Am I jumping the gun? Who knows. Let's hope this works out.

Brandon, if it were not for you, I would not have gained the confidence to believe in myself. I would not have gone that extra mile, that extra step, to really step out of my comfort zone into the real world. Your unconditional love for me prompted me to love myself. And for that, there are no words to convey my gratitude.

Happy anniversary sweetie. May we have many more "first dates" and many more "first kisses."

Happy birthday, Matt. Now you can buy your own alcohol ;)

I really like this shot of me that Courtney took. I think maybe it's because I look so comfortably focused on the phone. I also like the shadowy effect from the lamp.

Here's hoping it'll get here by next week so I can go get my dress hemmed. Joy!

PS. I'm still hemming and hawwing on whether to go get my hair professionally done for the wedding. I'm not too worried about makeup (I'll just lay on some foundation and add some lipstick. And maybe let my mom add more makeup, I don't know). But the hair! I'd like it tied back or tied up. But I don't know the "correct" way. I'll have to look around the area for places that do hair up-dos.

On a brighter note, I recently received some Homestar Runner goodness by way of Fed Ex. Got me a Strong Bad t-shirt and the Strong Bad DVD. I am in Strong Bad heaven.

Now excuse me while I spend the next hour or so dissecting this DVD. It'll help rid me of my CES envy. Strong Bad Nirvana, here I come.

This is the deal: By and large, I prefer Nintendo over Sony, company-wise. I'm just one of those people that would rather play a Mario game than a Final Fantasy game. I'd rather stick to tried-and-true favorites like Mario Kart than try the Johnny-come-latelies like Crash Bandicoot. I don't buy the idea that Mario is the "past" and that I have to "move on." Hey, I like these simple kinds of games. I don't want to play some highly involved game with high-falutin 3D-rendering and an orchestral soundtrack. Simple gameplay is the only thing I really care about, and the Nintendo gives me that satisfaction. Plus, Nintendo has this knack of churning out timeless characters like Mario and Zelda. I'm sure the Playstation have similar versions of them, but I just have this connection to Mario that I can't shake. So, as far as game choices go, I'd rather take Nintendo's side.

However, as much as I appreciate the dual-screen design of the DS, the PSP simply trumps the DS in terms of design. The DS looks bulky and awkward. The stylus-usage, while handy, still seems a little clumsy. Then again, the use of a stylus might give it an edge in FPS and RTS games (since it simulates the movements of a mouse cursor), so the stylus isn't completely horrible and does have actual gameplay value. But I'm not convinced that a stylus repeatedly stabbing at the screen won't cause some damage somehow. I think Nintendo missed the boat by trying to change the Gameboy into a pseudo-PDA.

And then there's the PSP. It's sexy. It's slender. It's curvy. It's glossy. It's sleek. It looks tactile and comfortable to hold. There's that beautiful screen with all those lovely colors. THIS is a portable gaming system. Not a PDA. Not a Sidekick-wannabe. It's a full-blown gaming device (that said, I'm sure some enterprising hackers will try to surf the web on the thing). The PSP guys got it. They knew that design is important when it comes to portable gaming devices. Why? Because you're going to be carrying this thing around with you. You want it to be thin, and light, and unobtrusive. And of course, you want it to look cool so that others will envy you. In the world of handheld gaming beauty contests, the PSP wins first prize.

But the game choices for the PSP are simply not interesting to me. Tony Hawk? Er, no. NFL Street? Heck no. Gran Tourismo? No again. It's a little upsetting. I like the PSP's design, but I prefer Nintendo games. In the end, I'm not motivated to get either of these devices. Someone suggested I simply get the Gameboy SP instead and just play the older games. And you know what? That probably is my best option at this point. Not until Nintendo and PSP suddenly join forces, which is highly unlikely.

PS. I'm not actually going to get the SP though. I waste enough time as it is, doing things like writing this blog entry. I don't need another time-sucking activity.

Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly), I managed to get through the entire dinner (plus Matt's afterparty) without getting involved in a tech discussion. I mostly listened intently, nodded, laughed, and fiddled around with other people's gadgets. Not that I didn't hear a lot of tech geek talk; I just didn't see the need for my participation. Curse my lack of tech knowledge! Also, I'm not sure if this sort of dinner would be very conducive to new bloggers -- seems to be more of a get-together of people who are already in-the-know. Of course, the dinner wasn't specifically meant for new bloggers, so the idea is probably moot.

As far as my actual participation in conversations, I did talk about other stuff. Like Indian food. And alcoholic beverages. And rainy weather. And San Francisco geography. And Flickr (Okay, ONE tech-related discussion). And other stuff I can't remember. Scoble had the right idea when he actually walked around and talked to people; then again, he IS the host of the darn thing. Other people mingled too, but all in all, a lot of people just kinda stuck to people they already knew. I'd propose some kind of icebreaker introduction game, but that'd be too radical and horrifying I'm sure.

Most of the actual fun took place at the afterparty at Monsieur Mullenweg's place. It was great fun seeing Jonas and Jasmeet trading bartending duties. MJ and I flitted about arranging food on the dinner table, which turned out to be rather pointless since people didn't eat much anyway (to those who did eat -- those brownie squares? I made them. You may compliment me now.) After that, I mostly just lounged about being all lazy. I took some photos, ate, drank, played around with my Powerbook, and gossiped. It was fun. Kudos to Matt for letting us use his apartment as our playpen, so to speak.

More talk of the dinner/afterparty: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Photos of the dinner/afterparty:
Mine: here, and here.
Jasmeet's: here, and here.
Jason's: here.
Jonas's: here

PS. One of the more exciting parts of the day for me, was what happened BEFORE the dinner even took place. But I've been warned by certain parties that names cannot be used in the re-telling of events. And there's really no way to tell the story without everyone knowing who I'd be talking about. So it'll have to remain a mystery... for now.

In 2005, I hope to continue this trend. The following are my goals for 2005. I'm realistic enough to admit that I might not accomplish all of them, but I hope to at least have a 90% success rate.

• Get married to this guy.
• Get on the ball about applying for a permanent residency as soon as possible. This means reading up on all the laws and regulations.
• Get back on the healthy diet regiment (I've lapsed a little during the holidays).
• Get back to the gym. Again, I've lapsed a little recently.
• Get that driver's license.
• Give it my all at the WIRED Magazine internship. And hopefully stay on.
• Read my RSS feeds on a daily basis.
• Brush up on my CSS skills.
• Switch over to Wordpress (mostly due to Matt). Might not switch over entirely, but we'll see.
• Learn more about PHP and MySQL.
• Get organized. Use the PDA to its full potential.
• Do more offline reading. This means magazines, books, etc.
• Get out of the shell even more.

I'm nothing if not ambitious.

Happy New Year everyone!

PS. Here's a list of 2005 New Year's Resolutions around the blogosphere.