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iam(still)kevin. » 2004» December

Archive for December, 2004

dans mexique.

Wednesday, December 29th, 2004

I’m in Toluca right now, in the state of mexico, at my uncle’s house. I just had a delicious dinner called molcajete, which is pretty similar to fajitas, but much better. You have strips of steak, chorizo, nopal (a cactus), and green onion, all pre-grilled, and then some mexican cheese whose name i don’t know. While you’re getting that ready, you heat the molcajete (or two if you have them) on the stove, upside down, until they’re really really hot - you’ll probably see the surface boiling from the various juices that have been absorbed by the volcanic stone. Then you put the hot molcajete on the table, fill it with tomatillo sauce, and put the strips of meat, nopal and cheese in it, from which you make some tacos. it’s really good, and stays hot because the molcajete stays hot for a long time.

i’ve also had some really good enchiladas at some random street market near my grandma’s house in naucalpan, tacos de bistek, al pastor, costilla, and more, a ton of enchiladas made by my abue cuca, bacaláu, romeritos, “ros-bif,” sopes, mole, torta de milanesa, and i don’t remember what else, but all of it good, and none of which i’ll be able to eat in the U.S, at least not nearly as good.

well, i’m off now.

México!

Tuesday, December 21st, 2004

i’m going to mexico today!

merry christmas, happy new year, and likewise to any other holiday type event you’ve got going on.

see you in two weeks.

house of flying daggers.

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

watched this last night, it was good, except for the last 15 minutes at which point my stomach decided it was going to hurt really, really bad and make me leave and go to the restroom and miss the end of the movie.
It’s a good movie though, a martial arts movie in the style of crouching tiger and hero. Government and police on one side, undercover robin hood style group on the other, and of course a love story. I recomend it, except for the stomach hurting thing. That part sucks.

orbitz.

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

so about 15 minutes ago, my cousin called me because he went to checkin for his flight at the alaska airlines counter and he apparently had no ticket, and when he called orbitz, nobody knew about his ticket, or credit, or anything.
Background - Steven as going to come visit last year, and bought a ticket on Alaska with Orbitz, but his vacation time got screwed up, so he had to cancel that. He got credit with Orbitz for another Alaska flight, which he used for this flight.
In order to buy this flight, he had to go through orbitz.com, since the credit was with them. After he had made the plans for his flight, he didn’t receive any email confirmation, so he called back, and the guy who helped him knew exactly what he was talking about and supposedly set him up all fine. At that time, all this prior stuff was in their computers. But when he called earlier today, they knew absoultely nothing about it.

So, he called me and I checked Orbitz.com for him to see if there was any mention of his trip; there was nothing about this trip, last years cancelled trip, no record of credit existing, etc., so he decided to call Alaska Airlines next. (He had called orbitz, since that’s who he made both purchases with, and had the credit with, etc.).
The person at alaska said “Oh, of course, here’s your confirmation number, etc. etc.” and he walked up to the e-ticket kiosk and signed in and got his ticket.
So apparently when the guy at Orbitz said he’d get everything settled, he meant he would buy the ticket directly from Alaska Airlines instead of through orbitz, and then delete all record of the cancelled trip, credit, current trip, all conversations, and anything having to do with steven.

Now i do laundry.

california.

Friday, December 17th, 2004

i figure if i don’t write this now, i won’t write it, since my cousin is coming tomorrow, and i leave for méxico on tuesday.

After this stuff, I…
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pictures up.

Thursday, December 16th, 2004

pictures of my trip are up.
they are high class.
check em out, pictures.iamkevin.com
make sure to watch the video, i’ll explain later.

if you’re going to san francisco…

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

don’t drive. at least not by yourself.
you should also wear flowers in your hair.
I left my home at 9am on Saturday morning, headed to the post office for a bit, then to fill up on gas, and then I headed south for the “11 hour drive” to SF. I stopped a few times for gas, bathroom, food, and stuff like that. I also stopped at the lowe’s in Salem, OR to pick up the power inverter that i had purchased online for in store pickup. I ended up arriving at Robin’s place in San Francicso at 10:40pm or so, 13 and a half hours after I left, tired, with a sore back and legs, and a headache.
The drive wasn’t really all that bad, just incredibly long. At around 6:00pm i knew that I wanted to stop, but that i still had at least 4 hours left to go, and had no choice but to keep going. I talked to my parents for the last 2 hours of the drive, which really helped keep me alert and awake, and got me into san francisco safely.
Robin’s got a pretty nice apartment he’s sharing; two bedroom with one bath, a good sized living room and kitchen. The building is on a corner across from the Golen Gate Park, and if you lean out you can see the park just up the street. A bit pricey, but it’s SF, and really it’s not THAT much more than an apartment in downtown Seattle would be.
I hadn’t eaten dinner at that point - in fact i hadn’t eaten anything except chex mix since around noon - so we hit up an indian place called Naan and Curry which was pretty good. The chicken tikka masala tasted really nothing like tikka masala usually tastes, but it was still good. The restaurant totally screams San Francisco. The “hostess” (girl at the front) is really friendly and tells you to go sit at one of the tables. They have a little closet with silverware and plates and stuff, plus drinks, and you go in there to get what you need, there’s no waiter to set up your table all nice. Later someone brings you your food, and then when you’re done with your meal you go back to the front and she rings you up. I can’t really imagine a place operating like that anywhere else. After dinner I pretty much collapsed and had a nice 10 hour sleep until morning.

Sunday morning we headed out for breakfast and then walked around Golden Gate Park. Our plan was to take a short walk to find the buffalo in the park, and then we’d figure out what else to do, but we ended up walking all the way to the beach on the pacific ocean and back, which took about 3 hours, and we must have walked 4 or 5 miles total. Afterwards we were both pretty beat so we hung out at the apt. and i showed robin the woners of halo 2. No Live play though, apparently not everyone owns a 60 foot ethernet cable.
Dinner was burgers at “Slider’s Burger” which were good, then a little more walking, and then just chilling at home again, with a little more halo 2.

This morning I got up and when robin headed to work, i went to breakfast, and then jumped in my car and set out for LA, the farther destination of my trip. This drive was MUCH better, since it was only… five and a half hours or so. Pretty uneventful, it was mostly just farmland and nothingness, but once i got within an hour or two of LA it got pretty, with rolling hills and trees and a really nice looking lake that i should have stopped at to take a picture. I reached LA at 3:30 and hung out with my brother, setting up his new computer which I had built in Seattle and driven down with me, but had been unable to get working. (turns out the RAM was bad. swapping it had it running in minutes).
tomorrow… not much during the day, then lunch with pete and chelo, and something at night, yet to be determined.

Well, i guess i’ll go to sleep now, since there’s not much to do here when i’m the only one awake.

halo stats.

Thursday, December 2nd, 2004

Falling squarely in the category of “Neat Things To Do With Useless Data.”

Some guy came up with a Halo 2 Stats Excel* spreadsheet that uses the RSS xml feed from your Halo 2 games, available from Bungie.net, and excel’s Pivot Chart funcitonality to create some cool (albeit useless) charts and graphs.

To get your own RSS feed, link your gamertag to your passport, log in, and copy the XML link found on the My Stats page.

You can see how it works with mine using this RSS Feed.

*You need to use Excel 2003.

road trip.

Thursday, December 2nd, 2004

I’m gonna be driving from Seattle, to San Francisco, to LA, then back, for no reason other than taking a long road trip, which i’ve never done before; not this long anyway.
I’ve been thinking about doing this for a few months, since i knew i’d likely be jobless for a little while. It’s become a little longer of time off due to the damn HR at MS, but that’s alright. The current plan is well, still in flux, as it’s starting day is based upon when my brother’s computer parts get shipped to me so that I can drive them down to LA (he avoids paying CA sales tax this way, and I was going to LA anyway). That should happen by this Saturday, as the last set of parts shipped yesterday and they will be here tomorrow. That gives me at least a week and a half of time for the trip, since I have to be back in Seattle the week of the 13th, preferably later in the week.

It’s an 11 hour drive from Seattle to San Francisco, assuming I can avoid traffic. Leaving on saturday means i won’t have to worry about that until I get to san francisco, where there is always traffic.
I’ll hang out in SF for a couple days, then make my way to LA, which is a mere 5, 5 1/2 hour drive. Then I’ll chill with my cousins for anwhere from 3 to 5 to 7 days, or maybe more, then drive back to SF, chill there for a night or two, and head on home.

I’m not really worried about the driving time, but I need some good CDs to listen to in the car. Or if anyone in the seattle area has an MP3 player and an FM transmitter (see: iPod + iTrip), maybe i could borrow that for a week. I’ve heard that stand up comedy is good to listen to on long drive, and I have Dane Cook - Harmful If Swallowed, but that’s about it, other than really old Adam Sandler and Steve Martin CDs, which i don’t want to listen to again. If you have anything I could borrow (and you live in seattle, or have a way to get it to me secretly), that would be much appreciated. I will also make good use of my phone’s 5 hour talk time. I need to remember to buy a car charger for my phone before i leave.

road trippin’