It's been a while since I had an art project. I kinda miss having you know, personal goals.

I'm supposed to be in some horrid suburb of Houston at someone else's Christmas party right now. And I really don't want to go but I should. I guess I'll take a sketchbook, or something.

You guys let me know if this keeps on showing up on your friends page... :/

Rules, Regulations, & Conditions:
1// You must create one artwork for each of the themes listed.
2// Pictures are only to be done by traditional media or paint programs/ e.g photoshop.
3// These must be your pieces of art that you made, and abide by all d.a policies.
4// There is no time limit, enjoy.
5// Keep the list updated, when you complete a piece of art, put a strike through it and a link next to it.

Completed: 21/100
In Progress: 0/100

( THE LIST............... )

Note: to see all at once click on "the list" tag.

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3/13/09: new use for this thing - illustration ideas.

black bile (a la spirited away). Juxtapose against light colors, of course.
Traps - asn, of course. DUH.

I learned this recipe from Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who are this Cantonese couple who hired me on to tutor their kids some years back. In addition to their names, they're just really awesome people. Aunt May taught me the following recipe.

Wings Recipe

1 package chicken wings
white pepper (important!)
salt
oil (vegetable or any other non-flavoured is fine)
A covered wok

1. Heat pan + oil on high until very hot.
2. Put all wings in pan in single layer
3. Sprinkle generous layer of pepper and salt over top.
4. Reduce heat to medium
5. Cover, don't touch, don't look, don't disturb.*
6. After a minimum of 2 mins, check underside of wings. If wings = golden brown, wings are ready to be turned. If not, cover again and continue cooking until wings achieve golden brown color.
7. When both sides are golden brown, turn heat off and let rest for a minute or two before serving.
8. Chicken will be delicious.

*While this won't affect taste very much, it will affect the crust on the wings and will definitely affect how easy the pan is to clean afterwards. If crust is allowed to form, wings will slide right out of pan. If not, the wings will stick to the pan with a mixture of gooey chicken skin and oil.

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Fried Rice variation #3

Rice (4 cups)
Eggs (4 eggs)
Ham (1 package Carl Buddig = perfect)
Garlic
Ginger
Salt
Soy sauce (only 1-2 tbsps or so for color, not flavour)
Green peas
Corn
Cilantro
Green onions

I'll skip the instructions since there's no real trick to it and I've listed the ingredients in the order they should be added, anyway. (Eggs should obviously be scrambled before being added.) The last time I made this, I cheated a little bit - I had an unopened package of ramen flavouring that I just threw in there too. It didn't seem to have any adverse effect and the flavour turned out quite nice.

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Beef Stew

...is the bane of my cooking existence. I've never been able to make beef stew to my satisfaction and it irks the hell out of me. So I've abandoned the internet's method (which doesn't work!) and have decided to go with what my parents have suggested.

Internet's method: Season heavily, season early, nothing gets cooked without salt & herbs.

My parents' method: No seasonings or vegetables until the flavour's all there. Once that happens, go ahead and add all the frills.

Anyway, that's the experiment that's in progress right now. I have a pot simmering downstairs that has 1) water, 2) beef, 3) starch from when I fried the beef beforehand and 4) nothing else. I'm going to let that sit for 2-3 hours and then see how it tastes.

1. Oven-baked ribs (adapted from Cooking for Engineers)

1 rack of ribs
1/2 - 1 bottle of BBQ sauce

Optional:

Orange slices
Pear chunks

Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees and bake ribs for at least 2 hours, turning once during baking. Uncover and bake 10 mins to dry the BBQ sauce.

2. Salted Eggs

Eggs (chicken or duck)
Salt
Strong alcoholic beverage (clear liquor preferred)

Dip eggs in alcohol, then roll in salt. Wrap with a plastic bag and tie off. Allow eggs to salt at room temperature for two weeks. Hard-boil, eat.

Right, so the portfolio just went live like... 15 mins ago?

http://xiaorui.onetwentyone.org/index.html

It's pretty bare-bones sparse right now. Adrian put it all together for me with some lovely javascript and awesome CSS that he is infinitely better than me at (darn him!) I don't know what I would do without him. Wait, I would - not have a portfolio. At the same time, I can't help but cringe deeply and painfully. This whole process has been a cringy, painful process and well, until now I wasn't able to put to words exactly why I hate it so much. But now I think I've got it.

Because it's public.

Wait, hang on - I can explain. I don't mind public. I've been putting my work in front of the eyes of strangers for years upon years and years. I mean, I thrill to think of someone else seeing my work, because I know it appeals to many people and if someone sees my work and doesn't like it, I don't care. It's like a secret code - I can flash it as loudly and broadly as I want, and the only people who will get it are the ones in on the know, and screw everyone else. You either like half-naked girls making cute faces drawn by someone too lazy to put real time or effort into drawing without the push of boredom or you don't. Simple. Easy. And does not make me shudder.

But this is different. This is... god. Going to be seen at desks. By people wearing shirts with buttons. Maybe neckties. People who may be rebels and free-thinkers and love the strange, the quirky, and the downright dirty in their off-time, but cannot afford to do so under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of an office environment.

And that's where my prejudice comes in. I don't think it's any secret that I hate offices and bureaucracy and forms and doing things the "right way." I also don't think it's any secret that a significant part of that hatred is because I suck at it. I'm bad at the game and it makes me hate the game and distrust the players. Give me a ne'er-do-well at a bar, a little scruffy and with a tattoo peeking out discreetly. At least when he laughs at me, he does it openly, and without the need to wait until I've left so that he can titter to his friends about "God, what a complete whacko!"

...is the prejudice, anyway.

Thing is, I know that being swaggery and tattooed does not make someone accepting, nor does a button-up and pressed pants with the crease on the front make someone judgmental. But it's hard to shake the prejudice, and so it's hard to trust my work - me - to an imagined audience with pressed lips and faultless bearing. Some moments I'll think myself silly - this is all a manifestation of a continued rebellion against authority that I've just never been able to shake from childhood, and I need to just grow up. Some other moments I'm convinced that I'm absolutely in the right and the further up on the totem pole, the further one goes into the pit of snakes. From experience, the people I have come to like and respect the most are the ones who work in delivery, warehousing, janitorial services, security, service jobs - all these people were so real to me. Conversely, I very infrequently befriend people from the upper tiers of management. But then again, it's hard to like someone when they don't smile at or acknowledge janitors but they'll smile at people they consider their "social peers."

I don't know. It could be... what's that term? Confirmation bias.

Anyway, it's 3:30 and I should be to bed. Or smoke, read, try to convince myself that not playing the game is shooting myself in the foot - cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, essentially. That I have to play the game, but it's not forever - the game's only the introduction, the flash and glitz, and once I have a job then I can subject my poor coworkers to me and my ridiculous ideas and I won't have to smile and pretend I'm put-together, a go-getter, and a team player anymore.

It's getting easier. I've already gotten past the "semi-care" phase into the "completely don't care" phase. The hardest part will be pretending I know which company I'm talking to if/when anyone calls.

Again, I wish we could all be honest.

Ideal situation:

Me: I tend to slack off and check g-mail at work but at least I don't facebook or tweet. I don't really have a life so if you can convince me that your project is more important than my raid, I'll show up and do whatever it is you want me to do. Considering my last boss had me do things like be a pair of working legs to courier things and "Oh look, you have a car and license, could you pick up some food," nothing is really beneath me.

Them: Well we're all a bunch of assholes and none of us really work. We all pretend to work and then when work doesn't get done, we blame it on each other. Occasionally someone gets the can but it's usually the guy no one likes. Oh and we drink and smoke.

Me: I love you guys already.

So now that I'm applying for jobs in earnest... I've realized that putting together a portfolio is very strongly in my best interests and therefore is at the top of my to-do list right now.

And in putting that portfolio together, I realized... damn I rock. I am fan-fucking-amazing.

These HR people and recruiters won't know what hit them. And then I'll tell them.

Hello, my name is Xiaorui.

And I'm here to design your world.

Yeah, so my car got broken into. Again. *yawn* Find something more creative to do, houstonite hooligans.

*grumbles* I've been able to ignore the whole "need to find a job" thing because... well because it's AWESOME not working but with this pointed reminder of the fallibility of my safety net - suppose something even worse had happened to my car? It'd be much harder to job hunt w/o transportation - I guess I don't really have any excuse any longer.

So... here's Ree's new resolution:

1. Send out 1 resume a day.
2. Keep phone charged and within hearing distance.
3. Don't chicken out.

I guess starting today, dangit. *sigh*

Well, I take that last expletive half back.

So that thing earlier did definitely fix some problems, but I'm pretty sure it's a problem cascade - poor data reading and (assumedly) writing as well has corrupted many of the oft-read files on my computer - namely WoW data - and so it's possible I'm going to have to completely reinstall WoW to completely fix everything... but it's a start.

...and those of you who have had the misfortune of installing WoW knows how long that takes... *grumbles* Stupid... stupid massive bloated game.

BUT.

We'll see.

FUCK.

So I've been having problems with this computer for the longest effin' time and today... today (fingers crossed) I think I finally fixed it.

There is this thing. This beautiful, wonderful, magical thing called eventvwr.exe. (Start > run > eventvwr) You can see everything that happens in your computer! It shows you errors. It shows you what programs triggered the errors and whatever messages there were - messages previously hidden, messages that can change the world!!

...so basically after reviewing some of these error messages I realized (as I had long suspected) that the problem is in reading data from the HD. Cracked open the case, and then saw that the SATA cables were a) plugged in wrong and b) possibly faulty. So I removed the old SATA cables, Adrian gave me a shiny new one, and now EVERYTHING WORKS.

(er, it's been all of 3 minutes so there may be a follow up post with much profanity...)

SO.

In conclusion.

Review error logs. Make sure that your hard drive is plugged into SATA1. Replace cables.

Easy as lyin'.

Well, I took a picture but I can't find the connecter thingy for my camera so no picture for now. BUT... I think I'm getting closer to working out the bare bones of this recipe.

1. Cut up yam & apples, the smaller the better. I used 2 yams and 1.5 apples (the other half is for munching on while this thing bakes.)

2. Liberally sprinkle sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon all over this thing. Dump a few pats of butter on it too. Mix.

3. Bake at 400 for 1/2 hour uncovered, then cover and bake at 350 for another 1/2 hr.

4. Refrigerate.

5. Top with whipped cream and sugar sprinkles, eat.

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Made this yesterday with some turkey, corn, and beets. I felt thanksgiving-y.

Gotta think of other things to make though. I'm kinda tempted to attempt this one thing my parents used to make involving ground pork and a lot of cabbage, that you rolled into bing which is pretty similar to a thin tortilla with green onions and you eat it with a little bit of hoisin sauce, but I'll admit to being just the slightest bit fearful of screwing up one of my favorite recipes and forever tainting the memory. Maybe I'll make it one of these days and see if the D&D boys like it - they're fond of Chinese food so hopefully this won't go over too poorly.

(But deviled eggs first, everyone loves deviled eggs.)

Patty:
1 lb ground beef, the fattier the better
1 large clove garlic, finely diced
1/3 onion, finely diced
1 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/2 tbsp beef bouillon
pepper
salt

We shoulda included:
One egg, for holding the patty together

Stuff that adds to winawesomeness:
- Buttering and toasting bread
- mushrooms sauteed with onions as a topping

Adrian had his with some montery something something jalapeno something something cheese, and I had mine w/blue cheese. BLUE CHEESE BURGERS FTW.

I'd take a picture, but no picture can encompass the winawesomeness of these burgers, and plus I already ate mine. You'll just have to make it yourself to find out.

I know that my happy fun days of frolicking in WoW without abandon can't last forever. If I keep playing the way I want to (24/7, with breaks for food and reading time) eventually I'll run out of money, and long before that, I'll lose the respect of people around me as I degenerate into some kind of cave troll who speaks only in acronyms.

;_; But I *like* being a cave troll who speaks only in acronyms. The less people think I'm comprehensible the less likely they'll find what I say offensive.

AAAAAAAAAAAANYWAY so I updated my resume, that was my goal for the day. HOORAY ME.

The phone sitch is a bit wobbly right now. Mom called me last month clearly unhappy that we're "overpaying" for our phone plan (which means we pay what everyone else pays) since she has this unfortunate habit of talking to other Chinese people who all enjoy boasting about how much money they're saving. So she demands that the phone plan be cancelled that day, and I have to do it. I call my dad, trying to see if this is maybe some hormonal thing I should ignore, and he tells me that the internet AND phone lines are down at the house temporarily, but also to fear the mother and do as she says. Well, I'm not too keen on severing phone lines, so I tell mom that maybe we should wait 'til the phone lines are back up. She maintains her stance. I remind my mom that right now would not be he suan (==insert translation here, for when I can think of it later==) since it's right at the beginning of the billing cycle, and once I make it about money, she agrees to wait 'til the end of the billing cycle.

So here we are at the end of the billing cycle. E-mailed the mom yesterday and haven't gotten an answer back, and I'm kinda nervous because she's the type to cut off my phone and then tell me after... by trying to call me.

Anyway, I have my resume up-to-date now. I hate pimping myself out like this but it's actually a lot easier this time than it's ever been and I'm *considering* sending out a few just to see if there are any nibbles... but I should probably wait until the phone sitch resolves itself so I can actually pick up when prospective employers call.

(Honestly the phone sitch is just an excuse to get another few days of WoW in. But HEY, it's a semi-legitimate excuse.)

I plan on tryina keep my old phone # so that shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, I'm out. I just got some more organizational stuff from IKEA yesterday so I have places to put stuff (not fully unpacked yet). Our new apt's pretty damn spiffy but it's also old, and lacking in closet space and just... general putting-things-away space, so Adrian and I have had to buy a lot of storage-related furniture. The new apartment's a trip, actually. Some would call its many interesting quirks "poor planning" or "bad design" but I like to say it's got character.

From the description on Kong:

Yo dawgs. I just finished a new one, and it’s an introspective take on a personal life experience I once had that I think leaves me emotionally vulnerable, while encouraging the player to think about their own feelings and how they’re percieved by the people around them.

It’s called Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar.

Win.

(Haven't actually played game yet.)

I have internet again!

...although really I've been doing fine without it. Without WoW, I've been reading some R. A. Salvatore and cooking, playing Disgaea...

Oh man, speakina which. Oh my god! My worst fears are coming true! I tried to put on a dress the other day that I'm supposed to look STUNNINGLY HOT in and I ended up looking stunningly NOT. UGH. What do you mean sitting around being lazy and eating all day is ruining my figure? NOT COOL. It's so hard though... :( I just get hungry! And I eat... And then I get tired... so I take a nap... and...

Yeah, I need to get a job.

So back to Salvatore. I tried reading it once before waaaaaaay back in college b/c Adrian has all the books so I guess that means he might like it or something, and it was totally boring! But without the internets I got through the exposition and now I see why everyone's all like "Omg Salvatore's the shit." 'Cause he kinda is the shit. Man, I knew that anything referenced in OotS couldn't be bad.

Anyway, brain fuzzy. Gonna go eat a brownie.

*yawn*

I crashed out at like 10 PM last night and then at 4 AM I just couldn't stay asleep anymore. That's only like 6 hours though! What the hell. Stupid body, stay asleep when I tell you to! And while I'm whining, my boobs have been tender like whoa for the last week or so. When I first started taking the pill I was like "omg, maybe pain = they're growing!" but no, it just means they hurt, which kills the sex drive, which defeats the whole purpose! Well half the whole purpose.

Hrm, that mighta been TMI. Topic change!

This whole move thing has been even better than I thought it would be. Everything I worried about turned out to be either non-existent or inconsequential... well, 'cept I think I've packed on a few pounds. But since I don't have a scale to check I don't have to face reality for at least a little bit longer!!! Yay. Weather: no problem. Jobless: Completely awesome and I love my life. (okay, I could stand to get a job but... man, daytime mobility is the best! No crowds, no dealing with places being closed after 5...) Miss people from LA: Not really. 'cause I'm coldblooded like that.

The F11 key is located entirely too close to the backspace key for my liking.

Anyway, really looking forward to the move. I previously imagined that I could live in a 1br/1ba with Adrian and be perfectly fine, but this space is just too small for the both of us. See: lack of closet space. See: itty bitty little kitchen. See: I need a real desk for my computer, j0. And going outside to smoke and read has been killer since there's no lighting right outside the apt - I have to go over to the mailboxes for light. But the new apt has a balcony and assuming it doesn't collapse, the reading/smoking nights will continue on! Yeah!

*yawn*

WoW servers are down of course. DUH. Why else would I be not playing? I think I'll go take a nap 'til they come back up.

Got the keys to the new apt. today. Yay!

...I sure hope there's no internet connection disruption during the move. I may have to like, go outside or something.

Hurr, kidding. Actually convinced myself to go jogging today, just around the block. I think next time I'll go jog to museum district & back.

Can someone else watch The Guild and tell me if there is or isn't chemistry there between Codex and Stuntman? Because watching them pseudo-flirt is making me want to puke a little. Like, Stuntman isn't even hot and his dialogue is ridiculous. :( He makes Zaboo almost look like a good choice by comparison.

Omg, The Guild cracks me up. It's been making me go AFK all morning.

Augh, so WoW is my life right now. I've made peace with the fact that I can have no other extracirricular activities - nights and weekends are for raiding, and any other spare time I have is for dailies and achievements.

So since I don't have a life outside of WoW, I may as well start posting about it.



I got both my copper and silver fishing coin achievements last night after a 25 Ulduar raid. I was only missing like one copper coin and one or two silver coins so that was only about half an hr of fishing last night. Still missing 3 gold coins though... :( That one takes more work, apparently.