Mokas News

Strike--huzzah!

2005-11-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

Strike--huzzah!
Originally uploaded by Mokasquarl.

Thanksgiving weekend 2005. A much needed break from school, many people were in town, from Shaun, Jack and even the ever elusive Danny. We went bowling on thanksgiving night because it was the only place open all night on that particular holiday...you would think it being Vegas we would have more options (lets not forget how I hold the group back with my age).Any who, bowling ended up being really fun, even though I usually don't enjoy it. It was so fun that we went back again later that weekend.

In the pic we see a jubilant Jeff after a strike.

Videos of us bowling:

My Morning Jacket @Fillmore 11.12.05

2005-11-13T16:07:00.000-08:00

So on Wednesday of this week I here that Shaun's sister Staci is thinking about going up to San Francisco for her birthday and wants to go to a concert. Well after looking we couldn't find any shows, she suggest this band called "My Morning Jacket"--I had never heard of these guys and I inquire as to where she heard them, "PBS" is the reply...I'm a bit skeptical, so I go on line and check out some of their music, it's pretty mellow, but I read some concert reviews which say that they are really hard live. The night of the concert, my expectations still aren't very high, but I do think it will be a good show, after all it is in the Fillmore. The opening act comes on...it's rap--slightly shocked at first, I quickly become a fan of the performer, Saul Williams. Next My Morning Jacket came on and put on a incredible show...very loud, very hard and quite fun. I'm glad I went to this show, it really opened my eyes to how some bands might be good on the albums but just extraordinary live. Thank you PBS, you are super cool.

Videos of the show:

1.Early in the show

2.Mid show

3.Late in the show

4.Saul Williams

Not Safe at all

2005-10-31T15:50:00.000-08:00

Not Safe at all
Originally uploaded by Mokasquarl.

The night before Halloween 2005. Everyone happened to be in town...and somehow ended up in a party bus hours before I had my flight back to school and Shaun had to drive back to San Francisco.The next day at school was not fun to say the least.

Halloween 05'

2005-10-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

Halloween 05'
Originally uploaded by Mokasquarl.

At Chris's Halloween party 2005. From left to right, some-kid that no one knows, Eddy, Christen and Zach. Good time were had, Chris cooked me up some wicked veggie burgers ... Zach and his "crew" all came as communists, Zach is Lenin. Myself, Jeff, Shaun, Billy, Fee and Paca did not dress up, because we didn't know it that going to be that kind of a party...

Bears & Katamari

2005-09-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend started of quite well, I had multiple sushi encounters and I bought We ♥ Katamari. The first game, Katamari Damacy was great, the artwork, gameplay and the music were all so well done that the game became one of my favorites. This new game doesn't really hit you as hard, because the gameplay for the most part is the same, however the story in this one totally makes up for it....every time a CG sequence comes on to tell me how the King of All Cosmos was abused as a child, I get glued to the screen---pure genius. The game does everything better than the original, but the first one always feels like a better experience.

After spending most of my Friday playing this game (watching the Wills bros play it while I try to buy a PSP) I left the safety of my house to venture into Truckee to the cabin of our friend Frenchie. The food was great, good times were had. Then as we got in our car to leave the cabin and drove but ~50ft down the street there was a fucking bear....in the middle of the street. Jake (Pictured on the left, giving me the finger) was the first to sight the bear, which we were about to hit with the car, and began to scream "Holyfuck a fucking bear!" We didn't hit the bear, but were concerned that a bear was walking about the neighborhood. The night came to end when we got back to Reno, went to party that really didn't turn out---went home and I put away the dishes while posing as Ray Charles.

Relief from The Test

2005-08-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

I took the MCATs today, I had been preparing for this test for about the last 3 months and it felt awesome to finally take it. It really felt weird in the test room because some of the people taking the test with me were high school biology teachers or people with masters degrees and extensive balding. However, there were many people from my classes as well, which helped to comfort me. Now that it's over I essentially have nothing to do for the next year or two, other than write my thesis and work at some hospitals "helping people." For now, all I'm interested in doing is sitting here and enjoy listening to the Deftones. Tomorrow morning I go to Vegas and relax at my parents for the next week, before Fall semester starts on the 29th.

My Gadget bag '05

2005-07-16T02:56:00.000-07:00

The editor of my favorite blog and possible favorite website "quit" over at Gizmodo . So I kind of had the idea to do a "What's in your gadget bag" sort-of-thing, which they used to do over at gizmodo (i.e. link), except I'm doing it to my self.

The above shot is pretty much all my belongings that I have here with me at school, almost literally (I have some books and a futon too!). Any who, I'm going to list off the hardware ascending to my favorite:

6. My phone (duh!) the Nokia 6800 , this thing was cool when I bought it, like a while back, but now it's beat to shit. Although it can still make and receive calls fine, a phone should do a lot more than that.

5. Delicious nectar of life....Red Bull. I hate drinking the stuff, but not as much as falling asleep in the library for 3 hours.

4.The GBA SP with Wario Ware Twisted. I liked my GBA before Wario Ware, now however it is loved on a completely different level. If you haven't played Wario Ware, then you haven't really.....um spun yourself around pretending you're an ice-skating princess.

3. Sony Fontopia headphones. Just spend the $50 and get these headphones, they are so worth it. Once you've used in-ear headphones (good ones at least) you will never want to have it any other way.

2. The Archos AV 420! In all honesty this is the best purchase I have ever made. This is my second archos, I had the av300, loved it, but the 400 series just totally blows everything away. I've had this particular one for about 1 year now and it has been great. I use it every single day, when I'm at school I'm listening to music on it, when I'm at home it's hooked up to the tv and I'm either watching something on it or listening to music from it and of course I have never ever been on any trip of any sort in the last two years with out either the av300 or the av400...if you don't have a PMP or an mp3 player I strongly suggest you pick up an archos.

1. The Sharp Actius MP30...my laptop (the link goes to a gizmodo review). I love this thing, it weighs less than any of my books, which is very helpful since carrying around 2 books is bad enough. It's is more than powerful enough to play my games (not like I ever do) and I love the size...since I have really tiny hand with long fingers.

Well that's everything worth mentioning, not that I don't like my other computers/gadgets or anything like that.

One of these two is the meanest person I know!

2005-07-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

[18:48] Jeff Bassing: fuck you
[18:48] mokasquarls: what?
[18:48] Jeff Bassing: You heard me
[18:48] mokasquarls: so mean
......
[18:49] mokasquarls: you are the meanest person i know.....but when we were in high school you were really nice...what happened baby?
[18:49] Jeff Bassing: You left me.
[18:49] Jeff Bassing: I'm the meanest person you know?

So I say Jeff is mean ....but not in a "bad" way. It's appreciable though, that he can become disgruntled really quickly is just an accepted fact of life. But any who, being mean doesn't acquaint to being an asshole, he is actually very friendly and I love the fire.

In other, not so Jeff-heavy news, I must have this keyboard (click for more info). It had OLED screens for every key, which can change as you go into applications....to let's say the actual icons that hot-keys may represent, and the design is very slick. I can't imagine what the battery consumption is like, as it is also wireless, shoudln't be too high since OLEDs are known to consume very little power. More so if something like the new Fujitsu e-Paper is used, which doesn't require any electricity once an image loads onto it.

BTW....Reno summers seem to be almost as bad as the winters, it was 102 here today! So -15 winters and 102 summers.

Reno sucks less & Music

2005-07-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

So update on the me getting ditched....not so pissed anymore I guess since kids involved in the incident have since apologized, but I still stand with all my comments with the post below, in that the vegas kids rule! and reno sucks as a place and as a collection of people.
On other news, the recent release of albums have been awesome. Everything from the new Coldplay , Gorillaz, Foo Fighters, Audioslave, Team Sleep, System of A down and I would venture to say the new Dave Matthews Band.

I especially like the Gorillaz Demon Days and System of a down's Mezmerize . Demon Days I think really changed the sound from the first Gorillaz album and eventhough I liked the original sound, the new sound is very catchy too...though it's a lot less rock (" O' Green Wrold"). Mezmerize, what can I say? Is it the best SOAD album? I think so....and if you don't agree just listen to "Radio Video".Team Sleep's self titled is pretty good too, not what I expected, alot more "techno" then I thought would be in it, but still it's really good.....like low tempo angry techno.
Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Audioslave sound the way I thought they would sound, which is good. Now the new DMB is a completely different zone from all of the other albums mentioned here, it's different from the original sound to where it's hard to believe it's even the same band. Moreover, none of the songs even come close to holding up against the older stuff (even stuff from Everyday, think "So Right"), but it still sounds good, so I still think it's fun to listen to....I needed new DMB songs anyways.
Any who, I'm really happy with the recent wave of music, inspite all the crappy emo, pop-punk....and eventhough there isn't a lot of good metal coming out now (say for example something like Adrenaline) the "alt rock" is pretty good....oh and I recently got into Modest Mouse and it's all pretty decent but Lonesome Crowded West is incredible, very hard, unlike the newer stuff.

p.s. I'm glad I have a working archos....what would I do without it?

Mo bitches...sorry

2005-07-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, I am 100% sure that this is by far, not only the worst summer I have ever had but is possibly the worst time I have had in the entirety of my life. I'm studying for the MCAT, a test for med school...and essentially it means that I am at school from 6am to 9pm Monday - Friday. The studying itself isn't what is making these last few months so fucking crappy, rather it's the fact that all of my friends have left for the summer or have graduated....so there is absolutely no one for me to hang out with when I do have some free time or when I get bored. The two or three friends that I do have up here are really into gambling and one had previously stranded me at a casino before and snagged $20 of my money having yet to pay me back....another kind of did the same thing to me tonight, except they were nice enough to give me cab money and told me take a cab back home (and apologized).

So, my 3 "friends" don't really have anything in common with me, have had histories of ditching me....and I suspect frequently lie to me oO however, they are all nice kids, as in they aren't assholes and are there when I need them; it's really making me miss Vegas, not only because that's where I have more friends, but more because....well honestly no one has straight up ditched me there, I actually have things in common with my friends and they don't lie to me (or at least not that I know of).

Any who, I know I'm whining, but it's cool sometimes people need to vent....and I'm not pissed or anything at anyone (honestly), I'm glad I at least have friends....can't wait to leave Reno next spring though.

2005-04-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

Google labs has to be one of my favorite organizations, they make my day better by allowing me to have access to more and more information, which doesn't really help me in any manner at all. For example: the new satellite imaging that google provides is just loads of fun...check out this site for some sight seeing with google.

Busy

2005-04-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

I'm suppose to be busy...but I didn't feel like being busy so I did a little revamp on my template for this blog.

A small break

2004-10-03T22:19:00.000-07:00

So I have been busy lately, like for the past month and a half, but really busy for the last few weeks. That's the main reason I haven't written anything on here, played any games or even talked to anyone other than Hidetomo and the people that I have class with. But finally, after all this time (and the second round of exams) I decided to take a break and go hang out with Shaun. Myself and Omid went there on Friday after class and many interesting things happened:
- Friday-
1. Omid projectile vomits profusely at 10pm outside a nightclub with incredibly hot Asian girls in miniskirts surrounding him...wasting his $50 meal at Original Joes.
2. We then go to some fucking hill that Shaun likes....its freezing cold, and Shaun almost falls to his death.
3. Afterwards, we go to Shaun house and meet his neighbor, who, according to him, has wild sex in the hot-tub....
-Saturday_
1. We rent bikes, and ride around everywhere, weaving through traffic in quite a reckless manner

-me after we've gone up and down hills for about 4 hours....my legs are like linguini at this point.-

-Omid and Shaun in China town...after we had lunch at Sam Woos-

2. After all of this we go to Omid's aunt's house, meet some of his cousins, eat some good food and smoked some strong fucking hookah that burnt up my lungs...
3. We then went out to find something to do around 1 am....well we found something...more food and an insane amount of hot, drunk, Asian girls about this club called Sake . Shaun, being Shaun, missed out on that...for some reason the cops told him to get out of there...even though Omid and I had a pleasant conversation with the very same cops about finding some decent chai at 1 am.

Oh, and Ikea rules.

The Great Dilemma

2004-07-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

Went to Fry's today to check out some hard drives and some wireless cards (they were having a sale), I came away from the store seeing something that shook the foundations of my laptop desires .....You see, I like the Sony U70, I told Hide to buy one for me. He said he will try next time he goes to the store. Today however I got my eyes on the Sharp Actius MM20

This laptop isn't too special when compared to the U70, but it is about $400 cheaper. Additionally, I won't have to go through the problem of installing English on it. Granted it this is about double the size of the U70, when I actually saw the MM20 in person and held it, I came to the conclusion that a 9" x 8" x .6" laptops isn't THAT big. The MM20 also has a ATI Radeon Video Chipset instead of my preferred Intel 855....so I'm not sure if it will be able to play C&C Generals ...I'm going to wait until the first day of the second week of August, if Hidetomo hasn't bought the U70 by then, I most likely will purchase the MM20.

Spiderman 2 : The Game

2004-07-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

Been waiting to play this game since the movie came out but it has been rented out every time that either myself or Jack has checked. So today me, Jack and Jeff decided to just go buy the game at this new EB.

I like it! The swinging system is way better then the first game (now you actually need things to shoot web onto), even though it takes a little while to learn. It's pretty much like GTA, except you're Spiderman and it's not very violent. In some aspects its better than GTA, like when there are no load times between different parts of the game...granted some things, such as the cars, look far worse than they do in GTA.

More movies like this are needed

2004-07-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

I finally watched “Memento” today. I had seen about 5 min clips of the movie before while my roommates watched it…but didn’t really reveal any of the plot. So this morning around 2am, myself, Shaun, Jeff and Jack took my monitor to the front porch of my house and hooked up the Archos to it and watched the movie from that. After watching the film and looking through the DVD, here is my theory on the events and characters:

1. Lenny is an insurance investigator with a diabetic wife

- He investigates a case where a guy fakes short-term memory loss

2. Lenny and his wife are attacked in their house, he kills one of the two murderers and he himself receives brain damage…but his wife was not killed

3. His wife is how we see as Sammy’s wife...she refuses to accept his condition and Lenny kills his wife with the two shots.

4. Lenny does not accept the fact they he killed his own wife so he creates the character and story of Sammy. Furthermore, he seeks revenge for his wife.

5. Teddy, who is a friend of Lenny from when Lenny was an investigator, fells pity and gets Lenny out of the hospital to track down and murder the killer…hoping this will bring Lenny satisfaction.

- When Lenny and Teddy kill the real John G. aka the 2^nd criminal, Teddy takes a picture of Lenny pointing to his chest, where he will place the “I’ve done it tattoo”

- But Lenny forgets and Teddy can’t convince him to get the tattoo….so Teddy sets it up so that Lenny kills yet another criminal

- Teddy continues this in hopes that Lenny will snap out of his condition (Teddy has become like Sammy’s wife).

6. Jimmy is just another criminal that Teddy had Lenny kill for the aforementioned reason, and Natalie is his girlfriend who wants to have revenge taken on Dodd for setting up Jimmy

7. After Lenny kills Teddy we can assume that he will stop his search for John G. because he has Teddy’s license plate number tattooed on himself...therefore all investigations will lead to the dead Teddy.

- Or we can assume that Lenny will have the tattoo removed and continue his hunt.

All in all, it is a great film...and this is all just my opinion.

Summer movies

2004-07-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

Went to see "I, Robot" today. I personally liked it, it had excellent CG, a decent story line, good action...and cheesy lines. Now usually I don't like movies like this, but I can't really expect a summertime Will Smith flick to be "Spring, summer, fall winter and spring"...I went to see this movie just simply to be entertained, not to come out with an epiphany. David thinks that it is bad taste of me to even consider that this movie is decent, well you I don't care what he think.

FFXI and the conflict

2004-07-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

Brent from Reno came to Vegas today. His Mom was in town for some business and he came too. They took me out to lunch and the California Pizza Kitchen...I got some Peking duck pizza and it was good. Later I showed Brent FFXI...everyone thinks that game is geeky, well I say it is slightly geeky, but anything with that complex of an economy system is automatically cool in my book.

I wish I had my camera

2004-07-12T02:36:00.000-07:00

So today Danny threw a pool party. It was pretty fun...but it became more fun once the sun went down.
Billy showed up with a bunch of illegal fireworks and Jeff came up with the idea to shoot them at Shaun while he was in the pool totally submerged in the water. It was the greatest idea anyone had ever come up with. The bottle rockets would go about 2 feet into the water right next to Shaun’s' face; sending quite the shockwave through the pool.

Afterwards, Shaun tried to stuff 11 Oreos in his mouth at once...he succeeded but then had to throw them up....pretty black goo was running down all over Shauns' face.

And then came the deer. Chris had this concrete deer in his backyard that he needed to get rid of...so we took a sledge-hammer to the deer broke them to pieces took them over to Votech High School and chucked them. We then proceeded to shoot the remaining fireworks off....but soon the cops were coming and we had left...I wish I had my camera with me.

Keith and Anchorman

2004-07-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

Keith came over to visit today....we went over to Chris' party. I had a veggie burger, Keith and everyone else had their precious meat. Then we went and saw "Anchorman"...wow! What a hilarious movie, too bad Keith fell a sleep during the movie....he really put me in a glass box of emotions.

Oh and later that night...around 2am, Billy blew up some bottle-rockets while myself, Jeff, Danny and Shaun watched...thank you billy.

Purchase list

2004-07-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

There are several things I need to spend money on right now, like school, rent, food etc... But the two most important things are the Sony Vaio u70 and the Archos av 420.

The Sony Vaio u70 is what I want for a laptop.

This laptop rules! It has a 1GHz Centrino and a touchscreen and the Intel 855GM video card (this mean I can play C&C Generals on it). I'm trying to get Hidetomo, to buy it for me when he comes back from Japan, since this isn't sold in the US and to import it is like $2700.Go here for more info

The second thing I want - nay need - Archos av400.

This is an upgrade to the Archos av series, I have the av 320, which does all the things that this one does, but is about half an inch thicker and weighs about 4 ounces more! Not to mention this thing looks good enough to bone. This looks like it'll cost around $350-$450....which is good I can sell the av 320 on eBay for like $250 and spend the rest on this.
I'm assuming after all this I'll still have money left over for all that other crap that I need money for.

$1 Anime vending machines for GBA

2004-07-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

They need to have this in the US. This Japanese company has started putting up vending machines across Japan that sells anime that can be watched on the GBA for only $1-$4!With the battery life of the GBA it should be no problem to watch 10 or more episodes. And there are no worries if you happen to lose a cartridge or two since they are so cheap.

One thing that does worry me is picture-quality and framrate. Still, if they had this here, I would totally be using it, imagine only paying like $24 for a whole series. Check out Link for more info.

Back to Vegas

2004-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Came back to Vegas from San Diego today. Slowly watched the thermometer rise from 71 to 104.

Finally got GML to work with my Gmail, and uploaded all my old mail from thunderbird to the Gmail account.
Oh and I finally got a chance to sit down and really listen to the Kill Bill vol2 soundtrack....it rules! My favorite song on their so far is Goodnight Moon.

Padres, car crashes and giant fires

2004-07-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a SD Padres game...it was good. I really like the new stadium and the weather was perfect, like always.
On the way back Shaun ran his dads car into a pole:
Danny goes out to see the damage.
Says he can't see any damage
Goes out again, says he sees a little scratch he can fix with nail polish
we stop to get lighter fluid for a BBQ and see that the damage to the car was alot.
-the whole door of the car will need to be replaced....shaun may not get a sony u70 now.

Oh, and Danny almost started a fire.

Parking lots

2004-07-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

Went to the beach this morning to go boarding and couldn't find a single parking spot....friggin people and their 4th of July, the worst part is I went at 9am and it was still packed!

Jack the retard

2004-07-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Jacks computer sucks!!! It has like....Wait and I HATE THIS KEYBOARD! When I came to SD I brought my keyboard and my mouse but not my receiver (it's wireless)...argh!
anyway, just came back from the beach, had some fun there...Now I want sushi.

gmail, gml, blog....

2004-07-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

yay got a gmail account today, and wanted to migrate all my old mail to it, but i can't seem to be able to do that. I tried using GML, but it gves me some sort of socket errr,(1006 I think).....so I just moved on, and am going to try it later, since I'm in San Diego right now...