Visiting long time friends

I typically prefer not to blog "diary" or "journal" type entries but I'll make an exception today (and whenever I feel like it again in the future). I made it a priority this week to hang out with some bay area friends that I have not seen in a long while. During the conversations, I was trying to remember when I last saw them, I just couldn't remember. So I want to blog it here to help me remember in the future.

Early part of the week, I had met up with Carolyn, JLT, Joel and the kids. I had a kind of weird/embarrassing incident before I went over to JLT and Joel's home. I was at a work offsite at City Beach and agreed to bring over some King Egg rolls (what I always bring to people's houses). The closest King Egg roll on the way was in Newark. As I came out of King Egg rolls, I was startled by a man who was standing close to me while I was about to get into my car. During the moment I thought he was making some unusual noises with his mouth and given his proximity, I made a dash for my car without hesitation. The man happened to be hispanic, noticed my dash and as I was in my car, he tried to speak to me through the car window and asked something along the lines of "do you think I am crazy?" in spanish. I was embarrassed because I didn't want him to think I was being racist or fearful of him because he was hispanic. But at the same time I was startled enough at the moment that embarrassment/awkwardness were ok if it meant that I had zero risk of being in harms way. The rest of the evening turned out a lot better at JLT and Joel's house. It was great to catch up. Naomi and Nolan are growing up so fast now. Naomi talks a lot more now and says some of the cutest, darndest things. Nolan is walking now. He even approached me on his own several times and gave me hugs and I thought to myself, "Hey, I could get use to this." I still feel a little shy and awkward around kids but maybe it will be different when we have our own.

The next evening Alice and I had dinner at Tsunami Sushi in MountainView. We also had a nice chat about a lot of things. Even though Alice and I don't see each other a whole lot, it's pretty much as if we just spoke the day before (which is a good thing). Our waitress was also very gracious - much more so than other restaurants. Being a skeptic, I thought to myself, "How can anyone be this kind? She can't be this nice to everyone." So as we walked out, I looked back and and I tried to observe the waitress while she was interacting & not interacting with other customers and she seemed to have the same genuine, gracious demeanor. I was impressed.

Ellie and Ben's visit

Next door to Nubi Yogurt - an outdoor seating area for a restaurant still being built. I was trying to see if the natural lighting would work better than the flash.

Eating at Maki Yaki

Ellie and Ben recently came back from Korea and we met up for dinner last night. The pictures above, are from our new P&S camera - the Canon SD870IS with all settings in auto mode. Our older Canon S400 died. It's been on it's last leg for some time now - a lot of memory card errors. I tried different memory cards, re-seating the memory cards, and changing the batteries . Each of these seemed to work for a little while but after the last weekend, I couldn't get the errors to go away. I even tried taking the camera apart to see if I could verify the "internal bios battery" but I think I made the problem worse as the the camera would not turn on properly anymore. I kind of gave up at that point and decided to just get a new camera.

There are so many new features on the current gen of cameras compared to our old S400 but the wide angle feature of SD870IS was what won me over. I'm hoping to get more comfortable with the all manual settings.

Short Bay Area trip

Last week, Viks and I were in the BA for a few days. From the looks of it today, Viks will be doing additional fellowship training with Dr. C starting next summer. I'm really excited for Viks since this has been a very challenging year for her to say the least but now the future looks incredibly bright. We were both invited to Dr. C and her husband's (also Dr. C) home for dinner. Aside from their impressive credentials, accomplishments and business acumen, what struck me was how both Dr C's are so down to earth and gracious.

We dropped by Mike's place to check out his new Epson 1080UB front projector set up. Mike seems to be pretty happy with his new set up. And I don't blame him. Wow is all I can say. Out of the box and with good HD material, the Epson has nice saturated colors, lots of punch and a high contrast image. The image is also sharp, bright, and there are nice control settings if you want to adjust grayscale and primaries/secondaries. The unit also has good zoom and lens shift for placement flexibility. Historically, I've been much more of a fan of DLP but the current Epson has definitely changed my perception of LCD front projectors. LCD has come a long way! However, what does concern me re: LCD PJs are dust blobs (afaik, the optic path is not sealed) and panel misconvergence as this a 3 chip LCD but these issues could be more of an exception rather than the norm. Viks was more interested in playing with Mike and Christie's foster pups but even she commented on how nice and sharp the image was. So maybe I can upgrade soon! hehe.

We also went to check out Eric and Ivy's newly remodeled home. Their place looks nice and it's great to see all their hard work paying off for them. It kind of inspired us (or at least me) to want to pursue a beater home and fix it up as well despite knowing all the time, effort, and pain involved. But for now we're gonna take a wait and see approach with regards to buying our next home. I think the housing market has more bad news to absorb such as Alt-A and prime loan resets. From all sources I've read and people I've spoken to, we are supposedly only in the 3rd inning of this housing debacle. Hopefully, we can time things better this next go around as opposed to our current home.

Before we flew back we even squeezed in a mini day trip to 17 mile drive. The weather was great. Everytime we go there, it feels like a mini vacation to me. They even have some paved bike trails so a future bike trip by the ocean sounds interesting.

Sabrina and Jon's wedding

@ the Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel

Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.

Lately, a lot of AVS'ers have been complaining about the film studios butchering their hi-def releases with excessive digital noise reduction and edge enhancement. The DNR attempts to remove film grain but the issue is that fine detail is also removed. For example, faces will have an unnatural, wax-like appearance - or think botox. The edge enhancement tries to sharpen the image but can result in halos around objects. I am in the camp that likes film grain, I can see these anomalies and they do bother me. But to be perfectly honest, I can live with the imperfections of DNR/EE as long as there is appreciable upgrade to the standard definition release. I would probably not want to admit this on AVS as I would just end up being flame bait. I recently picked up Dark City and this is a title that could have an AKA of "DNR/EE City." DNR/EE are both there but for me the pros (it's a new directors cut, 1080p transfer) outweigh the cons.

Paramount released a decent blu ray transfer of The Hunt for Red October with minimal DNR and EE. It's not razor sharp and colors are not brilliantly saturated like many new releases but for a catalog title that is almost 20 years old, it looks pretty darn good to my eyes. Well worth the purchase if you love the movie.

I remember a few years ago having a Sean Connery impersonation contest with an old college friend,
Captain Ramius: Re-verify our range to target... one ping only.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Captain, I - I - I just...
Captain Ramius: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Aye, Captain.