Tuesday, December 23, 2003

New Zealand, plus fantasy football wrapup

I'm back in Taipei, after having spent 10 days in New Zealand. What amazingly gorgeous scenery! There are no words...

It was pretty cool taking great pictures based on no photographic skill whatsoever; everything is so lovely that any random snapshot comes out looking good. I'll post a couple when I get a chance.

Having seen the first two Lord of the Rings movies, I guess I'd had an inkling of what we would see, but I'd figured everything was CG enhanced. I'm still pretty impressed with Peter Jackson and the LOTR crew, but it certainly didn't look like they would've had to do much to get those beautiful panoramic landscape shots. Speaking of LOTR, I got to see Return of the King on our last full day in Auckland. How cool is that?

Sitting on the plane today, I was trying to decide what the trip highlights were. My conclusions:
- the drive to Glenorchy (and the hike we did there), definitely the most scenic day of the whole trip
- the entire sheep farm trip: the ride over on the TSS Earnslaw, getting to feed all the animals, and the very yummy afternoon tea (especially the cheese and onion scones) in the lovely garden
- jet boating on the Shotover River
- whale watching at Kaikoura (5 whales!)
- getting to drive from Christchurch to Picton, and again from Taupo to Auckland
I bet I'll look at my pictures and come up with more, but those were the ones that were foremost in my mind.

On a completely different note, I'm the champion of our fantasy football league! Woo-hoo! I'm counting that as a birthday present, and a most excellent one. My team MVPs were Holmes, Lewis, Holt, McNair, and my free agent pickup of the year, Domanick Davis. I'm tempted to retire from fantasy football altogether, on this high note.

Monday, December 08, 2003

military powers

Someone asked me the other day if I thought the United States' armed forces could take on the rest of the world, if necessary. For some reason, I was pretty convinced we could, except then the nations with nuclear weapons would probably use them, and we would all be screwed.

Today I went looking for numbers to justify my belief. I found this site which has numbers on military spending and scores for military power, quality, etc. The only countries that come even close to the US are, in order: China, Israel, India, and maybe Russia. China has 1/3 the power score of the US, 1/3 the quality score, and 1/10 the budget, but they have more active units and a bigger population.

Monday, December 01, 2003

forced relaxation

I've decided that the best way to relax is to go to a place where you are literally unable to do any work.

Over Thanksgiving weekend I was at my parents' house. They do have high-speed Internet there, but all three of the computers of decent speed and stability were monopolized by people playing FF XI. I couldn't pay any bills, I couldn't compulsively check e-mail, and I couldn't write holiday cards or wash dishes or do laundry, so my cousins and I basically sat around all weekend. We watched some DVDs, chatted about random topics, reread old books, lounged around being backseat gamers ("What do you mean, it's not your job to heal your party??"), ate lots of yummy food...pretty much the standard definition of doing nothing. It was great fun.

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

old and ignorant, and creaky too

I've been having some issues with my right hip during yoga. It doesn't hurt when I'm just walking around, or even during basketball, but whenever I do a hard stretch like a right side split I'll notice. I was afraid I had a stress fracture or something, because the last time I had persistent pain it turned out I had a stress fracture in my left foot (although that healed by itself). Anyway, my doctor thinks I have early arthritis in my hip. Ugh. She thinks all that gymnastics as a kid might have contributed, because gym inflicts a lot of trauma on your joints (well duh). Now they tell me. I guess the 4-year-old me wouldn't have known what arthritis was anyway.

Friday, November 14, 2003

duh...what?

Every once in awhile I'm reminded of how some things are just way over my head.

I was doing an interview the other day, and asked the candidate to describe her current project. The first couple sentences out of her mouth involved something about "P4 structures" and "perfect graphs." I must have sounded sufficiently confused, because she spent a good five minutes explaining (pretty well, considering my ignorance) what she was talking about.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Speakeasy rocks

Wow, look what just landed in my inbox...

Speakeasy is kicking off its customer upgrade program, affectionately called Turbo Shot: Upgrading your need for speed! As part of our network and service upgrades, we're increasing your circuit's speed at absolutely NO COST to you.

Your upgrade will occur during the month of February, 2004, and we'll notify you via email 7 days in advance of your scheduled upgrade.

We will upgrade your service from 608/128 to 1.5/384 - all the same great services complemented by an increased speed for the same base monthly fee you pay now!


I've had Speakeasy DSL ($49.95/month) for six months now. My favorite features:
- no port blocking and/or server restrictions
- policies that explicitly allow wireless and other internal networks
- static IP, woohoo!
- support for non-Windows operating systems
- customer service people who understand traceroute results and tell me to run ifconfig

Me like. Why anyone would voluntarily continue to use Comcast for high-speed internet is beyond me, especially at $56.95/month ($42.95 if you subscribe to their crappy cable TV).

Friday, October 31, 2003

halloween 2003

It's Halloween! It's funny that you're allowed to celebrate Halloween as a kid, and then there's this gap of about 5 years where people look at you funny if you dress up, and then when you're an "adult" you're allowed to dress up again.

Some of the best costumes I saw today at our party:
- Lumbergh, the boss from Office Space
- the "Can you hear me now?" guy
- Owen Pochman uniform complete with knife through head
- a couple bloody Siegfried and Roys (that one is a little mean)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (somehow it's better when Snow White is a 6ft+ man)
- a "multi-threaded bug" (yes we are geeks here)
- a Powerpuff girl costume

This year we're not going to a Halloween party, but we are going to play poker at a friend's and eat, I mean give out, candy. Mmm...

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

in search of a women's basketball league

With the demise of the Oracle Women's Basketball League, a bunch of us started scouring the Valley for a place to play. Because the San Carlos Women's League started way back in August, the closest program we could find was the Campbell Community Center Women's League, a solid 20 minutes south of Mountain View...and well worth the drive. The league consists of three levels: Novice, Lower Intermediate, and Upper Intermediate. Each level consists of 6 teams of about 9 players each, and each team plays every other team twice during the season. It's really very well organized, and apparently it's been around for 4-5 years now.

Anyway, we joined a Novice team, and started out the season barely beating a good team, and then somehow completely fell apart in our second game. We were disorganized, sloppy, out-of-sync, we were low on energy, and started bickering right before the half. Somehow we managed to mount a comeback, and we only lost by about 10 pts (yes, that did require a significant comeback). During practice on Sunday we ran zone defense drills, passing drills, layup drills, and did some scrimmaging, but more importantly we talked about who would play what position, who our starters would be, how people would sub in and out, and how people would give and receive criticism.

Today, we came out with high energy, getting off to an 13-2 start, and pretty much dominated the entire game. I myself took two shots early on, made one and barely missed one. I think I did a fairly good job of seeing the court and making good passes during the rest of the game; sometimes it's hard for me to know if I should be looking for more shots or just concentrating on creating opportunities for everyone else. Anyway, it was a good game all around, but we'll have to be careful not to rest on our laurels.

Some of the things that we need to work on:
- I need to do a better job of seeing the left side of the offense. Apparently our guards were getting free down low and I wasn't seeing them.
- We need to work on our post defense. Because we got burned baseline so many times last game, our outside low defenders were playing extremely conservatively, and we gave up too many perimeter shots. In general, we need to communicate more on defense.
- We need to work on our fast breaks. We have one of the fastest teams in the league, and we should take advantage.
- Some of our rebounders need to work on securing the ball or passing it back out quickly after grabbing the rebound.
- A few people need to learn not to shoot when they are too far from the basket and/or well defended.
- I need to get in shape! I was yelling for a sub midway through the first half...not good.
- We need to use our center more...she's tall, quick, has great fundamentals, and is a good shooting threat. I should work on finding a way to pass to her, to draw the defense up high.

In any case, it was a very satisfying game, and I'm looking forward to next week.

Monday, October 27, 2003

New York, New York

I'm visiting my sister in New York City in two weeks.

I love the Bay Area best of all the places I've lived, but from time to time, I do miss the craziness of NYC. I was only there for one summer, it was a totally different life, and I'm pretty sure I would have been exhausted at the age of 30 if I had stayed, but sometimes I wish I could go back for another three months or so. It's just not the same when you visit.

Things I miss:
- subways, subways, everywhere (and stations that are open all the time)
- walking around Battery Park amongst the suits during lunch (although I didn't enjoy the wearing part)
- corporate car service (thank you Goldman Sachs)
- hanging out after work at McSorley's, a Irish pub/dive serving exactly two types of beer, "light" and "dark"
- Broadway shows, off-Broadway shows, and way way off-Broadway shows
- concerts at Jones Beach
- outdoor showings of old movies in Bryant Park
- Central Park: rollerblading, chilling on the grass, just looking at it from someone's apartment on the Upper East Side
- never getting ID-ed (and I was a young-looking 21, that year)
- being out and about at 4am and seeing streets full of people
- chancing on a random street festival, staying for awhile, and having a blast
- authentic Russian food, Jewish food, Italian food, Irish food, Chinese food...
- lots of lovely old bookstores and trendy new coffeehouses to sit and read in

Now I'm all nostalgic.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

credit cards

Wow, what a giant pain it is to close a credit card account.

I called up Fleet today to close out my Platinum Cash Dividend card. It used to be a tiered rebate card with up to 2% cash back a year, but starting in September it became a flat 1% card. The customer rep redirected me to a "closing specialist" whose job it was to convince me not to close my account. I spent a good ten minutes turning down all of her reasons for not closing my card, many of which involved lowering the APR %, which would have done me no good, since I don't carry a balance. Finally she closed out the account, and I requested written confirmation that the account was closed at my request, since I'd heard that was a good thing to do.

I'll be using my tiered 1.5% Amex Platinum Cash Rebate card as my primary credit card from now on, with my flat 1% Motley Fool Platinum Visa card as a backup, and my AAA Visa card at the pump (5% cash back on gas). I prefer the Fool card to the Chase PerfectCard (aka Freedom), even though the Chase credits your rebate to your card monthly instead of paying out annually. I find the Fool card more consumer-friendly, since it offers a 25-day grace period, all the normal platinum services, and no additional fee for overseas purchases. Plus, the Chase card charges you a fee if you don't use it at least 10 times a year, and I don't want to have to worry about being charged. Anyway, if you like rewards cards, Credit Card Goodies has a pretty active forum where people post information about all the different cards.

Monday, October 20, 2003

TMQ and MMQB

When you say you love your job, how much do you really love it?

From SI's Peter King:
Peyton Manning missed football so much during his bye week that he played touch football Sunday morning in his backyard, then went inside to watch all the pregame shows followed by the actual games, and then fell asleep with the Madden 2004 controls in his hands.

The quote is courtesy of Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback, so it may or may not be true. I love MMQB, but I also love(d) Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Unfortunately, Easterbrook made an anti-Semitic comment on his New Republic blog last week, resulting in ESPN dumping his column. I understand that Easterbrook's comment was hurtful and offensive and wrong, and I'm not defending him and I don't vilify ESPN (although it's worth mentioning that Easterbrook's comment criticized Michael Eisner, whose Disney owns ESPN), but I am sad that a column that I found witty and insightful and well-written is gone.

Friday, October 17, 2003

SJ Ballet?

I'm going to the ballet tonight. Nope, not the San Francisco ballet, the San Jose ballet. Yeah, I didn't know they had a ballet company either.

Not to be a snob, but I'm generally skeptical about SJ's performing arts. They just can't compare to the SF companies, especially for the ballet, symphony, and opera. The touring performance of Rent was pretty good, I guess. Plus, I think I get an extra kick out of watching the SF ballet because I indirectly know Yuan-Yuan Tan.

Anyway, I decided to give SJ a chance tonight because (A) a group of my co-workers are going, (B) it's only $10 for us, and (C) they're performing Appalachian Spring, which I've never seen. I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Friday, October 10, 2003

bleah

I've been writing a lot recently, probably because I'm finishing up the beta release of my project, which means I have lots of things to do that I've been putting off because they're tedious or otherwise annoying. There's nothing like procrastinating from one task to make you accomplish something else.

I was talking to someone the other day how it seems like days go by faster now. When I was a kid, my parents used to say that, but I never really got it. I think it has something to do with not having school (vacations do a good job of breaking up the year) but it also has to do with having more abstract goals. When you're trying to get a degree, your milestones are exams and problem sets and semesters. When you're trying to just do good, interesting work at your job, you don't notice days and weeks slipping away.

On a slightly related note, sometimes I worry that I'm losing touch with people that I used to know and hang out with. I feel like I must be doing something wrong; I used to see these guys every day, and we'd eat dinner and chill and crack stupid jokes and go out for movies and talk about politics and religion and art and music and gadgets and human nature. Now, I see them maybe ten times a year, and a lot of times its in these big party-type group settings where you don't really get to talk about anything interesting anyway, since you don't know anything about each other's lives. Maybe some people can have good conversations at a party or at a bar, but I manage it best at 4am in the morning while taking a break from finishing some life/time-sucking project. I don't have many of those moments anymore...maybe I really should think about going back to school. Having felt this rush of horror just now while saying (typing?) that, I'll go ahead and take it back.

So what am I doing wrong? It's not like I'm lazy and sit at home all day surfing the web and watching TV. I play league sports. I'm taking Chinese class. I vacation in interesting and beautiful foreign countries. I go shopping with my girl friends. I hole up on Sunday watching football with the guys. I go to poker night, and movie night, and whatever other nights those crazy young'uns come up with every week. I sometimes think if I moved to San Francisco I'd have more of the life I want to live, but I'm pretty sure that's not true, either. And, the thing is, it's not as if I'm unhappy. I do lots of fun things, I hang out with cool people, I have a nice place, and an interesting job, and great co-workers...I guess I just have a vague inkling of missed opportunity. In the back of my head, I'm wondering: are these supposed to be the best years of my life? Am I missing out on something?

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

back to my favorite topic

Wow, I haven't written a post about Taiwan in months...how unlike me.

I was reading an article this morning with a pretty good explanation of Taiwan's political situation.

As an aside, the article also includes an explanation of Taiwan's history by former President Lee, that clearly articulates a point that I often have trouble making; that China does not have any reasonable claim to sovereignty over Taiwan:

Lee pointed out that Chiang's regime was originally asked by the United States in 1945 to go to Taiwan to set up a temporary administration, since the US itself was somewhat overstretched at the time. There were no implications of sovereignty attached, no more than there are to the United Kingdom's current responsibility for Basra in Iraq. The whole question of who was to own what was to be sorted out at the peace treaty to be negotiated after the end of the war.

Chiang's regime then made a land grab - based on the gentlemen's agreement - claiming to have recovered China's "lost" territory, and returning to Taiwan as the sovereign power, which, of course, it wasn't.

In 1952 the final claims of the war were settled in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. By this time there were two rival Chinese regimes, Mao's in Beijing and Chiang's in what it is becoming fashionable in Taipei to call "occupied Taiwan". In the treaty Japan finally renounced the sovereignty over Taiwan it had gained in 1895 and that sovereignty was given to - nobody, a situation that remains to this day.


Anyway, back to the main point...

The author uses the premise that any act of aggression by China will push Taiwan's voters further towards independence-minded candidates, and hypothesizes that the recent inflammatory statements by President Chen and ex-President Lee are designed to provoke Beijing into initiating such acts. It is possible that some of Taiwan's politicians may use China's highly reactionary nature to advance their agendas, but politicians aren't the only ones annoying Communist China. Last month, 150,000+ marched in Taipei to advocate that Taiwan (currently the "Republic of China") officially rename itself as Taiwan. Although it's a possibility, it isn't highly likely that all of those citizens were involved in a ploy to advance the DPP party agenda. I think it's just becoming clear to an increasing number of Taiwanese that they have to stop cowering in China's shadow, so that they can get the international recognition that they deserve.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

those crazy Californians

So, today is the recall election. I can't even explain my feeling of disgust over this whole spectacle.

I know that as a good citizen I should vote, but looking at the candidates, I can't imagine ever telling someone that I voted for one of them. I'm really hoping that there will be someone in the 2004 presidential election that won't disgust me. Hear that, candidates? All you have to do, to get my vote, is not disgust me...and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

hiring engineers

I find our hiring process for software engineers pretty novel. It's based entirely on hiring committees; interviews are done by engineers, who write up feedback reports, and a committee meets to discuss the reports and make a decision on whether to proceed. Also, engineers aren't hired for a specific position or by a specific manager; they are hired first, and then allocated to projects by the engineering directors and VPs. Theoretically, this results in all engineers throughout the company being uniformly brilliant, with the added bonus that they have enough general knowledge to rapidly change projects and/or teams.

I've noticed a couple of possible drawbacks, though. Because all interview candidates get asked the same kinds of interview questions, we tend to hire applicants with breadth rather than depth of knowledge...maybe not always a good thing. I came in listing no C experience on my resume (yes I know, pathetic) but I got asked questions about memory allocation and differentiating between big-endian and little-endian machines. If I had known nothing, I probably wouldn't have been hired; luckily I managed to dredge up some vague knowledge that I had picked up years ago in college.

Also, because the hiring committee needs lots of feedback to work with, since they don't meet the candidates themselves, each candidate goes through a pretty grueling interview schedule. If I remember correctly, I myself went through one phone screen and three onsite days, for a total of 10 technical interviews. In addition, the hiring committees only meet once a week, since they are comprised primarily of engineering management; busy people with lots of non-recruiting responsibilities. The end result is that the overall process can take months, and some applicants just don't want to wait that long.

On a related subject, I seem to be doing interviews all the time. I've been at this job for almost six months now, and I've done 7 training interviews (paired up with a senior engineer) and 11 solo interviews, over the course of the last three months. I've heard from various sources that we have an unofficial policy that every engineering candidate must be interviewed by at least one female engineer. I've also heard that recruiters also make a special effort to have more female engineers on the interview schedule when the candidate is female. I've never confirmed it with HR, but I'm inclined to believe it, since no male engineer that I know has done 18 interviews in 3 months.

I'm also beginning to think that we must be trying very very hard to hire women engineers; 9 out of my 18 interviews have been for women, which is extraordinarily high, considering the normal ratio of male to female engineers. I guess this is a Good Thing, but I sometimes think that we're trying too hard, especially when I phone screen a woman who can't figure out the running time of a simple algorithm, or do an onsite interview with a woman who can't write a method signature in her preferred programming language. I wonder if the hiring committees base their decisions exclusively on feedback ratings and reports, or if they consider the gender of the candidate. I don't like thinking that I might have benefited from some bias; that I'm not as least as good as all the guys. Maybe I'll find out on Friday, when I sit in on my first hiring meeting.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

I suck at Chinese

I'm going to be taking Chinese 4 at Foothill College, starting next week.

I must say, their application process is a little daunting for someone who just wants to take one class. A friend who is taking the class with me was jokingly wondering if we could somehow invalidate our existing college degrees by making a mistake on the form.

I also got a call two days ago encouraging me to attend the "new student orientation" this Friday at 8am. The woman seemed a little befuddled when I explained that I have to work during the day. Actually, that's not quite true, I can work whenever I want; it just works out better with other people's schedules if I work during the day.

But, I digress. I guess I thought people took enrichment classes all the time. I wonder what percentage of the students at community colleges are not working towards a degree?

Friday, September 12, 2003

you're not crazy

I'd been having a VPN problem for a couple of weeks now. I'd run a servlet on my machine, try to access it through VPN, and get an "Access Forbidden" error. I'd tried a whole bunch of small tweaks, but nothing worked.

Two days ago, I tried helpdesk, and they spent half an hour having me run through all the solutions I'd tried already. As an aside, I'm glad we have a helpdesk, and they are helpful sometimes, but all too often, their preferred suggestion is to tell me to reboot my Linux(!) machine.

Finally, I filed a sysops ticket. I think the tone of my description must have expressed a little frustration, because I just got a response, and the first line read: Hi, you're not crazy. I must admit, it's good to hear that once in awhile.

Monday, September 08, 2003

weekend in Vegas

When I was booking my plane tickets, it seemed like a good idea to fly to Vegas on a Friday night, stay three nights, and fly back at 5am on Monday morning in time to attend an 11am meeting with an Engineering VP. No, I wasn't smoking anything at the time. I think I still subconsciously have the delusion that if I try hard enough, I can sleep 5 hours a night and function properly, like I did in college. Then again, I don't remember certain college years all that clearly.

This post was written after a weekend of:

- 20+ hours of gambling (up at most $165, down at most $80, net profit $145...take that, Vegas!)
- 1 food coma inducing all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ dinner
- 1 Bellagio champagne brunch
- 6-7 hours of being glued to the sports betting section watching opening weekend football
- 6 hours, 6 hours, and 5 hours of sleep, consecutively, plus a 1 hour nap this morning

I still have a 9pm ice hockey game to play tonight. I guess we'll see how far pure adrenaline can go.

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Robert E. Lee

I've just started reading The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra. It's a work of fiction set during the Civil War, but I hear it's very close to historically accurate.

Coincidentally, I ran across a blog posting today about combat leadership and how it applies to business, which discussed a scene from that novel:

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee understood the importance of giving praise along with criticism. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee's cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, failed to provide needed intelligence. Stuart was an exceptional cavalry commander and Lee didn't want to lose him. But he had to make certain that Stuart would not repeat his actions. Gen. Stuart was only 30 and very temperamental. If Lee was not careful in his criticism, Stuart might quit the army.

Here's how he did it. After condemning Stuart's failure in no uncertain terms, Lee said: "There has been a mistake. It will not happen again. I know your quality. You are a good soldier. You are as good a cavalry officer as I have known, and your service to this army has been invaluable. I have learned to rely on your information; all your reports are always accurate. But no report is useful if it does not reach us. And that is what I wanted you to know. Now, let us talk no more of this."


I know the author (not Sharra, the blog author) was trying to make a point about how to learn from General Lee and become a better leader, but to me that anecdote just reinforces my mental picture of Robert E. Lee as a really cool guy. I first read a story about him when I was about 8 years old, and it was pretty flattering. I haven't read anything since then that seriously suggests otherwise; that includes a couple biographies as well as Connie Willis' strangely titled Lincoln's Dreams, which is actually a novel about Lee.

Besides, when I read new articles about JFK and his philandering, I can't help but think that it's easier to have heros that are long dead.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

fantasy football 2003

Fantasy football season is starting! So much stress, so much effort, so much pain, and so much fun.

Last season, I had the best team in the league (overall point total, by more than 150pts), and didn't make the playoffs. How did that happen? I played the owner with Shaun Alexander during his 5 TD week. I played the owner with Michael Vick during the Vikings-Falcons game. I played the owner with Quincy Morgan in the last week of our regular season, and thought I had clinched a playoff berth, until Morgan pulled down his third catch of the game for his second TD, as time ran out. I'm hoping conservation of luck applies, this year.

Did you think I was done with that topic? Sorry, I need to dwell on last year's league for another minute, if only for the benefit of my mental health.

Last year, I landed the 5th spot in the draft, which I was happy with. I picked up Ahman Green in the first round, Priest Holmes in the second, Torry Holt in the third, and Deuce McAllister in the fourth. I had crap for quarterbacks all season (Griese, Green, ...) until I picked up the fairly respectable Chad Pennington after he took over for Vinny. I wound up the season with six receivers: Holt, Plaxico Burress (6th round), Laveranues Coles (7th round, and yes I did have to look up the spelling of his name), Hines Ward (free agent), Donald Driver (free agent), and Tai Streets (free agent) in addition to my primo running back core of Holmes, McAllister, and Green. I know, how did I lose that league?

I'm going to attempt to keep my compulsive fantasy news reading in check this year. No, really.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

old and ignorant

I'm starting to feel old, and I'm wondering if I'm going to feel old for the rest of my life.

Things that make me feel old:

- my baby brother going to college next month
- having my knees creak and my wrists crack
- meeting up with an old high school friend who's been married for four years
- going to weddings, in general
- my friends graduating from law school and med school

I used to always feel young and ignorant. Now I feel like I have no excuse for my ignorance.

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

bridge, poker, and driving

Our weekly bridge night, which had been going on continuously for almost a year and a half, seems to have morphed into poker night.

I'm guessing it's because the learning curve has flattened out; we've all figured out the basic conventions, and a couple of more advanced ones, and it doesn't feel like we're improving as much anymore.

Poker, on the other hand, involves cash. There's always an adrenaline kick when there's money on the table.

However, I'm still not fully convinced that even Texas Hold'em is a skill game. There's just too much luck involved; if you're a sucky player and you get great cards you can do fine. In bridge, luck gets factored out because each pair gets compared against a whole bunch of other pairs who have played exactly the same boards. In poker, there's no such comparison.

Speaking of adrenaline, I was talking to someone the other day about getting sleepy while driving. In all the driver's ed classes they tell you when you get tired you're supposed to pull over and take a nap. In practice, most people keep driving, maybe a little more slowly. I have a different strategy, which I developed during my sleep-deprived high school days, when I commuted from Marin to San Francisco. I drive faster, and more aggressively.

Yes, it sounds like a dumb thing to do. But, what happens is, I get on an adrenaline high, and I become very, very alert and focused. When I get out of the car, my hands are usually shaking a little bit, and it takes me a good half hour to relax completely. I think this only works because I like driving, and I like finding paths through mild to moderate amounts of traffic. My trusty Impreza RS, although cheap (no trunk light, I'm not joking), is excellent at handling curves, has a surprising amount of pep for a 165 hp car, and is extremely responsive to both gas and brake. Anyway, I'm sure it sounds crazy, but don't knock it unless you've tried it.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Ocean Beach

Trying out the Blogger Pro upload file feature...

A friend took this when we were at Ocean Beach on July 4th. Pretty, huh?
ocean beach

Monday, August 04, 2003

A's vs Yankees

Yesterday I went to the A's vs Yankees game at the Coliseum. It was a gorgeous day, the game was sold out, and both pitchers (Mulder and Pettitte) were kicking serious ass. I'm not sure what all the stats were, but Mulder struck out a side, and wound up with 5 hits over a complete game. Pettitte, poor guy, pitched a 1-hitter through the 9th, walked one batter, and got yanked for Rivera, who proceeded to lose his first game of the year by giving up a single to Chavez and a walk-off hit to Tejada. That's the second time in three games that Tejada has pulled through in the clutch.

Anyway, I wanted to make a point about how going to games is an extremely exhausting activity. Every time I get back from a game, I just want to shower, sit down on a couch and then not get up until it's time to go to sleep. My theory is it's something about sitting around on the edge of your seat for 3+ hours. It's worse than playing a sporting event in some ways, because you can't actually do anything to affect the outcome (unless you're one of those fanatics who thinks that his/her especially spectacular display of fandom actually makes a difference), but you still have that adrenaline rush. The better (closer) the game is, the more tired you get.

I'm looking forward to seeing the A's make a run for the division. I like the Giants too (rooted for them in '89), but the current A's are more likeable; they're the perpetual underdogs. You can't help but love a team who keeps digging up great prospects, bringing them up through the farm system, having them kick ass for a few short years, and then losing them when they become stars, for lack of money. I heard some guy say that the Yankees bullpen makes more than the whole A's team. I don't know if that's true, but the fact that it's believable makes a point in and of itself.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

airlines suck

I'm going to New Zealand! Okay, it's not happening until December, but still, I'm excited. I'm also going to Taipei afterwards, which should be fun; I haven't been in a year and a half already.

I do have to complain about international flight scheduling for a bit, though.

It's much more expensive to book a round-trip fare between two international locations from the US than to book it through a foreign travel agency. This applies even to websites like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia. I don't understand why.

It's much, much more expensive to book a three-legged itinerary from San Francisco to Auckland to Taipei and back than it is to book two round-trips. I guess this is a known oddity. However, the only decently priced round-trip flight from San Francisco to Taipei arrives at 10:05pm, five minutes after the last flight to Auckland departs. Plus, direct flights from Taipei to Auckland only exist on odd dates, and for some reason, the one-stop flights are much more expensive than the direct flights (there's a first!). Anyway, the upshot of the whole thing is that according to my flight plan, I'm leaving San Francisco and not arriving in Auckland until four days later. Yes, some of that is due to crossing the international date line, but it still sucks.

Also, I'm being forced to choose between getting United frequent flier miles (and regaining my Premier status) and saving five hundred bucks. Bleah.

Friday, July 11, 2003

ice hockey returns

I'm playing (non-checking) ice hockey, again. No, I'm not any good, but it's fun anyway.

Luckily there's only one more wedding to go this summer, so I'm not too worried about all the bruises.

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Hong Kong protests

I've got lots of stuff to finish before the three-day weekend, so this is going to be short.

When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, some people predicted that everything would be fine, and that Taiwan would soon see that it should also accept the "one country, two systems" proposal. Some other people, mostly Taiwanese people, predicted that everything would go to shit, and the international community would soon see what folly it would be for Taiwan to submit to any kind of Chinese governance. It's still too soon to say, but from anecdotal evidence, many Hong Kong natives are starting to incline towards the latter view.

A friend of mine sent me a forward today that included this NYTimes article: Security Laws Target of Huge Hong Kong Protest.

Her mother had commented:

"Daddy and I were forced to wait in the Victoria from 2:00PM to 6:30PM under the hot sun and heat. The HK police closed the 10 exits except 2 trying to stop the procession of the demonstration. We are among many young students, middle classes and professionals to witness the anger and hopeless feeling toward Tung's government in first hand."

"I wish that this day will be a solid evidence for those Taiwanese people who still wrongly mislead to believe in unification with China will bring a better life. If there is any good outcome came to Taiwanese people due to HK people's massive protest, our hardship on the 7/1 will be well worth it."

'Nuff said.

Monday, June 30, 2003

women's basketball at Oracle

I've joined the women's league at the Oracle Gym again. I'm a little surprised and a little annoyed that we can't get 24 women to sign up this year.

My first thought is that there are just way more guys than girls at Oracle, but this logic doesn't stand up to closer inspection. Let's do the numbers...

The men's 5-on-5 league has 3 tiers (recreational, intermediate, and competitive), each with about 10 teams, with at least 6 players on a team...that works out to over 180 players (probably closer to 200). Did I mention there's also a 4-on-4 men's 6ft-and-over league, a 4-on-4 men's 6ft-and-under league, a 4-on-4 coed league (primarily comprised of men) and at least one 3-on-3 men's league? Granted lots of guys play multiple leagues, but I'm still going to guess that there are at least 500-600 men that play basketball on a regular basis at Oracle, especially if we count all the guys who are too intimidated to play in a league. Of course all the good players show up for lunch pickup games too, so the regular guys have to shoot around at like 2 in the afternoon.

Okay, let's get to percentages. There are about 8,000 employees at Oracle headquarters. Probably 80% of them are men (giving us 6,400 men), so we're looking something on the order of 10% of the men at Oracle playing basketball, even if we assume some of the league players aren't Oracle employees. Let's say conservatively that 6-10% of the men play basketball.

Using our 20% women number, there are at least 1,600 women who can play eight weeks of league ball for $15, and have chosen not to, despite two months of advance notice. Of the 20 people that have signed up, I know of at least 4 (including yours truly) who don't even work at Oracle. So that's 16 women out of 1,600, or 1%. Granted, there are some women who play only in the coed or men's leagues, but I'm going to guesstimate that number at about two or three. It's also possible that some women don't feel that they're good enough to play in the league, but given the level we play at, and the fact that six of us started playing in the league last year with no prior experience whatsoever, that barrier should be fairly low. So optimistically, slightly more than 1% of the women play basketball.

So our conclusion is that proportionally, somewhere between 5 and 10 times more men than women play basketball at Oracle. No wonder the guys always crowd around, they're used to us giving up the court because we don't have enough women to hold it.

So, tonight we're having a scrimmage, in an effort to recruit more people. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

evite rules my life

My life is totally driven by evite.

It's a sad story...in the beginning, I tried to resist. As a rule I hate HTML mail, so when I first got evites, I'd just reply and ask the organizer to give me details. As you can imagine, people were lazy and didn't respond, and I was forced to cut and paste the URL into a browser. For awhile after that, I resisted signing up with evite, but finally I figured out that if I created an account, I wouldn't have to cut and paste at all; I could just login to my evite account and all my evites would be displayed on one page. Three years later, I organize any event for more than 5 people with evite, compulsively check replies when I organize an event, use my evite page as a calendar, and am hopelessly lost when evite is down. What am I doing today after work, you ask? I'll have to check with evite. On average I have between 5 and 10 evites in my upcoming events calendar, and a draft or two ready to go.

The thing is, the features that evite offers are really too tempting to resist. My top five favorites:

- seeing when someone has viewed my evite
- offering multiple scheduling options that guests can vote for
- specifying a list of options for things that guests should bring
- privacy options, especially being able to choose if your guests can invite more people, and if so how many
- automatic reminders (somehow i feel less bitchy when i use evite to nag people)

Wow, I sound like an ad for evite, don't I? My biggest criticisms are:

- the UI is just awful...who came up with this color scheme? and lots of preferences are hidden way too deeply
- the site requires cookies to function at all
- there should definitely be a way to say, "copy this evite" and then be able to make small changes (good for recurring events)
- of course, the nasty blinking ads
- the archives only go back about six months, as far as i can tell

I wish that someone would come up with a site that worked like evite but actually had a decent UI.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

"Together" and my first Wal-Mart experience

A bunch of us went to go see "Together" last week. It's a Chinese movie directed by Chen Kaige, about a 13-year old violin prodigy and his father. I enjoyed the non-Hollywood-ness of it, even the ending was a bit obvious. Plus, I really love watching movies with great soundtracks, and this one featured lots of "classical" music that I liked, some of which I recognized. I do have to mention the subtitling, which as usual, failed to impress me. I shudder to think of how much I miss when I see other foreign films, when the original language is not Chinese.

Interestingly, I find I understand a fair amount when I watch French movies...and last weekend I went to a wedding where the groom was French, and I was able to understand about 80% of his father's toast. Maybe all those years of high school French weren't a complete waste after all. It's a pity I never learned to speak French properly, or I might actually be able to survive in Paris for awhile, without being derided to death by ticket booth clerks who smirk at my poor attempts to communicate. Yes, that's another story.

I went to Wal-Mart yesterday to pick up a folding table for my party. Two nice things happened:

- I was struggling to put the table on my shopping cart, when a middle-aged woman offered to help me. I'll admit my first thought was, "Yes I need help, but probably not from you" but the two of us managed to get the box on top of the cart. Random acts of kindness, and all that.

- After I spent about 5 minutes coaxing the box to fit in my trunk, I pushed the shopping cart back up to the front door. Another woman was sitting on a bench there, and told me it was very nice of me to bring back the cart. I do like it when other people appreciate my random acts. Yes, I'm silly that way.

I conclude that sometimes people suck, but there definitely times when they don't.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

CrisisWeb on Taiwan-China relations

I had a discussion with someone the other day about whether people who don't capitalize are just lazy. Just to prove my point to myself, I'm going to write my posts using proper capitalization, for at least the rest of the month. Here I go...

There's a fairly intelligent and unbiased analysis of the Taiwan-China situation at CrisisWeb, which is the International Crisis Group (ICG) web site.

Those who know me will recognize another one of my favorite subjects, and run away and/or cower in fear.

In the interest of full disclosure:

- My parents were both born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. All four of my grandparents were schooled under the Japanese occupation, and both my parents under KMT martial law.
- I've been brought up on horror stories about KMT rule. I've read and/or heard about unprovoked killings of civilians during the 2/28 massacre, beating of schoolchildren for speaking native Taiwanese, massive disregard for property rights of local landowners, and general suppression of the educated upper middle classes by the KMT.

That having been said, I recognize my bias, and am able, I think, to semi-objectively evaluate other people's analyses of the current political situation. The ICG makes a major point in each of three reports:

1. Taiwan has been moving "slowly but surely" away from the "one-China" principle, primarily due to increased democratisation and the emergence of the "new Taiwanese" identity.
2. The risk of war remains distant, for two main reasons: Beijing's objectives are "reunification" and economic development, and the first is at odds with the second. China does not have the military force necessary to conduct an effective blockade, which would be the most logical military strategy.
3. Peace may be achieved across the Taiwan Strait if proper measures are taken by Taiwan, China, and the international community. Specific steps are outlined in the report.

I can not agree more with the first point. In fact, this is a point that I often try to explain to people who haven't been to Taiwan recently. There is a real cultural gap between Taiwan and China right now; the political freedom that the people of Taiwan enjoy has become a cherished part of the new Taiwanese identity. In the last presidential election, voter turnout was around 80%, and there were grandparents and parents going to political rallies and protests. I would argue that Taiwanese people appreciate their newfound freedom even more than Americans, who have enjoyed their civil liberties throughout their lifetimes. It's hard to imagine that the people of Taiwan, who have fought for their freedom, and now live in a vibrant democracy, would ever accept any kind of governance by Beijing.

The second point is another one that I have made before. I once posed the idea the Taiwanese government shouldn't try to kowtow to Beijing at all. In fact, it should cause the situation to come to a head right now, rather than to let the status quo drag on until China is a real military threat to Taiwan. If Beijing were forced to attempt a blockade or invasion of Taiwan right now it would most likely fail, and Taiwan might gain sovereign nation status in the eyes of the international community. This would be a major risk for the DPP-led government to take, and I doubt it will happen, but it's an interesting scenario to think about.

The last point about peace being achievable assumes that the Chinese government is or will at some point be willing to take steps to stabilize the situation. I argue that this is a flawed premise, since Beijing has shown again and again that it will always take the hard-line stance towards Taiwan. A few weeks ago, pressure from China on the officials at the Miss Universe pageant caused Miss Taiwan to have to change her sash to say, "Miss Chinese Taipei". China has fiercely opposed the inclusion of Taiwan in the WHO, in spite of the SARS threat and the fact that a WHO entity does not have to be recognized as a nation state. Most disturbingly, after entry into the WTO, China has repeatedly tried to downgrade Taiwan's membership status in the WTO, to the same level as Hong Kong. Unless there are radical changes within the Chinese government, peace will not be achieved in the near future...and every year the Taiwanese people take another step towards a separate national identity.

Thursday, June 05, 2003

steve young sighting!

i was eating lunch on the cafeteria patio the other day, when the door opened, and out walked our CEO, with steve young, my second favorite football player of all time (and a bunch of other people who i didn't really look at). they sat down with their lunch trays at a nearby table.

so i promptly regressed into crazy niner fandom, turned around and hissed to a co-worker, omigod, it's steve young!

to which there were several replies:

- are you sure? (yes, he's wearing a visitor badge that says, "Steve Young")
- he's in a car commercial, right?
- which sport does he play? baseball?

i conclude that the sign of a true geek is to not know who steve young is...or at least not know what he looks like.

but now that i think about it, maybe the reason steve young likes to eat here is that no one knows who he is.

and that's not even the coolest celebrity sighting this month. apparently gwyneth paltrow was here last week with coldplay.

this can't be good for productivity.

Thursday, May 29, 2003

thomas friedman on globalization

thomas friedman from the new york times was here today to give a talk on globalization.

lots of interesting ideas and opinions, and i want to talk about some of them, but before i start...

i think it's really scary that some people are so charismatic, persuasive, and well-spoken. of course it's to their benefit that they are, but i think there's a real danger that some people will just take everything that they say as fact, without spending a lot of time thinking about it. i think thomas friedman is one of these people; he's obviously very intelligent, very educated, very well-informed, has a lot of interesting opinions and ideas that be believes in very strongly and expresses very persuasively, and i very much enjoyed hearing him speak, but i almost needed to make a concerted effort not to agree with everything he said. other people who came out of the talk actually said that their whole worldview was changed, and that's what started me on this train of thought. what if a person who were less well-intentioned and less well-informed decided to use his speaking skills to convince everyone of some totally crazy idea? i'm sure that's happened before in the course of history. i bet that's why we sometimes look at history books and think, what were these people thinking? the answer is some one man or woman was just very very good at convincing them to do something that seems very wrong, when you think about it clearly enough.

anyway, back to the things he said. the most central point he made was about the US and its power, and why the rest of the world hates us "way more than it should" as he put it. his idea was that the US has become more and more powerful, in terms of cultural, economic, political, and military influence, and during the 1990's this was mostly okay for the rest of the world because although we were a hegemon, we were somewhat benign. we were happy and dumb and making tons of money and our biggest worry was whether our president was sleeping with his interns. after 9/11, we became angry, and as an angry giant the US is much more scary. his theory was that people are angry with the US because we have so much influence over their daily lives, even more than their governments do, and they have had no say giving us that power. so there's kind of a resentment that is created, not necessarily on a conscious level.

i think that's one possible explanation, but maybe it gives the US too much credit. i think to a large extent the US does consciously meddle with other nations, and sometimes we don't really know what we're doing. obvious examples are afghanistan (when we were helping the people who eventually became the taliban) and argentina (when we essentially helped instill a dictator). yes we have cultural and economic influence also, but it also seems like we feel free to use our political and military power more than any other powerful nation.

for example, friedman's argument that we should have gone to war with iraq, not for whatever reason the bush administration was espousing, but because the middle east is a factory for undeterrable threats (terrorists) and we need to put a functioning government somewhere in the middle east so that failing nations will have an example to follow...it's interesting and makes a lot more sense to me than rumsfeld's rambling, but that argument seems to try and draw a line in the middle of a grey area. for example, should we have the right to pressure china into free press, because their efforts to conceal SARS cases have resulted in a worldwide epidemic? it's a similar case; if we have the right to invade iraq because we are being hurt by something that their government has done, do we have the right to invade, or otherwise pressure china?

after hearing talks like this i'm always tempted to run out and go buy some books on world history and politics, but then i remember that i'm not any good at reading non-fiction. i always have to work to finish any book that's not a biography or a novel, and i doubt i get as much out of it as i could (or should).

on a completely separate topic (well, perhaps not completely separate) i've always been very impressed with Rilla of Ingleside (by L.M. Montgomery) and its depiction of the Canadian home front during WWI. recently i've been looking for more fiction set during WWI...after looking around quite a bit, i've been pretty much unsuccessful. i guess i'll keep looking.

Thursday, May 22, 2003

encouraging women scientists (and engineers)

okay this is one of the (many) rants that i store in my brain and spew at unsuspecting victims.

i don't understand the concept of having conferences, or seminars, or lectures, to tell women why they don't like math, science, or computers. in fact, a lot of times these presentations are made to an audience that is full of technical women, or girls who are already interested in math and science, and the presenter ends up "preaching to the choir".

if i were a 15-year old girl, and i was fairly good at math and science but not sure what i wanted to do yet (which i was, once) and then i was bombarded by the message that women aren't generally good at the sciences, and they have a lot of obstacles, and the world is unfair in such a way that diverts women from technical fields, how would i react? i can think of two types of reactions:

- i could think, gee why are all these people trying to keep me from math and science, want to be a "rebel" and "defeat the system" and so forth, and plunge myself into the technical world

- i could think, wow i never thought about all these problems, i just thought i liked physics (or chemistry, or whatever). now that i know there are so many awful obstacles in my way, do i really want to go into this field? or do i want to just choose another, perhaps slightly less interesting field with less resistance?

i'm not sure the first reaction can be sustained over a the course of a career, and of course the second one is completely counter to the intent (i think) of these presentations.

i'm an engineer, i've always enjoyed science, and i never went to these kinds of events. yes, in college, my classes were filled with guys. this wasn't really an issue for me. if someone had pointed it out to me when i was there (wow, look! you're one of seven girls in a 75 person class!) i don't know what i would have done. maybe get uncomfortable with it. maybe decide to switch to a field where i don't have to be singled out as a token female or considered as a role model for young girls, and i don't have to consider the possibility i got hired (or accepted, or chosen) to fulfill some kind of unofficial quota.

i know the intent behind these conferences is to encourage women, and yes, it is a problem that many women don't consider going into engineering or science. i'm not sure what the solution is, maybe do something to raise awareness among all the parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who give 5-year old girls Barbie dolls instead of radios, or maybe do something about the teachers who unconsciously call on guys more than girls in math class. but i really don't think the solution is to group together a bunch of women who already have a predisposition towards the technical world, and analyze in detail all the ways that they're different from the men. maybe they'll just resent it, because they don't think they are all that different. i know i don't.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

first post!

i named this blog after the first computer i ever had all to myself. actually, now that i think about it, maybe that computer was named after me.

in college, when i was still running Windows NT, one of my not-so-subtle friends thought it was funny to change the "My Computer" icon description to say "The Wench" every time he came to visit. i got tired of changing it back to "My Computer" so finally i slipped an "r" between the "w" and the "e" and he didn't notice for a good couple of months. hence, "The Wrench", aka the-wrench for DNS purposes.

that started me on my computer naming trend. since then, i've had power-drill (twice as fast as the-wrench), screwdriver (a laptop) and ice-pick. perhaps next i'll build "hammer" from an athlon.

 

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not that of my employer.