So tonight I watched Changeling. I thought it was going to a pretty boring movie, based on the first 30 minutes or so. It's a pretty long movie too - it comes in at 2 hours and 20 minutes long. I was lifting weights while watching, and I wondered if I would finish it today, or just let it sit until the next time I lifted. Well after awhile, I was so hooked, that even after I finished weights, I just sat there watching for awhile. I then moved into my living room and finished the movie. Angelina Jolie did a great job acting, I thought, and some parts of the movie are really well done. All in all, I give it a thumbs up, but it is definitely slow to start, and a long movie, so if that's not the kind of movie you are in the mood for, don't pick it up.

I also completed day 3 of the Japan website tonight. It definitely took a fair amount of work, as that day was one of the highlights of the trip, but definitely go check it out at http://www.zubersoft.com/Japan09. On a side note, I'm going to be adding some improvements to the website soon. I've been concerned with the presentation of the website on laptops, and on small devices like phones. I also realize that content is more important than presentation, so I'm going to add a maximize/restore type behavior to the content section. The area you are reading inside of now will expand to take up the whole bottom section of the site. This should definitely help with smaller monitors. Look forward to it!

Well another year has begun, and I hope this one is a great one for us all. I really hope things turn out better this year, and some of the problems facing people(foreclosures, unemployment, etc) get addressed properly by the new leadership. As for my goals this year, I would like to accomplish a lot of things:

- Finish recording enough songs to make a CD
- Ride up Mount Lemmon
- Ride in at least one race, and do one really long ride( > 70 miles )
- Enter a couple of table tennis tournaments and get ranked
- Win a volleyball match against a team that is better than mine
- Finish creating all of the random parts for my web site that I've left unfinished (description of my music studio, my coding projects page, etc)
- Beat 80% of the games that I own but haven't beat yet

That's a fair amount of stuff, but I'm optimistic about my chances. Looking back on the past year, I think I managed to accomplish a lot there too. Between this web page, my house, picking up far too many hobbies and regaining my health, I'd say I had my hands full.

On a side note, Christmas was wonderful. There is nothing better than seeing how excited kids get over their presents. I also managed to do a 25 mile ride and a 35 mile ride with my dad, so I got some really good time in on my bike. It kicked my butt a little bit, and made me realize just how much training I need. My dad also got his new ping pong paddle, and we had some awesome games. It's amazing how much a good paddle can help. I got some great music cd's, but I think my favorite present of all is a sheet music book. It has all of my favorite dragon warrior songs, but they aren't dumbed down at all - they are very accurate and some are difficult. The music is so beautiful. I had to go through several books before I found one that had what I wanted, and they are all imports, so it wasn't cheap.

I sure hope everyone else had a great Christmas and New Years. I think I'm going to enjoy a little zombie gaming (Resident Evil ftw) before I go out for a bike ride with my parents (they were awesome enough to come out to Phoenix to hang out for a day). Sayounara!

Man, it feels like it's been forever since I've updated this site. I just got done working a 66 hour work week, and I have to say, I didn't really enjoy it. Getting home so late that I have little time for anything except eating and maybe a light workout sucks. Having said that, when I receive the overtime pay, I'm definitely not going to be complaining

Other than work keeping me extremely busy, I've been continuing my quest for ping pong greatness. I traveled all the way to Green Valley and picked up a great ping pong table and robot for $750. Now, you may look at that number and go, WOAH, what is he thinking?! Let me explain a couple of things. First, the table is normally $1000 alone, and the robot is around $700. I got both for under half the combined price. Granted, the table isn't new, and it's been used a fair amount, but it's still in superb condition. The top is nearly perfect, which is the most important part. It's missing a couple of features that the new ones have, but those matter very little while you are playing. The robot is in "like-new" condition, so I lost nothing there. The table that I got is called the Expert Roller, and it's the same table that is used in the U.S. Open, so it's the real deal As for the robot, you may ask, what is a robot? Well I'll tell you! It's something that you set up on one side of the table, and it has a netting that extends all around that side of the table. It also has plastic that funnels the balls that hit the net and fall, so that the balls continually recycle( unless you hit them off the table ). In the middle sits a cool device that sucks up balls, and then shoots them out of a rotatable head. The head can be twisted to put any kind of spin, and the angle can be adjusted so you can work on serves and hits of any variation. Unlike some of the more expensive robots( 2 grand ), this robot can't add speed without spin, but it's a small price to pay for the performance vs price. The robot can actually put so much spin on the ball that it's nearly impossible to return it. It can also hit it so fast that you have to dodge not to get hit with the ball off the bounce. I should mention that a little device sits on your side of the table, hanging off the side, and it lets you rotate knobs to adjust speed, oscillation, and frequency. The oscillation is important because it ensures that the robot will keep turning back and forth, working both forehand and backhand, and forcing you to be prepared for either. This is adjustable though, in cause you only want to fire in one specific area. So the first time i was testing the robot and table out, I had a ball. I was hitting balls and just thoroughly enjoying being able to practice so much in a relaxed situation. Then I thought, "I wonder how fast this thing will fire. I'm gonna turn the speed all the way up!" The robot then proceeded to turn towards me, and fire off a ball that hit the table and bounced, nailing me directly in the stomach. I hardly had time to react, and immediately feared the next incoming shot. Needless to say, I dove for the off button as I heard balls slamming into the closed garage door, sounding like shots going off all around me. I hit the switch after hearing a few more rattle off, and then checked my stomach to see the damage. I had a beautiful welt from the ball, which taught me an important lesson - don't test the max out without being prepared for the consequences.

So practicing with the robot has definitely helped my game. I've been playing at work, and the last few days have been really great, despite not getting much practice time in this week. It's all about muscle memory. It also doesn't hurt that I really learned a lot about how you need to hit the ball to create a lot of spin. Understanding the game at the level helps with every aspect. I also practiced crazy serves over and over, which helped me somewhat. I still managed to screw up the serves when I tried them in a game, but I will keep working at it! I can already get a ball to go over the net with backspin, and then roll back to the net.

Other than ping pong, I'm doing my usual stuff - watching anime, playing volleyball, doing music as much as I can, and working out. I'm also going to get a road bike, as a late night adventure I had on my mountain bike really made me want to get into riding again. Maybe I'll finally get motivated enough to start doing mountain biking on my own... If only I could find some more time... Hell, if I had time, I think the number thing I would do is make my music CD! I played through all of my songs the other night, and was so excited about creating a cd of my favorites. I want to make something I can be really proud of.

The last thing I should mention is Left 4 Dead. This game is amazing. We have all of the guys from work playing, and it's a kind of game everyone can get into. Who doesn't love zombie games? This game allows people to play together co-operatively as humans vs zombies, or as zombies vs humans. This allows for 4 people playing against the computer, or 4 people vs 4 other people. The games are intense, and so much fun, that we wind up talking about it all the time. I can't wait to see how this game evolves. If they put out an SDK, I will create a campaign involving the area around my work. It will be the best thing ever!

Anyways, I'm off to make dinner. Then more Left 4 Dead!

Hey Everyone!

I can't believe it's almost been two months since my last post. I feel like I haven't stopped moving since that point. I knew that it was going to be hard moving from my apartment to my new house, but getting it done in a couple of days was a huge undertaking. I would have never been able to do it without my parents. They actually came back several times over the following weeks to help me finish several projects I had going for my house. I will try to quickly summarize the various stages of moving, what happened, and the projects my parents helped me with.

8/21/08: Moving day through 8/24

For several days before the 21st, I had been cleaning, packing, and preparing like mad for the move. I thought I had done a pretty decent job getting everything together, but I knew there was a lot of cleaning to be done after things were moved out. Before things could be fully moved though, there were a few things that had to be done. My mom was going to help me paint the rooms, and my dad and I were going to rip out the carpet and install the wood flooring in my music room. The plan was to do this all in around a day, to a day and a half. Ha. That was way too optimistic. For three days straight, we worked relentlessly, my dad and I struggling with the huge ordeal of doing glue down installation, and my mom with tons of walls to paint. I will have to put up pictures of the whole project, but I have to get them off my mom's camera. In the middle of the installation process, the piano movers came really early and delivered my piano. We were only 1/4 of the way done (if that) with the wood flooring, so it suddenly got very interesting. We had to put the piano down on the concrete, and work around it. When we finished enough of the wood flooring, and we let it harden, we then had to roll the piano on the wood, and finish the other part of the room. It all worked out in the end. While all this is going on, I also had appliances delivered, and all of my utilities being turned on by workers. It was insane. Anyways, we got the wood flooring done, and the important rooms painted, so we decided to finally move stuff over. With the help of my dad, we got the 2nd largest U-Haul available, and moved my entertainment center, my couches (sofa, love seat and recliner), my 14 sound panels, my music studio, 40 billion boxes, my bed and my dining room table(among other things). Let's just say that afterward, my back hurt like it's never hurt before, and it was actually tingling constantly from being out of place. My back was messed up for weeks after this. Anyways, after working like dogs and packing everything in the U-Haul and the Pathfinder, we headed over to the house and then had unpack everything. We were on a time limit, so it was like the whip was cracking behind us, forcing us to go on. There were some interesting experiences while packing/unpacking, including some close calls, but I will save those for another time. While we worked on unpacking, my mom was my savior, and cleaned the entire apartment in one day. She was amazing, and made the apartment cleaner than the day I moved in. This all happened by Sunday. On Monday, my mom worked and worked on painting other rooms, and my dad and I worked on all the random things that needed to get done like putting up ceiling fans. They left really late that night (I felt bad), but we got so much done.

A week or two later, my parents came out again, and once again worked relentlessly the entire time they were here. My mom helped me finish the painting, because it was just too much the first time around. My dad and I mounted my sound panels in the music room, and built lots of cool stuff like a 4 piece mirror with a border for the workout room, a specialized mount to connect my tv to the adjustable arm on the wall, all of the mounts for my surround speakers in the great room, and little carpet blocks to hide my wires in the great room. You can see later in the walk-through video examples of the speaker mounts, etc. I also had a fun experience going into the attic to run speaker wire in the middle of the summer in Arizona. I never want to do that again. Ever. I got my dumbbells set up in the workout room, as well as a second bed for master bedroom, so that I have a california king sized bed now (it's really just two twins side by side, so that each person can adjust their bed the way they desire). In the end, we once again worked until the second my parents left, really late that Sunday. They are incredible, and helped make my house what it is now. Between the times they came up to help me, and today, I have never stopped working. Whether it was putting together my two computer desks, getting my music studio set up, unpacking everything, getting my entertainment center filled and everything wired, getting my classic gaming center ready, or some other random task, the work load seemed endless. Hence the reason I haven't posted for 2 months. Just today, I worked all day long, and managed to put together my grill, and clean the entire house thoroughly for the first time. Because of the loose carpet, I went through like 3 vacuum bags... Anyways, a few other things have happened over the last two months, but I will have to cover them in some other posts, as I am dead tired. Posted below is a video walk-through of my house. Let me know what you think. Note: The coloring in the video is really weird, probably because I did it at night, and the camera is reacting poorly to all of the lighting. For example, my dark tan walls look almost yellow at times, and my tan carpet didn't look tan either. I will re-do the video during the day, but that will probably have to wait until next weekend. I will also show off my dart board in my garage in that video. This at least provides a look at my house in the meantime, with my wonderfully lame commentary.

Video: Walk-through of my house (Do right-click and Save As)

Man, there has been a lot going on. Planning for my house, and trying not to forget anything is definitely taxing. The packing seems endless too - I'm probably gonna have like 40 boxes by the time I'm done. Anyways, here is a list of things that have happened in the last week or so.

New House Stuff - Tomorrow I have the inspection for my house, and Thursday I have the walk-through. I'm hoping the inspection is worth it because it costs 300+ dollars. I've also studied up quite a bit on installing wood floors, because I'm ripping up the carpet in my music room and installing wood flooring. The room is about 210 square feet, and is square, so there isn't anything intricate I have to deal with. Having said that, the process for installing wood can be quite difficult. To make matters worse, I only have 1 day in which to do it due to some scheduling problems. I am gluing the wood down to the concrete slab (for several reasons), so there can be a lot of messiness to deal with. The only thing that could make the whole ordeal really difficult is if the concrete slab isn't level, in which case I have to either grind the concrete or buy some leveling stuff. Wish me luck and pray that it's level for me If you want to see the wood I chose, go here: Wood Picture. I've also picked out several other things including my refrigerator, washer, drier, and some furniture. The most interesting thing I'm gonna have to do is run speaker wire through my attic to keep things clean. I sure hope I don't step through the ceiling...

Volleyball in Prescott - Every year, Dan Williams invites everyone up to play volleyball in the mountains. Dan used to work at Lockheed until he retired, but still likes to play volleyball with everyone. Well this year was very interesting. I rode up with some guys who were somewhat rowdy ( all around 25-35 ), and they had other plans than playing volleyball. They picked up 72 cans of beer, and started drinking before we even got up to the court. They proceeded to drink all day long. While playing volleyball all day, I watched them being crazy over on the side, drinking and listening to music. They tried to play volleyball towards the end of the day when they were completely hammered, but it didn't go so well. Needless to say, by the end of the day (around 7pm), they were still very drunk. Despite this, one of the guys convinced everyone that he was fine to drive, despite argument, so he left on his way. I refused to drive with anyone that had been drinking, which forced me to ride in the bed of a pickup truck. It was going to be a long drive, but about 10 minutes down the mountain, we find that drunk guy's car turned sideways. He had decided he wanted to drive up on the side of the wall on the right side of the road, and his car just dropped straight down into a little ravine. We couldn't believe the stupidity. After some really stupid ideas, including using a jack on the door frame to lift up the car, some young people drove up in a souped up dune buggy with a corvette engine (best way I could describe it, but supposedly that setup costs around 100k...the engine was insane...). They had some experience with rolled over vehicles, so with their assistance, we managed to pull the vehicle up and out. Needless to say, it was scratched and dented, but still running. Until the oil burned off, it was smoking badly. We didn't let that guy resume driving, that's for sure... Although all that sucked, it allowed me to get back in the truck instead of riding in the back. Everyone made it safely back after that...

Todd's House - Friday night we had a get together at Todd's house and played Scategories. It was a lot of fun, but I placed third. Erin, who was accused of cheating several times, got 1st I also ate Pei Wei for the first time, which was pretty good.

Trip to Tucson - I headed down to Tucson on Sunday and had a chance to see my family, including my Aunt who is in town for over a week. I got a haircut, picked up packages, got a wonderful home made dinner, and my favorite part - I got to sit down with everyone and watch the olympics, including all the stuff they recorded. Men's indoor volleyball kicked butt! Misty May and Kerri Walsh also dominated, and I don't see them losing anytime soon. They are true champions.

Anyways, this week will be busy with house stuff and a hell of a lot packing. Wish me luck on everything. I'll try to update once more before I move.