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20050930
 
Birthday time!
It's my birthday! And it's late, so just a quickie. It's already been a decent birthday, for the two hours I've had it, so I'm happy. I'm many years old. But to spread happiness and cheer, here you go, something a little different:

MICHELIN MAN DENIES PATERNITY SUIT... CLAIMS CHILD IS NOT HIS.



Have a great day! Hopefully I will... we'll see. Toodles!
Comments:
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday, dear Eric!
Happy Birthday to you!
 
Luckily, we can be absolutely sure that's not a baby picture of YOU!
 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC!!!!!!!

<3

amy
 
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20050920
 
Doh! Almost forgot!
I didn't put it on my last entry, but that's when it was. My blog's birthday! Woo! Two years old! Isn't that crazy?

That's all I've got to say. Apart from this. Yes, Seanicus, we are, apparently, the SAME.

naruto
Which Naruto Character Are You?
Test by naruto - kun.com

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Dangit! Screw you, advertisements! Your silly post lasted all of sixty seconds!
 
I'm surprised I didn't come out as Nara Shikamaru... smart but too lazy for my own good.
 
Soooo... did you catch last night's episode of Popular Reality Show? Yeah? No? You missed a good one, man, Missed A Good One. They were kicking people off left and right, and like, some people got kicked on. And, uh, I mean, it was, you should have watched it, you definitely should have watched it, should have watched it. I mean, they'll be talking about this one for a while. I mean, I'm gonna be talking about this one for a while. Oh... cool. I guess you're gonna go watch it now. Later.

Coooool.
 
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20050918
 
It's late, but I can still blog
Wow, it actually feels late. And I'm tired. That's good! I need a normal sleep schedule. But I have a little time to blog. So here! I'm blogging! What an odd word. I'm still not used to it.

Ah, so the trip to Springfield. A week ago, it was. Seems like... a week ago. It was a good trip! Took two and a half hours each way. Left early in the morning, but the road tripping was fun. Even IF gas was crazy priced that weekend. We got there, checked the place out. Nick's kwoon was very nice! It had high ceilings, large floor space. Even a couple of foundation poles, good for banging arms and shins on. I tested them out, they're quite nice. There's something weirdly satisfying about throwing your shins against a large metal pole and just having it ring loudly each time. Especially when you don't feel it. If you did it and it rang but your shins hurt a lot, it's not quite as good. It's a level you work up to, believe me. So we hung out, talked with Nick, so forth. One of the students from our school asked about a particular technique that Justin uses, a quick side heel kick, so I started showing him how Justin throws it. It's all about how he throws a backfist first to lure you into thinking your coming high, then shoves his whole body into the kick that goes right into your solar plexus. It's a great move, believe me, I know. I've been sent through the air by it plenty of times. So I'm showing how to throw it, and Justin comes up to give extra tips on how it works. Now by this time, some of Nick's students had arrived. As Justin is showing how the kick works, one of these students starts commenting on how it's too northern style, in a very "tsk tsk" sort of way. Justin kind of glances at him, then dismisses it. Until the student comes up to tell Justin what's wrong with his technique, and the "right" way to do it. As he's doing this, Justin just looks over his shoulder at me and gives me this look of incredulousness, with the implied "What the hell does he think he's doing" all over his face. And I couldn't help but start chuckling. The guy had no idea what he was in for. He showed us how you need to step INTO your kick, by planting your other foot about three/four feet behind you, towards your opponent, before throwing the kick. As he started doing it, Justin got into a subtle fighting position, and I knew exactly what he was getting ready to do. Unfortunately, it never happened, as the guy stopped right about then. I was on the verge of telling him, "Go ahead, show him the right way - how would you kick him?" But I thought that might be pushing it a little. Later, when he put on his uniform and his white belt, and Justin put on his full Chinese traditional regalia with his black belt, did the guy realize just what a mistake he had made. He apologized later, and Nick apologized, too. After that, the whole day, the guy tried to get chummy with Justin, but Sihing really didn't talk to him too much. Except a few times to correct him on improper movements through his forms. Which was funny to watch. Even Sifu went to correct him on Lau (our first set), came back, sat down, and then turned away and said, "I can't watch." It was funny.

So we had our mischief there, but after everything was set up, we went and did the demo thing. Started with the lion dance, which we used Nick's new lion for. So we awakened the lion, which involves putting paint on various parts of the lion, as it "awakens". Then the full lion dance, with a stack, and the offering, and all of it. It went well, even though it was very windy, and HOT. And when it's hot, and you're under a lion "skin", it's VERY hot. At least we didn't have to worry about fireworks. I think the dance turned out okay. Then it was time for kung fu demos - Nick's students went through their warmup stuff, and we had a lot of our students do various demos. Including the first few forms, and some of the more advanced forms. I did a sparring set with the other Eric, which we hadn't practiced in a very long time (he hadn't been to class in a month), and it turned out okay. I also did a chunk of Gung Gee, which is one of our most advanced sets. It was rather last moment, since Nick thought it'd be good to show it. I think I did it okay, though, which was good. And Sihing did a few sets - one with the spear set (which is AWESOME to watch him do), one with a chunk of Fu Hok (the other very advanced, super long form we have), and a sparring set with Nick. Of course, he did excellently. In the Fu Hok demo, there's a point where you jump and then plant both feet straight down below you. When Sihing did it in the parking lot, we could feel it from the sidewalk next to it, about thirty feet away. Which is rather crazy.

We did the whole demo twice, with an hour break in between. The second time, the lion dance wasn't quite as long, and the stack went better - the first time, I jumped early and hit Cory in the face, since he hadn't positioned yet. And THEN when I landed on his leg, part of the lion skin had slipped in between my foot and his leg, so I kept sliding down towards his knee. I had to hop each time, and finally landed where I could hold it (barely) to push the lion head up high. We made it, though. The second time went a little better, and we even got applause. I think there's even video of it somewhere. Maybe I'll see about finding it. Even moreso if someone out there expresses INTEREST in it. One of YOU guys, that is. And Eric missed one move in our sparring set, but we still finished it okay. I think Sihing left a few nice welts on Nick's arms with their sparring set, which is funny. But not surprising, somehow.

And Nick was nice enough to give us all a good Chinese dinner, which was delicious. Take out, the only way, man. And even a gas tank refill for our ride home. A lot of us were worried Sifu wouldn't be pleased by his school and their skills/antics, and although they have a lot of work to do and a few things didn't sit quite right with Sifu, he did do a lot right, and made lots of effort to make Sifu happy, which worked out very well. I think it turned out great, to be honest.

So that was our crazy kung fu trip. This last week has been another week of work, which has been going pretty well. I got two projects, both of which I finished the same day I was given them. I want more work! But I'm sure I'll get it. I'm happiest when I have some good work to do. I hope my boss realizes that, and gives me something GOOD to work on. He's a fun guy, though.

So full week of work, all that, and then we had open kwoon on Friday, which I was in charge of. We had three other people show up, one of which was J.R. He really wanted to spar me, so I finally said okay. We sparred a bit, it went fairly well. Until I made the mistake of turning away from one of his punches, which put my head directly into his other fist. Landed right in the middle of my face, compressed my nose very nicely. Made my eyes water a lot, and sure enough, blood started pouring about fifteen seconds later. He hit hard enough that it left a slight bruise on the top of my nose, moved my upper teeth a bit, and got enough blood through my nasal passage to plug it up (with blood) for the rest of the weekend. Kinda sucked. Although my nose didn't actually break (which I was surprised about), and I think my teeth will be okay. Still was a little upsetting. I think I'll reward him for it, though. He's earned my full attention for sparring, so he'll get a full contact match from me, and I won't handicap myself like I normally do against students newer than me. I don't want to bloody him or anything like that, and I'll still pull punches (no full power unless it's a serious situation), but he'll get plenty of my shins into him, which have a tendency to make people stop the fight. Hopefully I won't hurt him too bad, if at all. But he's got it coming, and I'm eager to let loose a little more than normal. AFTER I heal up fully.

So that was Friday. The rest has been a lazy weekend, blowing chunks of blood out of my nose (I know you wanted to hear that) here and there, falling asleep randomly a few times. Which was very nice. And paintball! Well, an effort to. Only all the places don't open until NOON on Sundays. So we got all dressed up with no place to go. So we went to the next obvious place, which was to the movies! To see Lord of War. A different movie, but pretty good. Definitely a "heavy" movie.

And church tonight! Normally it's me and Carlos on guitar. We have two other guys who play, but they never really show up to play in the choir. Well, last weekend, they BOTH did. So we had four guitars. Which was crazy. We managed it, somehow. I did hear that of all of us, three of us made it look easy, and Paul made it look hard. Apparently his "guitar face" is constrained with effort, and the rest of us look relaxed, just playing. I thought that was funny. So THIS weekend, apparently the guitarists didn't want to repeat the crazy guitar quartet fiasco, so NOBODY showed up. Except for me. So it was down from four to one. But it turned out pretty well, I think. Some good songs.

Ooh! Random news. This week, the Tokyo Game Show happened. And at it, Nintendo unveiled their plans for their new Revolution console. That is, they revealed the nature of the controller for the new system. And it is something revolutionary. If it works, it's going to change the way we think of video gaming completely. I think it's awesome, personally. Check it out for yourself!

Okay, it's late, I need some sleep. Got to be at work in the morning! So have a lovely day yourself, and here's some random linkage for you. Ever heard of people losing a job for a silly reason? Well, I think this one probably beats any reason you've heard yet.
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Show me the video!
Show me the monkey..err money!
 
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20050909
 
First week
So I've finished my first week of work. Ah, to be back to work, to have something to do for eight hours every weekday. It's quite nice. I'm tired, but it's a good tired. So work started kinda slowly, but it's been getting progressively cooler. I'll be programming, most of the code being HTML and JavaScript, which is okay. The tricky part is that you don't simply edit files - you have to use a program which monitors how the files fit together, as well as how it interfaces with the server(s). So there's a lot of work outside of just coding. It's very different. But I'm starting to pick it up, and once I get it, I'll be crazy good at it. I think I actually like it, because it's something only a few people know how to do, so I think I can catch up decently, and then learn all the quirks to it so I'll be EXPERT. Which I like doing.

The guys I'm working with are all massive nerds. My supervisor is hooked on WoW, and has several characters, although only one 60 among them. Those who know the game know what I'm talking about. A lot of the other guys in my group play, but I think my supervisor's the one who does it the most. Another guy's a big linux fanatic, and another one's into Brak and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Yeah, like I said, MASSIVE NERDS. I fit right in. Oh yeah, one of them is a second degree black belt in taekwondo, too, which is cool. Fun guys.

And kung fu has been back in session. Only three people at full contact training on Wednesday, though. So we did our normal warmups (with a five minute horse), then right into sparring. Since Sihing was gone, it was rotation - two minute rounds, two of us at a time, while the third conditioned. I did learn something new this time. I managed to land a hit on Cory, right on the chin. Now I have massive gloves, and he had a big set of headgear, so I actually didn't hit him directly. I hit into his pads, but the force went to the side of his chin. He made me stop and almost passed out. Apparently, according to him, he said it felt like he had been hit from inside his head, out the front through his eyeballs. I've never quite seen that before, so it was new - and I didn't even hit him that hard. That, and I also got him with a nice rack to counter a wide open high round kick, since he threw too many of those, and I was nice to him the first four times he did it. And Crystal's getting better, Sifu's giving her some good tips. Although she still doesn't cover her head enough, and got rattled a few times with some of my hooks. Don't worry, I don't hit hard.

And tomorrow we're going out of town! Off to Springfield, Missouri. Not St. Louis, like I was thinking before. We're going to help with an open house for a school that an old student of Sifu's (named Nick) opened. The funny thing is, I joined a couple of months before he did. So it makes me feel weird - I'm a Si-Bak, now. (It means Uncle in kung fu terms.) Yeah, we'll be going over to help him with two demos, to do some lion dancing, as well as a bit of form demonstration. I'm curious to see what his students think of our kung fu, since they've only seen his - and everyone's kung fu is different. And Sifu will be their Sigung! (Buck Sam Kong is our Sigung.) Apparently he has a lion already, so we'll be waking his lion with our lion dance. I'm guessing his students will see a live lion dance for the first time, so it should be fun. Only bad thing is we have to leave at 8 in the MORNING. Which is too early. Maybe I should be going to bed soon. Bleah.

Yeah, we'll be going early, coming back moderately early, too. So maybe have some time to play Saturday night. Speaking of which, I got a demo disc for Shadow of the Colossus. And it's glorious. The first disc I got had almost all the demos running fine EXCEPT for Shadow of the Colossus, which made me a bit upset. It just stopped running when I tried loading it. So I went back to QT (where I got it), and the guy there was nice enough to let me trade it. Yay! Apparently, they get credit back for any merchandise, even if it's opened. And the new one did work, although it made me nervous 'cause it took a long time to load. Oh, but it's beautiful. You start just walking around, seeing this luminous female lying prone on a stone tablet, in the middle of some kind of long room. You can go up to her, but it looks like she's not responding. There's also a black horse there, and you can get on it. Then ride around, wherever you want. The world outside is HUGE. The feeling of immersion is great - for most of it, there's no music, you just hear the rhythm of the hooves hitting the ground as you explore, and see the countryside move past you. There is a battle to be found, and it's something else. I still have yet to finish it, but I haven't had a lot of time yet.

Oh yeah - today was payday! It's a very nice feeling to get a paycheck again. So I think I'll feel a little more relaxed this weekend. Ahh, yes.

There IS one other thing I did a while back, and since I haven't gotten a response from it (I wasn't going to say anything about it originally), I thought I might as well share. One day about two weeks ago (maybe a little less), I gave my mom a ride to a doctor's appointment she had. Well, while we were there, I saw a brunette that was working behind the front desk (among a few ladies), who I found, to be honest, rather stunning. I sat and waited for my mom to finish her appointment, then took her back to work. While I was driving back home, I decided I had to do something, and not just let life move by. So I went back to the office, and walked up to the counter. I talked to her, told her that I didn't get a chance to really talk to her, but that I was interested in getting to know her a little better, so I had brought something for her. I handed her a piece of paper with my name and number on it. I told her I knew she was working, so I'd let her be, and then I left. I think I surprised her a little, because all she did was smile goofily and say a few "thank you"s. I couldn't stop grinning walking back to my car - I had nothing to lose, so why not? I think I should probably try to do things like that more often - not necessarily involving flirting with women every time, but you know - just grab life by the horns and say, "HEY! I want in on this!" Maybe you should do it to, if you see something you want to be a part of. Even if you initially think you deserve no part of it. I think it somehow fits with who I am, who I've become, to do it. Now I never heard back from her, but it's fine by me. I did something, instead of just sitting idly by, and I really didn't have anything to lose. And I'm glad I did.

Okay, so that's enough waxing philosophical for today. I need to get some rest! To be ready for crazy kung fu action tomorrow. Random link? Here you are! Don't know if you've seen this site, but if you're ever curious about the random bits of mischief people manage to get themselves into, this is a good place to look.
Comments:
Good for you Eric. I think I can speak for all of your friends in saying, "It's about damn time."

Have fun in Springfield.
 
Don't worry, I don't hit hard.

Like hell you don't
 
Well, okay. Not TOO hard. I do pull my punches.
 
so liking aqua teen hunger force makes one a nerd? if so, i've been a nerd for some time now.
on another note, i'm glad you went back and flirted with miss office assistant. ;) good for you!
 
It's nice to know that those "surprises" you sent me were indeed from someone else.

That chic doesn't know what she missed.

*slightly jealous*

-A
 
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20050905
 
Labor day!
It's labor day. Ironically, I'm not doing a lot of labor today. That's okay, though! I'm getting excited about doing labor TOMORROW. That's right, I start work tomorrow! Yay! I've finished all my paperwork, have everything ready. Just should probably do some laundry, then I'll be set. That, and get some SLEEP. But I'm excited.

So this weekend's been crazy. It turned into a bachelor pad party on Friday, and I didn't even mean for it to. That's right, the morning after, I felt kinda bleah, had a bunch of beer bottles strewn throughout the apartment, as well as a cooler still containing plenty more. It was a lot of fun, though. I think I may have had a little TOO much. One can only have so much Pepsi, you know. Oh well. Me and Justin (Sihing) got together, and some more kung fu boys ended up coming over. We stayed up, talked, played a variety of games (including some crazy DOA action with Carlos and Brandon), and had munchies early in the morning. We got one guy trashed nicely - he'd never had any Jager, so he tried a couple of shots. He'd never taken a shot before, either, and sadly, I could give him more instruction on how you're supposed to do it than what he already knew. Although we were going to drive him home, since he was in no condition to drive, and he snuck out the door (supposedly to smoke), and then drove home. Sihing was rather upset he didn't listen to us, so apparently he's going to give this particular student a lesson in listening to what Sihing has to say next time we spar in class. A lesson consisting of a nice right hook. I hope I can be there to see it, should be interesting.

And I saw the Transporter 2 this weekend. It's what I would call a popcorn flick, as was the first one. A mindless romp through action and adventure. Keep in mind, I said mindless. Yes, don't expect this to be realistic WHATSOEVER. If you can do that, it's a rather fun movie.

The main thing lately has been the recovery from Katrina. So I'm going to go ahead and put the major links here, for anyone who hasn't sent in something to help, so you can have another way or two to do it. There's the Red Cross, naturally, as well as the United Way. And being who I am, I will include Catholic Charities, as well. Anything else you might want to find out on how to help you can most likely find here. This is the widest hit of suffering our generation has seen in this country, so I think reaching out is a good thing to do. I've given some, but will probably do a bit more after I actually start getting paid.

In other news, we're getting ready for the open house in St. Louis this coming Saturday. A kung fu open house! For one of the old students of Sifu, named Nick, who opened his own school. We'll be doing a lion dance (and yes, I'll be the lion head again), as well as a few demos. Hopefully it will all go well. We have one other student who's opened his own school, in town, named Chris. Sihing and I are interested to go check them out. From what we hear, their sifu has been giving them... interesting methods on sparring. We may have to step up and show them why they may consider other techniques. And throwing strong leg kicks against knees may be a bad idea. Especially if you're expecting to hit a soft knee, but hit someone's not so soft shin. Anyone who knows me well knows my shins aren't TOO soft. And Sihing's are about the same.

And it's birthday time! Lots of birthdays! Brandon had his at the end of last month, Carlos had his yesterday. If you know them, say hey, tell them they're getting OLDer. Carlos finally caught up to me! Although, sadly, I'll be outpacing him again at the end of the month. Oh well.

Okay, I gots to go to a cookout. Free food! How can I pass that up? Well, hope everyone had a lovely Labor Day weekend. I'll leave you with a random link. Yes! Random! I play guitar, indeed. But some people play something just a LITTLE bit different.
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Grr. Advertisements starting to hit my comments section. I am not pleased.
 
Disallow anonymous posting then. :-p
 
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