an awesome Thanksgiving

I had a great Thanksgiving long weekend. This was a pleasant surprise given what happened last year!

The weekend began with trouble: my parents were picking me up from work when our Lexus RX 330 died. I thought we'd be stuck in the Lab126 parking lot, but my colleague Ryan managed to save the day with a jumper cable. Thanks, dude!

Thursday

It was a busy day as we had to make preparations for our Black Friday party and another gathering at our family friend Sun-Yen's house. This took up lots of time and meant we couldn't do much else other than go hiking in Rancho San Antonio County Park in the afternoon. Figuring that three parties might be too much of a good thing, my family decided to not have one this year and had our turkey the day before.

One thing I'm thankful for this year is getting an offer from Lab126 in June. The job is enjoyable and perfectly fits my interests.

Friday

Seeing that his old classmate Sing Man and his wife were in town, my father invited them over for lunch. Their son Hang Kin and daughter-in-law Wing also came along. The cool thing is that Hang Kin and Wing are both software engineers. It's always nice to meet other young people with similar interests.

Dad also had the Lu family over as Wen-Juei was another old classmate. This was our first time seeing the Lu since the 2009 Labor Day weekend. Though Thomas and Connie are in SoCal and couldn't join us, I had a great time hanging out with Jenny and watching Star Trek: The Original Series on DVD.

The gathering turned out to be so lively that we encouraged our guests to stay for dinner, to which they gladly obliged. Jenny left early to see her other friends, but that didn't make the evening any less fun. I don't think we've ever had a 10-hour party before!

Saturday

Another highlight of the weekend was the party at Sun-Yen's house. Her son and daughter came home later in the evening, although they were busy with schoolwork and didn't spend much time with us. On the other hand, Dad and I enjoyed playing pool with two other guys. It was past midnight when we got home.

Sunday

All of us tired from the partying and didn't much aside from fixing our treadmill. The belt had become misaligned and took me and Dad the entire morning to shift back into position - obviously not very exciting. Other than that, I watched Super 8 in the evening. That was a cool movie.

On the whole, the weekend couldn't have been better. I've posted some pictures here.

In other news...

I just successfully compiled my first CUDA program. Woohoo!

Currently watching: Super 8