Please remember to go vote February 5. As a Republican, I can only vote for Republican candidates in this election and for this primary, the field could have been better. But of the men left, John McCain is probably the best choice to uphold conservative values and have a chance to win in November.

My heart says vote for Mitt Romney. He's a businessman. He co-founded Bain Capital and was CEO of Bain and Company, one of the best consulting firms around. He saved the Winter Olympics in Utah. However, he seems to be one of those guys who tells you what you want to hear rather than what he believes in. He's the Republican Party's own John Kerry and we'll be killed in November if he's nominated.

Rudy Giuliani is best known for keeping New York City in order after 9/11. If that man was running for President, he would have an excellent shot at winning. However, we got Giuliani, pre-9/11, whom New Yorkers never truly embraced with his divisive policies on race, the homeless, and education. Watching him on the campaign trail, it doesn't seem like he's taking it too seriously...always reaching for the next joke or one-liner. When he does take it seriously, he relies upon 9/11. His strategy in the primaries have certainly not helped. By ignoring Iowa, New Hampshire, and other states, he needed to be the front-runner in the national polls to ensure victory in the later, bigger states such as Florida, California, and New York. Now, he is trailing and has no momentum.

The beneficiary of Giuliani's decline? McCain. He's got national security down pat. He's said the right things about the economy, though it is not his strong suit. He is portrayed as a truthful man which can be good and bad at the same time. There are questions surrounding his health. After all, if inaugurated, he would be 71, the oldest ever. There are also questions about his loyalty. Whenever he doesn't get his way, he runs to the Democratic side, siding with Joe Lieberman on climate change, Russ Feingold on campaign reform, and others. However, in this time of war, McCain is the one Reublican candidate who can ensure we can stay on top of national security while bringing about enough change to reunite a country so badly divided after a less-than-stellar Bush presidency.

Briefly, on the Democratic side, I wouldn't mind an Obama presidency but I couldn't stand a Clinton presdiency. The prospect of a Billary White House would seem to be a wrong move in a country desperate for a fresh start.

Hope everybody had a great start to the new year. Christmas was good. I got a Slingbox, which allows me to waste even more time at work. Oh yeah! Work. I'm full time on my $36 million contract after transferring all my previous workload to the two newbies. The temp I interviewed became a permanent employee, but the more I get to know her, the less I'm impressed with her in terms of...what do you call it?...intelligence.

The Oscar nominations are out which means Oscar predictions will start up soon. Of the best picture noms, I've watched Juno and No Country for Old Men. Michael Clayton is coming out on DVD in a couple of weeks. That just leaves Atonement and There Will Be Blood.

Merry Christmas to all. Also, a special thanks to all those who came to my birthday meals. I ate at Elephant Bar, Benihana, and Maggiano's in two days and I'm still standing. I think I need a drink.

Happy Thanksgiving folks. Hope everyone enjoyed the holiday, the food, and the football. I got back from Hawaii last weekend and it was just great. Perfect weather. Great food. What more could you ask for?

This trip has been in the making for months. The kids bought the parents tickets to Hawaii about six months ago. Since then, they made a trip to Seattle all by themselves and while they enjoyed themselves, they expressed their dismay about how they would have been happier if we joined them. So the decision was made to surprise them in Hawaii. So everybody except Chris went and we surprised them outside their hotel. The look was priceless but the camera angles were bad so we never got a good picture.

The first day was the traditional luau. I got pulled onstage to dance with hula girls. Sure, it was a surprise but was I complaining? Nope. In subsequent days, there was Pearl Harbor, North Shore, shave ice at Matsumoto's, shrimp at Giovanni's, and tons of shopping for Nancy. She couldn't decide between a Dior necklace or Dior wallet, so what does she do? Get them both, obviously.

In fact, the only unpleasantness was the trip home where the flight back was delayed for almost 4 hours, which meant we couldn't get to Oakland until 2:15 am. And if you know my parents, you know their opinion of Oakland even if it is just at the airport.

All in all, these few days away from work were welcome. As some of you know, I'm in month 2 of my 4-month hellish period at work where two veterans are on medical leave and replaced by two newbies while at the same time I'm trying to take over a new, more complicated contract. Luckily, I'm thankful the newbies are performing extremely well (obviously because of my great teaching skills :) The roadblocks seem to be IT in its fumbling of the reports we use to do our jobs and a reorganization at work that has given us mixed messages to start out the new year but seems to be getting better.

Don't worry...I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. It's just been busy. Really busy. Really really busy.

There have been some nice weekend trips. One to Lake Tahoe, one to Reno, and one this past weekend to Vegas. Tahoe was an end-of-summer trip before school started again. This was with Hai, Claire, Alex, Ngan, and Paul. Kayaking was involved and of course, when we're faced with a large body of water, somebody's bound to fall in and that was Alex and Paul this time around. In Reno, it was my third time getting to the rib cookoff and this year was probably the best one of the three. Nice and cool and we saw Superbad. It was a good comedy but I think they could've gone over the top and it would've been so much better.

The last trip was to Vegas where we were celebrating my sister's 21st birthday. And she made the most of it, hitting 3 clubs in 2 nights: Tao, Pure and Jet. I of course go for the gambling and food. Food was good, the gambling was not. I've never won in Vegas. The last trip I took in July was the only time that I did. All the winnings I got from the previous Tahoe and Reno trips? All wiped away on this Vegas trip. At one point, the dealer didn't pay me after he busted and when I called him out on it, he said, "well, I was getting used to not giving you any money." As for the buffets, $15 for the brunch buffet at Paris is a pretty good value, but while the Wynn has an excellent buffet, is it worth the $38? Nope.

We stayed at the Planet Hollywood hotel, still pretty much a construction zone with the Miracle Mile shops still being upgraded and condos going up next door. But if you remember a couple of years ago when I was there last, you'll recall that a gorilla mask from Congo was the centerpiece of the hotel room. This time? A spider from Arachnophobia. Oh, and it was cold there, first time I've complained about that. 68 degrees to be exact.


In the middle of all this? Work. I've been reassigned to do actual work as I'm in charge of a $35 million project. If only I could swing a small percentage of that towards me. The problem about this reassignment? I still have my old job to do, I'm gonna take over for my co-worker who's going on maternity leave and I've gotta spend time training my replacements. Yes, replacements. Apparently, it takes two people to do my job. Hard to believe.

Reorganization is taking place in my department and it looks like I'm getting the short end of the stick. One of the divisions in our company wanted to have its own business analyst all for themselves, which is great until we found out our current boss was taking the job.

At our company, business analysts come in two flavors: products and projects. A product business analyst handles financials for jobs that are selling pre-made units (that's me!). A project business analyst handles financials for development jobs. Products used to be the backbone of the company in the '90s but nowadays, it is development that is making the money. As a result, we've gotten to the point where all the business analysts are going to be under one manager, which is a nice idea except that there are now 11 of us with 3 more about to be hired spread across 3 different sites throughout the country. Not an easy job.

My new manager is nice enough, but when I saw her in the hallway, her first question to me was "You're not going to quit, are you?"

Who knows? All I know is with the products BA manager gone and my fellow co-worker going on maternity leave, I'm left holding the ball for everything. Everything. Who's my backup? A part-time business analyst going back to full-time and a temp that my new manager, former manager and I get to hire. No worries, I'll put him, her, or it through the ringer. (We joked it could be one of those Japanese robots that gets hired...after all, I've told you what I do everyday, right?)

I'm back from DC! Ok, that was a week and a half ago. I'm still recovering from the heat. 100 degree humid weather just sucks, especially when you're roaming through the city by foot. In two and a half days in DC and 1 in Baltimore, we managed to visit Union Station, the National Zoo, the National Cathedral, Georgetown, the Washington Monument, the Natural History Museum, the National Air & Space Museum, the Capitol, Arlington National Cemetery, Chinatown, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the White House, Camden Yards, and Lexington Market.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency near the Capitol which on the inside looks pretty nice but when you walk outside, it's like a whole different world out there. A homeless shelter is nearby. The fire station is across the street. Not the first place I had in mind to stay at but when it's at a 75% discount from regular prices, you made do with what you have. Of course, this wasn't as bad as the streets of Baltimore, which looked a lot less inviting unless you are near the ballpark.

The tour of the Capitol was much better than the White House. It's guided first of all plus if you go through your representative in Congress, you get a little bit of a local tour as well. Much more history and you get to see where things get done. The White House is just a walking tour filled with a lot of pictures and, in our case, rooms closed due to renovation.

Sure the budget was limited, but we still made it to some great restaurants. It was Restaurant Week in DC, but we were only here on the first day of it, so we didn't take full advantage of the prix fixe menus. Straight from the airport and hotel, we headed to the Cap City Brewing Co, which had some pretty good beer. The next day featured Clyde's of Georgetown, visited by Rachael Ray in a $40 a day episode, and Old Ebbitt Grill, apparently a Washington institution. Then there was Fogo de Chao, the Brazilian steakhouse where they bring around 10-15 different meats continuously until you say stop. Even for lunch, this was really good. Chicken, lamb, beef, pork, and it really didn't stop until you turned your card over. Finally, there was Chinatown, which was smaller than I thought it would be. In Baltimore, I had a crabcake at Faidley's, which was much better than anything I've had on the West Coast.

All in all, a very nice trip with first class air travel to and from.

I'm writing to you live from Washington D.C. as I'm on vacation for the next few days. After flying to Chicago in coach a month ago and flying to D.C. in first class, I don't have to tell you which was the better flying experience.

This weekend, The Bourne Ultimatum and Hot Rod were released and the two have decidedly different critical opinions. Bourne is a great, great film. If you hadn't seen the last two films in the series for a while, like me, you might get a little lost when catching up with the story. But when you see Jason beat up 6 guys buy himself, you'll get right back into the game as we figure out his origins.

Andy Samberg and his writing crew just might be the greatest 5-minute writing team there is today. But that doesn't mean Hot Rod, at a lengthy 80 minutes, is a great film. It's not. Not by a longshot. It reminds me a lot of Napoleon Dynamite, a pointless exercise that has nevertheless received a cult following. I mean, come on, who does Andy think he is in this film after going through all those stunts unscathed? Homer Simpson?

The Smashing Pumpkins were great for 2 hours with half of the original band and three newbies rockin' the Fillmore with songs old and new. Billy took time out to sing a song he wrote that day. And the crowd generally had a good time. That was until the show stretched to 2.5 hours. With a half hour jam session that dragged on and on and one song in the encore, it wasn't the ending I would've envisioned, but going up to see them was still well worth it.

Also worth it was the Simpsons movie. My only quibble with it was that most, if not all, of the funny jokes were already seen in the trailers and the promo clips, defusing the buzz that surrounded the movie. Great seeing them on the big screen though.

According to simpsonizeme.com, this is what I'd look like as a Simpsons character. Not Asian at all, but the program's still pretty cool and I am Simpsons yellow.

Two music notes:

I've listened to the Smashing Pumpkins' Zeitgeist CD all week in the car. I really like the first half...pure Pumpkins, songs you can listen to over and over again. Tarantula's great, 7 Shades of Black and That's the Way My Love Is are awesome. The last half is kinda iffy. Not a big fan of United States or Pomp and Circumstances but Neverlost has its moments. Maybe seeing them live will make me a fan of these songs. That's next Tuesday, the 24th.

Garbage is out with a best-of CD along with a new single. That comes out tomorrow.

Without spoiling too much, lemme say that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is a bit underwhelming. The storyline revolving around Dolores Umbridge goes on far too long to keep me interested while the ending, the only worthwhile part to watch, feels rushed. I've liked the series' turn to darkness, especially in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" but there is too much of it here in the literal and figurative sense that you're being pounded with the same message over and over again...Lord Voldemort is coming. Yes, we heard you the first time. All in all, it's worth watching to see the further development of Harry Potter, but don't expect to be entertained with fancy spells and fast Quidditch matches.

The rest of the few pics I have are on Flickr.

After Transformers let out at 10:30 pm Monday, I had 6 hours before I had to leave for my flight to Chicago. Unless you try to stay awake the whole time, one should not try this. I was dead tired walking onto the plane. I don't know how I made it, but I'm glad I did.

Airport security was tight but caused me no problems, with the exception of my checked bag being "randomly chosen" for inspections for all 3 legs of my trip. The plain black bag must have scared the shit out of them. O'Hare was actually the best airport with no lines to speak of. Walked in and wondered what to do with all the time I set aside.

In a preview of things to come at Jon's wedding, the San Jose-Chicago leg of the trip was spent with about 60 Christians headed to Illinois for vacation. Once that seatbelt light turned off, the whole plane seemed to rise in unison to socialize. It got so bad, the pilots needed to turn the light back on. However, 4 short hours later, I'm there. Well, gotta wait another 3 hours on a bus to Madison to see Jeanette, so 7 short hours later, I'm there. Boy, it was muggy. Highs in the 80s and pretty humid. I'd rather have Vegas' 118 degrees than this.

As you might expect, people move to a different beat up in the Midwest. Madison's big tourist spots are the capitol and the nearby lake. And that's about it. The wind at that lake was crazy. As the capital of the state and a college town, things were rather empty for the summer recess since everybody was on vacation. The few people left were drinking beer. Whether it is quality brews or Pabst Blue Ribbon, beer was being consumed in large quantities. The beer did make "Black Snake Moan" a little bit more bearable, but still it's just an okay movie. Every scene with Justin Timberlake is a laugh riot since he has to cry in every scene he's in.

After a few minutes of depression in the morning (the light in Jeanette's bathroom was so bright, you could see where my future bald spot will be), it was off to Chicago with Jeanette, Hai and Andrew. The day was modeled after Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Okay, there wasn't a Ferrari but a Chevy Cavalier. No French food but there were French Fries at McDonalds. The game was with the White Sox instead of the Cubbies. No Art Institute or parade but we did listen to "Twist and Shout" in the car. Sears Tower was good. It's amazing what you can see 103 stories up. Wrigley Field had that classic look I remember watching on TV. And the Orioles beat the White Sox, which only happened because I was there, right?

The 4th of July in Chicago probably showcases the best of the city because after the fireworks display at the baseball game, you walk out with a great view of the entire city skyline ablaze in more fireworks. It was a great sight. What wasn't a great sight? Two drunk guys coming up to me to compliment my Office shirt, the third such encounter that day. But this particular one concluded with a pat on the back and a slap on the ass, so I'll file that one under weird.

Thursday meant a flight to Vegas to meet up with my brother among other people. We stayed at the Westin Casaurina, a nice, out-there hotel that never got too crowded, especially in the casino, making for a pleasant experience. Since I'm still writing this, I was not involved in the shooting at the New York New York casino. I stayed up until 4 gambling on slots and blackjack. Blackjack I was in for $120 and was down to $10 before a rally got me back up to $250 before retreating to $170, making for a $50 win.

I'd never played blackjack with my brother but this is his strategy, which I had never seen used before. If the dealer is showing a 6 or less, more often than not, he's going to bust. So if my brother also had 11 or less, he would double his bet every time, essentially betting on the dealer to bust. It sounds crazy but it worked for him all night.

I got back late Friday night just to wake up on 7/7/7 for Jon's wedding. The ceremony was at 10 so I needed to leave by 7 to get to Placerville and to pick up Hai and Claire along the way. I had my GPS with me, but if you know those things, they'll steer you toward the shortest route, not necessarily the best route. So the GPS had us going up steep inclines and declines and on dirt and rocky roads. Not the best of drives especially when 10 miles down, it's all pavement to the bride's parents' house where the ceremony was taking place.

It was a nice and simple wedding that ended with Jon and Rosemary walking down the aisle to the theme from "Star Wars". And that was pretty much my weekend. It was the drive back from Sacramento where fatigue really hit me. Apparently, I dozed off on 101 around Tully since a car swerved behind me when I slowed to 40. At least I was driving straight. In any case, that woke me up enough to get me home, so that on Sunday, I rested.

First off, the Smashing Pumpkins' new CD is being streamed on AOL.

"Transformers" first and foremost aspires to satisfy people who thought highly of it years ago. The screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are becoming veterans at it with Mission: Impossible under their belt and Star Trek in the near future. And for the fans, they should be satisfied by the rock'em, sock'em nature of machines that are more than meets the eye doing battle. But the movie as a whole is a disappointment and it's mostly because of the "primitive" humans as Megatron describes them. After a thrilling opening scene to demonstrate the power of the Decepticons, the film degenerates into a bunch of eBay jokes and awkward one-liners by Shia LeBeouf to gain the affection of the admittedly attractive Megan Fox. Soon, the aliens are fully introduced and finally the movie has some cohesiveness, highlighted by Optimus Prime rallying the troops. But treating humans as though they could be equals in the fight between Autobots and Decepticons is absurd. It contributes heavily toward the muddled final 30 minutes until the situation is resolved and we're left wondering what just happened.

Wild fact of the night: Darius McCrary, Eddie Winslow himself from "Family Matters", voices Jazz.

A little sleep and I'll be on a flight from SJC starting at 6:30 am. I'll update by Wednesday night at the latest...I think.

There's a lot to like about "Live Free or Die Hard". After all, before there was Jack Bauer, there was John McClane doing anything and everything to stop the bad guys using only his fists and guns from the people he killed. In this movie, it's no different. The movie starts out as a version of one of his earlier films "16 Blocks". He's gotta escort a hacker to Washington D.C. for interrogation after there's a breach in the FBI computer system. But when the country around them turns into chaos and hired henchmen target this hacker, John McClane goes into, well, John McClane mode. What results is a 130 minute action adventure that doesn't seem boring at all. Some of the stuff that occurs in the film is a bit far-fetched, okay, very far-fetched, but if you don't let that bother you, you're in for a great ride.

This is probably the last post until my vacation starts next week, depending if I'm able to watch Transformers on Monday. I'm gonna try to blog my trip as best as I can with stops in Chicago, Las Vegas and Sacramento.

A pair of electronics purchases highlights this weekend. I'm writing this blog on my new hp dv6000t notebook which came in this week and it's a vast improvement over the old Toshiba. This one features Windows Vista which isn't as bad as people say it is. I do find it weird that there is a difference between being logged in as an administrator and being logged in with administrator privileges. Also, the glossy finish produces plenty of fingerprint smudges but I don't mind that.

My parents went ahead to buy a new TV that's long overdue. Where it'll fit in the house still eludes me but I'm sure they'll find room for the Panasonic 58" plasma somewhere in the family room. The only thing that sucks is the wait from Comcast to get HD hooked up on the TV. The guy said the first available day they can come out is July 3, when I'll be on a plane to Chicago, which also means my first chance to catch it will be July 8, the day after the day of perfection apparently.

Downside to the TV? My parents insist on watching all of their thuy nga dvd's all over again, now with an upconvert DVD player.

Watched The Police last night and it was pretty awesome. They played all the great hits and came out for 3 encores. I stood 6 rows from the stage but while I had a clear view of them, I still watched them from the giant screen right in front of me. Sting was showing his age but still came off as cool. Stewart came with a ball of energy and was probably the best one of the three. He always had that look where he's staring down at death and he'd come get him if he didn't hit the drums right. On the other end, Andy had that look where he was trying to remember the words and chords to each of the songs. But he had a great solo in the first encore.

Two movies you should definitely see are Pan's Labyrinth and Ocean's Thirteen. I wrote off Pan's during Oscar season thinking it was just another visual movie with not that much plot to go along with it but I was pleasantly surprised. Ocean isn't as good as the first but much better than the messy second one. The problem with this one is that Eleven pulled you into lots of different directions before finally explaining how they did it. Thirteen is more straight-forward but I liked the whole concept of the film plus having Al Pacino doesn't hurt.

One of my high school teachers always sought to set students' expectations low so that when we did well, we'd feel so much better about ourselves. Maybe that's what the producers of Pirates of the Caribbean were thinking when they made the last two films of the series. Part 2 was just so bad and boring, I fell asleep. And I snore too so the sold-out crowd was probably none too happy. Fast forward to Part III, At World's End, and you know what, it ain't that bad. Maybe it's because the second one was dismal, they had nowhere to go but up. Or it could be it was genuinely good. Nah, that's not it.

The movie was still pulled in too many directions by characters who each had their own agenda to follow. At least putting everyone in the same general area for the last half of the film helped everything gel together for one final action-filled battle.

It was a few months overdue, but I finally bought my new laptop over the weekend. Kinda. I settled on a hp dv6000t from Costco online. It has the Core 2 Duo chip, which supposedly has some kind of high-pitched noise if the power settings are turned on in a certain way so hopefully my new system will have that problem fixed. It should be here in a week.

The Sharks lost again. Better luck next year. But the small factoid I discovered years ago lives on. No team that has beaten the Sharks in the playoffs has won the Stanley Cup. The Red Wings were eliminated by what looks like the final champion Anaheim.

Excuse me while I try to knock out this insomnia I have at 3 am in the morning.

TPTB at work just gave me a raise so large, the CFO had to approve it. Even so, I figure July alone will wipe out that money so every little bit helps. At my review last year, my boss pretty much called me a dweeb (his initial thought about me upon our first meeting). This year's was equally puzzling. He said he was glad my old boss chose me since if it were up to him, he was torn between me and another guy, but ultimately he would have chosen the other guy. Man, I'm just feeling the love.

Also at work, they are really, really picky about their parking spaces. I had just dropped off a co-worker at the auto mechanic and was heading back. It was almost closing time on Friday so I figure I'd park, run in, grab my stuff, and head out. The parking lot was pretty much deserted so I parked in the space closest to the sidewalk, a visitors parking spot. As I'm walking back from my office, a facilities guy was looking at me funny while I get in and drive away. Imagine my surprise when I show up Monday morning. A company-wide memo was issued informing us that the visitors parking spots were for visitors only. Seriously?

If you've never had to deal with AT&T/SBC outsourced tech support, consider yourself lucky. The Internet was down at the house and after checking out the router and modem settings, I figure it was their problem. So I call and check to see if there's a network status or something. The outsourced Indian guy I got to talk to had a cold so I could tell it was tough for him to keep his faux American accent going throughout the conversation. But listening to him, I don't think he knew what he was talking about. All I wanted to know was whether or not there's an outage in my area. So he asked me what state I lived in.

--California.
--Where?
--California, C-A...
--Thank you, sir.

So he goes straight to troubleshooting. Whoa there, I know everything's fine on my end.

--Do you have a router?...What kind of modem do you have?...What are the colors of the cords in the back?

The colors of the cords? What difference does that make? When I told him they were all beige, he was just utterly confused, either because he didn't expect that they were all one color or that he didn't know what beige was. I played dumb like this for a good 15 minutes before he finally gave up.

--What state do you live in, sir?

Didn't I just answer that? I thought I said California.

--Ok, California, what time is it over there?

What, no clocks? He proceeds to ask me this 4 times before he finally tells me there's an outage and to try again in an hour before pretty much hanging up on me.

Finally, to wrap up, we have the movies. Awfully slow out there in the movie world. Talked about Spider-Man 3 already, but I must say I had a much better time at Blades of Glory a few weeks earlier. Funny man that Will Ferrell is. On the Netflix front, Volver was mixed but it's always nice to see Penelope Cruz, Notes on a Scandal was interesting (I'm hoping that a certain someone at work doesn't turn into Judi Dench's character), The Pursuit of Happyness was good but the real guy looks nothing like Will Smith, Rocky Balboa was whiny in the first half and didn't pick up until the training began, Man of the Year wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj was as bad as people made it out to be, Kate Winslet made The Holiday passable even with the presence of Cameron Diaz, and while Cars is still quality stuff, Pixar has made better movies.