watching television or checking stuff out online or whatever it was that we did back then when my boy Phil goes “Hey Zac. Have you seen my powerball?” Pause. Raise an eyebrow. “What the crap’s a powerball?” Phil rolls open the drawer of his desk and takes out this plastic ball thing, gives it a flick with his thumb, starts spinning it, and the thing lights up. “Holy crap! That’s awesome!”

Now a technical description, because I have people here wondering what the hell I’m talking about. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, this powerball is a little different from the powerball where you pick 6 numbers and hope to win millions of dollars, but it’s almost as good. Maybe even better. The powerball is a gyroscope powered device commonly used by athletes to exercise one’s forearm, wrist, and/or grip. Spinning the device causes the gyroscope inside the ball to spin and create force. I’m a little fuzzy on how gyroscopes work exactly, but I know spinning them is awesome. In any case, you can get these with counters that measure how fast the gyroscope is spinning and such or with LEDs. Phil had red LEDs.

Within hours, Dave and I are online trying to buy our own. Prices are something like 25 bucks for a normal one, 35 for either LEDs or the odometer dealy, or 45 for the combo. So what’s the decision here? Well, LEDs are just fancy lights, there’s no real practical use for it other than to know that the powerball is spinning (I neglected to mention that there are no batteries - the LEDs are powered by the gyroscope and no, I don’t understand how) which is pretty obvious if you’re using it. The odometer’s kinda cool. We can “race” with it and actually get a figure on if we’re improving. But… 10 bucks for some gimmicky add-ons… Hmmm… What to do… whattodo…

I think it’s pretty obvious: Buy the ones with the lights!! So what’s the theory behind this?

EVERYTHING is better with lights.

Let’s face it, things that light up unnecessarily are just straight up cool. Pens with lights rock my world. No USB device is complete if it doesn’t light up. Laser pointers blow the minds out of any household pet. Street cars with neon lights are kicking [and illegal for bonus points]. Anything and everthing can be improved with lights. Maybe not necessarily lights, but anything that creates a glow effect. I say that because glow-in-the-dark things don’t technically have lights, but they’re kickass nonetheless. Why else would Asian glow be so trendy now?

If you still don’t believe the theory, I think you need to check this site out:

dealxtreme

I don’t usually trust people that think the letter “x” is cool unless it’s in “X-Men,” but this site amazes me. Light up shot glasses. You want a set. 2 bucks a pop shipped. Yeah, buy them now. How’s all this stuff so outrageously cheap [mini 200x zoom microscope WITH light for under 30 bucks shipped]? Well, it’s based in Hong Kong, so expect poor craftsmanship [read: bootlegging]. Whatever though, if your light up pen breaks down you’re only out a dollar, boohoo. Also, be sure to check out the LED powerball for under 9 bucks shipped.

Quick story before closing this up. Shipping is apparently about 2 weeks via Hong Kong Post. I’m not 100 percent on this, but a while ago I imported something from China on eBay and it may have been shipped HKP. I actually had it delivered to my apartment within the week. Here’s the kicker: The delivery man was totally an illegal immigrant that couldn’t speak English. I swear, that guy just got off the boat to hand deliver my package. Keep in mind, I’m in the mid-west, boats don’t get here that easily. So if that’s standard service from HKP, try not to think of it as shipping and handling, think of it more as a fee for a good laugh.

Posted in Fun and Games, Randomness | 4 Comments »

February 21, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

My fried rice is the bomb.

Posted in Serious, Randomness | 1 Comment »

February 19, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

Sunday night: it’s a bit after 2am when I decide I should start heading home from campus. I get to the bus stop at 2:22 and check the weekend schedule for Saturday and Sunday. The last bus is at 3am and the bus comes by every 20 minutes. Lucky me, I just missed one. Whatever, it’s not too cold tonight, I can wait a bit.

2:45 comes along and still no bus. Let’s check the schedule again. Yeah, last bus is at 3. I call the number at the bottom of the schedule to check. Of course it’s automated and provides no reassurance whatsoever. The office closes at 5pm, so if you ever need help finding a route home or anything of that nature, you’re not going to get it. That’s not my case, but I don’t like the idea that the schedule said a bus would be there when it wasn’t. Forget it, let’s wait until 3…

Still no bus. What just happened here? I recall a time when I was looking for a parking with my cousin and we managed to find an entire empty street around midnight because people didn’t realize that when a sign says “No Parking 8pm - 2am Monday to Friday,” you can actually park there Friday after midnight because it’s technically Saturday. At least that was the logic we used and there weren’t any tickets when we came back.

Yeah, that was a crappy story told in a very crappy way. Just thought everyone might appreciate a little late night parking tip. So yeah, when they say the last bus Saturday and Sunday is at 3am, they mean the 3pm that comes after Friday and Saturday midnight. If you want a bus late Sunday, you’re out of luck. I had to spend “Monday night” on campus.

Oh, and Happy Lunar New Year!

Posted in Rants, Randomness | 1 Comment »

February 16, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

I’m still alive, don’t worry. I didn’t get TOO much harassment after last week’s entry. For the record, about 90% of the guys approved of the concept of the five axes. Several wanted to make tweaks and adjustments, which was expected. That was the main reason I posted it. I think there can be a lot of refining if I wanted to make it a serious system and I needed feedback.

Now, on the other hand… About 90% of the girls I’ve discussed this with have stopped talking to me. Go figure, huh? For the few that thought it was brilliant (you know who you are): You are awesome. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Ever. If someone does, tell me and I’ll beat them up. Or if they’re bigger than me, I’ll jump up and punch them in the shin.

Posted in Randomness | 2 Comments »

February 8, 2007 by zeeliciouszee.

It’s been over a week now, so I suppose it’s due time for me to write a good piece. This is the one you’ve been waiting for. Sorry for anyone that knows the score already, but I’ll try to go a little more in depth with this explanation.

My iTunes library has over 4,000 songs and growing. I think that’s something like 2 weeks of continuous play. So how do I make a decent playlist? Pretty simply: the rating system. Any 4 and 5 star songs make it to my mini, everything else stays at home. Where am I going with this? Again, the answer is: the rating system.

“That’s a 9. Easily.” “Are you kidding? Look at all that butter! Not even a 6.” “Bags are cheap. You can probably feed a family of 7 or 8 with that many bowls.” What was that? For anyone that didn’t catch all that, here’s the idea: that’s a sample excerpt of three typical guys rating a girl passing by, presumably on a scale of 1-10. The first guy is pretty straight forward. The second guy refers to “butter” or “butterface” because she looks great but-her-face. The third guy is a chauvinist and suggests putting a bag on her head. Bowls is short for bowls of rice, a unit of measurement commonly used for Asians. Scoring low on bowls means you’re going to starve. I’m getting tons of “wtf”s right now; I can feel it. The girls can’t believe anyone would talk like that. The guys can’t believe I’m cracking the code.

Okay, now that I did the lead-in, I think we’re ready to have a real discussion: MY rating system. It’s called “The Five Axes.” At the end of each of these axes is a star. As the name implies, it’s scored out of 5 - there are no halves. I hate how people use a 1-10 scale, but never give people 4’s. Likewise, please don’t use a 100 point system and only use 80-95. It’s just dumb. Sure, it’s funny to give someone a 17, but what’s the difference between a 92 and a 93? With the Five Axes, you can clearly define where someone is lacking. Also, and this is probably the best part, you can legitimately give people zeros. Iknowiknowiknow. I’m awful. But let’s continue with the axes…

The First Axis: Looks. We all know what this means. Ask yourself: “Is she a looker?” That’s a yes or no question. “Maybe” or “Kind of” are NOT acceptable answers. Either she is or she isn’t. Absolutely no partial credit. If a girl has a rocking body but a huge nose, you need to decide if her body outweighs the need for plastic surgery. If it doesn’t, then that’s butter - no star. If you’re still conflicted, the question is really asking “Are you physically attracted to her?” See how simple that is?

The Second Axis: Personality. “Is there any mental attraction?” This includes high/low maintenance. Do you need to always be there with her, or can she be a little independent sometimes? There’s a little more gray area in this one, but you still need to commit to one way or the other. Because there are so many different types or personalities, you have to determine which one(s) are your thing. Perhaps you’re looking for a bad girl in your life. Maybe you want someone you can baby. Or you can always be into the studious library girl type - they’re pretty cute.

The Third Axis: Wealth. I get complaints about this one, but it’s important. Don’t even try to pretend that it’s not. The idea is that the more money the girl has, the less that will be coming out of your pocket, and the better gifts you get on special occasions. If you’re not benefiting from her father being the CEO of an investment banking company, she’s not getting the star.

The Fourth Axis: Housekeeping. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, garbage. It’s all right here. Like personality, there’s some gray. Because there are so many ways this can be measured, you need to pick out what’s most important for you. Some guys can cook pretty well, so for them, a girl that does the dishes would be great. Then there are guys that don’t know how to dress themselves in the morning. They need a girl that can match their socks. Whatever is most important to you is what earns the star.

The Fifth Axis: Talent. Any particular skill that you find attractive, whether it be singing, dancing, swimming, juggling, or whatever freaky fetishes you might have. If you like to go clubbing, your girl needs to be able to keep a beat. If you like to sing karaoke, she needs a 3 octave range. Athleticism counts too. This was kind of my wild card axis. There were a number of facets that wouldn’t get covered for a myriad of reasons. I found that talent made a good cover-up.

And that’s the general breakdown of the Five Axes. Just count up the number of stars she earned and that’s her score. I’d say an average score falls around a 2. I wouldn’t touch anything lower than a 3. There are a few things that could be more refined that I’m working on, but I’m hoping to eventually make this system universal. Which brings me to another brilliant part of the system: it’s unisex. Girls can use it just the same as guys. Genius. Pure genius. Okay, now you can send me hate mail.

Posted in Looong, Randomness | 7 Comments »