I know I haven’t been updating it recently but that’s because it takes so long everytime… gotta find a way to make it faster. Maybe move it altogether to Facebook.. not sure yet.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 36 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 39 posts. There were 969 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 599mb. That’s about 3 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was January 31st with 349 views. The most popular post that day was Gallery.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were adrah.wordpress.com, facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, netvibes.com, and unitedstatesofandrea.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for spankeygoesyankee, asus k60, spankey goes yankee, casino count room, and photos soirée blizzard.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Gallery January 2010

What happens in Vegas… July 2010
1 comment

Computers, How-to Build one! February 2010
9 comments

Day two and pictures! January 2010
4 comments

First days at work! January 2010
6 comments

I actually hit that milestone a month ago on October 11th, but today was the sword ceremony which kind of makes it official.

It’s been 5 amazing years… from the friends I’ve made in my first team as a Game Master to my time in QC to finally moving over to Irvine and meet more great people!

Thank you all! I can’t wait to get my shield next!

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J’ai finalement atteint 5 années chez Blizzard!

Pour etre franc mes 5 ans etait il y as un mois deja, le 11 OCtobre. Mais la cérémonie de remise des épées n’as eu lieu qu’aujourd’hui.

Ca a été 5 superbes années. De mes amis que je me suis fait dans ma premiere team de Game Master a mes 3 années dans le departement de Controle et Qualité jusqu’a mon arriver ici a Irvine où j’ai rencontre plein d’autre personne et retrouver de nombreux amis qui ont aussi demenager ici!

Un grand merci à tous! J’ai hate d’avoir mon bouclier pour mes 10 ans

The stadium was pretty packed for a pre-season game, everybody cheered for Lakers, and especially Kobe Bryant who sucked anyway. Played barely 8 minutes, and was his selfish self ^^

The game itself wasn’t particularly good, but the atmosphere was still great, I was especially happy at the end since the Lakers lost

Not much else to say about the game, so enjoy the pics and video:

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Donc mardi Ashok et moi sommes allé à un match de pré-saison NBA. Mon premier match de NBA en vrai, ca aurais pus etre meilleur ailleurs vu que ca se passais près de Los Angeles et que tout le monde était pour eux… sauf moi vu que je les aimes pas, contrairement au reste du stade: p

Le stade a été assez plein pour un match de pré-saison, tout le monde applaudissait Lakers, et surtout Kobe Bryant même s’il etait bien mauvais ce soir la et n’a joué  qu’à peine 8 minutes.

Le match lui-même n’était pas particulièrement impressionant, mais l’atmosphère était super sympa, j’ai été particulièrement content à la fin puisque les Lakers ont perdu: D

Mais bon pas grand chose d’autre a dire, alors profitez des photos et de la vidéo.

e’ll be going next Tuesday! This time I’ll make sure I bring the camera ^^

Blizzcon is coming up as well, and there are quite a few EU guys coming over, so I’ll be updating the blog with pics in the coming week!

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Bon j’ai pas vraiment gagner la lotterie… Ashok a gagner 2 ticket la meme maniere que j’ai gagner les tickets pour le concert de Green Day. On vas aller voir Mardi soir un match de pré-saison NBA LA Lakers – Utah Jazz

Je vais essayer de pas oublier l’appareil photo cette fois :p

Blizzcon (une convention de ma boite) commence vendredi et pas mal de gars d’Europe font le voyage donc je vais mettre a jour quelques images cette semaine!

Anyway, I got back from the Concert safe and sound with Ashok, as Lin was unable to go that day because of her school. The concert was awesome, man does that Billy Joe kick ass, felt like he would never stop! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the event… I was already refused entrance with my bag, that I had to go back to the parking attach my bag to my bike, hope no one would steal it… and left the camera inside xD

But anyway, not much to show, it’s like any other concert I’m sure. ^^

Two weeks  later, Lin, Hansa, G and I went to visit San Diego on a Sunday. It’s a really nice and pretty city!

Can’t really describe the whole visit, but basically we checked out the beach and hiked a little in the morning

Then had lunch.. We found the second best pizza in America (first one still remains in Las Vegas so far), I’d like to find a nice pizzeria on Irvine though…

And then pretty much spent most of the day at the Balboa park where G was forced into a magic trick by some kid performer on the street ^^

Check out the video of the trick in the Video section of the blog (if it’s not there yet, it means I’m still working on it, check it out in a couple of hours)!

And of course we checked out the Coronado Island, using the huuuuuuge bridge that connects them, but not many pics as we couldn’t find anywhere to park and just drove around it and left.

Don’t forget to check the gallery thought, there are more pictures of the day!

Oh and I just reached 1000 miles (1609 kms) on my Ducati ! \o/

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Bon ca fait quelques semaine que je veux écrire ce post mais que j’ai pas la motive… je vais arreter de m’excuser vu que ca arrive tout le temps :p

Enfin bon… donc je suis aller au Concert de Green Day avec Ashok, vu que Lin ne pouvais pas m’accompagner ce jour la à cause de cours qu’elle avais ce soir la. Le concert etait énorme! Le chanteur Billy Joe est vraiment bon, et impossible de le calmer 30 secondes ce type… le concert a durer plus de 3h sans interruption! Malheuresement, je n’ai aucune photo… on m’avais deja refuser l’entré avec mon sac a dos (même si les nana peuvent rentrer avec de sac à main 2 fois plus gros que mon sac…) et j’ai du resortir de la queue pour attacher mon sac a ma moto, en espérant que personne ne le vole… et j’ai laisser l’appareil dedans xD

Deux semaine plus tard, Lin, Hansa, G et moi sommes aller a San Diego un Dimanche. C’est vraiment une belle ville!

C’est un peu dur de décrire toute la visite donc on vas faire court. On est d’abord aller a la place qui devance San Diego et on a fait un peu de marche a pied dans les colines derriere la plage.

Puis on est aller manger dans un resto italien que Lin connaissait, super bon! C’est la deuxieme meilleur pizzeria que j’ai trouvé aux US… la premiere restant tjs celle a Las Vegas! Putain ce que ca me manque une bonne pizza… j’en voudrais bien une sur Irvine tiens, mais ils ont que des Pizza américaine bien dégueu

Ensuite on est aller a Balboa Park où on as passer la majorité de la journée. G a même participer a un tour de magie qu’un gosse faisait devant le public ^^
Aller voir la video du tour de magie dans la section video du blog (si elle est pas la c’est que je suis encore entrain de bosser dessus, revenez plus tard!)

On est également aller visité Coronado Island, qui est connecter par un pont gigantesque a San Diego, malheuresement peu d’image vu qu’on as pas trouver de place où se garer et qu’on as finis par partir.

Ah! J’ai aussi atteint 1000miles (1 609kms) sur ma Ducati

Et comme toujours, aller voir les photos sur la gallerie!

I WON A GAZIBILLION $$$$$$!!!!

I wish…

I did win at a lottery however, see every week at work there’s a raffle you can enter and win tickets to concerts, sport events, shows etc… I rarely ever sign up because most of them I’m not interested in, I think since I’m in the California I only signed up for one a few weeks back. Until Monday, where I signed up to enter the raffle for the Green Day concert next week. And I won!

Two VIP tickets for Green Day next Tuesday 31 August!

Expect to see a nice update next week

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J’ai gagner !!

Ohputain j’ai gagner une tonne de $$$$$$ à la lotterie!!!

Bon ok c’est pas vrai… mais j’ai bel et bien gagner à une lotterie. Chaque semaine au boulot, une (voir plusieurs des fois) lotterie est organisé pour gagner des billets a des concerts, match, evenement, théatre etc… depuis que je suis ici, je n’y ai participer qu’une seule fois, généralement y’a pas grand chose qui m’interesse dans ces lotteries. Jusqu’à ce Lundi! On pouvais gagner 2 billets VIP pour le concert de Green Day Mardi prochain (31 Aout). J’ai participer, et j’ai gagner le tirage au sort

Attendez vous à voir un post plein de photos la semaine prochaine

J’ai hâte d’y être, Green Day est un de mes groupe préféré

Anyway, it’s been 3 weeks since the last post about Vegas and a few things happened since then. First of all Lin, me, John and Julien (a friend from Annecy who recently moved to Irvine for one year of internship) decided to go to the X-Games 16 in Los Angeles!

I’ve wanted to go there well… pretty much for the past 16 years, ever since I saw the first one in books and TV shows. So there it is, finally did that! Doubt I’ll do it again considering it’s pretty damn expensive (you thirsty? want water? here’s a tiny bottle that we bought 25c and selling for 5$!… bitches!). Apart from the expense part, it was awesome! We were only able to go there on one saturday (it lasts 5 days total) but we managed to see a few finals:

- BMX Park Men Final
- Skateboard Street Men Final
- BMX Big Air Men Final
- All the Rally car races and finals

I can tell you that seeing guys (even kids as there was 15 and 16 yo kids in the finals of both BMX and Skateboard…) jump 2 meters above the copping is a lot more impressive in real than on TV! Also seeing the guys at the Big Air take 15m long jumps and 6m high, you realize how fucking insane these guys really are!

Don’t think from the pictures that it was a bad weather day… that was when we arrived around 9 AM. It’s the usual South Californian weather until around 10-11h when it then clears and burns your skin to ashes which it did to me… even after using sun screen multiple times during the day. I felt like a snake a few days ago if you see what I mean… :p

I’ve posted a ton of other pictures on Facebook, so I’d advise you to check there for more pics of the X-Games (yes I’m being lazy at re-uploading them here :p).

After that week end we decided to go to the Orange County Fair, if anyone has been to the Paris “Foire du Trone” imagine the same one just 5 times bigger… so big they had one of those things (that you sit on sit on in ski resorts to bring you on top of mountains) going across the fair!

You can find there the most horrendous food ever… deepfried butter… deepfried snickers… deepfried anything you want and they just do it anyway… also tons of BBQ stuff! One of them was a freaking truck that could unfold into a giant BBQ: WIN!

Check out the gallery for more pics of the OC Fair. It was a bit expensive though (like all the fairs are…), so only went there one day!

And that’s about it for the big things, I’ve started baking recently with Lin, and made a few cakes as you might have seen on Facebook if not here’s a few of our “creations” :p

Hopefully I won’t take as long to update the next one :p

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Je sais que ça fait belle lurette que j’ai pas écrit un post, j’ai pas d’excuses… J’avais pas envie d’écrire :p

Quoi qu’il en soit, ca fait 3 semaines depuis le dernier post sur Vegas et j’ai bien fait quelques trucs entre temps. Tout d’abord Lin, moi, John et Julien (un ami d’Annecy, qui a récemment déménagé à Irvine pour une année de stage) avons décidé d’aller aux X-Games 16 à Los Angeles (une compétition de sport extreme)!

J’ai toujours voulus aller voir cet evenement… depuis que j’ai vu le premier dans des magazine et a la TV y’a 16 ans xD Alors ça y est, enfin, c’est fait! Par contre je doute que je le ferai encore vu que c’est vraiment pas donné(“vous avez soif? un peu l’eau? La achetez donc cette petite bouteille qu’on as acheté 25 centimes et qu’on vous vends 5$!” les enfoirés…). En dehors des frais, c’etait super! On as pu y aller un samedi (ca dure 5 jours au total), mais on as réussi à voir quelques finale:

- BMX Park finale
- Skateboard Stree finale
- BMX Big Air finale
- Toutes les courses de voitures Rallye et les finales

Je peux vous dire que voir des gars (et même des gosse vu qu’il y avait des finaliste de 15 et 16 ans à la finale du BMX et de skate…) sauté 2 mètres au-dessus du sol c’est beaucoup plus impressionnant en vrai que sur la TV! Aussi, voir les gars sur le Big Air fait des sauts de 15m de long et 6m de haut, on réalise à point ces type sont completement dingue!

N’imaginez pas à partir des photos que c’était un jour de mauvais temps… C’est le temps habituel du Sud de la Californie jusque vers 10-11h quand le soleil dissipe les nuages et vous brûle la peau… ce qu’il a fait pour moi… même après avoir utilisé une crème solaire à plusieurs reprises pendant la journée. Je me sentais comme un serpent il ya quelques jours si vous voyez ce que je veux dire…

J’ai posté une tonne de photos d’autres sur Facebook, alors je vous conseille d’aller voir la bas pour plus de photos des X-Games.

Après ce week end, on as décidé d’aller à la foire d’Orange County, si vous avez deja été à la Foire du Trone de Paris imaginez le même seulement 5 fois plus grand (ou 50 fois celle d’Annecy lol)… si grande qu’ils avaient un télésiege pour traverser la foire d’un bout a l’autre plus rapidement!

Vous pouvez y trouver la nourriture la plus horrible qui ai jamais existé… comme du beurre frit… des Snickers frit… ils frient tout que vous voulez en gros, absolument dégueulasse… par contre ils avait des des tonnes de BBQ! L’un d’eux était un camion 36 tonnes qui cachait un gigantesque BBQ: JUSTE ENORME!

Allez voire la galerie pour plus de photos de la Foire d’OC. C’était un peu cher par contre (comme tous les fête forraine sont …), alors on y ais aller qu’une fois.

Et c’est a peu pres tout, j’ai commencé à cuisiner des gateau récemment, et j’ai fait quelques gâteaux avec Lin que vous avez pu voir sur Facebook, sinon voici quelques-unes de nos “créations”: p

J’essairais de pas laisser autant de temps entre deux post la prochaine fois…

Last Wednesday I suddenly felt the urge of going to Vegas! So Lin started searching for hotels and deals on that evening as we had planned on leaving Friday after work and coming back Monday.

We left on Friday around 18h and arrived in Vegas around 22h30. We made one stop about 1 hour before arriving to refuel; it was already pitch black outside, yet when we got out of the car it felt like a hammer of heat had just fallen onto our heads. I’m not sure I’ll be able to describe well the heat that we felt at that moment. It was night and there was a ton of hot wind… not warm… I said H O T!

What you need to remember: 21h30, night, 35°+ outside… I think that gives you a good idea of what kind of weather we got the rest of the week end.

Lin found a really nice deal with Travelocity, we got a room at the Hilton, a 4 star hotel really close to the strip (the main road of Vegas with all the famous hotels and casinos like Caesars, Luxor, Bellagio etc…). We paid 58$ a night for a pretty nice room with a King size bed.

Saturday

On Saturday the first thing we did was going to see the WSOP Main Event, it was the last day with just 3 tables left (27 players left out of a 7500 field a week before). I’ve seen the ESPN featured table, and Michael Mizrachi on another one, I point him out has he’s the only pro left… I’m hoping he wins it in November when the final table will be played!

I’ve also see Phil Hellmuth’s private lounge, unfortunately I didn’t see him. ^^

Since we woke up around 11h30 and went immediately to the WSOP, we decided to have lunch after that. We decided to go to The Buffet at the Bellagio. By far the most expensive buffet place I know, something like 28$ if I remember correctly for an all-you-can-eat buffet… but omfg the food! I ate so much I got to the point I seriously couldn’t move for 10 mins while my stomach tried to slowly digest a few things and make some room. It was the best buffet EVAH! Did I mention they had french pastryies exactly how you would find them in good bakeries in france?

After that we checked out the Bellagio’s Casino, unfortunately you won’t see any pictures as we’re not allowed to take pictures inside the Casino. Apparently some people go there lying to their boss and/or wifes and Casinos don’t want them to end up on Internet…. O’RLY?! But check out the Gallery to see more pictures from the day.

We didn’t do that much on Saturday as we were still pretty tired, so after spending a little time at the Bellagio we headed back to the hotel to rest a little before going to the “Lance Burton Master Magician” show at the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino.

I had never seen a magic show live before, and I’ve gotta say it’s pretty damn fun! Thank you John for advising us to go see him because the show was a lot of fun. That guy knows his shit, he didn’t do anything that we hadn’t seen before on TV, but seeing it live kicks ass! Some of his tricks are really amazing, next time I really wanna go see David Copperfield to compare them.

After that we decided to visit Fremont street! If the name doesn’t ring a bell I’m sure you’ve still heard of it, it’s in downtown Vegas, an entire street covered with a giant screen! It’s like 5 miles away from the Strip, yet there were more people on the street than at the strip.

It’s really impressive, seeing this giant screen of 460m long and 27 m above you. The best was seeing the entire street’s lights going off and a KISS video clip starting with a fireball that goes through the whole street

Sunday

Sunday, once again woke up late and decided to head to Pampa’s, a Brazillian restaurant. Lin has been in Vegas several times and knew where to get discounts, so we first headed to the Tuscany Hotel & Casino to buy the vouchers. We paid 3$ per person for the vouchers and paid around 50% off at the restaurant, which saved us like 10$, it’s not a whole lot but when every penny saved in Vegas is more money you can spend on slots right? :p

That restaurant was pretty cool, the waiter saw us arrive and decided to give us the little private room rather than seating us in the main restaurant room. We had our own private little table! The food was quite good, it starts with a buffer for the appetizers and then you get a green piece thing that you put on the table meaning that you’re ready to eat the meat.

When it’s green waiters keep walking in with different kinds of meat on a stick which they cut in front of you, beef, chicken, porc, turkey wrapped bacon, sausages etc… it was really tasty! Once you’re done you just flip the thing over to show the red side and they stop coming in.

This was in the Planet Hollywood Resort… which seems to be a really nice hotel to consider next time! Check out the gallery for more pictures of that hotel.

We then spent the rest of the day wandering in the streets of Vegas under a 45°C sun… yeah, as I first said at the beginning of this post it was H O T! Thankfully Lin was smarter than me and brought suncream which means that even with my bald head I didn’t get a single sunburn \o/

We went to see the Bellagio’s fountains (check out the new Video tab for a video of the fountain), which are really beautiful. They only work every 30 minutes though, so you gotta time your arrival there! We then checked out Caesar’s Palace and Paris Paris!

We then headed to the Venetian to see the Blue Man Group show. In one word: AWESOME!

They don’t do as much drumming as I thought, it’s a lot of situation comedy, taking people from the audience and putting them in funny situations, like this guy they took, blind folded him, walked backstage, painted him entirely blue (not before making him wear a full suit ofc) and then attaching him by the legs upside down and throwing him into a big white sheet to make a print of himself!

We were also in the “Poncho” section, which means that we were in the first 5 rows (3rd one actually) where they give the public ponchos to protect themselves from the paint and various other liquids they throw at you. Fortunately we were on the left side and we didn’t really get anything thrown at us, but the center part… well let’s just say that I hope they wore the poncho correctly.

We then went to an italian restaurant at the Venetian… and FINALLY I found a proper pizza in this country. Because AMERICANS CANNOT MAKE PIZZAS! There I said it, whatever John says, US pizzas are fail, end of the story. However, this restaurant we found was simply put awesome! I wish the crust had a little flour on it like I like but that’s only because I wanna be picky, apart from that it was without a doubt the best pizza ever in the US!

Monday

Finally Monday we had one last buffet at Harrah’s thanks to other vouchers for discounts that we bought, not as good as the Bellagio but for 8$ each we had a really nice lunch before leaving!

Overall we didn’t really play much, or rather I should say I didn’t play much, Lin however did lose 35$ and I lost 5$ on slot machines. We didn’t really have time for me to try a poker tourney, I don’t really like the slot machines and apart from Blackjack that I knew a little I had no idea how any of the other games’ rules like Craps, Three Kind Poker etc… I’ll be sure to read about it online before I go next time!

Anyway, this was a great week end, but we’ll definitely never go back in July, the heat was insane, I really can’t stress how hot it was… to give you a better idea here’s what two women were discussing behind us in the queue for the buffet: they read in the newspaper that some dude decided to run barefoot after the mailman that had just passed by, 5 seconds after he stepped outside the guy’s foot had blisters, he collapsed from the pain and burned his knees… yeah… it was just that hot!

Make sure to check out the pictures on the Gallery, I haven’t uploaded a quarter of them on the front page compared to what’s in the Gallery! And check out the new Video section that should be up tomorrow, I’ll be uploading a few videos from the trip!

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La trad en francais des que j’ai le temps, ca m’a pris 2h pr écrire ce post en anglais… pour les impatients => google translate!

N’oubliez pas d’aller voir la Gallerie et la nouvelle section Video, je vais y mettre qq video de notre séjour à Vegas!

First batch was kinda burned, but the 2nd batch was awesome! Gonna have to make some more; takes 10 mins to prepare and 10 more to bake!

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Cette fois Lin et moi avons fait des cookies, apres qu’on soit aller en moto à Laguna Beach pour s’aérer un peu!

La première fournée de cookies étais un peu bruler dessous, mais toujours mangeable! Par contre la deuxième fournée étais parfaite! Ca prend 10 minutes à préparer et 10 de plus a cuire. A ce rythme je vais en faire des tonnes.

They’re pretty easy to make though, next step is to baking a cake and making the special same cream as you can find in french bakeries!

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Yay j’ai enfin acheter un gaufrier!

C’est plus facile que je ne le pensais, prochaine étape c’est de faire des tartelettes avec de la bonne crême patissieres!