Soul Searchings

I showed up at work Monday morning, and I was clearly not in very good shape yet, so my department manager told me I should probably go home and get some more rest… so I did. I slept a LOT these past couple days, and everytime I woke up, I was definitely a couple notches better than when I went to sleep. I guess there is no substitute to rest when you’re trying to get over a cold. Today, I feel a hell of a lot better, and only a few small symptom remnants are left.

Generally, I’m not a very healthy eater. I always eat fast food, probably because it’s cheap, delicious, and always available. I also always drink pop and juice, and almost never drink plain water… except when I’m at a restaurant or playing sports. During this sickness, I’ve tried my best to be good and resist all things detrimental to recovery, such as drinking cold fluids and eating fried food. Usually when I’m sick, I throw caution to the wind and still consume all the things I usually do… so it was quite difficult for me to change my diet. Hot water with honey isn’t that bad, but tea just sucks. Even the raspberry tea I got from Tim Hortons tastes like crap. Nothing beats chugging an ice cold beverage to quench a thirst.

I swear I’m mass-producing this stuff. I better go buy some stock in Kleenex at this rate. At first, it was just a sore throat Wednesday night. On Friday, I started getting a bit of a runny nose. Saturday, I got a slight fever and my whole body felt weak. Today, I’m just a phlegm machine. Hopefully I’ve reached the peak, and am on my road to recovery now. It’s been awhile since I’ve been this sick… and this time, even ColdFX didn’t help. I don’t know whether ColdFX is really that effective or not, but I bought a bottle and a few times where I thought I was starting to get sick, I took a few pills and the symptoms never materialized into a full-blown sickness.

Maybe I shouldn’t have played volleyball Friday night at Bonsor… but several times in the past, I actually seemed to get better from my colds after playing sports. But this time, my body felt incredibly tired and weak, and maybe I exerted so much energy that my immune system strength was decreased.

Man, it sucks to be sick and feel like crap. I guess health is taken for granted sometimes.

Apparently Microsoft is allowing free beta 2 version downloads of all their 2007 software, and they are fully functional until February 1st, 2007. So I decided, what the hell, let’s try Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007. It must have a lot of bloat, because the installation process took forever. Just by the installation screens, it’s easy to see they’ve tried to add a lot of visual flair to the first new version of Office in four years.

I’ve only used the new Outlook for a few hours now, but I think I would have to say that it does look more visually appealing, with the soft baby blue motif as the main colour. There seem to be a lot more buttons everywhere, which makes it feel a little foreign. I do see a few new features that do seem to be useful, such as floating "Next" and "Previous" buttons that will take you to the next reply in an email that has several generations of quoted text. I thought that was pretty neat.

I like the new default Calibri font too. It’s simple and easy to read but an improvement in appearance over the standard Arial that I’ve used for so many years.

By default, documents that you save with Office 2007 won’t be compatible with previous versions of office because they will now be in XML formats.

For those that want to try out Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, here’s the key: MTP6Q-D868F-448FG-B6MG7-3DBKT

This weekend, I played in my first (and possibly only?) Asian Invitational volleyball tournament. Our team consisted of Gary, Will, Thi, Ed, Chanh, Sam, Henry and Brian. With eight of us being Gladstone alumni (all except Brian), it’s only fitting we called ourselves the Gladiators.

We played six two-set games to 25 capped on Saturday for the round robin. From that, we only won a grand total of three out of the 12 sets. One of those sets, we took off Elite, who was comprised of young guys mostly just out of high school, who we’ve played with against a lot and usually lose to. That was the only real highlight of the day. Realistically, I think we could have expected to win at most five sets out of the 12. Most of the teams we played against were definitely at a higher skill level.

With our fairly poor, but not surprising, showing on the first day, we finished last in our pool, and got placed into the bottom tier for the playoffs. We never envisioned making the top tier, but we thought we could have done better to get seeded a little higher for the bottom tier… but as it was, we were seeded sixth out of the seven bottom tier teams.

For the first game of the playoffs, we played the Young Guns, which were indeed a very young team. Some of their players are still in high school, going to David Thompson, and they went to the provincials this year, but finished dead last. So I guess these bunch of guys are pretty similar to how we were seven years ago. They aren’t a bad team at all… finishing sixth in their pool of eight in the round robin, good for a third place seeding in the lower tier. The exuberance of youth got the better of the experience of age, and we lost two straight in the best of three format. Fortunately, this was a double elimination tournament, so we weren’t done just yet… and it wasn’t a total loss for waking up at 7am two straight days.

Going through the losers’ bracket, games were a single set to 25. First up here was the team who finished last in the other pool on the first day and were seeded last in the bottom tier. If we lost to them, that would immortalize us as the worst team at the tournament officially… something we really didn’t want to happen. Fortunately we managed to win to avoid the very early exit. Next up, we faced the fifth seeded Typhoons, who finished seventh in the other pool yesterday. We beat them as well. We then got a rematch against the Young Guns… and this time, we got the better of them, and didn’t relinquish the lead after going up 6-0 right out of the blocks. With that, we were now in the finals for the losers’ bracket, where we played E-Town’s Finest, a team from Edmonton. Our winning streak finally came to an end, and we bowed out, in a respectable third place finish in the bottom tier. We definitely had a chance to beat E-Town’s Finest, and if we did, we also had a chance to beat the eventual bottom tier champions, Victoria Secret. We played Victoria Secret in the round robin yesterday, and we split the sets one each, but they were very beatable. They did manage to beat E-Town’s Finest three straight sets though. Alas, we could have finished a lot worse, but we also could have done better. I’m just glad we didn’t embarrass ourselves and finish last, which was a very real possibility.

The caliber of action in the top tier was much higher, with many college and university level players to be found on the rosters. The most stacked team was Fu Man Chu, which was comprised of all post secondary players, including four players on the current Capilano Blues roster and Richard, who of course plays libero for UBC. One of the players was a 6′4" exchange student from China, where he was a 2nd division national team player. He was also rookie of the year in the BCCAA this past season, and this guy can pound a ball like you wouldn’t believe. Suffice to say, it wasn’t much of a surprise that this team was seeded first overall.

However, in an absolutely stunning upset, they actually lost to the eighth seeded Elite in the first round. Lucky for them, they still had the backdoor route in the losers’ bracket available. Avoiding any further upsets, they battled their way to make it to the championship match, where they played the undefeated second seeded Vikings, the core of which were alumni from Burnaby North. The Vikings put up a good fight, but in the end, Fu Man Chu prevailed to win the title, as they rightly should have, given the talent on that team.

One can’t help to feel a little sorry for Kent Laubman’s team. With pretty much the exact same team, they finished second last year… but this year, they made the earliest possible exit and finished dead last in the top tier. They only managed to finish third place in their tough pool, so they were seeded seventh and had to play the Vikings in the opening round. They lost that game, but they should have been able to put up a fight to try and battle through the losers’ bracket… except they had to play Fu Man Chu right away, because of the aforementioned upset. Poor guys had to play the top two seeds one after another.

All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable weekend, and I’m glad I got a chance to take part in the tournament and to see some great volleyball action.

Having said that, my body is sore, my legs are tired, and my foot is blistered… I think I need to take some time away from volleyball.

Tennis, anyone?!

It’s the end of the line for Joey. The Friends spinoff has officially been axed by NBC. This isn’t exactly something that comes as a surprise, since they only aired one new episode since the middle of December. While there were initially 18.4 million viewers tuning in for the pilot episode, it managed to retain only about 4 million viewers towards the end. Out of those 4 million viewers, I would have to wonder how many of those were actually watching because of the quality of show, as opposed to just being diehard Friends fans watching it just because it’s the one and only Friends spinoff. Sadly to say, I would probably fall into the latter category.

Although I got a late start and didn’t start watching Friends until they were airing season 8 or so, I quickly became a big fan. I’ve watched through the entire series probably a good half dozen times now. Like many, I have the entire series downloaded onto my computer, but I would someday like to purchase the entire collection on DVD.

Sadly, the Joey run ends with 38 episodes aired. We never will know whether Joey makes it big in Hollywood, or how his relationship with Alex develops. It really sucks when a series just dies like that without ever having a chance to tie up any loose ends. The one other show I followed religiously that did this was Fastlane, which aired a few years back on Fox. I absolutely loved that show, and I knew others who did too. But apparently, it didn’t have a big enough audience. I happened to see some people talking about it on IRC before the pilot episode aired, so I tuned in that night, and was instantly hooked. I thought it was a fantastic show - great dialogue, great action, great actors, and great plots. I was surprised to learn that after the end of the first season, Fox decided to pull the show. I guess it came as a surprise to the producers too, since they left a giant cliffhanger at the season finale as a prelude for the never-to-materialize second season premiere.

All good things must come to an end. Sometimes it lasts too long, and sometimes it’s better to not have started at all. Joey tried to extend the legacy of Friends, but in the end, all it did was mar the good feeling that Friends worked 10 years to instill. Joey just never had the elements that Friends did to make it instantly captivating, to hold onto viewers from one episode to the next. It’s hard to describe what those elements are, but it’s easy to feel… and while watching Joey, the feeling just wasn’t there.

Sometimes it’s better to go out on top with a bang, instead of trying to cling on to the past and fading away with a whimper.

Volleyball is the main sport I play nowadays, and has been for the past 13 years or so, ever since grade 6. That was when I joined the volleyball team at McBride Elementary. Come to think of it, I don’t remember much from playing in grade 6… but I do remember playing in grade 7. We were a good team, definitely one of the best in Vancouver. We were a pretty short team, but we made up for that with very high overall athletic ability. I was actually the starting setter on our team, and we went to the city finals held at Shaughnessy, possibly the only elementary school in the city that actually had bleachers. For the championship game, we ended up playing Fleming and they were just a little bit taller than us. Well, okay, a lot taller than us. Hell, they had someone named Gabe who was 6′4". SIX FOOT FOUR in grade seven. And he wasn’t someone who was lanky and uncoordinated either. He was perfectly able to handle his size. We were a bunch of five foot regular-sized kids. Playing against this man-child just wasn’t fair. Needless to say, we finished 2nd in the city… a position that I would become all too well accustomed to down the road.

I actually remember when our basketball team played Fleming. That was no barrel of laughs either. In fact, this guy Gabe had more points than our entire team combined. It’s not that difficult when all he needed to do was camp under our basket and just casually put the ball in the hoop. Gabe playing on an elementary school basketball hoop is more ridiculous than Yao Ming playing on a NBA regulation hoop.

For my high school career, I decided to go to Gladstone instead of Tupper. I’m not really sure why I ultimately decided that: First of all, pretty much all my friends - including my best friend - were planning to attend Tupper, and secondly Tupper was much closer to home. In fact, even John Oliver is closer than Gladstone is. Maybe it was mostly because my brother was already going to Gladstone, and it would be more convenient if I went there as well. Looking back now, regardless of the reasons, I think I’m glad I did choose to go to Gladstone, although I do sometimes wonder who I may have befriended, and how my life would be if I had gone to Tupper.

I’ve always been pretty good at passing, so in grade 8 I was converted into a starting power. In fact, pretty much all through high school, I was a starting power, even though I was still only 5′4½" in grade 12. It was only for the second half of my final season when I started riding the pine regularly. Being short with a very mediocre vertical jump finally caught up to me. My defense was always my biggest asset for the team, and as the years went by, offense started becoming more and more important and with my very low spike approach, I just couldn’t be any sort of dominant hitter. I was probably only able to touch about 9′2" with a full approach, and for volleyball, that just isn’t going to cut it. I mean, sure, I can hit, just not very consistently and not with any sharp angles. I’ve come to terms now with the reality that I’m short and can’t jump very high. I just try to be as good of a player as I can, given my handicap.

I’ll try to make the details brief, as I don’t want to write a novel about our results and accomplishments.

In grade 8, we were the team to beat. In the city championships, we made it to the final game where we faced Van Tech, a team we would become very familiar with in the following years. We were in fantastic shape to be the city champions. In fact, we were up two sets to none, and had championship point at 14-12. Somehow, we lost that set… and then proceeded to lose the next two as well. We choked, and in grand fashion. Final result: 2nd place.

In grade 9, we were again one of the best teams. We played at a tournament at Burnaby South and even beat their grade 10 team in an exhibition match. Their team included someone named Lukas… who ended up playing for some national team, I think Romania. We also finished as the "E" flight champions at the large UBC tournament. For the city playoffs, we ended up playing Van Tech in the semi-finals and this time we got it done against them. We were happy to find ourselves matched up against Britannia in the finals, who we had owned in every game we had ever played against them. It should have been an easy win for us… except it wasn’t. I’m not sure what went wrong, but somehow we lost in straight sets. Another disappointing finish. Final result: 2nd place.

In grade 10, we had some major personnel changes and also we were missing Ed, who played for the senior squad earlier in the year. We were still a good team, but no longer the favorite in the league. We held our own though, including winning a couple small tournaments and being crowned the ‘D’ flight champions at the UBC tournament. I also won an all-star award at the St. Pat’s tournament, likely due in large part to both Demetre and Zach blowing their tops after some unfavourable calls by the referree in the championship game. For the city playoffs, we somehow still fought our way into the final game, where once again we were pitted against Van Tech. They were the favorites this year, and they lived up to it by besting us again. Final result: 2nd place.

In grade 11, our senior line-up was definitely not one of the better teams in the league. We didn’t get very much help from the grade 12’s, while other teams did. It wasn’t a very memorable year in general, although I was singled out as an all-star at the Langara tournament. That was actually quite the surprise, as I think everyone, including myself, thought Henry should have been the one selected. I received an interesting prize package consisting of a medal, a very large Club Monaco sweatshirt, and a pair of Speedo sunglasses. In the city playoffs, we bowed out in the first round against Kitsilano, who sported some very tall players.

In grade 12, we were once again a team to be reckoned with, and had help from the grade 11’s, and grade 10’s as well. Both Richard - who went on to play for Langara and UBC - and Mark came up to play for us as grade 10’s. We had an undefeated regular season, and cruised through to the finals of the city playoffs again, where for the third time in five years, we found ourselves facing off against Van Tech for all the marbles. History repeated itself, as once again we went down as the favorites and secured our reputation as the biggest team of chokers ever. Final result: 2nd place.

We did get a measure of redemption when we once again matched up against Van Tech soon afterwards in the lower mainland finals, where we FINALLY won a meaningful game against them. Somehow, even though winning the lower mainlands should be more prestigious, being the city champions seems to have a more satisfying feel to it, and it is something that we were denied from four times in five years. Final result: Lower mainland champions.

We went to Kelowna for the provincials and played horribly in the round robin, losing all three matches. We lost to both Van Tech and Burnaby North. Heck, we even lost to Caledonia from northern division of BC! With that, we ended up being seeded dead last for the playoff… where we were granted the priviledge of playing Claremont, the legendary team from Vancouver Island. They had a team full of all-stars, including some guy by the name of Fred Winters, who just so happens to play for the Canadian national team now. We didn’t have a ghost of a chance to beat them. We were a few points away from taking a set off them though, and even that would have been a remarkable achievement. Whatever the case, after that loss, we played 7th seeded Johnston Heights. Lucky for us, their star player was hurt, and we pulled off a huge upset by beating them. We lost the next game to Rutland, and I think that was it for us. What is funny about that is we only won one match in the entire provincials (1-5), but we still finished higher than Van Tech, even though they won five matches (5-2). I guess when you win is sometimes more important than how many you win. Final result: 11th place in the province.

At UBC, I played on some intramural teams… and early on it was mostly with Gladstone guys, but the roster changed as the years went by. We ended up winning about 5 or 6 titles in a row.

Nowadays, I mostly just play recreationally at Bonsor once a week, with the same core of high school friends after all these years. Every now and then, we play in a tournament, but we’re never really in contention. Hey, we’re a bunch of relatively short Asian guys who can’t jump very high - we do pretty well for what we have to work with.

All in all, volleyball has been a pretty big part of my life, and it’s given me many great memories to look back upon.

I purchased my first digital camera back in July 2002 and it was a Kodak DX3500. I didn’t know very much about digital cameras at the time, so I didn’t do much comparison shopping. I just happened to see it advertised on CompGeeks for US$199, which included a docking station and rechargeable batteries, and it seemed like a good deal, so I bought it. The camera is big and bulky, has 2.2 megapixel resolution, a 1.5" screen and doesn’t do video… but this was pretty standard at the time. It’s amazing that this was only four years ago.

I already wanted to upgrade not too long afterwards to a camera that was able to record video clips, but didn’t get a new camera until June 2004 when I ended up buying a Canon SD100. It was small (85 x 56 x 24 mm) and able to do video clips - the two main things I was looking for. It served me just fine for preserving my memories and feats, like my under the leg bowling strike, my 360° snowboarding jump, and my standing back flip. Of course, not every memory was a good one - this snowboarding distance jump didn’t feel so good!

In these last several years, the digital camera industry has just grown by leaps and bounds. Camera manufacturers are releasing upgraded models in very short cycles. I’ve primarily only been looking at Canon models as generally they seem to always near the top in terms of overall quality and value. The successors to the SD100 were the SD200 and SD300, which were announced in September 2004. The main improvements were smaller sizes, larger 2.0" LCD and better video modes. Just a scant five months later in February 2005, the SD400 and SD500 were unveiled, the main upgrade being higher megapixel ratings. Another half year after that, the SD450 and SD550 were revealed in August 2005, with an even larger 2.5" LCD. Continuing the trend of bi-yearly upgrades, the SD600, and SD700 IS debuted in February 2006. There actually didn’t seem to be any significant upgrades for these two models, except the SD600 is smaller than the SD550, and the SD700 has image stabilization. Now, at the same time, they also introduced one other model, the SD630, which I am now a proud owner of. The main difference with this model and the others is the MASSIVE 3.0" LCD screen that pretty much covers the entire back of the camera. Also, the housing of this unit is even better looking than the previous generation. While I’m sure they will continue releasing new models, I honestly can’t imagine what more they can do with these small point and shoot cameras. This SD630 has everything I want in a digtal camera - big LCD screen, fast speed, and 640×480 30fps videos.

With all these constant upgrades, much like for computers, the value of these digital cameras depreciate so quickly. I’m actually surprised that used SD100’s are still fetching about US$120 on eBay. But for buying new, just a mere month ago, the SD450 was selling for $500 with very little discounts available to be found. Now, with the new models coming to the market, the SD450 has dropped down to about $360 - more than 25% off in four weeks time. Now, the SD630 has replaced it at the $500 price point, and with it being a brand new model, discounts are hard to come by. BestBuy has a $25 rebate on the camera, plus a promotion for a free HP Deskjet 5940 printer with any digital camera purchase over $200. Also, when buying online, there is a VISA Perks coupon for $20 off $250. So this was already a very good deal. However, yesterday, BestBuy had their so-called preferred customer sale, where all digital cameras were 10% off, which means the final cost came out to the following:

Regular price: $499.99
10% off sale: $449.99
$20 off VISA perks coupon 20OFF250445255724276: $429.99
SD630 final price: $429.99

HP Deskjet 5940 regular price: $129.99
Promo price: $0.00

Subtotal: $429.99
PST: $30.10
GST: $30.10
Total: $490.19
Mail-in rebate: -$25
Postage: 51¢
Grand total: $465.70

Basically, that’s like the camera and printer coming up to be $408.51 pre-tax. Even for just the camera alone, that’s a fantastic deal. Add the absolutely free printer (not a mail-in rebate or anything), and it’s simply an absolutely incredible deal.

It took me 23 months to upgrade from my 1st digital camera to my 2nd, and coincidentally enough, it’s now been exactly 23 months again for my 3rd digital camera. I wonder what cameras will be like in April 2008?

Went for my first cash game at River Rock tonight, and it was the saddest poker session ever. Started playing 1/2 NL at about 1:30am with a $100 buy-in. First table I was at, there was one loose-aggressive player that was raising almost all the pots preflop, often to $12. For the first hour, I couldn’t get any hand that was even remotely playable to challenge him. Pretty much no two high cards, no pocket pairs, not even any connectors. Think QJ suited was my best hand, but he raised it to $12 so I folded that too. Just being blinded away cost me about $16 or so. Never won a single hand at that table. As players started leaving, our table got broken up, so I went to a new table, where there was one very bad player that lost like four $100 buy-ins within an hour or so. Unfortunately I STILL couldn’t get any hands at all to have a chance at taking some of his chips. About half hour into this new table, I finally got a good hand, AK clubs. I was in late position, and there were a few limpers ahead of me, so I raised to $10. Two people called. Flop came A97 with two diamonds. First guy checks, second guy bets $20. I call the $20. First guy re-raises all in for like over $100. Hmm, okay. Second guy calls. What the hell. I lay down my top pair, top kicker… and it was a mighty good fold. First guy flopped his set of nines, and the second guy had A7 two pair. Yeah, just my luck. First playable hand in an hour and a half, and then even flopping top pair, top kicker, I’m third in the hand. That’s just freakin’ awesome. I guess I should be lucky the betting went as it did… otherwise I would have lost a hell of a lot more than $30 on that hand, possibly all of it. So now I’m down to about $50 or so. Maybe half hour later, got AQ spades in early position. Raised to $10 again. Splashed out two $5 chips. A new dealer had just stepped in for this hand, and people weren’t paying much attention. Two others afterwards called for $2 thinking it was two players that put in $5 chips to call. So one guy reluctantly calls the $10, the other folds. Flop comes something like T63. I throw out a $15 continuation bet, and he calls. Damn it, he hit something. Another rag on the turn, so I check to him, and he bets out $25, so I fold. Great, now I’m down to like $30. Got the same AQ spades like three hands later in the small blind. There were like 5 limpers, so I went all in with my remaining $25 or so. The big blind calls with QT and everyone else folds. Fortunately, at least this hand held up for me, as it should have, so I went back to a little over $50. Then awhile later, I got pocket 8’s, one off the button. A couple limpers, so I raised to $8. One caller. Flop comes 554. I’m pretty certain I’m ahead here. Other guy checks so I bet out $20. He calls. He does a blind check to me for the turn, which is a 3. I go all in with my remaining $25 or so. He has 76 for the straight. That’s fucking bullshit. Why do I get sucked out so damn often? I swear I have the worst luck ever. That was it for me, done right around 4am. So that was 2.5 hours of entertainment at the cost of $100. Oh well, what are you going to do when you can’t get a damn thing to play, and when you do play, you get outdrawn everytime? Holy shit, I won TWO hands in 2.5 hours. That’s just SAD.