Now that my love has finished up her study program in Hawaii, I'll be flying over there to see what all the fuss is about. I'll be out all next week. I'm leaving my laptop behind (yes, it was my idea), so don't expect much IRC lurking or email responses.

Look what I found inside of the front bumper of my Prius this evening:

OMG KITTEN!!!!

Sophia and I knew that we were going to get married long before I asked her to marry me. One side-effect of this arrangement is the ability to shop for a ring together to make sure that it is exactly what she wanted.

For me, I always imagined offering a custom-designed one-of-a-kind ring to my love. A unique artifact which no other woman would have on her finger.

Sophia was quite fond of Tacori's elegant and sophisticated designs. However, by buying one of the existing Tacori designs we would be certain that the ring would not be of a unique design.

So... What do we do? Have Tacori make us a custom-made, uniquely designed engagement ring?

Yep.

Over the past two years and three months, I have gotten to know and fallen in love with Sophia Liu. She has become the love of my life, and I cannot imagine living without her. Yesterday, I asked Sophia if she would marry me. And she said yes.

More details to follow.

Last month, Sophia and I went to Steamboat, CO. While there, we found this quaint old-fashoned drug-store with a soda fountain, a jukebox, and... a photo booth. I'm not talking about one of those modern photo booths that are digital and just print out the pictures, no siree. This box was totally old-school, taking around two minutes to develop the sepia-toned pictures on a textured photo paper. There is just something imminently comforting about knowing that things like this still exist and are still working. In an age where it is hard to imagine how to make anything without microcontrollers, one needs to be occasionally reminded that people built amazing things long ago without them.

Of course, there are plenty of other pictures from my steamboat trip. Read on to take a peek.

I realize that recently a lot of my friends have had a lot of trouble trying to contact me thru Google Talk. If you end up seeing me online, trying to send me a message, and getting an error in response, then try sending me an email or something. When I get some time over the next few days I'll try to debug the issue.

All of these problems seemed to crop up when my router died an untimely death a week or two ago. Probably related.

This past weekend, Mike, Nathan, and myself had a road trip to Los Angeles for the weekend to hang out with Sophia. Lots of pictures after the jump.

I had a profound experience at Ikea this morning. Sophia and I went there to go buy a couch. We had already been to Ikea yesterday to pick up the couch, but after getting there we found that apparently the couch was up on one of the racks that they couldn't get to during operating hours—making this our second trip to Ikea in less than 24 hours. Sophia's dad was helping us out with his truck, much like he did the night before (when there wasn't a couch).

This time they had some of the couches we wanted on the self-serve floor and we loaded it onto two of the flat-bed carts. We glided over to one of the checkout lines and proceeded to wait for our turn at the casher.

Eventually it was our turn, and after all the items were scanned I was ready to pay. I reached for my wallet and...no wallet.

My heart sank. Not only another wasted trip for us, but another wasted trip for Sophia's dad! I fumbled around in disbelief for a few distressed moments.

"What's wrong?", I heard a voice ask. It came from the guy behind us in line.

"I forgot my wallet", I replied while fumbling around. I figured he was annoyed that I was taking so long.

"How much do you need?", he asked.

Puzzled, I answered him, "Around $700."

"I'll cover it and you can send me a check," he replied.

I was dumbstruck. There must be some catch, I thought. Or maybe I didn't hear him right. It seemed like something out of a movie, not something that happens to real people. But here I was without a wallet, and here was someone willing to help. And that's exactly what he did—he walked around the couch to the register, pulled out his American Express card and paid for it.

He handed me his drivers license so I could get his address off of it. I also wrote down my address, phone number, and email. I thanked him profusely, and we went our separate ways. His name was Stephen.

As you might imagine, this has been quite a profound experience for me. $700 is no small amount of money, and he had no way of knowing if I was even good for it. Yet he helped me anyway, and for that I am extraordinarily grateful.

The check is in the mail.

UPDATE: By the way, Stephen apparently runs the Boulder Creek Brewery in, um... Boulder Creek. If you are in the area, you should probably drop by and check it out—because it is a known fact that cool people make delicious beer. You heard it here first.