http://kolinateng.com

Due to growing up in the Silicon Valley or my social circle of geeky tech friends, I’ve always been a wannabe-geek but without the shiny new gadgets that real geeks can show off. UNTIL NOW. Sure, it’s not the MacBook Wheel, but thanks to Reid, I have recently come into possession of the “Google phone” - the Nexus One! Since I’ve been using a free flip-phones with antennae (!) up to this point, this is a whole new horizon laid out for me. Amazing. Let me give you an example of what I can do with this bad boy.

Over the weekend, I met up with some girlfriends that work at Google (just another step towards Google HQ infiltration) for some tea at Palo Alto’s Tea Time. First, I had gotten a Google calendar invite (that Android pushes directly to my mobile Gmail). I was able to respond to it, and it syncs with my Google calendars.

I do a speech-to-text search for Tea Time since I can’t very well type while driving, and GPS navigation and text-to-voice directions help me get there since the Google God knows I have no sense of direction. Point in case: I parked in an underground garage, and when I emerged, I had no idea in which direction to walk. Out comes the phone! And I pinpoint my exact location and walk towards the little red dot marked Tea Time. BTW, this phone renders my $140 Garmin nuvi useless.

I meet the girls, and we’re all a-Twitter about this super cute place with super tiny I-need-5-of-these-to-be-full-cuz-I’m-about-as-dainty-as-a-pig English crumpets and sandwiches, so we all take out our Android phones and communally tweet about it via Twidroid. And then Foursquare check-in because… I don’t know. Because we CAN.

The Yelp application helps me decide which sandwich is most highly recommended.

And then some pictures are in order, using our 5 megapixel phone cameras (that also captures video).

Looks like I won't be needing my point-and-shoot anymore. On a different note: look at the tea cozies! I've never seen one before!

Then we chat/gossip about the upcoming Valentine’s Day, and we (or just me) joke that we can keep tabs on our significant others’ current locations via Latitude.

As I leave, I notice that I’ve missed a phone call from Mom and she’s left me a 2-minute message as she is prone to do, but have no fear, because Google Voice has transcribed the message so I can just read it quickly. Unfortunately, Mom speaks in Chinese, and Voice doesn’t do Chinese-transcription-to-English translation yet. Bummer.

Bummer #2: I can’t take screenshots of my phone to supplement my blog post here. But that’s okay because you can already read about them at much more reputable tech blogs.

Bummer #3: Still waiting on a widget/app for Google Buzz that was just released yesterday (which, I might add, still hasn’t shown up on in my Gmail yet…)

Yes, I realize these are all things you can do to some degree with various other smartphones, and in another year, this phone will probably be as obsolete as the G1 that came out almost exactly one year prior to the Nexus One. But let me bask in my new phone’s glory, OK? This is a huge step for me since I have been waiting to upgrade for a long time, but wanted to wait for an worthy phone. Ahh, all praise to the Google!!!

Where is my friend Reid***?

Maybe I need to find new friends.

"Sorry, you can't hang with the totoros."

"Hi! Do you wanna be my friend?"

"You're not supposed to even be on my continent, mang."

"Excuse me, sir. Do you want to play with me?"

Eeep!

Ooh! Circus animals are fun! They will want to play with me.

Where are all the animals? How do I get in?

Sigh.**

*** Reid is in India and won’t be back for a few weeks. I’m learning how to use his DSLR.

** Snuffles is sad. I am not projecting my feelings onto Snuffles.

Halloween is quite possibly one of my favorite American holidays–not so much for monsters and ghouls and girls in leotards (or less), but for the pure crafting and baking potential.

One of these Halloweens, when I’m not lazy or spending 15+ hours putting together 2 costumes, I need to make these Vampire Cupcakes from Baking Bites:

And these creepy crawlers from Not Martha:

Also, this meatloaf is pretty fantastically disgusting from Not Martha:

Anyway, when I’m rich and/or find an excuse to throw down a large Halloween party, I promise I will go all out, food and decor. Until then, I will have my costumes.

Initially, I had planned to just throw on a carved pumpkin T-shirt from Target and a pumpkin stem that I made out of cardboard, silk leaves and wire on a headband for tonight’s Party Chef Halloween event. But then I realized I couldn’t get excited about Halloween if I didn’t put in much effort in making something I was proud of. So instead, I spent around 8 hours each on these bad boys. I have a tendency to get really absorbed in my work and my shoulders tense up (from the excitement!); now I have a strained neck or something and have trouble turning my neck more than 45 degrees in any direction. I can’t see well out of my peripherals either, so I hope no one tries to scare me tonight out of my line of vision…

Here we are at Googleween in my rendition of Max from Where the Wild Things Are. They sure do go all out there with the haunted house (with paid actors!) and snacks. More than half of all the employees were dressed up!

Photo courtesy of Sandy!

This is Reid’s coworker Greg that took “On a Boat” fan-dom to the next level. His costume is complete with the tuxedo shorts, “Free boat ride for 3″ tickets in his pocket, Santana champagne (’cause it’s so crisp!), the dolphin, and blue flippy-floppies! (He wasn’t able to find a “nautical-themed pashmina afghan” either - so I feel better that I’m not the only one who can’t.) I wish I would have thought of the costume, but I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Best costume I’ve seen yet!

Photo courtesy of Reid!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Update: For reference, here is what we were supposed to be! (We forgot to pose like this :( Sadness.) And I’m disappointed that Reid and I didn’t get a picture with Nelson and Kim - Max quadruplets!

So Reid pointed out to me that I hadn’t blogged for the past month and a half, but I promise you I’ll have a good update soon! After all, it’s the day before Halloween 2009, and that can mean only good things. Yet in spite of my enthusiasm, I don’t know if I can truly beat what was last year’s awesome group costume: The Asparaguys!

Okay, so your definition of “awesome” may differ from mine, but I assure you, this year will be awesome.

Here’s a hint and a teaser for this year’s costume; Snuffles is wearing his version of what both Reid and I will be wearing!

LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!!!

Sorry Mom and Dad--I was kind of an ugly kid!

When I was younger (and still today), my mom always teased that all my birthday gifts should go to her as gratitude for bringing me into this world. (For the record, I didn’t ask for it!) But thanks anyway, Mom and Dad. I turned 3 years old in the picture to the left, which was taken in the house in which I currently reside. (That’s right, I moved back in two decades later!)

Thanks for all the calls, texts, tweets, IMs, and, of course, Facebook wall posts! And since we all know that the number of Facebook birthday messages received is a direct one-to-one positive correlation to your popularity factor, I can now claim that I am approximately 5% more popular this year than I was when I turned 23. w00t! (But that’s not saying much.)

No, really, thanks everyone! :) I’m officially in my mid-twenties now, and next year, I’ll have to start rounding up to 30-years-old!

Trying to hack (emphasis on the “trying”, less on the hack) Wordpress source code so, uh, bear with me :) BUT, if you’re reading this in Google Reader, it shouldn’t matter anyway! SUBSCRIBE NOW! :D

I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but I finally bit the bullet and bought the domain and web host account in order to start this site. Hurray!

Its existence is long overdue. In a 6th-grade elective course called “Internet”, I created my first ever webpage detailing the intricate steps required to make a tuna sandwich. I know—not terribly exciting, but I did get an A in the class! Perhaps it was an early indicator of my future-now-present internet addiction, partially fueled by the dot-com era in the Silicon Valley where my circle of friends at MSJHS was far more interested in web development than, say, sports. I remember joking that we represented neither the “East side” nor “West side” but “Web site!” Man, I was lame even back then!

My first recreational page was on one of those free Geocities-hosted sites and was completely decked out with animated gifs and pastel text in Comic Sans font (Sorry Jen—don’t judge me). I redesigned that site about 4 times between junior high and college, “coding” in Notebook with basic HTML and CSS skills I picked up from interweb forums. I didn’t get very far.

In addition to early interest in web develepment, I’ve also kept a journal since the 4th grade. I blogged journaled almost everyday up through junior high, until I discovered LiveJournal. There, I blogged minute details of my life almost daily for nearly four years before the switch to Xanga. I’ve largely stopped journaling since then, ironically when the blogosphere started booming, and sadly, when my life started really picking up (but that’s not saying much). 

Anyway, here’s to hoping that I’ll keep up with this site and cultivate the few web development skills I’ve acquired, as well as blog about the rest of my 20’s. These should be the best years of my life, right? :)