Hurricane Sandy & I

Hurricane Sandy was devastating. The damage done to lower Brooklyn was really bad and recovery efforts were slow and sub-par. It took a long 23 days for power to get restored to my building. It took 40 days to get heat, hot water and gas back. Life was a mess and I'm glad it's behind me. I'm not going to make a big whine post because no one wants to hear about it.

Planted Three Trees

I received a gift card recently from a Bank of America event. The event was subpar to say the very least. Anyway their rewards were one of the following:

 1 song, 3 trees, or 5 photo prints. I asked myself, which had the highest value? Music is already free if you know what I mean... and 5 photo prints is just not very useful. I decided on the trees.

The only concern I had was that it wasn't a legit site/operation. How can I be sure that they are really going to do what they are saying they will?

Well I have hope in humanity and hopefully my damn trees will be planted.

Looks legit son.

FUNemployment and Adjustment

Stage 1: Unemployment Hell
Ever since I graduated, I entered the unemployment pool. Technically I'm not even an unemployed person because I never had a job to begin with. A bunch of my peers had offers coming out of college and they're set. Others like myself have it rough and remain unemployed. It's really a shame because once you graduate, it's 10x harder to push your resume because my school isn't considered a "top tier" school. For the past two months I've been "funemployed" (having fun while being unemployed). With all the free time in the world, I was getting real bored. At one point I had so much free time, I didn't know what to do. In the meantime, I was getting desperate and sending my resume to all types of jobs, things that aren't even in my field. I checked into a ton of staffing agencies, had coffee with a bunch of professionals and submitted my resume at least 5 times a day.

Stage 2: Working Hell
So I finally got a job interview, and the guy offers me the job on the spot. Sure, the pay wasn't what I had in mind, but I knew I needed to keep myself occupied right now in order to use it as a stepping stone into something better. I started like a day after my interview and its not a smooth transition. From having too much time to having no time at all, life is just ironic. The two hour commute already makes the day shorter. The 8 hour workday requires me to wake up early and leave when the sun sets. After I get home, do whatever, I'm already dead tired and ready to hit the sheets. I want to work to live, not live to work.

But in the meantime, I'm just grateful I am keeping myself occupied.

Jeremy Lin is an Linspiration to us all

Linsanity! Linning!

This is a story about how the young Jeremy Lin went from zero to hero. A week ago, he was a benchwarmer on the New York Knicks roster. Due to sheer chance, two of the Knick's superstars were missing in action and thus the head coach gave him a shot to fill the point guard position. And then he blew everyone away.

Ever since he became a starter, he's been carrying the Knicks to victory every game. He has been averaging over 23 points and over 7 assists each game. There were a lot of people who doubted his skill and he yet again overcame the odds to win over the Lakers last night against Kobe Bryant.

Not only is he humble about it, he's unselfish and his ability to make split second decisions on the court is astounding. He's my new inspiration.

The End of the Internets

Lately, the possibility of SOPA being passed has attracted much attention. The most recent action taken against online piracy is the closing of Megaupload, the most popular file sharing service out there. I'm not going to lie, I preferred to use MU over BT when it comes to getting stuff. So much content was lost due to this event. However, since its fallout, many other file sharing domains decided to follow similar actions before the FBI steps in, including FileServe and FileSonic. I think we're on a path down a very dark road. People will only be forced to use more of BT to pirate their desires. If SOPA actually passes, a lot of people will get in trouble and be fined heavily. But it doesn't make sense to do something that will affect at least half the population.


It seems like law makers are plain stupid.

A-"What you in here for?"
B-"Rape--3 year sentence. You?"
A-"Downloaded a movie. 5 years"

Good fucking game. It is the end of the internet as we know it.

Extensive Research on the Chicago 7 on 1 Beating

Asian dude jumped by 7 cowards behind James Ward... by netwrok


I first saw this video on Monday night. Watching this video infuriated me and adrenaline pumped through my veins. Nobody knew what happened, but we can clearly see that an Asian high school kid is jumped by 7 other people while filming it. With the help of the internet (Reddit, 4Chan, and bodybuildingforums), I quickly found out what happened. The morons who attacked the guy were stupid enough to put the video on facebook and youtube. The moron quickly took down the video because his face was in the video, but someone already saved it and reposted it. Thus the video quickly became viral. The video itself is brutal to watch simply because it was a beating with no chance of a fair fight. The guy is kicked in the face, thrown around, punched, choked, and simply overwhelmed by 7 little shitheads while being called a n*. To continue to hit a person while he is curled up into a ball and crying for mercy is really pathetic.

There was a lot of speculation as to what happened. There were many angles, so you can only choose what you want to believe.

1. He was getting robbed and beaten for snitching them out for something.
2. It was a retaliation for a previous fight in which the victim along with 20 people jumped the assailant.

I'm fairly sure it was a retaliation for something that had happened in the past. What about the 20v2 story? I don't really buy it. The victim is a recent immigrant, or dubbed "fob" by Amy Holly Feng (the dumb bitch who tried to defend the 7 assailants), so if you believe him to be part of a gang in Chicago, I find that hard to believe. Most fobs come to this country and lay low--to study and do their homework so they can go to college. I remember when I first came here, I didn't speak a worth of damn of English, and clearly the victim didn't either because in the video he was speaking Cantonese. Why would he want to start something with these kids? To ruin his life? Even so, if he was part of a gang, why did they pick to jump this guy? Wouldn't they be picking on 20 people and risk getting their asses beat later on?

And even if it was a 20 versus 2 person as the assailants had claimed, how did they manage to count the number of people who were beating them? And please imagine, being surrounded by more than 8 people, how can they even reach you to hit you? Clearly the assailants were making themselves look like the victims but suck at it.

Leo, the victim's facebook cover picture.

One of the assailants was stupid enough to uncover his face and thus was the first one to be caught.

I mean like how stupid do you have to be to uncover your face and assault someone and then post it online? Hey let's help them find us derp derp. The idiot in the picture, Raymond Palomino, was handed in by his dad, a former sheriff deputy. So his dad was a cop, and when he got jumped by 20 asians, he wanted to get street justice, good going there dad, way to teach your son to behave.


According to the news, Palomino ratted out the other kids who were behind this and they're serving juvi. Unluckily for him, Palomino was charged with battery and strong robbery. What did they think was going to happen to them? Each one of them is going to regret this for the rest of their lives because the internet find out where each of them lives, their phone numbers, their relatives, and more. This type of retribution is undeniably effective. If I was them, I'd legally change my name and get plastic surgery because they are infamous.

Funny thing is, in the video they kept using the racial slur n***** like they were from the ghetto. Why did they beat the shit out of an asian person and called him a n* on Martin Luther King Jr Day? Oh and did I mention the main perpetrators of this brutal attack is a bunch of fucking asians? God bless these souls.

Main thugs are Easley and Wesley Wu. All they're missing from their gang is Northley and Southley. I'm both ashamed and raging at this incident but I guess the internet is the biggest payback of them all. Think about it, they're infamous. College? No chance. Job? McDonalds--probably.

Nostalgic Times Part 2

TBD

Nostalgic Times Part 1

Winter break always brings out the boredom. Over these few weeks, I've played some old games and watched several anime series.

Games

Monster Rancher 2

My utmost favorite game of all time on the PS1: MR2. There is no doubt in my mind this is the best Monster Rancher game of its series. The replay value in this is huge and I haven't even scratched the surface of the game yet. I have the real game on the PS1, but now I'm using the emulator version because Gameshark makes the game go much faster (time is valuable after all). Once I finish raising all the monsters I want, I'll start to create YT videos to showcase my work.

Pokemon Black & White (Black)

The Pokemon series, a genuine classic. Back when Generation I was out (Red & Blue), every kid on the block had a Gameboy Color and was playing/trading their Pokemon in real life. I didn't own a GBC because my parents were cheap. Thus, I lived through the entire series off the emulator. Generation I was the best. The following paint picture provides an accurate interpretation of what the series becomes.

Generation I was the best because it was very hard to decide who you wanted to be your starter Pokemon. All three of them were awesome and my personal favorite was Charmander. Generation II, Gold & Silver, (still on GBC) was equally good. The first two generations were the most memorable of them all. The first 150 Pokemon can be remembered by every kid. At 250, it began to get sketchy, but manageable. Generation II was a toss up between Totodile or Cyndaquil, no one really liked Chikorita. I liked the first two games so much I beat the game many times and unlocked everything. Generation III (Ruby & Sapphire) came out on the Gameboy Advanced. GBA was a step up in the series. The color and graphics were much improved, but the speed of the game was slowing down. It became annoying because with all the animation, the gameplay felt really slow. Nonetheless, I beat the game with Torchic as my starter and never looked back. There was way too much to fully unlock and I didn't bother. Genration III also included the remake of Red & Blue AKA FireRed and LeafGreen. Those were very enjoyable.

Generation IV came out on the Nintendo DS (Diamond & Pearl). There were no working emulators during that time, and so I skipped Gen IV completely. I felt no connection with the new Pokemon either. The reason why the first couple Gens were so sticky was because the anime was also on air. As a kid, to be able to watch the show and play as the characters was what made the franchise so successful. I don't even remember when channel 11 decided to sell Pokemon to Cartoon Network but I felt it was a bad move. Generation IV was a big miss for me.

Just came out last year, the 5th Generation features Black & White. Again, it had the same problems that Gen IV suffered. I played Black on the emulator and everything was too excessive. The random encounters took too long to load, the attack animations were tedious, and the walking was too slow. Everything about the game was too slow for my limited time capacity to enjoy. Again, there was no connection. I looked long and hard at the three starters and none of them appealed to me.

First Blog Post of the Year

Well this is the year that is rumored to be the end of the world, so here we are! Looking over the years I've blogged, here is the breakdown:

► 2011 (14)
► 2010 (41)
► 2009 (106)
► 2008 (26)
► 2007 (57)

My interest to blog about my life peeked in 2009, my first/2nd year in college--and when I had a huge amount of free time on my hands. I'm actually surprised I couldn't write more than 14 posts last year, even if you count it as one per month, I barely made it since half the posts were about The Walking Dead.

Right now I'm on winter break and I have nothing better to do. I read some of the old blog posts in the earlier years and it was fun rereading the shit you used to write. To compare how I write now to how I used to write, I've definitely become more professional. However, the content has also been less exciting because of less emotional effort on my part.