This weekend, we celebrated Olivia’s birthday early. I also shipped off Melissa’s birthday present and then worked on a secret project! No, unfortunately, it is not teetarsauce.com… I still need to get to that.

Ultimate was good especially since the weather was still pretty nice, but I’m not fully recovered from the previous week, so I didn’t feel quite 100%. I finally played a little bit of Black Ops, which is pretty fun so far, but I haven’t gotten too far along into the single player yet.

I think that’s it? Oh, congrats to Ochs and Weishan. =)

November is the first month of our new quarter, so BV flew in our international team for our All-Hands. Because they were here, we also had an early holiday party at the Austin Music Hall. I don’t have pics of the latter event, but Anne-Marie was there in photographer capacity so I’m sure she’ll post awesome photos shortly. =) Here are some of my shots from our All-Hands featuring new BV band, FEEDBACK:

Also, congrats to the culture award winners, especially the TS folk!

On Saturday, we played an early game of ultimate so that Simon could join us. We ended up playing for around four hours because the weather was so awesome and Jonney brought us Krispy Kreme donuts to fuel us through the game. It was pretty awesome, but now I’m sore. Luckily, my shins aren’t too bad this week so I guess they’re getting stronger. =p

Sunday was not all that eventful except I met up with the Tings and co for brunch at Tacodeli to see Alex again before he goes back to California. After that, went around eating/snacking with peeps then throwing frisbees around. I think my throwing technique could still use some work…

Oops, I just realized I didn’t make my obligatory weekend update post. Well…

• We played ultimate again and it was splendid weather and had some new comers that were pretty good. Enjoyable! My shins feel a little sore now though… recovering…


• Didn’t do much for Halloween… for work, my team was Office Space themed, but I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have photos. If I get unlazy, I may track down some shots other people took…


• Watched UT lose to Baylor. Good. They deserved it. We should not be nervous our guy can’t catch the ball on kick-returns. I swear, I probably watched UT botch this at least once every game I’ve watched this season.


• I finished A Game of Thrones, but I’m not sure I’ll continue with the series… we’ll see. So far, I’ve read about five or six books that start series but have not yet read the next yet. I guess I’m kind of noncommittal.

I didn’t do much this weekend except play ultimate I think. There was great weather and we had a good turnout, so it was a lot of fun. I’m kind of sore still… I think I gave myself some minor shin splints again. =)

For some reason I was reflecting on one of my past work experiences. During one of my rotations at Freescale, I spent a few months at Metrowerks. Back in the day, they were known for CodeWarrior and dominated the Mac development scene before Apple started to release their own tools for free. At the time I was there, they provided the development tools for Nintendo and Sony (maybe still do… not sure) and even had a development Wii at the time (this was before the Wii was out). I got to play with a pre-release Wiimote by moving a bunch of dots and lines on the screen. How exciting! ;)

Anyways, I ended up not getting an offer to stay full time from the group primarily because I didn’t put in a lot of effort into meshing with the team there. I basically did my own thing siloed away and though I completed my project with positive reactions, the team ultimately decided that they’d hold off on the full time offer because they wanted me to integrate into the team more. Although they did a lot of cool things there, I wasn’t exactly convinced it was the right fit for me, so I wasn’t too disappointed with the outcome of that experience. However, I did learn the lesson that I need to engage at a level other than just delivering what’s asked of me to be successful in certain environments. I’m glad I didn’t get the job offer as I’m not sure I would be where I am today if I had. I look back at my rotation there positively, influencing me for the better, and helping me to be successful at BV.

So, here’s to you, Metrowerks. RIP.

Yes, I turned 27 over the past weekend. I didn’t really do much though… mostly sat around and read. There was some eating involved, though. On Friday, the usual gang went to Austin Land & Cattle, Saturday, I went to Asia Cafe with the family. Then finally on Sunday, Heather arranged for a small birthday thingy with a few peeps at Eddie V’s, then we went to a couple of coffee shops until we found one that was open and not packed.

Did something else happen? I can’t remember anymore… oh, I have cancelled my WoW account and we played Heroes of Newerth instead last night.

Oh yeah, and Melissa made me a website in the fashion of Andrew Approved: Things Owiber Wuvs!

Okay, so I returned Friday night, but my schedule’s pretty much back to normal now. For a while over the weekend, even though I seemed to have quickly returned to a normal sleep schedule, I think my eating schedule was still off. I felt like I wanted to eat even though I had already eaten and felt full still. Hungry and full at the same time. It was weird. Anyways, I’m good now.

I’ve used my Kindle pretty heavily and I read three books on my London trip: Ender’s Game, Hunger Games, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’m also now about 90% through the first Wheel of Time book. That one starts pretty slow, but it’s finally picking up now.

On Saturday, I was really looking forward to playing ultimate again and it was pretty fun. Last night, we skipped WoW (didn’t have enough people to raid) and played DotA instead, which was also good to get back to. We need to start HoN sometime soon… =)

Oh, and as usual, Flickr (but not my account!) has photos from the London Summit.

Apparently the US decided to warn against traveling to Europe after I arrived. Oh well. =)

I spent most of the flight reading Ender’s Game, which I enjoyed. I’m liking my Kindle so far! Unfortunately, because I was reading instead of sleeping, I was not prepared at all to stay awake so I crashed once I got to my hotel (morning UK time). I ended up sleeping way too long and woke up at around 11PM. I lounged around a bit until it was early AM when I realized I was pretty hungry, but everything was closed (that I was aware of). I waited until around 5AM and found a McDonald’s. Never been happier to see one.

On the flight over, I sat next to a super cobra pilot who was flying to London to watch the Ryder Cup before going back to Afghanistan. He told me that the GPS, maps, and screen on the iPad are so much better than what’s installed in the cobra, that he carries one along with him (they hack it to hook it up to their GPS antennas on the cobra). Plus, he told me, they can play music and play games with it while they wait around. I thought that was pretty amusing.

I’ve managed to stay out of the rain so far, which I was actually a little surprised about. I had to wander around a handful of stores before I found a grounded/3-prong power converter I could use. I’ve left my camera in the bedroom safe because I didn’t want to risk getting it wet (in hindsight, I wish I’d taken it out since I lucked out not getting rained on), but I went to visit Kensington Gardens and ate at an indian place called Zaika which was well rated on Yelp UK. It was not bad, but pricey. Probably wouldn’t go back.

Oh, and there’s a tube strike now. Woo! Mind the gap!

So that game was pretty terrible. I’m kind of glad I’ll be in London for the OU game cause I don’t think I want to watch anymore UT football until they stop beating themselves.

Besides that, the weather was pretty good for a fun ultimate game, we played a decent amount of DotA, I got a haircut, went to Parkside for Tiff’s birthday, skyped with Melissa after she returned from Thailand and… what else… maybe that’s it. I slept a lot probably. =p

I ordered a Kindle to prepare for my upcoming international flights (London at the end of this week and Hong Kong for New Year’s). I’m thinking I’ll finally read Ender’s Game and maybe start on the Harry Potter books. We’ll see.

Update: Oh! I almost forgot… I also watched Sharktopus, which was horrible and awesome.

This weekend, we had a pretty sweet game of ultimate. The weather was great and we ended with a pretty good 4v4. After ultimate, we watched the really unenjoyable UT/Tech game and then Saturday night was really boring after that. Viraj and I just sat around watching dumb TV until Mark showed up then we played a few games of DotA against computers.

Sunday was not much more eventful, but I went to campus Torchy’s and ate with Sam, Oriana, Steph and Laudie. After that, I repeated the sitting around bored at my house with Sam. Eventually, I remembered that I got loaned a set of Planetary comics so I started reading those again. I finished it not too long ago. Pretty enjoyable.

I think I pretty much just played a lot of DotA this weekend. That, and ultimate which was pretty tiring as we had a low number of people (means more running). It was pretty fun though.

I purchased Halo: Reach but have not played it yet…

The past week or so the traffic on 360 has been terrible! I hear it’s because some side streets are still closed. =( At least there’s hope that it will get better… I thought someone just messed with the light timings to mess everyone up.