Alan Shmalan

Bold the establishments you've been to. Underline your favorites. Strikethrough the ones you don't like.

1. Arby's The first time I went to Arby's, I thought their roast beef sandwiches were so good.  I'm not sure why I don't go there more often though; probably because there aren't too many chains around here.
2. Beefeater
3. Benihana
4. Black Angus  I don't go to many steakhouses, but BA is decent for the price
5. Buffalo Grill
6. Burger King Whopper tops all other fast food sandwiches
7. California Pizza Kitchen I always either get the BBQ Chicken salad or BBQ Chicken Pizza.  Their tiramisu is still one of the best I've ever had.  Their other pizzas are pretty good too, like the duck one.
9. Chick-fil-A
10. Chipotle It's not authentic Mexican food, but I do love their burrito bowls.
11. Chuck E. Cheese's Fun when I went as a kid.  I haven't been there since elementary school though.
12. Claim Jumper Really good, and great portions too. 
13. Cluck-U-Chicken Chicken so hot it burned to crap for a week
14. Del Taco
15. Denny's Good times in high school.
16. El Pollo Loco Good chicken, but not very big portions
17. Fatburger
18. Hard Rock Cafe 1st and only time at Las Vegas.  Nice environment, but nothing special about it though.
19. Hardee's
20. Harvey's
21. HomeTown Buffet Shit.
22. Hooters
23. In-n-Out Best tasting combo of burger, fries, and shake for fast food.
24. Jack in the Box Love their shakes.  I think I've had one too many sourdough jacks though. 
25. Johnny Rocket's I would underline it as a favorite if Du were my waiter. :o)
26. Kelsey's
27. KFC Perfect Friday night dinner when staying home.
28. Krispy Kreme Overrated.
29. Long John Silver's
30. McDonald's
32. Outback Steakhouse Good food.  Moderately priced.  Typical chain restaurant.
33. Planet Hollywood So so. Nice environment, if I remember correctly.
34. Quizno's
35. Rainforest Cafe
36. Red Lobster Love their cheddar biscuits. Hadn't eaten here in years
37. Red Robin Went there recently, and holy crap they have the best fruited lemonade I've ever tasted.  It had a bit of a zing to it.  Must go there again.
38. Red Rooster
39. Señor Frog's
40. Skyline Chili
41. Sonic
42. Subway A staple for me back when I was attending night classes.  Dinner was always some chicken sub with sauce.  I think it was sweet teriyaki, although it tasted nothing like teriyaki.
43. Sweet Tomatoes Is this the same as souplantation or fresh choice?  If it is, they're all the same.  Good food when eating light.
44. T.G.I.Friday's
45. Taco Bell Good times in high school.
46. TCBY
47. The Old Spaghetti Factory
48. Tim Horton's
49. Wendy's Delicious Frosty.  Their vanilla one tastes like soft serve ice cream.
50. White Castle

I finally had my first day of substituting for a math teacher in the summer school program yesterday.  It went pretty well, although getting the call without any preparation time ruined my morning workout routine!  I was just about ready to head out the door for my morning run when I got the call to sub.  This has been a pretty easy gig working in this summer school program.  I'd definitely do this next year.

It's been pretty difficulty to gain weight.  I had lost the weight I had gained after slacking off just a few days, but I've been trying to gain it all back, and more. 

Let's have a birthday party for Bonny on Friday night (or whatever day works best).  I just don't know where to eat or what to do.  Any ideas?

I've gained 5 lbs!  That's such an accomplishment for me.  I'm sure others would hate to gain weight, but daily exercise and eating lots of protein has really helped me to look healthier.  My goal is to gain another ten pounds by the end of summer.

Waking up at 5am is a real drag.  1.)  It's so hard to get out of bed and 2) by the time I'm finished exercising, it's 7am.  Hardly enough time to get ready for school and beat the morning commute.  I need to figure a workout routine that will work during the school year so I can maintain this lifestyle.  The problem is that I know I'll slack off if I push exercising until after school. 

iPod scrobbling is not working as planned.  Only some of my songs get recorded onto last.fm, or sometimes not even at all.  Bummer.

I just screwed up my music's ratings.  I was trying to backup and sync my mp3s to iTunes, and all of my mp3s ratings got lost in the process.  So much work put into rating the songs, and it disappeared before my eyes in a matter of seconds.  Damn it.

My new project: Re-rate songs in iPod.  Day 1: Artists beginning with A.

I love summer school.  Great hours, great pay. 

This past week, I've been getting back into running.  I've decided to wake up every morning at 5am to run, because on past experiences, I'll always have some excuse not to run in the afternoon/evening (too tired from work, time for dinner, time for bed, etc.).  So far, it's been working well, although my ankles feel sprained.  I bought new workout clothes too, because it's pretty nippy at 5am!  My day certainly feels longer now, like I'm getting more accomplished.  I just hope I can keep this up during the school year.

I also started getting back into last.fm.  I kinda gave up on it before because I didn't know how to sync it to iTunes.  But it's finally all set!

Anyone up for seeing The Fratellis?  At the Fillmore, June 18, 20 bucks a ticket.
Haven't been to a concert in a while...

My goodness, I've never received such nice gifts from students for Christmas.  But then again, they are from Cupertino.  I've received Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Best Buy, and even iTunes gift cards.  Today was especially surprising because one of my periods' students had been secretly collecting a pool of money to buy a gift card to Best Buy, which totaled $150!!!  Receiving this many gifts from students is definitely a new experience for me; LA students did not show appreciation in this way, although I could tell it was there (in some of them at least).

Wow that was a big earthquake....5.6....

I went to dim sum at Koi Palace with Christina, her coworker and boyfriend.  That has got to be the best dim sum place I've ever been to.  Ever.  Their xiao long baos were comparable to Din Tai Fung in So Cal too.  The four of us then picked up Phuong and Michelle, now attending graduate school in San Francisco, and we headed over to the Ghiradelli Chocolate Festival, and met Benny .  We tried so many samples of cookies, brownies, chocolate milk, sundaes, etc.  They were good, but I think I've had my fix of chocolate for a very very long time.  All the samples were just so rich!  We also went to this really glamorous cupcake shop, kinda resembling Sprinkles down in LA.  I guess everything LA has, Nor Cal has too.  Cupcakes cost $3 each, which is more than I'd spend on a cupcake, but since this was my first (and probably only time) to buy a cupcake from Ghiradelli Square, I got four to bring home.  After we left the festival, we met up with a few of Benny's friends and had dinner at a chinese cafe in Millbrae.  We then went our separate ways around 8pm, where I met up with Du and gang at Dave and Buster's.  I wasn't expecting to drink, but I was "forced" to....  thank goodness the buzzed feeling wore off by the time we were leaving.

I got a PS3 for my bday too, which is pretty amazing.  At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep it, just because I still don't know if it will be a success.  But as I play with it more and more, it's a pretty amazing video game ystem, blu ray player, whatever you call it.  Now I am eager to find out what games are coming out soon for it...

The new Collective Soul album, Afterwords, is great.  It definitely has a more adult contemporary feel to it, but I think the move was in the right direction.  Pretty much all the songs have a catchy melody. The first listen had already caught my ear, although maybe that's because they're only my favorite band.  Still, it's easy enough to listen to that even my family liked it.  I think one thing I still like about the band is that they are not "popular" (or as popular as they once were), so it gives me a feeling of satisfaction liking something the general public does not.  However, on their own indie label, they did decide to only sell their albums at Target though, which still baffles me.  I feel that they are limiting themselves to record sales that way, but then again, who buys CDs at Sam Goody anyway...other music stores just charge too much...

For some reason, listening to my music on my iPod rocks way more than when I listened to music on my Creative Jukebox.  There's just something about it that makes me love playing it everywhere.  Perhaps that's why it is so popular.

I really need to change my homepage. It is currently http://bensbargains.net, which is a website dedicated to posting mostly online items that are on sale, and for good prices. I just recently bought a 500 GB external hard drive, as well as the Sony DSC-T100.  It's addicting scrolling through the pages of deals, and I am not even sure these are things I really need or I keep convincing myself I need.  The camera, I repeatedly told myself, would be a family camera, for everyone to use because our older digital cameras truly suck.  Pictures always come out blurry.  Actually, I had just bought a family camera for my mom's birthday, but I figure the T100 only costs $50 more and tops our previous one in terms of optical zoom and LCD display size.  And it's a helluva lot sexier too.  I do plan on returning the previous camera though, so I am not entirely throwing money away.  Or is that more of my own peer pressure talking me into making purchases?
As for the hard drive, well I still don't think holds as much validity as the camera.  I just want to consolidate my two baby hard drives (40 GB and 150 GB) into a massive, well organized (and aesthetic!) black box.  I'm not entirely sure it's a necessity though.

By currently reading The Number, by Lee Eisenberg, I figure that I should be taking some of his helpful advice and saving a little extra money.  He basically focuses on saving for retirement, and although I am not at the point of retirement (boy I'd like to be though), I really should be more frugal because every little bit helps.  I'll start tomorrow, just like I had said yesterday.

Those SC fans can shut their mouths at last.

So school started again, in early September. All is going well, and I love my students this year. THe 9th graders are so adorable, and obedient. It's so easy to mold them into what I expect from them. I'm teaching Algebra 2 (regular and honors), Geometry honors, and AP Calculus. My Calc class started out with 24 but is now down to 21 (those three were scared they couldn't hack it in the class). Its great having such a small class, I've never experienced small class sizes like this before. My others however, are capped at 37 each. Waaay too big, but we dont have enough funding to hire another math teacher. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to control such huge classes, but it hasn't been a problem as of yet. Hopefully it stays like this all year.

ALmost done with my credential/masters too@! I'll be finished by end of October with my student teaching. Its a lot of work until then though, with Saturday classes and homework throughout the week.

Last year at school, the math department received a bunch of technology equipment and one of the items I experimented with in my class was a wireless writing tablet to write notes, rather than writing on the board. THe kids loved it, and the staff was in awe as I presented its functions. The school bought a bunch more of them for the rest of the staff, and we FINALLY just got them last week. I took my *new* tablet home, so now i have a tablet at home and at school :D It's sooo fun to play with :D:D:D:D

After a difficult few years with my life recently, things are starting to look up at last. There's reason to live again.

( jenny's survey )

what an amazing usc game...

I'm developing a huge power trip. From multiple reports from various teachers, they say that the students that we share are saying I am really strict. What a compliment! I really feel like I finally have control over my classes, especially compared to last year. Well except for my fifth period, that class is a bit talkative, being after lunch and all, but still nothing compared to last year's classes. Glad to have the kids' respect though, so they know they don't misbehave in my class, or else!