| Hey Young People, I'm Cool, I'm With It! |
[30 Aug 2008|08:45pm] |
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( Read more... )
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| TumbleLog |
[25 Aug 2008|05:52pm] |
In front of a sport memorabilia store:
"That's a picture of Mark Spitz!"
"Oh yeah, you're right! Hey, it should have a 'price reduced' sticker on it."
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[09 Aug 2008|11:00pm] |
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While Kimberly was getting her hair done, I waited with Caturday, walking around the neighborhood. It turned out that her fancy hair salon was in Menlo Park, right across the street from the new Tesla dealership, and they were open. (pic, pic) Apparently the final assembly line is being built right behind the showroom, so the parts are shipped to it and the cars are put together right there.
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[04 Aug 2008|01:29am] |
So I thought of something:
If the technology were invented to flawlessly and truly allow people to change their sex at will, what would it do to the current dialogues about gender? How would the world in general change?
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| Writer's Block: Last Call |
[27 Jul 2008|12:18pm] |
I'd call someone who I knew wasn't home and leave a voicemail saying, "This plane crash isn't an accident! It's an assassination! Don't let them get away with this!"
Man, that'd have them going in circles for weeks. I'd probably mention some cryptic clue so they'd have something to obsess over.
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[26 May 2008|02:02pm] |
Well, Friday Night Internet was kind of a bust. I suppose a website whose entire point was anticorrelated against traffic patterns on the internet was a dubious idea at best. Thanks to a few dedicated users who contributed most of the material (read: ![[info]](https://web.archive.org/web/20080907121436im_/http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) blk).
Because I like the design, I am thinking of turning it into a small invite-only forum. However, that's dubious too - pros: open all the time, cons: invite-only means small user population. I'm thinking the old Forum, which was a pretty lively place with a limited set of regulars. LiveJournal is too spread out and there doesn't seem to be a great sense of community (and its communities kind of suck, for some reason). Opinions?
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| GNU/BSD |
[11 May 2008|11:50am] |
I find it ridiculous that in order to get wget installed on my Mac, I have to download and install XCode (1.1 GB) in order to get gcc, in order to compile wget.
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It will further amuse you to know that I am doing all this just so that I can avoid clicking six file links and selecting "Save As" for each. Uh, I mean, it's an investment in a future free of such click-and-save-as's*.
* An apostrophe means OH SHIT HERE COME'S AN S!
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| Party for Two |
[01 Apr 2008|11:01am] |
After my post on Shania Twain, Kimberly noted that a mashup of "Party for Two" (originally with Shania Twain and the lead singer from Sugar Ray, Mark McGrath) featuring Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could be pretty funny.
So I made it:
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| What Asian People Like |
[27 Mar 2008|08:19pm] |
In homage to Stuff White People Like and aziandude's What Black People Like, I did my best to come up with:
Stuff Asian People Like:
Taking showers at night
Living in neighborhoods where white people live
China
Michael Chang
Referring to white people as "Americans"
Introducing their American friends to dim sum
Classical music
Classical music on NPR
Always keeping the car tuned to NPR
Explaining that not all Asians are Chinese/Japanese/etc
Japanese cars
Hot beverages (only)
Protesting ethnic stereotypes
Buffets
PhDs
Chinese grocery stores
Serving fruit to guests as a snack
Asking other parents who their kid's piano teacher is
Covering things in plastic
Using the dishwasher as a drying rack
Paying monthly credit card bills in full
Giving their kids popular American names
Saltines
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[20 Mar 2008|09:55pm] |
This is awesome: Finally, it takes a blunt Russian to say it like it is about LJ.
Read the entire interview (translated poorly by Google) here. It's awesome.
An excerpt, which shows that he understands LiveJournal's userbase better than any of its previous owners:
"LiveJournal general audience divided into three groups. There is a silent majority, which enjoys LJ for their needs and absolutely indifferent to who, where, what money, for whatever reason, this resource has created, developed and supported. There is a "positive minority" (in the Russian segment - approximately 7-10 percent.). These people like LJ, they consider it a useful and want to see it developed. They helped us, including - constructive criticism, which we are, in fact, correct mistakes. And there is a third category of people. They continually, throughout the history of LiveJournal make loud initiatives, which aim - to prejudice LJ, its creators, ruin, sentence, endanger. Basically, these people are motivated by the desire to attract attention. And that every time they succeeded.
Their rhetoric virtually the same - regardless of whether a person writes in English in California or in Russian in Moscow. These people in their time demanded the resignation of Brad Fitspatrika when he headed LJ alone. Required to call each advertiser, collaborating with LJ, and his reputation in danger of harm if he did not cease to be in the LJ advertising. Demanded repeal every innovation in the LJ. Prizyvali users go to a competing platform on one occasion, then on another ..."
I love it.
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| Why do you hate America so much? |
[15 Mar 2008|06:14pm] |
This democratic nomination is shaping up pretty badly.
You pretty much expect Republicans to do things like using innuendo to make race an issue, but now basically half the Democratic party is doing it too. And then there's also the misogyny in a lot of the Hillary criticism. Mind you, all of this is coming from the Democratic party itself - we haven't even gotten around to what the Republican party is going to do.
So we're basically just going to get to see a general election that's going to be filled with thinly-veiled racism, or thinly-veiled sexism. The worst part is that I'm not all that surprised that it's turning out this way.
When people ask me, "Why do you hate America so much?" - well, my answer is going to be, "Hmm, well, let me start with two things... 1) the RACISM, and 2) the SEXISM."
Oh yeah, and there's also the bit where if Obama takes the nomination, the Republicans will try to smear him by scaring all of Middle America with "Obama is a Muslim" slurs - because apparently in America, Muslim = Nazi.
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| Insights |
[27 Feb 2008|11:36pm] |
1.) The quip "Now they have two problems" has become one of the most tremendously useful ways of compactly describing why a proposed solution is bad. I've found it useful both at work and at home.
2.) I have solved the eternal mystery of where missing socks go when they disappear in your dryer. You know, when you put a pair of socks in the laundry and then you take them out (and you double-check to make sure you got everything out of the dryer) but then when you finish folding the laundry, you find that you only have one sock in the pair. I know where that other sock's gone.
( Are you ready? )
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| Outraged! |
[08 Feb 2008|12:57am] |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080207/ap_on_fe_st/odd_komodo_dragons;_ylt=AqxDLOJG0W1qtkLKv1LazK6s0NUE
Apparently immaculate Komodos hatched
Two Komodo dragons have hatched at the Sedgwick County Zoo, apparently without the fertilization of a male...
No! Wrong! The immaculate conception does not refer to the conception of Jesus without direct fertilization; the immaculateness refers to the fact that Mary was conceived free of original sin!
So in fact, ALL Komodos are immaculate because animals cannot sin against God (they have no souls), but not because they are conceived with or without fertilization!
God, the ignorance of reporters in the popular media about topics like science, technology, and religious dogma rankles me to no end.
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| Kindle Review |
[03 Feb 2008|07:28pm] |
We have received the Kindle and I have finished reading a book (review: good) on it. Kimberly is currently reading that Stephen Colbert book (review: funny) on it while breastfeeding. So here's the review:
This is not a complete review, as I have not exhaustively sampled all the features of the Kindle, so you can consider this a review by "a guy who bought one and just uses it to read stuff."
( Read more... )
Conclusion:
I'm probably not going to send it back (apparently Amazon's been very good about returns), but I would only recommend that you buy this if you also have $400* to blow on satisfying your weird pathological problem with books as a physical entity (or if you just can't wait for things to ship).
I also wrote this review while carrying a baby in a sling.
( * )
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| Combinatorics and Baby |
[03 Feb 2008|06:46pm] |
Today I solved a combinatorics problem. I've been slowly solving the problems on Project Euler as a vehicle for learning Python (last time I learned a new language, I created a web-based expense tracker and a matchmaking application, but this time I didn't want to do anything that extravagant). Most of the problems on that site involve programming in some way, but that one I worked out using pencil and paper (or rather, TextEdit and hand calculator).
The answer turned out to be quite simple, but it took me a fair amount of time to do it (and an unnecessarily roundabout method, involving distributing balls into bins). Also, I'm not very good at combinatorics, since the last time I took a class in it was over 10 years ago, and I got a C in that class. On the other hand, my skills haven't gotten any worse, if you allow for having to look up some of the basics on Wikipedia midway through.
The most important bit though, is that I did the whole thing while carrying a baby in a sling. I would post video evidence of this, but it really wasn't that cool to watch.
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| Rock Band |
[13 Jan 2008|11:32pm] |
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Between breastfeedings today, Kimberly managed to play a 4-song set with the band which enabled us to get the bodyguards. Unfortunately (ironically), the baby woke up and needed to be changed just as we finished Enter Sandman.
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| Object tracking now online |
[06 Jan 2008|08:05pm] |
Caturday can now apparently see objects and track them.
This morning Kimberly put her down to go to the bathroom and I watched as she turned and watched Kimberly walk across the room. Now we have put her in chair and she does not get upset from not being held because she can see her mommy sitting nearby.
Apparently the brain cells grew overnight because as of yesterday she could not do this.
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| Jagadish Chandra Bose |
[05 Jan 2008|02:25pm] |
This guy is a total badass:
"Bose returned to India in 1885, carrying a letter from Fawcett, the economist to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. On Lord Ripon’s request Sir Alfred Croft, the Director of Public Instruction, appointed Bose officiating professor of physics in Presidency College. The principal C. H. Tawney protested against the appointment but had to accept it.
Bose was not provided with facilities for research. On the other hand, he was 'victim of racialism' with regard to his salary. In those days, an Indian professor was paid Rs. 200 per month, while an European drew Rs. 300 per month. Since Bose was officiating, he was offered a salary of only Rs. 100 per month. With remarkable sense of self respect and national pride he decided on a new form of protest. Bose refused to accept the salary cheque. In fact, he continued his teaching assignment for three years without salary. Finally both the Director of Public Instruction and the Principal of the Presidency College fully realised the value of Bose’s skill in teaching and also his lofty character. As a result his appointment was made permanent with retrospective effect. He was given the full salary for the previous three years in lumpsum."
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[05 Jan 2008|03:37am] |
For anyone who hasn't seen it:
JFK
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[02 Jan 2008|10:34pm] |
| [ |
music |
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Dani California |
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I found out that the best sushi restaurant in the area actually happens to be two minutes from our house. We've lived here for two years and never suspected this, since it's just this little place in a strip mall between a Baskin Robbins and a dry cleaners, but the other day I happened to look up their yelp review, and now I've been there twice to try it and it's great. Since it's so close and we don't quite have time to cook, I've been eating high-quality take-out sushi for dinner (I also just got Kimberly to eat some tonight). To make matters "worse," I haven't yet figured out their portion sizes, so I've been consistently over-ordering (they give you huge pieces of sashimi) so I am basically sitting here in a sushi coma. In theory, if I can order the correct portion size, their prices should be very reasonable.
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| </2007> <2008> |
[01 Jan 2008|05:31pm] |
2007 was a much better year than the last one. No one died, I worked on a lot of interesting projects at work (I guess I did last year too), and we successfully had a baby.
We received an email today from my parents telling me that today was Caturday's "Mooniversary." Apparently in Chinese culture it's customary to celebrate the first full month after the baby's birth. They did not specific the method(s) by which we were supposed to execute this celebration, so I mooned Caturday.* (UPDATE: info)
I've recently started doing this thing where I thank random service people for working odd or difficult shifts, like the late shift or on holidays. The idea is that if you're working a service job, it's probably a crappy job, and it's even worse when your boss gives you the night shift or tells you that you have to work on a holiday (I imagine them at a party with their friends or family and they're putting on their coat saying, "Sorry guys, I gotta go - I have to work"). Also, since most people aren't extreme extroverts, interacting with strangers all day is probably really wearying - it's just one strange face after another, and some of them are rude to you, and usually the best you can hope for is that the customer will be polite. It's gotta be pretty soul-sucking (actually, I guess I know it was, since I worked at Burger King for awhile). So I've adopted this habit where if I'm out late at night - I do a lot of our grocery shopping around 10 or 11pm - or it's a holiday and I'm out getting some food, I make a point of thanking them for working the late shift, or working on a holiday. Today I got some takeout at McDonalds (nothing else was open), and I thanked both the people working the drive-thru for working on New Years Day. I hope it made their workday better.
Oh, right - I made some New Years resolutions.
* Not really.
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[31 Dec 2007|06:44pm] |
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Um, two women at once. Ha ha, kidding.
MAYBE.
Became a father.
I was promoted at work.
Lots of daunting new challenges in both of those.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No, and No.
I'm not perfect, and one of my flaws is failing to adhere to common customs.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yeah, my wife - and I'm pretty sure it's mine...
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Luckily, no.
5. What countries did you visit?
None. There was much sedentery-ness this year, with the pregnancy.
6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A girlfriend.
[okay, really I just copy-pasted this from viajes and it amuses me to leave this line in here or maybe not.]
I'm not sure what I lacked in 2007 that I'd really like to have, since I have my baby now.
7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
01 Dec 2007, I guess. I've always found these things silly, but yeah, the birth of my daughter.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
BELLIGERENT AND NUMEROUS
I failed to go "Bwahahaha, it's ALIVE!" in the delivery room after Caturday was born, but I did play "Final Countdown" on the iPhone just prior.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I failed to learn to play Sweet Child O' Mine in Guitar Hero 2 on Expert while blindfolded.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Hey, none! Cool!
There are 5 hours left until the new year, so I hope I don't trip going down the stairs or something...
UPDATE 2008 Jan 01 17:27: Success!
11. What was the best thing you bought?
iPhone. This thing truly is awesome.
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| prescient or instructional? |
[28 Dec 2007|06:40pm] |
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This is the first time I've made a careful reading of the book within a book in Orwell's 1984. What is remarkable is that it is now an almost incredibly accurate description of how American society is run (seriously, read it), especially insofar as advocated by the mainstream conservative movement. And Orwell wrote this in 1948.
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[27 Dec 2007|04:56am] |
Internet low on holiday activity?
Try Friday Night Internet, open through New Years Day!
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| Classic rock |
[23 Dec 2007|08:58pm] |
My dad is playing Rock Band right now.
Our band is named "Forceful Letdown."
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| Moooortal Kombaaaaat! |
[23 Dec 2007|03:15am] |
In breastfeeding, there is apparently a condition called "forceful letdown." (wikipedia link not included because it's not really that interesting)
It really sounds like the name of a band to me. Perhaps when we get around to playing Rock Band we'll name Kimberly's band that.
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| OLPC |
[23 Dec 2007|03:15am] |
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Apparently this thing arrived two days ago but I assumed it was just some other less interesting Xmas-related delivery. I finally got it hooked up to the internet (I somehow can't get it connected to our home wireless) and am posting this from the laptop itself. It is really small.
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| Passage: A Journey Through Time |
[11 Dec 2007|06:33pm] |
This is a beautiful and poignant game. Play it through at least once before reading the Creator's Statement. It also only takes 5 minutes.
In other unrelated news, Transformers: The Game is just Transformers placed in the (of all things!) Destroy All Humans engine. Bizarre.
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| Brilliant |
[09 Dec 2007|01:17am] |
http://valleywag.com/tech/party-report/for-livejournal-six-aparting-is-such-sweet-sorrow-330059.php
"Users of LiveJournal call it "defriending." As terrible as it sounds, defriending's not really that bad; it just means you're bored with someone and don't want to hear about their issues anymore.... With the sale [of LiveJournla to SUP], Anker and the rest of Six Apart's team are letting LiveJournal know, as gently as they can, that they're just not interested in its problems."
Exactly right.
While I'm on the "losing" side of this defriending, I gotta say: getting rid of LiveJournal is probably the first smart thing I've ever heard of the SixApart management doing.
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| Planet Caturnon |
[08 Dec 2007|04:33pm] |
Thank you to Camille for her gift of a bunny and baby book! She also included this note, clever enough to be worth reproducing online:
Dear Baby Algerwong,
Some folks are gonna front like "blue is for boys, pink is
for girls." You, my dear, are an Algerwong, and you pity
those fools.
Much love,
Auntie Camille
Yay! Thanks, Auntie Camille!
Delightful cards were also received from Auntie Ellen (who is Yishan's twin in bizarro landModesto) and Auntie Laura, who wrote a card that Caturday shall doubtlessly read in hpuzzlement years from now, reminding her that she was born in 2007, when GWB was in office and it was the year of the iPhone. Also, thank you for buying us the diapers Laura - we have now almost used them all up!
In other news, we have rapidly worked out a 21st-century baby-centric lifestyle. We moved our center of operations upstairs (those of you who have visited know that the upstairs bedroom of our townhouse is unusually large - almost a hotel suite in size, with enough room for a couch, table, desk, etc), where we feed Caturday while she is awake and sit on the internet while she is asleep. The lighting and climate are also much nicer, and sunny in the afternoons (for her mild jaundice). It's actually a far more pleasant area than the rest of our townhouse's downstairs, which is usually much colder and sometimes has bunny mess in it. Occasionally I venture downstairs to retrieve food, feed the rabbits, and fend off predators.
I've also come up with a nerdygood way of thinking about the "wake up every 3 hours to feed" cycle. I've come to imagine that this room (which now has very cozy lighting that creates a different atmosphere from the rest of our townhouse) is a different planet with 4-hour-long days. The natural inabitants of the planet sleep for 3 hours and then wake up to feed and excrete for 1 hour, while Kimberly and I are just powerful alien creatures who only need to sleep every 4 days, and then for 2 days at a time. By thinking of it this way, I'm no longer bothered by the interruptive nature of the feedings - I just figure that I have long-term secret alien plans that take many days to complete (like sleeping, or going through some of my work email), and I break them up across several of these so-called "Catur-Days" while the puny inhabitants of this planet slumber obliviously.
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| Kindle |
[06 Dec 2007|10:15pm] |
I just ordered an Amazon Kindle. [wikipedia entry]
I'd heard vaguely about this in the tech press when it came out, and sort of ignored it as another one of those lame ebook devices. Those were never any good - why would I pay for an expensive piece of technology just to read books when reading on paper is fine, the selection is limited, and there's all sorts of silly DRM involved? So I'd always ignored these devices, including this one. In fact, I ignored it so much that I didn't even bother to read past the headlines on Reddit making fun of them.
But then today I realized something. Maybe I am the target market for an eBook reader (assuming it's the iPhone equivalent in eBook readers).
( You see, I HATE books... )
So I bought one. I'll tell you how it is when it arrives.
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| Yo home, to Bel-Air! |
[06 Dec 2007|07:01pm] |
Has anyone seen this Fresh Prince meme in forums? I've started seeing it occasionally in recent months. It's pretty rare, because it actually kinda complicated to do - usually someone starts writing a long and complicated paragraph on-topic to the discussion, and then concludes by transitioning into the lyrics to the opening song to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Here's an example.
I think it's great. Now that I have mentioned it, by the way, you will have the lyrics to the song stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
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[05 Dec 2007|05:00pm] |
Dear Ron Paul:
It does not help the credibility of your campaign or cause when you, the most prominent libertarian candidate in quite some time, are supported by (1) Nazis and (2) spammers.
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| the day after caturday |
[02 Dec 2007|12:22pm] |
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kimberly would be happy to see visitors from 5pm to 8pm today. We're at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View. Call or text me for the room number.
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[02 Dec 2007|12:21am] |
Currently stopping at home to pick up some things to bring back to the hospital. They have wireless there so I'm bringing my laptop but it's flaky, so in case I don't come back online until Monday (when Kimberly is discharged), here are some pictures:
( cut for size )
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055057&l;=68439&id;=4809639 for the album.
You are welcome to visit mommy and baby during normal visiting hours (I don't know when they are) - we're at El Camino Hospital on Grant Rd in Mountain View. No diseases please.
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| the final countdown |
[01 Dec 2007|06:29pm] |
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in the hospital now!
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[25 Nov 2007|09:44pm] |
Updates on old news:
- I received a refund postal money order for my lost $41.00 from the post office. I promptly returned to the post office and traded it in for 100 stamps.
- I wrote a new review for Spider-Man 3: Friend Or Foe
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