During my job interviews I was always asked why I started working on Gaim, and I would always tell them I became a contributor because that was what I used, and I used it often enough that some bugs bugged me. Well, that was then. What I usually don't tell them is that for the last couple years I really didn't live up to the title of "Crazy Patch Writer". Why? Because Gaim stopped being something that I care deeply about. Not that I've found anything better, but simply because I rarely chat online anymore. Sure, I am still subcribed to gaim-devel and gaim-commits, but I don't care as much as I did say, 3 years ago.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, probably around the time, the second time, that I realize I really don't have many friends. You see, when I was a kid, when I was in Elementary School that is, I actually thought I had friends. Plenty of them even.

Things seem to have changed as I moved on to Middle School. It's like blink, and all the sudden all the old friends were gone, and then blink again I met new people. Then much later, blink again, and I lost the few friends that I had. Was that my fault? Maybe. Even now it's hard for me to admit that I really did anything wrong on that occasion. I was just umm, being me.

Fast forward to Berkeley. There's Keith, and then maybe Vineeth, for the first year at least. Of course, I knew both of them since High School. I really don't think there's anyone else. Even then, I still felt very alone, not the lonely kind of alone, just that even when I was going out with the rest of the floormates I was by myself. No one talked to me, you know. Okay, maybe that was the lonely kind of alone.

Okay, I will be a little more on topic, then maybe I will finally get to what I wanted to say. That is, if I know what I am trying to say, instead of just some random ranting.

The truth is, I am not sure why I still use Gaim at all. In the last couple years very few people tried to reach me through IM, and the few that did mostly did so because of academic matters. You know, school stuff. Now that I have graduated there's just one fewer reason for people to care about me. Yes, I know I can start IM'ing them. That feels weird though. Whenever I do that I always feel like they don't really want to chat with me. It's like those sales people who call your home, you wait for them to stop talking so that you can hang up. Or those church people, do they know that if I really wanted to go to Church I would be going to one already? No, I am not interested.

Anyways, I guess I still leave Gaim running because I am hoping that someone would all the sudden realize that there's this person on his/her list that s/he would want to know more about.

After all these rambling, I really feel like I am a loser.

All the photos have now been uploaded. The tags are in Chinese, and until I figure out a good way to translate them, they will stay that way. I didn't get to tag (or mark them as "Starred", for the Gmail users) those that are worthy to look at yet, probably push that off to the next weekend.

Went to see "16 Blocks" with Dave and Milan over the weekend. Not a bad movie, but I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was more awake.

So, I am back.

Most photos from the trip has been uploaded, just click on "album" on the right. Not all the photos are worth looking at, I will probably tag those that are this weekend. Hopefully I will also get to upload the missing photos.

The album script was done in less than two days, and is actually quite elegant. The only major missing feature is hierarchical tags, which, come to think of it, may not be so important anyway.

As some of you may know (or rather, probably don't know, since I don't think anyone knows about this site anyway), I joined Riverbed since March 1st. Not much I can talk about yet, as I am still getting use to the environment. Commuting to San Francisco isn't exactly what I would call fun anyway.

More to say about the trip this weekend.

It's 2006! My only New Year wish is that my trip will be both eventful and safe. Hope everyone who comes to this site (you know, the 2 of you) will enjoy their short break.

New Scientists posted their top 10 news stories of 2005. The disturbing trend I noticed is that 4 of the 10 most visited news item are about weapons that the U.S. is developing or planned to develop.

Tomorrow will be a long day for me at work, from 10am to about 11pm :-(.

I will be moving out of my place at Berkeley tomorrow, after living here for a year and a half. After this, I will be at one more step away from Berkeley. I can't exactly say Berkeley is a beautiful city, with all those homeless people around People's Park and on my way to campus, and let's not mention the people who keep asking you for change on Telegraph. Yet this is the place I spent most of my past 3.5 years. I think the next couple days will be the first time in the last few years that the city does not have my presence for more than 3 days.

I will still be working for SCF until next Thursday. After that I will be off for a 2-months vocation in Hong Kong and China, flying there on the 8th and scheduled to come back on Feb. 23rd. Then I will be joining Riverbed Technology. More details on my job later.