It's sunny

Today it's sunny.

Ketchup

Isn't it funny how drive-thru fast food places with either give you no ketchup at all (if you don't ask), yet they give you enough ketchup packages to allow one to survive a nuclear winter (when you do ask)?

Trouble with Bush

It's funny, people dislike Bush Jr. so much that in an informal poll online, these are the running results when he's compared to Jimmy Carter.

Who will history judge more favorably?
Carter
77%

Bush
23%

Total Votes: 32,283

What the hell? LOL

In other news, this is a recent story about yet another retired general speaking out against the administrations (particular Rumsfield) approach to the Iraqi War. Read article

A player's trouble

So, I was at this party one time at a friend’s house in Monterey many years ago. There was a few guys that lived in the same place, and they always had some friends over. It was a den of players. At this party, a female friend of theirs had brought over some fresh meat, a cute 18-year old blonde girl. I had started talking to her and even got her number, but couldn’t hang out too long. Anyways, the king player had his eyes set on her, and hung out with her for awhile too.

The next day, I get a call from him. He went into this short story how he liked her and that she said she liked him too and he was hoping he could get her number from me. I was thinking that’s a pretty slimy move, but hey, it didn’t really matter to me. So I gave him the number, or at least I thought I did. It turns out that I misread the number when I gave it to him. By some massively strange coincidence, I gave him the new number to his ex-girlfriend’s new place. When he called, he got cussed out by his ex over the phone.

I get a call back from him like 20 minutes later. He was kinda pissed, but he was a trooper. He still wanted the blonde’s number from me, even though he thought I intentionally gave him his ex’s number to fuck with him. His friends thought I was a genius for that maneuver, even though it was completely accidental. I never met his ex, nor did I know her number. However, I think the accident ended up working in his favor anyway cuz he was able to use the incident to suck his ex back into his game for a little while longer.

So, Mr. Rogers was a sniper?

Hmmm. http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-mr-rogers.htm

Today...

It's rains.

Just some thoughts on U.S. war capability

For a long time the U.S. had a policy of keeping a standing military ready to fight one full war and one half war at the same time. This means that the U.S. can engage in one all out war in one region, while still being able to do peacekeeping missions and smaller scale operations in other regions at the same time. There was a time when people viewed the need for this with skepticism. Following the Persian Gulf War, some believed the world was becoming more united and less tolerant of rogue states.
After 9/11, many began to realize that the proper approach was neither a single war policy or a war and a half policy. So the U.S. adopted a two war policy. This allowed the U.S. to fight the Iraqi War and the Afghani War at the same time. Of course, here comes my criticism.
I've got the sense that the U.S. is barely able to fight one all out war right now. It seems to me that the politicians and bureaucrats have significantly underestimated the resources required to fight a war. It's my opinion that the current chaotic situation in Iraq could've been avoided had we sent in the appropriate number of forces from the beginning. In additional, the Afghani War never got significant U.S. forces at all. In reality, it was a half of a war. So, the U.S. really is fighting and rebuilding nations from one and a half wars. Yet, our ability to do this was based on trying to implement a two war policy. It seems to me that maybe our leaders don't really have a sane grasp of reality when it comes to what's really involved when fighting a war. We haven't learned from many of the biggest mistakes in the Vietnam War. Mistakes like never making a formal declaration of war, underestimating the enemy's ability to stay entrenched, or working too closely with the existing powers within the occupied nation. We succeeded with reforming Japan and Germany, but these were two nations weary of wars they started. Right now, we are occupying one nation that is weary of the war we started, and another nation that's not had a strong central government in modern times.
These wars need to be finished. In my mind, the Afghani War will not be done until Bin Laden & crew is captured. This should be our main focus. We should've been fighting the Afghani War as a full war. We need to get Iraq on its feet so we can finish our job in Afghanistan.

Trouble with time again, or not

So far, this evening is going pretty much as planned...well, not really planned, but as I intended for each task that I thought of doing. So, I had to leave work a bit early to drop off some components for rework. I left that machine shop around 4 and headed home. As I headed home, I figured out that I could possibly have enough time to do all of my laundry at the nearby Laundromat. I get home, gather the laundry and head over. I got all the loads started in the washing machines and headed next door to discover a sandwich restaurant at around 4:45. I finished my sandwich, walked back over to the Laundromat and started moving clothes to the dryers. As the last load was transferred, I looked up to see the time was about 5pm. I thought about the nice shirts and sweaters that I need dry cleaned. I headed back home and gathered my dry cleaning load and drove to the near by cleaners. After dropping off my dry cleaning, I'm thinking about how hella low on gas I am. Ok, I head down the street to the gas station and pump a nearly full tank, 15.25 gallons. Ya'no, I went 365 miles on that 15.25 gallons. That's pretty good. Anyways, after that I head back to the Laundromat. As I walk up to my dryers, the first load finishes. Talk about prefect timing. While I'm folding my clothes, the second load finishes. Just as I'm done folding both of those loads, the third and final load finishes. I get all that done, and everything back to my home at just about 6:55. That's 5 minutes before my grocery delivery time window starts. And here I am blogging about the whole journey.

How many thangs are wrong with this?

Recently, a disc jockey was babbling away on the radio. During her show, she reported that Donald Trump just had his new baby which was born on March 18th, 8 days early and at 8 o'clock. She then added, "That's kinda like 7 degrees from Kevin Bacon, but with 8 instead."

Vancouver Visit

From my visit to Vancouver, I can say it seems to be a cool place with plenty to do. I definitely want to visit again. Dave, little Miriam, Allie and I drove up from Seattle Saturday morning this past weekend. Dave picked out a great hotel, sep the bed situation was a little strange. The hotel only had two “deluxe double beds” per room available. I’m not sure was a deluxe double bed is, but my guess is that they are somewhat smaller than a queen bed. From sleeping in them, my perception is that they aren’t quite as wide. Anyway, in Vancouver, we headed down to the famous Public Market on Granville Island. It’s a place where one can get tons of fresh food from around the world in the style of a large European market place. We really just walked around; didn’t do any shopping. At the food court, we settled on German style sausages and hotdogs for lunch, with crepes for a dessert. We then walked down to the small ferry launch and took a ferry ride around False Creek. We got of at Yaletown, which (upon close inspection of the stores and inhabitants) seemed to be the gay centric area of Vancouver. We were in this one fancy knickknack boutique that had hella gay-ass photos as samples in the picture frames on sale. It was pretty amusing. I wouldn’t have expected overt stereotypical displays like that, regardless of who the target cliental was to be. Other clues regarding the homosexual friendlessness of the area were many of the guys walking around the area. After exploring the area for a bit, we got back to the ferry and headed back to Granville Island. One thang that Dave and I noticed is that time seemed to be slipping by without notice. We lost track of time several times, realizing each time that it was later than we though it should be. Very strange.
After that minor adventure, we headed back to the main shopping area in the region near our hotel. After getting thangs figured out, we found an area of shops near the Sears. The Sears in Vancouver reminded me more of an upscale dept. store in the U.S. We also checked out this one comic book shop that had a lot of interesting items, and a few other boutiques as well. All the stores in that area began closing around 6 to 7, so we drive on a hunch to find another area. Eventually we found a street where all the shops where open late. There we found the restaurant where we had diner. That’s another story. Anyways, after dinner we did some shopping, and then headed back to the hotel. The next morning, we headed back to Seattle.

Went to Seattle to get away from the Rain.

I went to Seattle to get away from the rain. lol It’s funny cuz it’s kinda true. For my birthday, Allie flew us out to visit Dave and his g/f (little Miriam) in Seattle. On Thursday night we decided to drive up to Vancouver for the weekend.

On Friday, both Dave and his g/f had to work in the morning, so Allie and I got to sleep in. We started the day around 12:30 when Dave got off and picked us up. We headed to Miriam’s job to pick her up. While waiting for her to get off work, we wandered around a Fry’s Electronics near her work. I had to battle off Dave’s attempts to buy me a gift. That will learn me not to go shopping on my birthday with my friends. hehe

Once Miriam got of work, we went for lunch at this one crab restaurant again, where they serve steamed seafood poured out on the table from buckets. Very tasty, as always. Then we headed to the heart of Seattle. The girls went off shopping while Dave and I tried to take in some of the attractions. We tried to check out the underground tour of old Seattle. We missed the last tour of the day. We tried to go to the top of the tallest building, but again missed that day’s cut off for access to that. We ended up just driving around for the most part, figuring out what to explore when everything is open next time. The girls bought some clothes. For dinner, we tried this one kinda hit sushi place. While waiting for a table, we wondered around the area, doing a little window shopping. I found a Nibbler character at this antique place. Although Allie is not a fan of Futurama, she does like that character, so I bought it and surprised her. The sushi place was pretty good. Afterwards, we went back to Dave’s home and watched Crash. It was later than I thought it would be when the movie ended, which kinda sucked for trying to get up early the next day for the 3 hour drive to Vancouver.

Seattle III Trip

 

March 3, 2006 to March 5, 2006, visited Seattle yet again in 2006 with Alice Leung, Miriam Erlichman and David Erlichman.  Also, took a trip to Vancouver, BC.  (Original post/backup link)

If you have any doubt about Bush...

Even when talking about the President, I normally don't use his name...but today I am. If you have any doubt that President Bush is negligent and is not fulfilling the duties of his job, watch this video:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2704463

The man needs to be removed from office on this account alone. If you support him in the face of this evident, you are as blood guilty as he is at this point. Yeah, I'm talking to you, that 34 percent of the population that still thinks he's doing a good job. You are as blood guilty as he is now. If you are still a Bush supporter and you think that somehow you are immune to this statement or that this is somehow an overreaction, you are even more blood guilty of those 1300+ deaths in the Gulf Coast. This man has no business being in the oval office any longer. He has proven without a doubt that he is willfully unwilling to fulfill his duties and oath as President of the United States of America.

Moved to Sunnyvale, CA

 
In March 2006, moved to Sunnyvale, CA from San Jose, CA.  (Original post/backup link)

Trouble with English sounds and letters

English is a funny language. According to the American Heritage Book of English Usage,

“English adopted its alphabet, except for the letters j, u, and w, from the one used by the Romans to represent the sounds of Latin, and the fit was not an exact one. English is a Germanic language that has borrowed many words from French, Dutch, and other languages, and the result is a phonological mishmash in which certain letters are pronounced differently depending on the origin of the words they appear in.”

That basically means that our alphabet doesn’t exactly match our spoken sounds. We have 26 letters, but over 40 sounds. Depending on the region, distinctions between vowel sounds may push the number of English sounds over 50. Anyone wanna learn an alphabet with 50 letters? No? Well, it might be easier to spell in English if we did, but then again, it might not.

There’s really no way to fully identify all the vowel sounds and have those recognized worldwide, especially where those sounds are combined with the r. One vowel sound that is completely without a letter though is oo (boot {long sound}, took {short sound}).

The consonant sounds are more predictable. Currently, commonly accepted consonant sounds that do not have their own letters are ch (chat), ng (long), sh (shin), th (thin), th (this), and zh (vision). The hard and soft th sounds can be given to one letter. The ng sound is really two sounds blended closely together, so it doesn’t really need its own letter. Adding these sounds as letters would give the English language a 30 letter alphabet. Adding the oo vowel puts it at 31.

But, there are sounds that aren’t commonly recognized. For example, the sound tt, as in little, is often reduced to a flick of the tongue in a way that sounds just like the Spanish r. Not many people notice they even pronounce the tt in this way. Once recognized, this will add yet another sound to the English language, putting the total alphabet at 32 (so far).

All this put together would produce an alphabet something like this:
Aa Bb Cc CHch Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss SHsh Tt THth TTtt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz ZHzh OOoo

Of course, for easier identification, it might be a good idea to give the new letters their own forms, such as joining line or even custom new shapes.  We could bring back some older letters that fell into disuse for various reasons about the 14th Century.  The letter thorn  (Þ) would be very useful in modern writing.

Additionally, there are consonant and vowel sounds that this new alphabet does not cover. For example, there is a soft and hard y sound (yes {hard}, you {soft}). But this alphabet would at least represent all of the major sounds. Of course, if this would be ever accepted, a respelling of many English words would follow. Experience with English might suggest this would actually worsen the link between English spoken and English written language. Oh well.

Trouble with Treo

Well, my old Treo 600 has now been replaced with a new Treo 600. I'm sync'ing all the software onto the new device. It's all hella easy. Not like trying to restore a Windows machine or anything. Just put the button, and everything is loaded on the new device in working order, same as before. Thank you PalmOne. lol

Friday, Saturday, Futurama

Allie and I met up with Miriam Friday night at Nola’s in downtown Palo Alto. Miriam’s company had a function there in the lounge area, so Allie and I showed up as it was ending, to keep the night going. That was a fun night. On Saturday, Allie and I had lunch and diner with some of her relatives. I think her cuzins like me. Even though they are a bit younger, we has some lively conversations about cars, music and even cartoons, if that isn’t a bit surprising. I found out that the makers of Futurama are currently working on 4 made for DVD new Futurama movies. I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I like the rumor.

Much ado about English thangs oh, and that Shakespeare guy

So as a random little project, I wondered what Shakespeare might look like if
it was translated into Modern English. I chose the opening soliloquy by Romeo when he enters the Capulet garden for the famous balcony scene. This seemingly easy task took on an added dimension when I found out that this is really a speech criticizing Queen Elizabeth. How does one translate text that metaphor laid upon metaphor? Thinking about how difficult it is to translate from Renaissance English to Modern English, I have got to wonder how anyone can possibly think the Bible is properly translated from ancient Hebrew to ancient Greek to Latin and then to all the different languages around the world. Well, here’s my attempt at translating this one small section of Shakespeare. BTW, I didn’t keep the original meter because that exercise is pointless. If anyone has any comments on this, I’m perfectly willing to adjust it.

What’s that light suddenly appearing in the window over there?
It’s dawn and, and Juliet is the sun.
Rise up, brilliant sun and put down the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
Because you, her servant, are way more brilliant than her
Stop being her servant because she’s the one who is envious of you;
Her virginal regal outfit is nothing but sick and green
Only idiots wear it. Get rid of it!
It’s my woman. Yo, it’s my love!
I wish she knew it!
She speaks but says nothing. What’s up with that?
Her eyes glance my way, she wants to talk! Finally, it’s time.
Oops, my bad. She can’t see me. She doesn’t know I’m here.
The two most brilliant stars in all heaven,
Going away on some business, beg her eyes
To shine their twinkle until they come back.
What if her eyes remained on her face?
The brightness of her check would way outshine those stars,
As daylight does to a lamp; her eyes do to the stars in heaven
If the atmosphere was filled with her glow
The birds would sing and think it was not night.
Look how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
Oh, I wish I was a glove on that hand,
So I could touch that cheek!

Winter Olympics IMHO

So, the Winter Olympics might be better renamed to the European Olympics. No wonder the Winter Olympics lacks popularity! Most of its sports are very European centric. How much Bobsleighing or Ice Skating is possible in places like Nigeria or Costa Rica? Sure, China and South Korea have been welcomed into the mix, but these two are from regions that are winter sport friendly. At least they add snowboarding. That's actually exciting to watch, since they allow contact and there's a good chance for at least one big wipe out! The woman's Snowboarding Cross final had three wipe outs, and one of those was from the #1 contender celebrating before she crossed the finish line! lol Anyways, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! hehe
Oh, and one comment about those South Korean speedskaters! Speed Skating is not a team sport unless it's Team Pursuit! The South Koreans are pretty much just outright cheating by playing as a team instead of individuals. It's legal right now, but if they keep it up, I'm sure the rules are going to be changing to not allow that sort of team work in the future. They screwed a couple of better racers out of gold medals because they were working together. If a racer isn't going for the gold medal, they don't belong in the finals! The teamwork strategy is not in the spirit of the Olympics for non-team competitions.

Daytime Motorcycle Cop with Radar

Well, my record is now 18 and 3. For some reason, I haven't been able to avoid a ticket when I'm pulled over by a motorcycle cop with a radar gun at daytime. All three of my tickets have been issued by this very specific demographic! Cops are normallly pretty cool about thangs when they pull me over. Normally, they give warnings of some type or another. But for some reason, when they fit that particular demographic, they issue a ticket to me. Bummer. Traffic school, here I come.

Haunted Room

When I was growing up, on house my family lived at was frequented by ghosts.  I don’t know who/what the ghosts were, or where they resided specifically.  I just know that every now and again, we’d experience strange things.  Often, our entire family would get strange dreams within a very short period of time.  Once, when I was seven, the ghosts got a bit more impish with me.

The house was part of a duplex; each side had 3 bedrooms on a corner lot.  My room was small and in the middle of the house with large windows along the backyard.  It had one normal door to the hallway that lead to the other two rooms, and one sliding door that opened into the kitchen. I often keep both doors shut at night.  My room was only illuminated by distant street lights thru closed roller blinds.  This one night, I was awoken in the middle of the night, in my bed of course.  I remember being on edge and scared, but still curious.  I felt something in the room with me.  I didn’t know what.  My parents had taught me about demons (from the Christian Fundamentalist perspective), and since I had nothing else to reference, I immediately associated my sensations with my limited understanding of demons.  My mother also taught me that if I had an encounter with such demons, I could simply call upon god’s name and that would scare them off.  For some reason, this night I did not immediately resort to this.  I was too frightened to speak or get out of bed, and I was a little curious actually.  I tried to get a handle on what I was feeling.  I imagined Halloween style ghosts floating near the ceiling. Of course, the reality is, doing this did nothing, and I soon found that out.

Trying to convince myself that it was all just in my mind, I started to relax a bit.  For a short while, I just laid in bed, awake.  I was lying on my side when I noticed something coming from my closed closet on the oppose wall from my bed right, in front of me.  There was a dark half circle shadow that appeared from the crack between the closet door and door rim, as though it was a hand reaching out from inside my closet.  I couldn’t believe it.  I stared as long as I could dare.  I was so frightened, I hide under my blankets.  My heart was pounding. I never saw anything like that.  What I had been taught said that this was a demon.  I got up enough courage to peak out from under my blankets and looked again.  It was gone.  The sense that something else was in the room was not gone.

Without the visible manifestation, I did start to calm a bit.  I began to think that since these demons were in my room, I would simply look out the window over my bed until they decided to leave.  So I sat up in bed and ducked under the blind with the plan of just looking into our backyard.  Well, this calmed my nerves for a second or two, until I saw a large silhouette appear as white shadow right on the window all around me.  I looked at the edge of the silhouette around me on the window, rolling me head and eyes from my right, up and to the left.  I was sitting with my face practically pressed against this manifestation!  In an instant of pure fear and dread, I zoomed back under my blankets and just started instinctively praying to god for all of this to go away.  I was tense for quite some time, but the other presence was gone. I was awake for quite some time that night.

I told no one of that event for years.  Of course, I’ve since realized that the spirit in my room that night wasn’t able to harm me, regardless to its nature.  What are ghosts?  I don't know.  In this case, I guested is that it was an earthbound ghost that was having some fun with me.  Or, maybe this are demons of some sort, whatever that means.  Anyway, other visitations did occur, but after that night, I never experienced any other tangible manifestations at that house.

Myths of Space (movies)

There are pretty big problems with every science fiction space movie or TV show, except 2001: Space Odyssey.

1. There are no auditable sounds in outer space. Maybe ships battling it out in a very dense nebula might produce auditable noises, but other than that, the only auditable noise transmitted is within the ships or objects themselves, and not across the vacuum of space. The first season of Star Trek got this right, but even the makers of that show eventually opted for the excitement of noisy explosions.

2. Massive fireball explosions do not occur in the vacuum of space, even when oxygen is involved. How is this known? Well, although Apollo 13 crew members did not see their service module oxygen tank explode, it certainly didn’t rip through their vessel in a fireball when it did blow. That incident may suggest it’s pretty hard to blow-up even flimsiest objects in space because the vacuum outside the object creates the path of least resistance for any force being exerted on the object. That’s my own thought on the matter. But the fact is, the vacuum outside the ship does cause any explosion to dissipate so rapidly, no fireball would have a chance to form.

3. When a person is ejected into space without protection, they will not simply explode from the pressure of their body. I’ve only seen two movies get this right: 2001: Space Odyssey and (believe it or not) Airplane II. The human body doesn’t have nearly enough pressure built up within it to spontaneously explode when going from normal atmosphere to vacuum. What would happen is that the person would suffer lose of consciousness from lack of oxygen to the brain, get the bends and prolly actually begin to die only after a couple of minutes. A couple of incidents have already occurred that support these conclusions, where either a whole person or an area of the body was exposed to a vacuum environment.

Sources: Basic High School curriculum (LOL), http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad12.html, http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=8, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html, and the Apollo 13 “historical records”.

Anudder weekend of fun :)

I enjoyed getting to spend an evening with Miriam out last Friday. We had dinner at Viva Sol in Mountain View, as we have so many times in the past. Cuz of the season, we didn’t get to dine outside though. Afterwards, we ended up a Zucca’s in downtown Mountain View and met several interesting characters. We met two owners of several other local establishments. They were very entertaining along with Zucca’s owners too, of course. Later, a regular showed up and started going on about how the U.S. is going to be beat by China. Kinda funny. He’s arguments were that of a drunk, and were a bit outdated. Anyways, Miriam and I eventually settled at a table with Zucca’s owners for awhile before calling it a night.
Allie and I meet up on Saturday to go over to her boss’s house for a wine tasting tour in the Livermore area. There was ten of us total. We had great fun at two wineries. I can’t remember the names of either of them right now, and prolly for good reason. hehe At the first place, we got a sampling of 8 wines. The winery was set in a relatively beautiful area, save for the growing city over the hill, and the trailer park at the bottom. The wine was good, but nothing that really impressed me. The second place was a smaller operation with organic fields. Are group was too big to keep in the serving area, so we eventually ended up at large a large table in the outdoors area. The afternoon waned to the likes of sheep jokes and playfully harassing the hostess (mostly with sheep jokes). This was prolly the best day I’ve had in quite some time.

Weekend Fun of Sorts and such

Well, a very relaxing weekend both started off extremely hectically and was very busy for Allie who took care of in town stuff for me while I was away. Thank you, Allie. ::muah:: So, there's like repair work that needed to be done to my apartment right away due to a leak in the pipes in the wall. Well, I was going away for the weekend to Seattle to visit Dave and his g/f. There was no way I was going to be able to stick around the apartment. Luckily, my g/f stepped up and took care of everything for me. This allowed me to have a relaxing weekend. Needless to say, I owe her big time. :)
So, in Seattle, Dave and I hung out and did some exploring around town. The Seahawks where playing in the Superbowl on Sunday, so the whole area had Superbowl fever. (This is the first time the Seahawks made it to the Superbowl.) He showed up his big new office to me. We checked out a couple of new restaurants (new to us). On Friday night, we accidentally ended up in an area of town I know, and I was like, "Turn left here. There's a good sushi place around the corner." It was funny that I was taking Dave and his g/f to a restaurant when it was them who was trying to take me out. lol
Sunday, his g/f had a good idea. We headed over the Gig harbor to rent a boat. The day was sunny and fairly warm. Perfect weather. Well, because of the Superbowl fever, none of the boat rental places were closed. The bastards. Oh well, we had a good lunch at a nearby restaurant. So basically the point of the trip for to find new restaurants. lol
When I got back, I found that Allie took care of all the stuff that needed to be done and had done my laundry too. I'm very lucky. Oh, and the news I went up to tell Dave?
Allie and I are engaged.

Seattle II Trip

 

February 4, 2006, visited Seattle again with David Erlichman.  (Original post/backup link)

Yesterday's business trip (no trouble with time)

For the first time in a long time, the pace of time seemed to allow me to hit my day’s schedule perfectly. Everything went smoothly yesterday. I had a business trip to a vendor convention. I got up early for my flight. I got to the airport on time, as usual. My wait was maybe about 1/2hr. The flight to Santa Ana passed by quickly enough. I passively watched the sun rise during our ascent, as I took in the beauty of its light play off of the thin layer of clouds just below us. I imaged what it would be like if we could walk on the clouds. I know it’s a bit silly, but the clouds looked like a large mattress floating over the ground. Taking off on a morning like this is my favorite daylight flight experience.
I got my car quickly from Hertz and made it to the convention center about 1 hour before the doors opened. The wait allowed me to explore the nearby Disneyland based Hilton, to make a few phone calls to friends and family, and to just relax in the morning sun at some tables set up outside in the front of the convention entrance.
The convention was huge, with thousands of vendor booths, all trying to get my attention. Some booths have cool gimmicks, aggressive promoters, flashy backdrops, demonstrations, examples, etc. A few had Booth Babes (relatively hot chicks). Many booths where plan, uninteresting or didn’t have a clear message as to the service offered by the vendor. I walked down every aisle, and talked to many vendors that I need now, or may have some interest in later. I was able to get through the whole place within 5 hours. There was like 10 really hot chicks in the whole place, and 8 of them where in working in booths.
I took one of my co-workers to the airport at around 3:30. I then headed off to find a nearby beach with restaurants. I don’t know the L.A./Orange County area well, but I do have a general sense of the area. I found Huntington Beach around 4:45 and settled down at the bar in Dunes. I was aware that I needed to take off by 6pm to give myself time to get to the airport, but I didn’t worry about it. I had a drink and a tasty battered fish taco as I passively watched the sun set over the Pacific horizon. This was exactly what I planned to restfully close my long day. After I finished dinner, I walked down the pier to watch the surfers. On the walk back, I stopped in a little shop to pick up a Huntington t-shirt (cuz that’s just what I do), then headed back to the car. I left the beach parking lot at exactly 6pm. Not bad considering I wasn’t trying to keep my schedule.
After dropping off the car, I made it to my gate at about 6:45. My flight was scheduled for boarding at 7:50, but another flight was heading back to San Jose earlier. I was able to get on the earlier flight.
Allie had planned to pick me up at 9:30. She left her phone off, so I had to get a hold of her through her brother, who called their dad’s cell in order to get through, cuz the house phone was busy. So, I did do a little waiting after the flight, but we left the airport around 9:25. Not too bad. Allie and I spent a little time at her place before I headed home.
Time wasn’t an issue for me yesterday. It’s been a long time since I had that feeling. Normally I watch the clock and see the minutes tick away like seconds. But yesterday moved as a pace that allowed me to get everything I wanted to without the worry or rush. Now, if only every day was like that.

I'm not so annoyed today

The president of the U.S. is likely to use the term "We are addicted to oil" or some form of that statement in the State of the Union tonight. Umm, well, it's a nice thought, but I know the words are hollow and the sentiment a bit late in the game. However, it is good that it is being said. Oil dependency is leading us down a path of collapse. The more money we unnecessarily send over seas, the more we weaken our nation when we don't have it come back in return. Foreign powers have used oil money to invest in the U.S. economy, but it's not in a way that can provide long term benefit to us. We need them to buy U.S. goods, not to U.S. companies. lol
Well, maybe the words will lead to some improvement of the situation. We get rid of oil dependancy (not just foreign oil), we strike a massive blow to terrorist, long term economic decline, and foreign powers seeking advantage over us.

Ok, so these weeks of busyness ...

Ok, so these weeks of busy-ness for me might start winding down after next week. I don't mind the busy-ness, but if it keeps up too long, I have trouble keeping up on my daily needs.

Chinese New Year's eve was spent with Allie's family with a very well cooked meal by her mom. Today, I'm not sure what I wanna do. It's already 1pm and Allie and I are barely getting out of bed. lol We watched my Snatch DVD just a bit ago.  Exciting stuff, but all part of the busy-ness. :)

My new apartment has come together nicely. It just needs a bit of cleaning up now. Everything is in order. I like what I was able to do with the living areas and the bedroom. The only thang left is for the landlord to fix a couple of items with the bathroom. Once that is done, I'll pretty much feel 100% settled in.

I'm hungry.

Future talking points

I grew up in a protestant fundamentalist home. The thing about protestant fundamentalism is that followers are told they have the answer for everything right directly from the bible. From my observations, each individual protestant fundamentalist group tends to take a core set of scriptures and ideas and build their beliefs around those; then they go through the bible picking and choosing other scriptures to support their conclusions. Normally they are able to form some grand harmonious scheme that convinces the group’s followers that they are the only ones on the right track in figuring out the bible, the universe and everything.

There are plenty of protestant fundamentalist groups in existence. Each one has convinced itself they are the only true path to fulfilling God’s will. Of course, the question comes up, if God was so interested in saving lives in this manner, why would he give his word to so few at such a later period in time?

Anyways, as I was growing up, I was taught that the bible says all modern supernatural phenomena are the work of the Devil or his demons who are trying their damnedest to pull people away from the word of God. Of course, this belief did nothing but reinforce the notion that Satan was succeeding because so many did not accept our version of God’s Word. I was taught that ghosts were demons pretending to be the deceased, psychic powers came from conjuring demon influence, and other supernatural events were the efforts to turn people away from God or at least distract us from doing his will. So, much of my life, I had both a fear of the supernatural and an unnatural arrogance about having the ability to know what it is and how to eliminate it.

This led me to completely misinterpret what was really going on around me. This led me to not understand my place in this world. I treated events around me too matter of factly (natural, human, and supernatural), almost with arrogance because I so strongly believed myself to be immune to them. Looking back now, I can say I was pretty ignorant, but that my heart was in the right place.

I'm now far more skeptic, but I'm also skeptical of skepticism. 

UFO Grade School

When I was in grade school, my teacher brought up the topic of UFO’s in a class lecture and discussion. I forget which grade and teacher. Either way, it was an unusual discussion for grade school. The one thing that stuck with me from that discussion is a frank consideration as to the possible origins of UFO’s. There are 4 possibilities.

Extraterrestrial (commonly called ET) – This is normally the first thing people think of when they consider the possible origin of UFO’s. From what I’ve see, most people that believe in UFO's pretty much assume they are occupied by intelligent creatures from other planets. In abduction cases, the victim normally associates their experience with beings from other planets doing experiments on us lowly humans.

Also see the articles about what life on other planets may be like

Terrestrial – People who view themselves as more practical tend to consider UFO’s as something common and terrestrial. Normally they associate sightings as misinterpretations of common Earth objects (natural or human-made). If you see an unusual craft in the sky doing incredible maneuvers, then it’s a new government spy plane or similar device. Many times, sightings are shoe-horned into preconceived notions about what the sighting could be. I’ve often seen a person trying to give “practical” explanation for a UFO sighting that sounds as ridiculous as they imagine UFO believers to be. It’s practical to try to rule out other possibilities when analyzing and observing something, but it’s just goofy to try too hard. Sometimes a sighting really is unexplained until further evidence can be found.

Ultraterrestrials (can be known as UT, not because they live in Utah) – This is one idea that is much less commonly known or considered. An ultraterrestrial would be an advanced being that is from Earth, but is generally hidden from view. This means that there are beings on our world that are so far advanced beyond humans, they are able to hide their existence from us, only popping out once in awhile in UFO’s for reasons only known to them. Since humans occupy so much of our planet, and have such a firm grip on our 3 dimensional perceptions, it is generally considered very unlikely anyone could be hiding from us right under our own noises. However, as far as evidence goes, there’s not much difference between this concept and that of extraterrestrials.

Fake – Of course, these previous ideas are all based on the idea that UFO’s are real in one way or another. It is not hard to completely discredit most UFO encounters (real, imagined or misinterpreted) as simple overstatements or outright fakes. Certainly, a lot of 20th Century mythologies are being revealed as hoaxes these days. Loc Ness Monster and Bigfoot are the two biggest examples of that. Pretty heavy discussion for grade school, huh?

If this discussion occurred today, it may have been a bit longer, as new possibilities have been considered.

Metaterrestrial – This New Age style notion is similar to that of ultraterrestrial. The belief is that UFO’s are from higher forms of beings or spiritual beings from Earth, but that they exist on some other plane of existence, astral plane or other dimensions. For reasons only known to them, they pop into our plane of existence in the form of UFO’s once in awhile. This is slightly easier to believe than ultraterrestrials because it offers an explanation on how these higher beings can generally hide from us.

My own contribution to this discussion is a bit more bizarre than the other 5 possibilities I just laid out.

Future Evolved Terrestrial Tourist and Scientists (or FETTS for short) – Far in the future, humans will eventually evolve into some higher form of ourselves. The new future human species is starting to send tourists and scientist back in time to both enjoy and study their species’ past (that’s us), much in the same way our modern tourists visit ancient ruins or our modern scientist study prehistoric hominid bones. They fly around in their UFO’s over our cities to take in the sites of a world that must surely be nearly prehistoric to them. Their scientists conduct the occasional abduction to make comparisons between modern DNA and their future DNA to determine our evolutionary course, and to do psychological tests to figure out how they evolved their superior mega-brain and thinking ability from our puny primitive ape brain and mind. Every once in awhile, they get bored and fry a cow or activate a crop circle.

Despite the fact that I’ve come up with this crazy alternate scenario, I don’t really have a strong opinion about the UFO phenomenon. I do think of a lot of encounters are misinterpretations of what really is going on, but this doesn’t account for many instances that are well documented and don’t have any explanations; and I’m not talking about the mythological accounts of Roswell. There are sensible unexplained events that are often abducted by the UFO mythos believers.

So what are UFO’s? Eh, don’t really care. I just think it’s strange that I had this kind of discussion in grade school.

Right to Die

I’m not quite sure where to stand on the Right to Die (euthanasia) issue. Should a severally suffering individual be allowed to commit suicide with their doctor’s assistance? Should there be a ban on medically assisted suicides?
I was first exposed to the debate about euthanasia in discussions about such matters with my mother when I was growing up. Later in a high school class where the topic came up, I believed that suicide itself was wrong, but I believed in the right of an individual choose for themself. One thang I’m not sure I was clear on was whether euthanasia is the same as suicide.
These days, my opinion is still pretty much the same in context, but the reasoning is much clearer. Of course, this makes it harder to know where to stand exactly on the issue. In principle, I believe that the individual has the right to determine their own life. But morally, I know that killing one’s self is wrong. Violence is allowed to defend one’s own life or the lives of loved ones, but it is not allowed to take one’s own life. Whether in mercy or in despair or in cruelty, one should not act in such a way against themself.
However, under rule of law, the right of the individual to any choices about themself is important to keeping the government from intruding in the lives of its citizens. The principle of keeping the government out of our lives is just as important because so many other morally correct doctrines can be threatened with too much control given to the authorities. If the government is given the right to tell an individual they cannot control when they die, the door may be opened to forcing unnatural methods to keeping people alive well beyond what nature intended.
Does the Right to Die only mean euthanasia, or does it include the right to refuse medical care that may or may not prevent the onset of a life threatening condition? That creates a pretty damn big gray area that brings the whole question of Right to Die into a state of confusion.
Then there’s the biggest problem with euthanasia. How can the government protect its citizens from being victimized by impatient relatives that may have motives for pursuing euthanasia upon their “loved one”? Even with the concept of keeping an intrusive government out of our lives in mind, it’s hard to justify allowing the possibility of such a scenario.
So, for me, right now, I think the best course of action is to not allow euthanasia. However, I think allowing the person to control what treatments they receive (or not) should be protected. This means a person (or that person’s immediate family, with the spouse having the second say, then if no spouse, the parents to have the third say) has the right to determine whether or not to be kept alive by machine, drugs or other treatment, but that the person may not choose to take the actual action to kill themself. Removing life support is OK because it is letting nature take its course. Euthanasia is not OK because it is a violent unnatural action that ends a life before its time.

Sponge know not

Recent myspace.com exchange about labelling sponges (almost realtime to the actual events):

Ok, just to finish this story (see below), Mia literally labelled her new cleaning sponges with the words "Kitchen" and "Bathroom" with a felt tip pen. Ok, so this is like psycho for two reasons. First, SHE LABELLED HER SPONGES WITH A FELT TIP PEN! Second, the germs are killed off by whatever chemicals being used. Trust me, she's having the cleaning people use some pretty toxic products! ::cough:: As long as these sponges aren't being used more than once, there's not going to be any germ or grime issues between the bathroom and kitchen.
And this "special attention" list she left for the cleaners had more hmphadumpfs than actual words, so she had to rewrite it, but she still mentioned mcp's a couple of times! Don't know what I'm talking about? Then it's a pretty good bet the cleaners won't know either. hehe

Sweet dreams my very clean mia

Ya'no the funny thang? I know someone else is going to read this exchange and think to themself that labelling sponges is a great idea and start doing it too! LOL

Here's Miriam's myspace.com original post:

"Ok so the cleaning people are coming tomorrow..They are really good at cleaning...the best help I think... but seriously anyone that knows me knows that cleaning my house was my hobby...im portugues...thats what us portugue women do...but I digress.... So I am making my "SPECIAL ATTENTION" list for the week.... even though they are good cleaning people they still require some guidance...AGain cleaning my house was my hobby so yeah I am anal...

Anywho so I am making my list and then I remembered... I have new sponges... So since they all look alike I labeled them.. One baths and the other kitchen... Matt is watching this and then gets this worried horrified sorta dismayed look on his face and says" You are phsyco...who ever heard of labeling a sponge.".. Mind you his idea of cleaning a cup is rinsing it and his old bathub is more gray than white....but again I digress...So I ask...if you have good cleaning people with an english issues should you not label your sponges??? I mean who wants the same sponge that cleaned the muck off your toilette to clean the sink on your kitchen??? Gross... I think so

Anywho, just a random thought for the nite..."

Freedom of Religion|Church and State

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

Together with the 14th Amendment, the Freedom of Religion is established in the U.S.A. by the Second Amendment of our Constitution

The two camps, both liberal and conservative, tend to only recognize the virtue of half this clause from the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Liberals tend to only accept the first half of the clause. Conservatives tend to only recognize the second half. Yet, Freedom of Religion can only be guaranteed if both halves are equally recognized.

The first half limits government from enforcing religion upon the populous. This means schools cannot institutionalize prayer. They cannot teach religion in any context except where religion itself is objectively studied in terms of history or social science. It means judges, states and any government institutions cannot promote religion, use it in their proceedings or refer to it in its decision making process. It also means that government cannot give preferential treatment to particular religious organizations. That is to say, it’s ok to give all religious organization a tax-exempt status, but it’s not ok to actually give money to particular groups without using some non-religious common criteria.

On the flip side, the other half of the Freedom of Religion clause prevents our governments from stopping someone from practicing their religion. This means that a school cannot tell a student that they cannot pray during school hours. It means that religions that are in the extreme minority may not be transgressed upon for their practices. Now, reason had intervened with the understanding of this clause. If a religion advocates harming others or their property, this is not protected religion activities. What is protected is what the individual does themself with their own property or within their own life, as long as they are not harming others.

An example of both ends of the second half of the Freedom of Religion clause have been tested out in the litigation involving Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jehovah’s Witnesses fought for the right to practice their religion within schools. Through the Supreme Court, they have won the right to not salute the flag at school. However, they have also been required to prevent unnecessary harm to their children by being forced to all medical care that involves blood transfusions. As part of their religion, they believe that seeking professional medical care is valuable and important, but have a specific prohibition again the practice of using blood transfusions.

So, the Second Amendment doesn’t allow the government to promote religion, and it does not allow the government from preventing it either. This leads to the contemporary discussion regarding the concept of the separation of church and state. The words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Second Amendment. Nor do they need to in order to establish such a separation because the words actually used in the Second Amendment establish the even greater and more inclusive principal of Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Religion inherently establishes a de facto separation of church and state, not as a doctrine itself, but as the only practical way to apply the Freedom of Religion principle with the actual wording of the Second Amendment.

Again, the Second Amendment (together with the 14th Amendment) prevents the U.S.A. governments (local, state and national) from promoting, imposing or prohibiting religion on/of its citizens, which creates a de facto separation of church and state.

More and less

It seems like the more busy I get, the less I talk about it. Damn, it's a buzy month though. Well, I moved into my own apt. The neighborhood is a couple steps down from my last, but it's my own place and the bedroom is all hella huge. I already got my car bumped into while it was parked in its spot. That is less annoying that it sounds. I've been hoping for sumfin like that to happen for a long time now so I could at least share the costs of replacing the bumper from previous incidents. This, coupled with a bunch of other items needing attention forced me to take a day off from work last week. I was running all over town taking care of busy that was piling up, including getting the quote estimate for repairing the damage to my car.
In Dec, I had to deal with two drunk asses (that couldn't handle their alcohol in one way or another) on separate nights, ruining two perfectly fun evenings out. Not cool. Well, New Years was laid back and enjoyable, even though everyone was sick.
Last night a group of us got together for a birthday dinner for Ronie and Fernando at House of Genji. Allie and I have had pretty good experiences there recently with fun and talented cooks, so we where a bit underwelmed by last night's cook, but overall we all had a fun time.
What else? Well, there's a bunch of other stuff too, but maybe I'll go into details later.

Pat Robertson

The notion that Pat Robertson might be slowing going insane has recently crossed my mind. Over the past couple of years, he has increasingly said some of the most ridiculous things. This isn't like the 19th Century where one could claim not to have said sumfin, so he always has to make some comment the next day to clarify his outragous statement. His clarification normally contains one or more major undeniable lies to try to make his original statement sound more reasonable. These lies have involved his claiming his original statement did not say what it says. lol The good thang is the people are finally starting to take notion and critize him for the ridiculousness and for the subsequent lies to cover over his ridiculousness. However, for some reason, he's still running the 700 Club. Is no one minding the store over there. Do no one at the 700 Club see that he's starting to slip over the deep end? Psst, the 700 Club is a large corporation that this thinnly guised as a nonprofit charity organization. The fact is, it makes more money than most companies in America, and that it spends that money in the effort to big further wealth. This is illegal for a nonprofit corporation. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Pat Robertson is going insane. One would think that the people running the 700 Club would want to get their number one money maker back in line with reason to prevent the corporation from being taking as seriously. Hmm

House not home

I'm in the process of moving out of a house that I've lived in for over 4.5 years. Although I've lived in that place for longer that I've live most anywhere else, I never viewed it as a home, only as a house where I lived. Even though I moved into that place only 4 years ago, it really does seem like a life time. I'm different now. My group of friends is different. All of this had nufin to do with the house, so maybe that's why I never thought about it before. Wierd.

News whore Letterman

I'm such a news whore right now. Here's another interesting piece:

Lady gets restraining order against Letterman for sending her secret coded messages over the TV that instructed her to do thangs like move east and marry him. Ummm, that is funny. You can't make this stuff up!

Unions still have their place

I used to believe that Unions are no longer necessary, but I'm not so sure anymore. As the union power recedes over time, employers are becoming increasing arrogant again. (Enron wouldn't have come close to getting away with their scam with union bosses on their tail.) It's not yet as bad as the 1800's, but we aren't as far off from reliving that nightmare again as some seem to think.
Already, some of the basic protections for workers are being scaled back, being wrongfully labelled as "archaic". We should be pushing world's developing nations to aspirer to meeting the challenge of copying our system of labor. We should not be rolling back our system to compete with them. As someone who is firmly rooted in white collar middle class, I can say the only thang protecting my career is the rarity of my work skills. As the world market becomes more competitive, that rarity will diminish, as with many American jobs. We need to help other countries realize that having a suitable standard of living is just as important as having one or two successful companies in their country. Henry Ford gave us clear examples of how to run companies that benefit the employees and in turn, benefit the company because employee prosperity is spent buying company products. Anyways, we are on a slippery slope that we should back away from.

Breathe of relief

On the AP today: "'We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,' [U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III] wrote in his 139-page opinion."
This was part of the judge's finding in the case where the then Dover Area School Board attempted to cram that ridiculous notion of Intelligent Design into our U.S. classrooms as an alternative to the Theory of Evolution. The judge also had other harsh words for the school board and their actions.
I doubt there will be an appeal to the ruling since the Dover area community kicked all 8 of those guilty school board members out of office earlier this year.
I expect that religious leaders will now push for a repackaged Intelligent Design concept under some different name, and that we will be having this issue come up again within 15 years. What these I.D. proponents don't realize is that the more they try to become scientifically accepted, the more they will eventually have to adopt evolution and natural selection into their own belief systems. This is pretty much the end of the legal road for anyone that wants to dearly hold on to the traditional biblical creation myths and force those myths on everyone else. From this point on, the movement behind I.D. will eventually turn into a scienitific group that will one day turn it's back on it's own origins.
The only other legal battle pursuable by the religious faithful is to pretend that the 1st Amendment of the Constitution doesn't really forbid government tampering in a society's religious beliefs. If they can convince a judge of this nonsense somewhere along the line, they may still be able to openly get religion back into our school system. But then all hell will really break lose because every religious group in existence will claim their right to be present in our schools. I'm guessing that any judge, regardless of their beliefs will want that to be the result of their ruling. Given that, even this battle will be lost once and for all by the religious nuts one day.

Drunks

It's weird how alcohol affects everyone differently. In some bizarre way, I'm almost jealous of people that lose control when they are drunk. Then again, I have no real desire to have no control over my person, and I'm thankful that not even getting mind numbingly drunk takes that away from me. But what happens to drunks when they are out of control and blackout, especially during these out of control periods? It's as though the person's Frontal Lobe and short term memory centers shut down. (I'm not going into the particulars as to why I'm wondering about this right now, but it is being triggered by multiple separate events this weekend.) They lose the ability to properly respond to emotional impulses. This suggests a shut down of the reasoning area of the brain, the Frontal Lobe. They also have a limited ability to retain memories of when this happens, which suggests a shut down of the short term memory areas. It must be a very strange feeling to wake up and be told of your actions, but having no ability to recall the memory of those actions. I never want to experience that myself, but I am curious how others feel when they experience it.

Hugs and Kisses

I just tried these Kissables. I assume that Hersey came out with this product to compete directly with M&M's. I tried Kissables. They are good. To me, they taste better than M&M's. I'd recommend at least trying them out. The only thang that I don't like about the candy is the odd shape, but I think that's only because I'm so accustomed to M&M's. Other than that, that are pretty good.

King Kong

Peter Jackson is a genius. He's not a genius because he's great at story telling or special effects. He is great at those. His true talent lies in having a complete understanding of the material he's working with. He gets it.

I didn't like the King Kong movies. The original is just too archaic to watch. The remake was completely miserable. And what's this about King Kong vs. Godzilla? What's that about? Peter Jackson produced and directed the 2005 King Kong version. He has not only redeemed the King Kong story, he has brought it to the level that the story deserves. King Kong still isn't one of my favorite stories, but it is now one that I now really enjoy and have a new found respect for. I think Peter Jackson understood the story better than its original director, producer and possibly the original writer too.

I highly recommend King Kong!

My life isn't one of those stories where I find my true love and live happily ever after from the start. I've written before about living much of my early life in a haze and only coming out of that haze since I past my quarter century mark. I was alert and sentient, but maybe not as alert and sentient and I shoulda been. This caused me to miss a lot of opportunities that were laid about before me. Opportunities to further my life in career, love, friendships, etc all lost. I was dumb...Intelligent, but dumb. The problem with having intelligence is that it can enable you to fool yourself into thinking you know more than you really do. lol
Not only could I have got laid much earlier, I coulda prolly had a couple of girlfriends by my early 20's. But no. I wasn't ready. The longer one wants to explore these areas, the harder it gets to have the breakout experience that opens your world, such as a first love or even just getting laid. If this blog were to go back to my early 20's, the text would be filled with frustrations that I would prolly now find embarrassing. Maybe it's a good thang my blog beings in 2002. lol I was well on my way to becoming who I am at that point.
In my younger years, I fear I was loved long before I know what love really was. If not love, then at least there was girls who where attracted to me that I just didn't...I just was unable to know it. Insecurities were the main cause. I had nothing to be insecure about, but when one is young, one doesn't know that. I'm no exception, though I guess I hid it pretty well, even from myself. Intelligence allowed me to come up with reasonings that nurtured my insecurities rather than defeat them. It took me a long time to figure out that I wasn't ugly. It took me even longer to figure out that I'm actually fairly attractive. It took me even longer to understand that certain people are more attracted to each other than others types of people and that it doesn't matter what one person likes cuz everyone is different with different tastes. There should be a class that teaches children this in grammar school. lol ...nevermind, there is... ...I was screwed up by my parents like everyone else...hehe. Most of my insecurities do come from my mom and dad, or at least how they raised me. I'm not sure where my early life haze come from, though. I still slip into it once in a while, but I've learned to use it as a tool (hard to explain...saving that topic for another time). It holds no grip over me any more.
Nowadays, I feel as though I'm experiencing life on my own terms. I have great friends and great loves (past and present). Most of all, I look forward to the days ahead of me in this life.

Dec Birthdays

This weekend, Allie and I helped celebrate 3 birthdays. I know several other people that have their birthdays in Dec as well. It seems that there are a high number of birthdays in Dec, or maybe I'm just noticing them more cuz I keep thinking it sucks for all these people to have their birthday so close to Xmas. Anyways, the weekend was fun. We first stopped over for my little cuzin's birthday and to drop off the remaining Xmas gifts for the family at my aunt's house. We then headed from there to a friend's birthday dinner in Sacramento. After trying to hit up a few bars that foolishly charged cover (can we say, "um, no!"), we ended up at a 24hr bowling place around midnight and played a few hours. I was tired by 3am, so Allie and I headed to our nice comfy hotel room.
When we finally woke up, we checked out and headed over to this nice mall and did a little shopping before heading off to San Francisco...for more shopping. We finally joined her family for a birthday dinner for her brother at an authentic Chinese restaurant in Pacifica. After that, we headed to my place and prolly fell asleep around midnight last night.
On Friday night before dinner, I found out that I'm going to be a neighbor to Dave's ex-brother at the apt complex I'm moving to. Dave, Miriam, myself, Sven and his g/f all met up for dinner. I got home late that night too. ::yawn:: Am I supposed to be getting more sleep than this?

Here's a heart warming Xmas story for ya

"Armed police boarded the aircraft after the shooting, with some passengers in hysterics. McAlhany said he remembers having a shotgun pressed into his head by one officer, and hearing cries and screams from many passengers aboard the aircraft..."

Sounds like the police are the terrorist in this case. The war on terror doesn't seem to be a war, more of an alliance with terror.

X-Men Movies...

I've enjoyed the two X-Men movies so far. They aren't perfect by any means, but they are very enjoyable, each one a good movie on its own. The one thang with the X-Men series that has been nearly perfect is their casting. The newest example is this: The Beast. The Beast will be played by Kelsey Grammer! I couldn't imagine a better fit! This is right up there with Hugh Jackmen (Wolverine) and Patrick Stewart (Prof. Xaiver)! Wow!

Changes in store

It seems with me, a lot of major changes all happen around the same time. First, my parents move far far away. I still am a little amused and annoyed by the fact they up and went to Wyoming. I took off for a great trip to Hong Kong, only to return to find out that my best friend Dave just got a major job and is moving to Seattle this month. Just before my trip, my roommate told me he's going to be remodeling and then selling his house, so that means I gots to move too. Both of us are moving this month, only I'm not moving so far. lol I'll be a lot closer to work, and in fact only about a mile from his current address. He expressed some annoyance at the fact that only now do I move so close to him, now, now that he is moving away completing. I agree. Oh, and I'm looking for a ring like object with a stone attached to fit over my g/f's finger. hehe It's no surprise, so I'm not spoiling anything by mentioning that here. :)

World of Hypocrites

Hypocrisy is part of the human condition, but it is not part of what it means to be human. We just have a bunch of people in our world that feel they have a right to tell others what to think or how to act while exempting themselves from those same rules (at least in their own minds). This is the classic scenario for over 2000 years since the rise of monotheism. It seems that the belief in only one god inherently creates a breeding ground for hypocrites and liars. 

The world is full of popular people who instruct their believers one thing, then turn around and do the opposite themselves. They are also capable of saying one thing here, but say the opposite somewhere else to appease whatever audience to which they are speaking. Open lying is terribly obvious these days when one does it on TV for an audience of millions, yet the likes of Pat Roberts still do so freely in full view of everyone, and they are never held accountable. Many professed Christians are now getting caught up in possible crimes of their hypocrisy such as bribery, insider trading, stealing, false testimony, treason, violating National Security, etc. These are the same people that just a couple years ago called upon fellow Christians to vote for them because they held the same religious beliefs. Now that all these people are being held accountable for their misdeeds, their proponents are standing by their sides saying, “They are being attacked because of their faith.” Is corruption really apart of the Christianity?

I get the sense that these people are the same that claim that Christians are being persecuted by this world. ::cough:: This world is under the power of Christianity and has been so for a 1000 years. Who in this world is persecuting Christians on a large scale? Other Christians, perhaps? Ridiculous. It’s as though the word persecution really means that a Christian’s misdeeds aren’t being ignored and other people aren’t helping that Christian to commit their misdeeds. What else could it possibly mean in the context of today’s world?

These issues aren’t limited to Christianity. Islam and Jewish faiths also carry this burden, but the Christians are in control, and it is they who must take the lead to stamp out the hypocrisy. Of course, for the time being, they will not, at least in the U.S.

Hong Kong Photos

This is the big Buddha statue at the Po Lim Monastery. Each visitor walks up the many steps to the statue and is allowed to walk around it and within it. Guests may only enter into the inner hall if they have a meal ticket (I guess to show they have just ate a vegetarian meal?). Although the statue is impressive to look up at, the site you seen when looking back down from the statue is a little less inspiring, with construction continuing on commercial projects just outside the Po Lim Monastery. They are going to build a gondola to the peak soon, and they are under way on making an underground mass transit point at the site. All of this kinda detracts from what I would've guessed to be the idea about building a giant Buddha statue in the middle of nowhere on the top of a mountain. Oh well.

I took this black and white photo from the top of a double decker bus. Buses are hella cheap in Hong Kong. It costs no more than US$1.25 to travel anywhere in Hong Kong. The old trolleys are even cheaper. They cost about 11 cents (US) to travel from one area to another, though they don't cover all of Hong Kong like the buses and mass transit rail do. The roads are mostly full with traffic from buses, taxis and commercial trucks. There are relatively few private cars in the main parts of the cities.

Many parts of Hong Kong have a special type of beauty when the sun goes down. Here's a scene of Jordan Street near my hotel. Even though it's pretty late, these businesses are all still open and making their bids to attract attention. This is a heavily touristy area, so many of the businesses are notorious for being rip-offs. I have not first hand experience with this since Allie prevented me to doing any shopping in this area. lol There were a lot of inexpensive goods to be bought just a block away on one of the side streets in various Lady's Markets and shops.

This is a shot of Hong Kong from the deck of a nearly authentic junk which cruises around the Hong Kong harbor on Thursdays and Saturdays. Apparently it's pretty hard to get the free tickets for this hour long cruise. Allie and I lucked out and got the last two tickets for this cruise earlier in the week. Many people try for weeks to get the cruise tickets of their choice. I recommend trying this tourist attraction, if not for anything else than the fact it is free.

Other blog posts:

Hong Kong Vacation: The Flight and Arrival 11/10/05 11/11/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Next Day 11/12/05

Hong Kong Vacation: Shopping and the Traffic Jam 11/13/05

Hong Kong Vacation: Mountain Tops 11/14/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Experience 11/15/05

Hong Kong Vacation: I'm a Repulsive Giant with Bird Flu 11/16/05

Hong Kong Vacation: On the Harbor and XL 11/17/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Return 11/18/05

Hong Kong Photos

Hong Kong Vacation: The Return 11/18/05

The number 11 came up several times on this trip. I arrived on Nov 11th (11/11/05). I was in the eleventh room on the eleventh floor of my hotel. We visited Allie's uncle several times at his condo, which is on the eleventh floor of his building. One of Allie's cuzins told me this joke that we will be taking the 11 bus. 11 bus? Yeah, your legs form the number 11 (ya'no, like walking everywhere). Anyways.

11/18/05 is officially the longest day of my life, not because it dragged on, but because it was long by the number of hours. Our flight took off at around 5:30pm and arrived in San Francisco at around 2:40pm. It almost feels like time travel to see a sun set only to have it raise on the same day 14 hours later. Four inflight movies. The new Bad News Bears with Billy Bob Thornton (so-so), an imitation of Bad News Bears with Martin Lawrence but I forget its title (horrible), Batman Returns (great) and one other film I can't even remember right now but I had to watch to keep me awake in my effort to get back on California time ASAP. I was relieved to be back in California after such a long flight. Even with my nerves and sensibility, a flight as long as this does weigh on my spirit.

Other blog posts:

Hong Kong Vacation: The Flight and Arrival 11/10/05 11/11/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Next Day 11/12/05

Hong Kong Vacation: Shopping and the Traffic Jam 11/13/05

Hong Kong Vacation: Mountain Tops 11/14/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Experience 11/15/05

Hong Kong Vacation: I'm a Repulsive Giant with Bird Flu 11/16/05

Hong Kong Vacation: On the Harbor and XL 11/17/05

Hong Kong Vacation: The Return 11/18/05

Hong Kong Photos