now that i have all of these blogs that are pretty much just assets and not sites that i necessarily enjoy writing for, it’s left little time to blog about the regular stuff that i used to on this blog. as much as i know this displeases ben, kentomatic has always for the most part been a correspondence blog, and now that my friends are more dispersed than ever, you’d think i’d be doing more corresponding, not less. i do a fair amount of micro-blogging on twitter, but only ben, eric, james and stephan are following me on that, so i need to start finding the time to turn those tweets into full articles… or you could just follow me on twitter :)

so on to some good ‘ole corresponding!

this weekend we’re going up to big bear to celebrate sanam’s birthday and (for me at least) get in the first snowboarding of the year. i didn’t get any snowboarding in last year, so i’m going to try to make up for it this year. taka obviously can’t go because of the baby in her belly, and who knows how busy i’ll be next year, so yeh, i’m really looking forward to this trip.

the following weekend us ishi’s and the campy’s are gonna drive up to santa barbara s2000 style, for a mini-vacation since taka can’t really do much traveling but we wanted to go somewhere. i assume like last year, we’re just gonna eat at fancy restaurants and chill out. hopefully the weather won’t be as cold or rainy as it’s been recently. and speaking of the s2000, yesterday Honda announced that it will *finally* end production of the s2000. for 10 freakin’ (awesome) years that car has been essentially the same.

(and i see the irony in using anchored text to my other blogs in this post =p)

watching the inauguration and all of the celebrations today was pretty exciting. it’s rare that you watch something that you know will be a historic moment, something that will be in history books and talked about forever. and i’m excited about this new president and the changes he might bring to this country.

i also like the idea that my child will be born when there’s a black president in office. what was something i never thought i would see in my lifetime, will be something that they take completely for granted. for their world it will be the way it was. in my life i haven’t really seen too much racism, although my mom’s generation definitely did and it just gets exponential the further you go back. failing economy and everyone (including me) worrying about their jobs aside, i’m excited about the future.

like a king without a crown, today i am without a gym. i’m sure most of you know the circumstances that i had been going to my last gym, and today that long run ended. it wasn’t nearly as fantastic of an ending as i always feared/fantasized it would be which was a bit of a let down for all of the thinking i had done about it. if you have no idea what i’m talking about, i’m sorry.

so i need to figure out what to do next. i can’t exactly sign up at the last gym, because everyone there knows *me,* so i’m thinking about stepping up the class and joining the spectrum. that fancy guy eric has a spectrum membership so that would work out well. the problem is it’s facking expensive but if i can get a discount through my work, i might give it a shot. i’ve kinda grown weary of all the ghetto gyms i’ve been going to (no doubt reflective of the ghetto areas i’ve lived in).

oh man, what a guilty pleasure this show is. i love how they do the intro of a contestant and you can’t tell until the moment they open their mouth if they’re going to be really good or really bad. i find it hard to believe that some of these people are taking themselves seriously, but it doesn’t matter, i enjoy watching them make fools of themselves.

i also didn’t mind that bikini girl, katrina darrell, who had a tight body and a decent voice. she made it to hollywood, and i only hope she doesn’t get snooty and start wearing clothes. so far i really can not stand the new judge, Kara DioGuardi, who just seems irritating without the paula abdul charm and warmth. i’ll go ahead and give her a few more shows to find her place, but i wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t get the boot next season. so fire up your tivos, this… is american idol!

i haven’t been updating this or any of my other blogs as frequently as usual because i’ve seriously been spending almost all of my free time building, flying, crashing and researching r/c helicopters. a post or two ago, i mentioned how taka had bought me and r/c helicopter for christmas. after learning how to hover that thing (the axe cpv3), i’ve become addicted. i don’t want to even think about how much money i’ve spent repairing that thing from various, ridiculous and often comical crashes, but each time i do, i learn something new, and tend not to make that same mistake again. i can now hover in any orientation, fly circuits, do pirouettes and most other forms of basic flight, so pretty soon i’m going to move to 3d flight (rolls, flips, flying inverted), and i’m sure that learning process will be just as expensive if not more than my last one.

while i’ve been learning to fly with the axe cpv3 (and also on realflight g4, a simulator that has amazingly accurate physics), i’ve congruently been building an align t-rex 450, a larger, more professional and a woefully more expensive helicopter that most enthusiasts prefer. i’m happy though to learn most of the kinks of flying with my cheaper heli, before i start flying this one probably sometime at the end of the month.

i’m also about to start an electric r/c helicopter blog: miniheliblog.com. that will help keep the helicopter posts here to a minimum and i’m also going to experiment with movable type on the site, just because i’m getting kinda bored with wordpress.

while i’m waiting for batteries to charge, or for replacement parts to be shipped from the hobby shop, i’ve been playing fieldrunners on the iphone. i actually stopped playing for a while when i thought i had a secure position at the top among my gaming buddies (eric, ben and stephan), but stephan came back at me with a ridiculous score, and yesterday i spent a good chunk of my day regaining my crown. i’m sure stephan will take it back any minute it now, so i’m working on a higher score to have ready for him when he does.

edit: so stephan beat my level 104 by getting to level 129. i spent about 5 hours today getting to the same level and we agreed that it’s unbeatable. so for now we’re going to continue our competitiveness on the crossroads map.

at the very end, i was moving my inventory up to the end to try to get in front of the seemingly unstoppable helicopters on level 129 hard.

man it was hard getting up and going to work this morning, and damn it was cold. for the last 10 days or so i’ve just been lounging around flying r/c helicopters and playing fieldrunners on my iphone (just finished all 100 levels on medium). my birthday was on friday and my mom and taka took me out to this great yakitori restaurant and then on saturday celebrated with my friends at the lucky strike at the delamo mall. while it was much closer for me, it wasn’t as good as the one at the block, so we ended up going to a korean karaoke bar near my place and even though lauren was there, i had the highest karaoke score on some eminem song. good times.

so yeh, back to the daily grind. to be honest i was getting a bit bored since most of my other friends were working all the time, and bragging about being home alone was getting old. here’s to a good year at work everyone!

so i guess this thing is flyable. you both know how small this room is too:

here’s a video taka took of me hovering the helicopter. i’m pretty comfortable hovering tail-in (with the tail facing towards me) but it gets difficult in any other orientation. shortly after this video i tipped over on a landing a broke a blade grip. i swear i’ve been to the hobby shop almost every day this past week :)

taka and i rang in the new year at costin’s place with a few other couples. we played that partini game which was more entertaining than the commercial would lead you to believe and otherwise we just drank, ate horderves and chatted about the year past and the one coming up. it’s interesting how parties are starting to transition to the more mature. i guess it’s cause we’re growing up.