Haha, so I dug through archives of OliverWEB and found some bits that actually made me laugh out loud:

aoushi: think destiny
aoushi: lol
Owiber: aha!
Owiber: someday
aoushi: she’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes…
Owiber: my wife will be the defender of the universe
aoushi: Whoa, I won’t go that far
Owiber: like Voltron
aoushi: ugh, you destroyed my romantic thoughts
aoushi: I’m going to bed

Ah, Viraj:

Viraj: no donuts for her fatness
Oliver: ok
Viraj: no, i was asking?
Viraj: retard
Oliver: QUESTIONS END WITH QUESTION MARKS, RETARD

The dinner conversation today somehow drifted into some aspects I look for in a girl, or that I think complement me well. I’m not going to get into that, but it’s led my brain to ponder similar topics in my now almost “ritual” solo-time right before I go to sleep (which coincidentally is also my blog time). I’m not one to jump on many bandwagons, much less reading popular “Christian novels,” but I’ve at least had a summary of “Love Languages” despite not reading the book on the topic. So I was thinking about what my love languages were and on the receiving end, it’s probably words of affirmation, quality time, and touch. On the giving side, it’s pretty similar except for touch, which is interesting I think.

I’m not really one that shows affection by touch very often outside of a joking manner (Sam and Viraj, I’m looking at you ;-)), but I think a hug goes a long way for me. When I’m feeling a bit mellow/down, I find myself wanting a good hug. Interestingly, I think this works better coming from a girl (not necessarily one I have a crush on or anything, just a female friend, etc.), but I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s just that I’m generally more used to hugs from girls than guys having two sisters and no brothers, or maybe it’s just due to society and guys don’t really give hugs. It’s gotta be in the right context though… this is not a plea to hug me. =p

I’m pretty confident that affirmation is one that I both give and take, but I’m a bit more iffy on quality time. I put a lot of time into anything I care about, but if I don’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t care about it, so I’m not sure if this counts as much. I also don’t necessarily have to be given it to feel like I matter to a person, so yeah…

I don’t think this mental exercise has helped me in any way other than cure a few minutes of boredom, and I hope it did the same for you, haha…

“She’s got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I’d stare too long
I’d probably break down and cry

Sweet child o’ mine
Sweet love of mine” - Guns N’ Roses

Lyrics have nothing to do with this post (and they generally don’t), they’re just usually a song I’m fond of listening to at the time. I feel like I need to be careful, particularly when the song mentions a girl or something like that (they often do :-)), but maybe I’m being too paranoid. ;-)

Last Friday at work, our team had Moustache Day where many of the “non-sissy boys” had moustaches (I was a clean shaven “sissy boy” :-():

Today, I went on a boat today with a bunch of chumps:

So last night I had a dream I went back to high school to get a second “degree” (I think I knew this was pretty much worthless, since it’d just be another diploma, but somehow I thought it’d be fun). After a class or two and looking at the work I had to do for US History, I decided it wasn’t worth it and went to the office to drop-out. At the end of my dream, I declared “hey! I’m a high school drop-out now!”

Apparently, my enrollment and first day of class (or maybe it was sometime in the first week) coincided with a few of my friends visiting the school, which made for a convenient get-away as I just walked out of the school with them on their way out. This was a somewhat weird dream, perhaps spawned by seeing a clip of Mark-Paul Gosselaar (aka Zach Morris) on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

“Hast Du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst Du vielleicht grad’ an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Und dass sowas von sowas kommt” - Nena

Sometimes I sit alone listening to really sappy 80s/90s love songs because I find it very humorous. It may be the same type of fascination with pink and other things I’m not supposed to like so much as a “grown up guy.” Or maybe I like to gently tug at my singleness and make fun of myself in a mild manner. Whatever the reason is, I enjoy it immensely.

Have I mentioned that I really dislike the decline of the blog and how the rise of Twitter, Facebook etc. seem like there’s just a lot of shallow noise now? There’s a lot of “social” but I really miss the deeper thoughts and investment that blog posts had. I feel like I’m purely just blurting out thoughts out there without anything to read and bounce off of.

Speaking of Twitter, after a few weeks of using it, I still can’t say it’s really gotten me. I primarily just use it as a means to update my Facebook status. Even then, I just do that occasionally because I’m bored rather than getting any real entertainment value from it. I guess now is a decent time to plug TwitterVoice (I hear the name was given tongue-in-cheek), which came out of our Bazaarvoice Labs group.

I got a business card from a realtor with a note on the back that basically said “I have a possible buyer for your house if you’re interested.” I called them back but got the realtor’s boss. I told them it’d have to be a pretty sweet offer because I just bought the house, so we’ll see. I doubt anything will come of it. I don’t even really know how things like this happen though. Did they see a really old listing of the house or something?

“There were nights when the wind was so cold
That my body froze in bed
If I just listened to it
Right outside the window

There were days when the sun was so cruel
That all the tears turned to dust
And I just knew my eyes were
Drying up forever” - Celine Dion

I posted pics a day or so ago, but figured I’d make a blog post too. Matt and Tara, two of our interns at work got married last week. I got to be their designated photographer, so here are a few shots:

… and the rest are here!

I was going through songs to post at the end of this blog post and ran across “My Heart Will Go On” which reminded me about a middle school talent show I went to at roughly post-peak Titanic craze. In said talent show, I recall at least three or four girls who sang that song as their entry, which was just horrible. By the end, you could sense that the audience was just tired of it. So… the goal of this is… if you ever are in charge of a talent show, do not let your performers do the same song over and over. It is terrible.

“Oh your reputation is so golden
You’re never lonely and you’re never home
I know you’ve been talking about leaving
You’ve lost all your feelings for this town.
Paint your nails and put your lipstick
You don’t want to miss your ticket out.
Just because you graduate from school
So high in the gene pool that’s your point of view.” - Dexter Freebish

I’ve been going through older xkcd comics lately and happened upon this gem:

I’ve now resolved to use it whenever I can remember:

I’ve also been going through photos and have come to a new realization about how much a quality L lens compares favorably against a non-L lens. This one’s a Canon 100 f/2.8 Macro, pretty much straight from camera:

And this one is the Canon 85 f/1.2L, again without any post-processing (other than converting to JPEG from RAW):

Notice the much better contrast and colors? That’ll be the last time I use my 100mm over the 85mm for its reach… time to get a 70-200 f/2.8L IS! Haha… =p

Every Monday, when I get to work, I get asked how my weekend was and what I did. I pretty much always forget, so here it is in an attempt not to forget.

On Saturday, I watched a few episodes of Fringe and did some general cleaning around the house where I discovered the source of the fruit flies. Someone had left some left-overs sitting in my kitchen hidden within some bags. Now that the source has been removed, I hope the flies soon follow. I then hung out with a bunch of the guys. When Viraj showed up, he put his keys on a table where I promptly picked them up and threw them behind the cushions on my couch. This eventually led to him going to Jim’s with us at 5AM in the morning because he couldn’t find his keys and we said “we’d help him when we got back.” Ended up sleeping at about 6AM. Good times.

Nancy woke me up on Sunday with a call and then said she’d call me back in “30 minutes” after sleeping some more. I went back to sleep as well and woke up 3.5 hours later with no said call. That’s totally her fault. Went to Town Lake (I don’t like calling it “Lady Bird Lake”) and did some kayaking with Sam and Nancy, which was quite funny because Sam was scared of falling into the lake and dying. I would poke him with my oar and he threatened to “punch me in the face.”

I then did some editing of some past BV events: our All Hands and 4 year anniversary party:

…and that’s pretty much it!

Our team hit our goal for the quarter! Regardless of hitting the goal, we decided to have a “play day” to rest from all the hard work we did, so we went to the lake and went kayaking/canoeing. Here are some pics:

As always, more on flickr.

I’m going to sore tomorrow from it, I’m pretty sure. =)

“Oh but I
Need some time off from that emotion
Time to pick my heart up off the floor
And when that love comes down
Without devotion
Well it takes a strong man baby
But I’m showing you the door

‘Cause I gotta have faith…” - George Michael

I had the privilege of shooting Bazaarvoice’s 2009 Social Commerce Summit in Austin this week. It’s a great opportunity and an awesome event to attend. I likely wouldn’t be able to go to it solely in my primary job capacity (as a team lead on the Technical Services team), so I’m very happy to have been able to go as the photographer. Here are a bunch of shots from it:

And of course, a ton more on flickr. Looking forward to London ‘09!

“Sometimes I just forget
Say things I might regret
It breaks my heart to see you crying
I don’t wanna lose you
I could never make it alone

I am a man who will fight for your honor
I’ll be the hero you’re dreaming of
We’ll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love” -Peter Cetera