aliseya (beta)

fuel shenanigans

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:20:00 +0000

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the gas stations could be up to something...

never have i ever, had a fill up of more than 14.7 gallons. Even when running on fumes and a prayer the maximum fill up has been 14.7.

But lately, I've had to fill up to 14.8 and 14.9. Last night, my tank required 15.1 gallons.

I wonder what the explanation for this is. Could it be that my gas tank has spontaneously grown?

Ring Bling - Part Duex

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:04:00 +0000

So I swear I wasn't dropping hints before. But either way, my ~~boyfriend~~ fiancee picked up on the hint, that I didn't drop, and so now instead of this being some random pretty ring, this is my engagement ring...

is it tacky to post a picture of my engagement ring. probably. but blogging in general can be a bit narcissistic so you'll have to forgive me this one time...

he hasn't made the announcement to all of his friends and family yet, so hopefully they don't see this before he gets a chance to tell them. or my facebook status. which is how i made the general announcement.

you know you're too web 2.0 when you blog about the ring you want, knowing your boyfriend will one day look at it, and then announce the successful execution of your plan, i mean your engagement, on facebook.

could have been worse. i could have tweeted it. really, the only reason why i didn't is none of my friends have bought in to twitter so, it would have been pointless.

For those of you that think California is ridiculous...

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:26:00 +0000

I'm about to prove you right.

Going to the movies last nite in redwood city, a start-up epicenter, I see this...

A solar powered parking meter. Wow, it's like the holy trinity of Bay-Area values...a networked device allowing tech companies to control yet one more aspect of your day, paying too much for things (who pays for parking in the 'burbs...only us baby, only us), and green. What's greener than a solar-powered parking meter? A mechanical one from circa 1994, however you can't raise $10M in VC funds for that so of course that's out...

anyhow, in honor of this discovery, i'm changing the tag line on my blog.

Ring Bling

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:37:00 +0000

So...this is what an $80,000 size 6.5 ring looks like on my hand.

---UPDATE---

whoa, i am ~~not~~ engaged, ~~nor am I dropping hints~~. wow. it's just a pretty ring, that's all!

but if were dropping hints, size 6.

UVAS Triathlon

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:36:00 +0000

Finish Line, originally uploaded by aliseyawright.

So I finished my first tri with a respectable time of 2:25:09.

The first part of each segment was the hardest. After the first 50 meters of the swim I remember thinking, crap I'm tired (since I wasn't warmed up), what have I gotten myself into!

2 hours and 25 minutes later, this is me crossing the finish line!

The rest of the pictures are here - I'll add the official ones when I get them.

Never say Never

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:25:00 +0000

So, when it comes to biking, I've learned to never say "I'd never do that" when it comes to a hill....

So, I live in the Oakland hills...well to be more precise, as my ex-boyfriends sister so kindly pointed out...i live on the incline, not the hills. Which means, that to do a bike ride from my house, no matter which way i go, there is a serious hill.

So around 4th of july last year, we were driving around looking for a good spot to watch the show. And during this drive, I remember saying, OMG it takes 5 minutes to drive up this hill, I would never ride this on a bike.

Well, as fate would have it. I did. I'm training for a triathlon right now, and I have a friend who is a serious rider. So he agreed to train with me as long as i agreed not to complain to much about the rides he picked. So, for our first ride, he tricked me! He came over to my house and i thought we were going to drive somewhere flat. Nope, for the next 45 minutes I was riding uphill. up that hill i said i'd never ride.

So then a few weeks back, my friend and I decide to go to Stinson beach. And the ride there includes a 15 mile mountain. Large hill if you will. And since it was late in the afternoon, there were only a few lone bikers taming the mountain. And i remember again saying....OMG, its taking us 30 minutes just to drive up this hill, i would never bike this!!

uh-huh. You know what's coming.

Fast forward two weeks. Since i didn't learn my lesson the first time, I agree to go on a nice 2 hour **flat** ride. Never trust competition riders when they say they're taking you on an easy ride. Easy is relative.

So we start out on our easy ride, and 6 hours later, we had ridden from SF, across golden gate bridge, thru Marin, up Mt. Tam (16 miles of non-stop redwood surrounded hill hell) and back. If a biker passes out in the forest and no one is around does she make a sound?

Am I glad I did it? Heck ya! Now, not only can I say Mt. Tam has been conquered, I've learned that with biking as in life, when i feel the urge to say I'd never do something because i'm too ~~lazy~~ to do it I'll probably end up being forced to do it in the near future. Lesson learned -- Even with physical things, life is mental. Get your mind in check and, just do it.

its all about the timing

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:07:00 +0000

so, the other day, a friend asked me

aliseya why are you still single?

and it wasn't so much the question that was interesting. it was the way it was prefaced...before she asked it, she said, i don't mean for this to sound offensive, but you're successful, brilliant, easy on the eyes, not a total b!tch (j/k she didn't say the last three, she just said successful) - why are you still single?

as a short answer, since this was on instant messenger, i just said timing. it just hasn't been time. however, given that a lot of my friends male and female have started to settle down (i'm 27), i'd like to shed some light on why it hasn't been time.

thanks to the many cultural strides that have been made in the last few decades, i, as a mixed race woman, have the choice to pursue any career i want. awesome. and i have taken advantage of this opportunity.

now whether it was harder for me (institutionalized discrimination, challenges of perception, george bush hating black people, etc) or easier for me (special programs to help women and minorities) is really out of scope for this blog - like how i dodged that one.

however what is in scope is that since i made the *choice* to pursue the career of my liking (software engineering), i also had the responsibility to learn the ins-and-outs of said field and do the necessary work. and this, took a lot of focus.

so, while i'm not anti-marriage by any means, i am only a few years out of grad school, which means that i have been paying dues, learning the field, and working hard. was i forced to choose between career and a relationship? not at all. not even implicitly. however, i only had so many hours outside of work/school to do something else. and for me, plotting on a man, some finger bling and a baby just wasn't all that interesting. sounds like something to do when i'm 30.

so, the point is, my being single right now shouldn't be all that surprising. its just a matter of timing and choice. and i've always felt that before i get married, i need to figure out my life as an individual first. and that's what i've been doing. in the two years after school, i've been doing me.

i suspect, were i a man, just 2 years out of school, it would have been assumed that at this point in my career it just wasn't time to prioritize starting a family.

so, long story short, why am i still single?

it's all about the timing.

like rome, all roads lead to aliseya.com

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:42:00 +0000

one great thing about web stats tools is that you can find out what people were searching for when they came to your site...

here, in no particular order, are my favorite search terms that led people to aliseya.com in march

1) facebook fight club
2) man-on-beast video.
3) rich is retarded
4) youtube server monkeys
5) cougar training
6) berkeley bike lane
7) best flash developer. (okay, this one is my favorite)

my least favorite search term.

aliseya.com. seriously folks you had to search on that?

what i should have done on valentines day

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:16:00 +0000

so, my valentines day was almost hall of fame bad.

i don't want to go into it here since i posted a myspace bulletin about it, and really, thats where i post all of the good stuff...but i did want to say that this is where i should have been:

Valentine's Day Pillow Fight

photo sniped from:
http://www.pbase.com/bvaez/image/92963404/medium

I am reconsidering moving back to the city. where, but in SF (maybe NY), do you get to take your valentines day tension out on total strangers, in public, in a fun way.

for Lent, i'm giving up the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:43:00 +0000

so AT&T has figured out that people that will pay $400+ for the iPhone, will also pay $150 month to use said iPhone...

which i begrudgingly paid...so here was my plan:

2000 minutes - $99
iPhone data plan - $20
text message plan (M2M text + 200 texts) - $10

after taxes it was about $150/mo....however, even though i have a contract, AT&T decided to drop the text message plan. So I get a bill for $250. yes, i text *that* much. $100 in text overages. i'm a texter.

so, AT&T is explaining to me that they discontinued the plan I ordered and they will credit me for this month, but in the future, to avoid a high bill, they can offer me this other, more expensive plan. And at that moment, i realize that because i love the iPhone so much, i'm willing to let AT&T f- me. I mean, the service sucks...my calls drop daily....and they change my plan at will, regardless of the mandatory 'contract'...but the iPhone is so great, it overcomes AT&T's many many shortcomings.

So that's when i realized the iPhone is my personal crack...and yes, i have had a CrackBerry, and got a RAZR as a form of smartphone rehab...but it wasn't the same...i missed mobile internet. and a qwerty keyboard. and email. personal email. work email - not so much.

so for lent, i'm giving up my iPhone and i'm going back to my RAZR just to see if I can do it...

man. it's only been 5 seconds and i feel so ... disconnected.

you know what. who am i kidding. i'm weak. i can't do it. i'll just give AT&T my blood sweat and tears. and buy some of their stock...............if they can get me to blog about how much they suck, AND STILL pay them almost $200/mo, they've got to be profitable in any economy...well, i just checked the stock price on my iPhone (see how useful this thing is), and they are down, like everyone else. But regardless...for the fact that i'm sitting at my computer, but checked the stock price on my phone instead of pulling up Yahoo Finance shows just how much i *need* my iPhone.

as for lent, well it's a good think i'm not actually catholic.

I'm retiring from Facebook Fight Club

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:49:00 +0000

So, I added the Fight Club app on facebook...and it's annoyingly addictive...and it's not even a video game. no rapid-fire button pressing. no animation. just win or loss based on some algorithm. or more likely, a random roll of the virtual dice.

anyhow, so, despite the lack of interactivity or requirement of skill, i've been training my fighter, that cr@zy b!tch (really, are you surprised by the name) and i had a perfect fight record.

47 wins, 0 losses baby. i was openin' up cans of whoop-@$$ chun li style.

then, one fateful day, i met my match...this one fighter, with a name that just said...if you lose, it won't be good, but if you win, it'll actually be even worse for you....and i *knew* i shouldn't have started the fight...but i couldn't help it...i am, that cr@zy b!tch, so i had to press my luck.

and as luck may have it, i was defeated. smote down if you will.

and the name of this fighter that defeated me and shattered my perfect fight club recored was....

wait for it...

ALLAH.

no i'm serious.

welcome, to my life. just when i get all cocky and start to believe my own hype....here come ALLAH, to remind me of humility.

appropriately humbled, i am now retiring from fight club.

my inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:32:00 +0000

i get asked all the time...why flash? it's not taught at cal or UW, so how did i get into flash.

one word.

StrongBad

if you don't know, now you know.

crank dat competition

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:49:00 +0000

oh good lord i love the internet. really, there are few things i love, like i love the internet...and this kind of stuff is why....

who, cranks dat the best?

mario?

dora the explorer?

sponge bob?

or my personal favorite....pooooooohhhhh!

and one more, just because i heart you
happy feet - walk it out

but i really didn't need to see alvin (from alvin & the chipmunks) in the bed like oooohhh, oh oh, oh, oh.) Time ~1:02

canadian is the new black

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:39:00 +0000

so....for a while, myspace has thought that i'm Canadian. Which doesn't change much...it just means that dates are backwards...and i get to see the canadian flag in the logo.

No big deal. But it's strange, because my state is set at California....so, they know i'm in the US....

so, while it's only been mildly annoying, i've been trying to figure out why MySpace would call me Canadian. I'm not canadian eh...

but then, i saw this article on Boing-Boing informing me that in the south, "canadian" is code for N-----. no, i'm serious. canadian is the new black.

So now i'm wondering, what exactly is myspace trying to say........

tiskotansi! wow..dancing really is genetic....

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:47:00 +0000

so.....i *look* black...but alas, like recruiters and someone on a first date, looks are deceiving. ya, i'm black...but the most significant pure genetic contribution to the total multi-racial awesomeness that is me, comes from the finns. Well not that being Finnish is all that racially pure ...

There's a comment on this page, that explains some things:
My ex was 1/2 Finn, her mother 100%. Their eyes were more Asian than Western in shape, they thought it was because Ghengis Khan had made it to Finland.

But based solely on my experience, this article is way off base. Finns can only be the spawn of Satan, no other logical explanation exists for how that woman got to be the way she is!!!

so that's why i have asian looking eyes and have been called the devil herself...wow. who knew it was the Finn in me.

anyhoo...back to the point. how, dancing really is genetic...with a little grey goose, the dance in this video just comes out of me naturally...

and watch the woman in the video...notice that she can do the steps, but is just a little off beat..not enough to be a bad dancer...but just enough to make it so that not all dances for her...but what is for her, from what i can see in the video is the two step and the shoulder shimmy with a little semi off-beat hip shaking. that's totally my zone.

anyhoo... here's the video. enjoy!

iPhone link

supid rich vs. retarded rich

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:14:00 +0000

watching the news makes me really think that the first thing an agent/manager/publicist needs to do with their client EVERY DAY is remind them the difference between stupid rich and retarded rich.

Stupid rich is what you want to be. it's when you have so much money that you can buy things that make everyone else say, that's stupid... like getting custom monogrammed seats in your bentley. or staying at the hugh heffner suite, for a week because you can. or spending $100,000 a year on rehab, where again, people may say, it's stupid how much money so and so has and you may end up in the news for your splurging, but you stay out of jail...

which brings us to retarded rich. this is where you have so much money that you have lost touch with reality and now end up in jail for the things that you do...note that retarded rich isn't so much about how much money you have...it's more about the adverse effects that your money has on your decision making abilities. like with drinking too much alcohol. or being in love.

this means you do things like...make $38 million and don't pay any taxes.

or make it rain, and then take the money back...what part of the game was that?....

or getting caught with major guns when you make major money from endorsements...big things stoppin? i hope not :(.

and everyone's favorite, running a dog fighting ring when you should be running after a superbowl ring...i mean damn, at LEAST be fighting tigers or doing it man on beast gladiator style... not some regular animals doing regular fights....i promise, if get brought down by PETA, it'll be because i got caught eating chinchilla tar-tar (who knew chinchilla's were so ugly!), while breeding bald eagles to be bronzed and sent to stephen colbert....not that i'd do that, i'm just sayin...if you must be foolish and cruel enough to torture animals, at least be a little more creative with it...can you imagine if the headline had read "Michael Vick indited for running a lucrative tiger vs. crack head with a jail shank fight club..." now *that's* a story...

anyhow, moving on to the real danger of being retarded rich...90% of the time, it's the same as being retarded broke...except when you're retarded broke...nobody cares. because you're broke. so you can probably get away with it.

because really, not paying bills, having illegal guns and 15 mean dogs in the backyard just sounds like some regular old hood s@#%. so it's really not newsworthy, unless your rich.

so please, managers everywhere, when you are warning your clients about the lurking threats of groupies and golddiggers...thrown in a warning about the dangers of being retarded rich. At least with golddiggers you stay out of jail.

in berkeley all lanes, are the bike lane. proceed with caution.

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:33:00 +0000

so it's christmas day and serious caffeine addictions like mine don't take holidays off. so out of sheer necessity, i have to drive into berkeley. becuase if nothing else, you can get coffee 24x7x365 in berkeley. so even though it's a car-hostile place (has anyone else seen that pack of wild bikes that takes up the whole street going 5 miles an hour... and you know they're just trying to piss you off because the one in the back has a camera, just waiting to catch you in a youtube worthy moment road rage...) anyhow, so despite the risks of driving in berkeley, i brave it, because i need coffee.

so i'm out driving, and this old school vw van (is there a new school one?) cuts me off.

and i'm about to honk...and i'm not really a honker, but this was ridiculous..the guy swerved AND slowed down. doesn't he know? cut-off and commit. don't cut off and hesitate. you did it, so follow thru. no-one likes a passive-aggressive driver.

so, i'm already annoyed that the scooby doo crime van almost hit me...but then i notice, he swerved to avoid hitting a biker. ah such a hippie. he made the berkeley choice (bikers over drivers - at all costs). so now that i've sized up the situation and decided it's a worthy infraction, i'm prepared to honk. this warrants a honk. not that the honk will do anything. but who cares. i want to honk...just to remind him that he had so many other choices....you can see the bike from half a block away... so change lanes earlier. or stop and wait for the lane to be clear...or just stay out of the bike lane (well nevermind that one, this is berkeley, so they're ALL the de-facto bike lane). but before i can honk, i need to complete my hippie profiling of this guy, so i check his bumper to see if he's a hybrid, electric or bio-diesel kind of hippie.

and that's when i see the bumper sticker.

honk if you're elvis!

ahh that hippie fucker. he cuts me off, then slows down, and i can't even honk at him without proclaiming that i in fact, am elvis.

so i didn't honk. i laughed. but i still try to avoid driving in berkeley. between the bikes, the non stop pedestrians jumping out like it's a drivers ed video and the meter maids on constant patrol, it's just too dangerous

cougar in training

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:36:00 +0000

so, i still get carded. all of the time. and not in that cute, i know you're on the dark side of your 20's so let me flatter you way...but in that, there is NO way you're old enough to drink, and i think this id is fake, kind of way....

so, i'm used to people thinking i'm forever 21...but this was a little ridiculous.

so i'm at peets having a late morning coffee date with this guy who's about 33. and his friend comes up and is like, hey, is this your niece? and i just kinda looked at him like, "huh? niece?"

and my friend was like, no she's not my niece...

so then the other guy looks at my friend all suspicious, looks at me, then looks at my friend and says "oh you better not!" like he was about to report him to "to catch a predator"

and i was like "WTF?" that was weird.

so then i saw the guy in peets the next day and he was like, so how old are you? and i was like, dude, i'm 27...closin in on the big three oh. ...don't be fooled by the wide eyes and innocent smile... he was like, no way...i thought you were 16.

and i was like really, 16? nice, that means i've got at least another 15 years before i'm the old woman in the club...and even better, since my face is frozen in time and stuck at 17, i'm going to make one hell of a cougar!

what's my secret?

grey goose and cynicism.

and also a drunkard

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:58:00 +0000

85%DRUNKARD

actually, the triva questions are pretty easy...it's not about how often you drink, but obvious stuff like potatoes can be made into what kind of liquor...

in case you didn't know...

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:00 +0000

I am 70% geek.

70% Geek
the question that really drove it home for me was..."have you ever solved a complex computing problem in the shower?"

for me, it's actually worse...i solved a resizing problem in flash in my sleep last nite. no i'm not saying it was so easy i could do it in my sleep...i mean, i wasted a perfectly good dream on Flash problems. the answer came to me in a dream.

and it was very dramatic. like some secret thing was being revealed to me from on high...and no, i didn't consider it a umm..."good" dream (u know what i mean here). I'm not *that* geeky.

too bad i'm not going to the Big Game!

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:44:00 +0000

Go Bears!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1789288

It took me a second to figure out what they were doing, but this is great.

the nice guys are the ones to keep an eye on...

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:30:00 +0000

So, this article I found on yahoo confirms what I have known anecdotally for a long time.

The worst cheaters are the guys that insist they are so nice...

Not the genuinely nice guys. But the ones that spend a lot of time proving their moral correctness. The ones that say things like "Aliseya...I would never cheat...I only want you" Ya right. And size doesn't matter.

it's when they start the "greatest boyfriend ever" campaigning that I get suspicious. Very Suspicious. And nervous. it generally has meant that they were up to something. something i wanted no part of.

Honestly, it's the supposed "cheaters" that you don't have to watch. because they keep it real...when you ask a question, they'll tell you. You just have to be prepared to hear the truth.

And it's the guys that do their dirt on the low and that are risky...because their truth isn't always true.

for my friends that are reading this and raising one eyebrow right now, just ask yourself...once you got to know them, which of my exes did you like better...the wild music industry dude or the 'squeaky-clean' D.A. and then ask yourself which one, in reality, did more dirt?

actual error message on YouTube. at least the monkeys are trained

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:03:00 +0000

this is awesome...so i was making this:

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

and i got this message on YouTube a few minutes ago...
500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, something went wrong.

A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation. Please report this incident to customer service.

Also, please include the following information in your error report:

M1GcDjDJy45-CoE4VksQPrTmDvjnvtKftcfdK7NejBfd3D1qUa_q__8uMRNM
M7IofhooMD8t9sSc5z9047Oq5fBwJyySrMdwLUoB1clfzbOg38no8tDD3eA1
WnFO-B8FiviLU6lhpd-pGcN9wRbJO2pJVAqNCGp9OM4JsQozgy8gu
yXC9MDDRBI45t4wHlOmw75lJ_I65Yqh7ebFF1X0=

error code truncated because it was too long...

what was I trying to do when i caused the error? nothing special.

I was doing video ad research.

Leave a comment...let me know what you think of it...it'll play some semi-random video. For the search terms, I put in britney, celebrity meltdowns, fighting cats. (not cat fight, but like two cats on a stool fighting-that video was on the myspace.tv promo ad, so i know someone else watched it too... )

anyhow, let's see what shows up in this awesomely semi-random video player...

have i mentioned...i love flash...

noreply@blogger.com (techdiva) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:22:00 +0000

when it comes to flash, i'm pretty easily entertained...no need for complex 3d graphics...or particle systems...just give me some good 2D animation and let me turn the sound off and we're good...

this game totally reminded me of super mario bros...the old school version...but with bunnies and bears.

http://fliiby.com/file/101/e7efhosmvu.html