You know what pisses me off?

Well, there's lots of things but here's a few:

- Evite: If you organize an event and click the checkbox that says 'email me when guests reply,' it doesn't email you! WTF? I'm honestly surprised they haven't fixed this because I doubt I'm the only one who's complained. Also, it would be really nice if you could mouse-over a name and it would show a picture of the person - kinda like Gmail does - since you don't always remember names, but you do remember faces. I hate Evite.

- The waiter at Gloria's: Maybe you want to ask next time you pack the boxes up separately. How do you know we weren't on a date? You don't think I could be on a date with a girl like that? Asshole.

- The stock market: One day you're up 20%, next day you're only up 10%. This whole investing thing is far more emotional that I thought it'd be. And the thing that really pisses me off is that Apple went down 6% today because some analyst said they'd be cutting production of the iPod/iPhone. Um, what? Not someone at Apple, not someone who knows something about what goes on at Apple, but an analyst. My guess is that the analyst wants Apple stock himself so he made something up to make the price go down. Asshole.

Okay, enough griping. Maybe next time I'll post about things that amuse me.

Oh, but before I go, a couple of pop culture tidbits: Britney and K-Fed's divorce has been finalized, The Simple Life has been canceled (I know, I was shocked too!), and Lindsay Lohan's new movie is the worst reviewed movie of the year.

Even if it's true?

Is it rude to tell a waitress that she should quit and become a stripper because she could make a lot more money?

Stocks, Harry Potter, Yoga

Stocks
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Back in grade school, we had this project in Math class where we had an imaginary portfolio and had to invest $10,000 dollars in however many stocks we wanted.  The winner at the end of the 6-week project would get a prize (or maybe it was an A on the project, I don't remember).

It was in Math class because we didn't have this newfangled gizmo called the Internet where you could easily look up the stock quotes.  Nope, you actually had to know the ticker symbol of the companies and go to the newspaper and manually search the thousands of stocks to see the closing price.  It was a pain in the ass.

After you did that, you had to calculate your total by multiplying your number of shares times the price per share.  Also, a pain in the ass, especially if you had a lot of stocks.

Well, thank god for the Internet.  Investing in stocks is a lot easier now that everything is calculated automatically.  For some reason, I've decided to take a lot more interest in stocks and recently invested in both Amazon and Apple.  I still haven't completely figured out the websites, but I do know that green numbers are good and red numbers are bad. 

I need to move some more money around and invest in a few more companies,

Harry Potter
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Last night, I saw the newest HP flick.  We arrived too late (20 minutes before it started), and had to sit in the front row.  Normally at a concert or play or something, that would be the perfect seats.  Well, not so much at a movie.  Harry was definitely larger than life, and not in a good way.

It was a great movie though, with lots of special effects and interesting character development.  Daniel Radcliffe is finally becoming a decent actor.

I heard the IMAX version has a 20-minute 3D ending which would be awesome to see..

Speaking of Harry Potter, the final book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) comes out next Friday.  I've already gotten some people interested in attending a book release party (where everyone goes to a Barnes and Noble and dresses up and plays games while waiting for the book to be released).  It would be even more fun if we combined it with a happy hour beforehand and got to the party a little buzzed ("What the hell am I doing at a bookstore at 11pm on a Friday night? And why is everyone dressed up??")

Yoga
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I guess I haven't mentioned it on here yet, but I've been taking yoga classes for a few weeks now.  I'm taking the kind where you exercise in a warm room (98.6 degrees, 60% humidity) and hold different poses for 90 minutes.  It's excruciating but also a great workout.

I thought today's class was more difficult than normal, and found out that the room was 103.5 degrees!  I could barely walk when class was over.

Speaking of hot, our teacher today was incredibly attractive.  Most of them are older, but this one seemed to be newer and younger.  I hope she teaches again.

Highs/Lows

I went up to DC to visit my family for the 4th of July. There were some definite highs and also some lows.

Highs
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- I hadn't seen my parents or sister since we met up in Minnesota at the end of March. I also hadn't seen most of my other family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) since Thanksgiving.
- My parents and uncle said I'm looking 'healthier,' even though I haven't gained any weight recently or noticed any difference myself.
- We went to DC for fireworks and the concert on the Mall. My dad had talked about how great the DC fireworks were and it was pretty cool to see them in person.
- All 4 of us went to Shenandoah National Park for some sightseeing. Although we had already seen most of that kind of stuff before, it was still fun to go on a road trip since we used to go on them a lot when I was younger.

Lows
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- My sister is suffering from some mysterious ailment that causes her to be dizzy and/or tired for long periods of time. The blood tests came out negative and the MRI didn't show anything significant and we're still waiting for results from her EEG.
- I mentioned my uncle's cancer earlier, but to see him in person was unreal. His memory and vision have been affected to the point where he can't remember certain words, can't see anything on his right side, and needs a few seconds to focus on objects. My mom said that he couldn't remember how to use the phone after he came back from surgery. All the family in the area is doing everything they possibly can to help him, but the situation is pretty bad.

Greatest Marketing Ever?

Last Friday, Evan Almighty opened in theaters nationwide. It's a humorous look at how an average guy is picked by God to build an ark to prepare for the flood. I haven't seen the movie yet, but there are parts where the sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Everyone thinks he's crazy for preparing for a flood.

This morning, the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I thought the meteorologists were crazy for predicting rain for the next two days. On the way home, there was a torrential downpour and I must have driven through at least 5 lakes.

If this isn't the greatest marketing gimmick ever, I don't know what is. Not only is it free, but it affects EVERYONE.

Lame

I've decided that all of my guy friends are lame.

Tonight at happy hour, we had a golden opportunity when 2 girls came to our table (since the place was packed and there were no empty tables) and asked if they could share our table.

We said yes, and one guy actually got up and offered his seat.

After one of the girls sat down, we had no idea what to do. No one said a word and we probably seemed either really creepy or really lame. About a minute passed, and the girl decided it'd be better to sit on the steps than to share the table with us.

Ouch.

New blog!

All the random quotes I hear will now be posted at:

http://overheardinthesumeetzone.blogspot.com

Movies, etc.

"No one's been in here all night. We have everything."
"Then why did we come here?"
"I don't know. Why did you?"

"Don't worry. I haven't had time to spit in your food."
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Wow, I've seen a lot of movies the last couple of weeks. This week I saw Spider-Man 3 and Ocean's 13. Last week it was Pirates 3. Somehow all the studios timed it perfectly so that this summer is all about the sequels. And not just the second in the series. It's always the 3rd (Spider-Man, Shrek, Pirates, Ocean's, Rush Hour). Except, of course, for Harry Potter, which I believe is on movie #5.

I also rented The Godfather and Goodfellas since I'd heard a lot about them and they're supposedly two of the best movies ever made. I dunno if I agree with that assessment, but they were pretty good.

I also watched Labyrinth (a fantasy movie about this girl trying to find her brother in a labyrinth) after my friend recommended it. I didn't get what was so great about it. Well, except for Jennifer Connelly, and she was like 15 in the movie.
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Oh, I guess I should explain the quote. We went to eat after Ocean's 13 yesterday and got to the restaurant at like 10 or so. Obviously, the staff was not very happy since they had probably been working all night and just wanted to go home.

So our waitress didn't try and hide that fact at all. It probably had a lot to do with our group, but she couldn't even take our orders with a straight face.

I can see how a lot of people might be irritated by someone like that, but I thought her attitude was great. She had spunk, she had moxie. It was kinda hot.
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On a more somber note, my uncle's cancer has returned and he had surgery again yesterday. Thankfully, everything went well and his condition exceeded even the doctor's expectations.

Race for the Cure update

In a company meeting where the boss basically chewed everybody out for not working fast enough:
Boss: Sumeet, you're doing a great job. Thanks.
Me: Haha.. thanks.
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I participated in the Race for the Cure this morning - a 5k walk/run to raise money for breast cancer research. I'm terrible at estimating crowds, but I'd say there were at least 5,000 people there (if not more).

I thought everyone in our group was going to walk the whole thing, but they decided it would be better to run most of it.

Yikes. Yeah, I'm really out of shape. That's the most I've run in a very, very long time. I'm sore right now and probably will be for a couple of days.

It was still a great event and I'm glad I went. They handed out all sorts of swag at the end too (wristbands, bananas, Popsicles, bagels, frisbees/fans) so that was pretty fun.

And what better way to end a charity event than a trip to get margaritas? We went to Cozymel's afterwards for lunch. I felt like quite the alcoholic as we waited outside for the restaurant to open just to get a margarita.. Oh, but our race t-shirts came in handy as the restaurant comped our desserts ;)

Nerd Post (RIP Veronica Mars)

Now that Veronica Mars has officially ended its oh-so-brief run, I'm going to have to find some other equally superficial topic to rant/rave about. I'm not sure what it will be yet, but here's a fun nerd post for now (well, it's not really that nerdy -- I won't name names, but I've read some REALLY nerdy posts, and this doesn't come close).
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My new job requires me to use Windows XP. For the 3+ years before that, I had been using Linux for my work environment. It hasn't been a huge deal to switch (more point-and-clicking, less typing), but the main thing that I had gotten used to was the "virtual" desktops in Linux. Basically, you could have several different backgrounds and taskbars which made it easy to separate programs that had nothing to do with each other (email/chat on desktop #1, documents on desktop #2, source code on desktop #3).

Well, after searching for a bit online, I found out that Microsoft has developed what they call "PowerToys," and one of them is a "virtual desktop manager." It's not quite the same as the built-in Linux feature (the process to move a program to a different desktop is a little more complicated), but it's a lot better than just having one desktop. Now I have 4 "desktops" and 2 monitors at work.

Check it out: Microsoft's PowerToys
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They removed the mouseover in Gmail that revealed the sender's email address (or even displayed their picture if they set one) without opening the message. The feature appeared one day without notice and now it's disappeared just as quickly. Normally, Google makes a big announcement or at least describes the new feature somewhere, but I never saw anything about this one. I've also never seen them remove a feature from any of their products (especially without warning).

I hope they bring it back.

Good news, bad news, lunch

Me: You could be a trophy wife for some people.
Female friend #1: For some people?!? Could I be a trophy wife for you?
Me: Well... I dunno about that.
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First the good news:

Paris' sentence cut in half!

"the Sheriff has agreed to reduce the amount of time she'll have to serve to 23 days. The Sheriff has also agreed to put her in a celebrity cell, away from the general population."

Now the bad news:

Veronica Mars canceled!

I can't believe it. It was the only good show left on television. Now what am I going to watch?

As for lunch, we had this terrible waitress who couldn't get our orders right, forgot our drinks, and was overall very absent-minded. She was pretty hot though, and I felt sorry for her since she had to manage 10 tables on her own, so I gave her a big tip.

Female bathroom attendants?

You know how they have bathroom attendants in some bars/clubs?

Well, I think it'd be awesome if they had female bathroom attendants in the men's restroom.

You might think that'd be kinda creepy, but I honestly think they'd get more tips than the guys currently do. Especially if they're attractive and follow the same dress code as the waitresses/bartenders.
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Happy hour tonight was pretty eh (as usual). We won another VIP party at the same place as my birthday (which meant cheaper drinks and free appetizers). It was nice weather tonight, so they put us on the porch and instead of having to fight for table space, we got a huge area for the entire night. We ended up needing it though since we had about 13-14 people total.

Overall, there were fewer people than my birthday party, but it was still a good turnout and great to see everyone again.

Race for the Cure

On a more serious note, I am participating in the Race for the Cure this year to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness.

If you would like to make a donation, please visit my page at:

http://race.komennorthtexas.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=1010&px=1089226

Gwen concert

I went to my second Gwen Stefani concert last night. The first one was back in 2005 (I'm sure there's a post about it somewhere). You're probably thinking it's unusual for a guy to like Gwen and to actually pay the money to go to a concert, and you're right!

The ratio was about 4-1 girls-to-guys. Of the guys who were there, they were either dragged there by their significant other or were gay. And then there was me.

There's certain advantages to having fewer guys; one being the bathroom line is ridiculously short, and another being that there's plenty of eye candy.

Back when tickets first came on sale, I thought it'd be a great idea to go. As the day neared, I started to wonder why I wanted to go in the first place.

It was an awesome concert though, so no regrets. Openers were this short British rapper named Lady Sovereign and R&B star Akon.

The girl next to me (who kept dropping all the papers from her wallet!) said Lady Sovereign was pretty good, but probably won't make it in the US since she has a really strong accent and people can't understand her. Yeah, it was definitely hard to understand her, but most of her songs had a good beat.

Akon rambled on about how he didn't care about money and started tossing out dollar bills. I looked it up this morning, and apparently he was dropped from Verizon for a risque onstage dance in the Carribean.

Funny that he can do freaky actions like that, but won't curse onstage (even though both Lady Sovereign and Gwen did). Oh, and one of his songs was about living in the ghetto, so he asked the crowd how many people actually lived in the ghetto. He obviously didn't see any of his audience since they were all upper-class white girls. Plus, I don't think anyone from the ghetto could afford the ticket prices. Ironic, don't ya think?

Then Gwen came out and did her thing. I hadn't heard most of the songs from her new album, but she played a lot of songs from the first album too so I wasn't completely lost. She also came out into the audience at one point. Oh, and she said that they're going to make a No Doubt album soon.

I still prefer the first Gwen concert since the Black Eyed Peas were the openers and it was just a better deal overall. But last night was still a great concert. There's nothing quite like the energy produced by 20,000 people.

VM quotes

Veronica: How is it that you have so many friends? You don't even like people.
Logan: And yet they adore me.

Veronica: Why settle for something not good just because it's something?
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I don't know why I keep posting quotes. I think it's because I read the overheard* websites too much and like to pretend that my quotes are somewhat comparable ;)

Memorable Quotes

My friend has been working at Verizon for a month (after getting laid off from her previous company) and she decided to have a party to celebrate. I had a coupon for a free pint of ice cream if you buy a cake and thought this would be a good time to use it.
Cake guy [after writing "Congrats" on the cake]: What's the congratulations for?
Me: Oh, our friend has been working somewhere for a month.
Cake guy (confused): Is that a record?
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Female friend: What time did yall leave the titty bar?
Me: Oh, do you still have my lunch box?
Male friend: Is that a euphemism?
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Me: Yeah, I haven't bought any of my game consoles. They were all either gifts or just bought by someone else.
Friend: Do you buy ANYTHING?
(To be fair, he's kinda right. Looking around my apartment, the only things I've bought on my own are the sofa, chair, and digital camera. Everything else is pretty much furniture from Austin. I'm spoiled, what can I say?)

Best Week Ever

My sister: Are you still at work?
Me: Yeah, but I'm about to leave in a bit to go to my party.
My sister: You're throwing your own birthday party?
Me: Yeah, but there's other people coming too.
My sister: Well obviously! You're not going to be sitting at home by yourself with a cake.
Me: And a birthday hat.
My sister: I love how the hat is crucial to the party.
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Wow, this week has been ridiculously busy. I started my new job on Monday, and so far, it seems like it'll be a fun place to work with interesting projects. We're also looking to grow and move to another office so that be a fun change in the near future.

On Wednesday, I went with a few friends to the opening night of the musical Wicked (the story of the Wicked Witch of the West and why she became "evil"). I wasn't a fan of the book since nothing in it overlapped with the original Wizard of Oz. I read the book a long time ago, and don't remember a whole lot of it, but most of the second half of the musical seemed to be completely different than the book. It was for the better though, because they tied in Dorothy's story to a much greater degree. It was very well-done, too. I wish I had brought binoculars or gotten the headsets though. I couldn't hear a lot of the songs, and could never make out the faces of the singers (we were pretty far back). We were talking about it on the way home, and realized that they turned the entire story into a huge love story even though the original Wizard of Oz was just about Dorothy trying to get home.

Yesterday was my 25th birthday. Yeah, I'm getting old. But I'm still younger than a lot of my friends, so there's always that. The first part of the day was mostly uneventful, but then we went out to a bar where my friend won a "VIP" party, which basically was free appetizers and slightly cheaper drinks. We had an awesome turnout and the crowd was pretty different from last year so it was good times and definitely one of my better birthdays. It was also nice to see everyone again, since I hadn't seen most of them in about 2 weeks (or even longer for some of them).

Poker Fun

Normally I don't post about poker since it's pretty much the same thing every time: same people and you either go up or down by a little.

Last night was interesting though, since we had several new people come.

We had enough players last night that we split into two tables.

There was the big table with a lot of new players and the smaller table with all the regular players.  I was at the big table.  I like to think I have a fair amount of patience, but my god, some of the people were ridiculously slow.  We had one guy who seriously seemed like he was on something.  We talked about him after he left (as we tend to do), and others thought the same thing. Then there was the guy who's a semi-regular and is just incredibly slow and a little dumb. After you've played 4 or 5 times, you're not allowed to say that people need to "help you out."  Especially if you keep winning big pots.

It was definitely better to play on a Saturday than our weird Sunday night games, since you can play til whenever.  I think I left at like 2 am (we started around 7:30), and people were still playing.
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New guy (looking at a friend's Illinois t-shirt): You and I have a connection.
Friend: Uhhh, whatever signals you thought you were getting were being misinterpreted. We don't have a connection.
New guy: No no.. [Illinois basketball player] Carter went to the same middle school as me!

New guy #2: Hey Sumeet, am I big?
Me (looking away): Um, yeah, you're big blind.

Me: I didn't like that guy ______.
Friend: You don't like anyone.
Me: True.

Reality TV

I thought I was over reality television, but I was wrong.

Last night, both The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll and American Idol were on.

Before last night's episode, I favored Melissa S because she did a really good job last week. Well, the episode changed my mind and I think I like Chelsea (the short girl who sings really well but can't dance). If she can work on her dancing, I think she may have a shot at winning the whole thing. Oh, and then there's Melissa R, the exotic girl who won immunity because she was the best backup dancer to the real Pussycat Dolls. I still find the whole premise of the show hilarious. It feels almost like a Chappelle's Show skit the way all the girls keep talking about how it's their dream to be a Pussycat Doll.

On American Idol, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I like the (only) hot girl left, Haley. As Simon put it, "I like your tactic. Wear as little clothing as possible. You know you can't win on your vocals, since everyone here is a better singer than you." Maybe. But if I just wanted to hear people sing, I would turn on the radio. This is television, where you have to look good too. The best finals possible would be Sanjaya vs. Haley. Neither of them are great singers, and the reason they've made it this far is because of their looks. You read it here first.

Shreveport

We went to Shreveport this past weekend to celebrate the April birthdays in the group (over Easter weekend, too - isn't it ironic?).

If you've even heard of Shreveport, you know it's a gambling town with a bunch of riverboat casinos. It was hilarious because one of the guys asked if there would be gambling involved. The rest of us were just stunned. I don't know why you would sign up for a 2-day trip and not realize what it was all about. We made fun of him for that comment the entire trip.

Since there's not a whole lot to do in Shreveport, this post could only be incredibly interesting if either a) I lost all of my life savings or b) I won a massive jackpot.

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but neither of those things happened. I ended up down a lot (maybe even the most in the group), but I still had a lot of fun. I went to Shreveport a couple years ago, but this trip was way more fun (we also had fewer people last time). It's true what they say; as long as you have the right group of people, any event can be a lot of fun.

Since it was seven guys and no girls, it reminded me a lot of my friend's bachelor party in Vegas back in October.
~~~
At the poker table:

Older woman: What do you do for a living?
Me: Um, I'm a computer programmer. What about you?
Older woman: I'm a teacher. I was asking because you have the fingers of a surgeon or a pianist.

Maybe I picked the wrong career...