Marketing

So whoever came up with this idea is brilliant…

Back in Pittsburgh, one time while shopping at Giant Eagle, I got a register coupon for some amount off one bottle of this new 100% juice stuff (I had been buying a lot of juice, stupid tracking buying habits). So I figured, “Eh, why not?” and bought a bottle the next time with the coupon, only to receive a coupon for slightly more than twice as much off two bottles of the same juice.
Naturally, I had to do it and, of course, when I did I got a coupon for slightly more than 1.5x off three bottles.

The same thing has been happening here at Safeway. Once while shopping I got a coupon for like $0.30 off one package of lean pockets. When I used it, I got a coupon for $0.75 off two packages of lean pockets. I am now in possession of a coupon for $1.25 off any three packages of lean pockets. Tricky tricky.

I’m half tempted to keep buying them just to see if/when they stop. Maybe I’ll get a coupon evenually for like $100 off 150 packages or something >_<

I think I’m going to be getting lean pockets again next time I shop.

San Francisco

My parents left this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this alone. Meh.

Moved into our apartment. It is very pretty and awesome. I think the best part is the location… one or two blocks down one direction is Japantown. This means that, not only is there authentic (and affordable!) Japanese food (bento boxes, real ramen, sushi galore), but that there’s also a Japanese bookstore (that sells game art books at really good prices), but also a Japanese collectables shop (games, giant robot figurines [Dan would love the store], cards) and video shops (anime, movies). Also a Japanese grocery store that sells these tasty things (fresh, not frozen! :D):

Yesterday’s lunch was a tasty bento. Yesterday’s dinner was delicious cold soba and sushi and tempura. I could live like this :D

One or two blocks down the other way is a Best Buy, Mervyns, Trader Joe’s, and a bunch of Kaiser medical facilities (which will be my insurance company). Convenient one-stop shopping, and it’s on the busline that I’ll take home from work, so I can just stay on the bus for a little bit longer and stop by and play Rock Band every day after work.

One or two blocks down another way is a bunch of restaraunts of various cuisines (Thai, Korean, Italian, etc). The other way is a ton of coffee shops.

The apartment itself is really pretty. The layout is actually ideal for two people sharing it, since the single bathroom has two doors (so I don’t have to go through the bedroom to get to it).

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos for you, since my 28-80mm lens decided to break. I think some of the glass just shifted or something, since it is no longer able to properly focus at things further than 3 feet away at the 80mm end (even in manual focus mode… the focus ring simply won’t turn far enough). It’s probably fixable, but likely not worth the trouble. On the plus side, I now have a nice macro lens that can focus much closer than any normal 28-80mm lens… In any case, this kinda gives me an excuse to drop $300-$500 on the 18-200mm lens that I’ve been looking at.

So yeah. Orientation for work is tomorrow. I’m nervous as hell. Also lonely. People should send me emails and letters (my physical address is on my Facebook profile).

Life, the universe, and thou

Life has been interesting lately.

The thread library was due Friday. Given that we had run largetest and successfully created and exitted and joined over 1.2 million threads, I think our library was fairly good. We did some comment and code cleanup on Friday and handed in on time.


Wean has entered the 410 zone.
What that means is that the kernel came out Friday… I’ve been studying the spec and going around writing pseudocode this weekend. I really feel like I should have gotten more done, but alas, such is a lazy weekend.

Next week is going to be death. Flight to California on Thursday, OS midterm on Tuesday, an in-Pittsburgh interview on Wednesday, and oh-god-lots-of-kernelling this weekend after I get back because checkpoint 1 is on Monday.

Car, Jeff, Tyler, Alan, and I experimented with chocolate bacon,

and chocolate-dipped salt-and-vinegar chips.

The former was interesting, the latter was vile.

There was more CS volleyball on Friday.
I think I’m getting better at anticipating action, because this set of photos came out better than previous times’.





In any case, I should sleep. Tomorrow is class, work (last day for a couple weeks), interview, kernelling, and studying for midterm. Ahhhh death!

Toronto day 2

Today was spent walking around Toronto, visiting various places.
We walked a few miles to a park that was recommended by the local “things to do” paper only to be highly disappointed. The plants were mostly dried up and dying, there were weeds everywhere, and the fountain things that were recommended weren’t all that interesting. Then we walked around the Chinatown area and found a bunch of really cheap fruits and vegetables (tomatoes at $0.15 each… a thing of strawberries for $1…).
We also found something that lambert would love: a cheese store. That resulted in us deciding to have a dinner of (imported French) brie on crackers and fresh mozzarella with tomato with strawberries and green tea ($0.79/box)… all for about $4/person.

We’re heading to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) later tonight to browse their exhibits, and tomorrow will probably be spent travelling the city by streetcar and visiting the island via ferry.

Arrr

This song Change (Jason Nevins Dance/Pop Radio Edit) might be the first song I’ve listened to where the remix is better than the original song. It’s truly an awesome remix for an already fairly awesome song. I love getting new music, even though I really can’t afford it right now :)

Life has been incredibly awesome and happy lately, despite this weekend consisting mostly of me being lazy and not getting work done and now, as a result, being incredibly behind in classwork and likely going to fail the graph theory exam tomorrow. I think Friday night was the most awesome time I’ve ever had in a long time. There was chocolate fondue (courtesy of Mars and Dan, I believe), awesome games, spending time with friends/people I care about, and some awesome conversation until 5:30 AM.
There was also a Tim getting eaten by his bed.

There was also scary ponytail-Dan-thing

There was an ITG sightreading tournament on Saturday that I went to and photographed for a bit. It had a rather impressive turnout.

So yeah, this weekend has been full of laziness and graph theory studying (and I’m still going to fail, ahhh!). Also worked a bit on my paper for photo history. I should have been coding networks. Bleh. At least we ended up doing well on p2. Yay for doing well on projects.

Life makes me so happy… friends make me so happy…
Why are people so awesome?