Sunday, May 30, 2004

Yosemite photos

Here are a few of the photos I took last weekend at Yosemite:

  
    

Saturday, May 29, 2004

future WNBA player sighting?

Okay, probably not, but it was kinda cool anyway.

Some of us played some pickup this morning at Microsoft, and one of our old teammates from Campbell brought her niece and one of her niece's high school friends.

Well, as it turns out, her niece is going to play basketball for University of Washington next year, and her niece's friend currently plays for Santa Clara University. Wow.

It was nice of them to play with us, especially since it was hardly a workout for them, and the rest of us were calling for a water break after 10-15 minutes. Must start jumping rope. Must run more. Must get taller. Okay, I guess not that last one.

Monday, May 24, 2004

Yosemite has a garage

We went to Yosemite over the weekend. We hiked Yosemite Falls, which was pretty killer on the legs. I'm glad we didn't decide to hike Half Dome.

Anyway, my car took a nail at the end of the first day, but we didn't notice until we were leaving our hostel (the Yosemite Bug) on the second day. Actually, we didn't notice at all, because the roads all around the hostel were these nasty, rocky, dirt roads. I could have been driving on four flats and not noticed. Some nice people staying at the hostel flagged us down and pointed out the flat.

We were pretty worried since it was a Sunday morning and we were about 50 miles from Merced, the nearest thing resembling a real town. Finally the hostel people said there was a garage in Yosemite Valley, so we decided to just drive on the spare into the valley and hope for the best.

It turns out that the Yosemite Garage is very, very well-equipped (three lifts!), and open seven days a week. When we got there, we were told that there were four other flats in front of us, but they'd be done in about an hour. Oh yeah, and the charge was $13. Last year when I got a flat in the Bay Area, it cost me $20. Amazing.

Monday, May 17, 2004

Powell vs Bush

I used to think of Colin Powell as a good guy; honorable, worthy of respect, and genuinely trying to do the right thing. It's been a little difficult this last year to adhere strictly to that view, but this report helps quite a bit:

Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press this weekend, and his appearance was marred by his press secretary moving the camera and attempting to end the interview early when Russert, the interviewer, started to ask a hardball question about the fictional Nigerien yellow-cake uranium that Powell used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Most noteworthy about this event was that Powell, rebuked the press-secretary on air, demanded that the camera be trained on him again, and then answered the question, describing the intelligence he'd received as "deliberately misleading."


I still believe that Secretary Powell is doing the best he can. In fact, I think he is a casualty of the Bush adminstration. A Slate article from this February sums up the situation beautifully:

As George Bush's first term nears its end, Powell's tenure as top diplomat is approaching its nadir. On the high-profile issues of the day, he seems to have almost no influence within the administration. And his fateful briefing one year ago before the U.N. Security Council—where he attached his personal credibility to claims of Iraqi WMD—has destroyed his once-considerable standing with the Democrats, not to mention our European allies, most of the United Nations, and the media.

At times, Powell has taken his fate with resigned humor. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker last year of a diplomatic soiree that Powell attended on the eve of war, at which a foreign diplomat recited a news account that Bush was sleeping like a baby. Powell reportedly replied, "I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming."

At other times, though, Powell must be frustrated beyond measure. One can imagine the scoldings he takes from liberal friends for playing "good soldier" in an administration that's treated him so shabbily and that's rejected his advice so brazenly...

The decline of Powell's fortunes is a tragic tale of politics: so much ambition derailed, so much accomplishment nullified.


Perhaps his fall is merely a sad consequence of our bitterly partisan "democratic" system. In any case, I hope that Secretary Powell will leave the Bush administration this fall, one way or another.

Friday, May 14, 2004

unlimited overtime

I just finished watching the Pistons lose to the Nets in triple overtime, in a messy, wacky, frustrating, but awesome game. Eight players fouled out, including K-Mart and both Wallaces. Crazy stuff.

After the game, we were trying to figure out if the NBA allowed for unlimited overtime, and if so, what was the longest game ever?

From NBA.com:

January 6, 1951: The Indianapolis Olympians defeated the Rochester Royals 75-73 in six overtimes--the longest game in NBA history.

I've never even heard of these teams. Rochester, with an NBA franchise? I doubt that could happen in today's TV market-driven world of pro sports.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

sneakemail greylisting

I've been using sneakemail's disposable email aliases to fight spam for awhile now, but I just recently started using their "greylisting" feature. Very, very cool.

Basically, when an email comes into a greylisted address, it is initially rejected. Regular mail servers will retry at regular intervals, so real email will eventually get through (although it will be delayed for an hour or so). Spam mail servers often use the "fire and forget" method, and they don't retry when a delivery fails. Here's a better, more detailed explanation.

I have a sneakemail alias linked here on my blog, and since activating greylisting, I've had exactly zero spam emails from that address. Every so often I log into my sneakemail account just to go and look at the "greylisting giveups" page and marvel at the coolness of greylisting.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

WTO says no to farm subsidies

It appears that the WTO, in considering a complaint by Brazil against the US, has ruled against domestic farm subsidies.

I'm not at all qualified to discuss theories of global economics, so I take my cue from the many well-respected economists who strongly support free trade policies. I believe that in the long run, increasing free trade will lead to a global equilibrium with net gains in productivity and economic growth. However, in the short term, workers in rich countries will suffer. I say this as a person who was laid off by her previous employer, when it decided to outsource the engineering department to India.

It's unclear (to me, at least) exactly what should be done to ease the pain, but it seems reasonable to implement some policies that slow the process of coming to that equilibrium. It would be nice to find a person or a website with some balanced discussion on this topic.

Monday, May 10, 2004

weekend in LA

Just got back from a wedding in LA...we drove down Saturday morning and got there in time for the rehearsal dinner, went to the ceremony and reception Sunday morning, and then drove back in time to grab a pearl milk tea at Tea Era before they closed. I don't suggest it as a very relaxing way to spend a weekend.

It was a gorgeous wedding, outdoors on a lawn at a resort/spa type place, facing the beach, on a beautiful summer day. More importantly, the food was awesome. The first course was a dish consisting of crab and mango salad, some fresh greens with vinaigrette, and chopped tuna sashimi salad. The last course was a trio of tiny desserts; a cheesecake, a chocolate cake, and a creme brulee. Everything in between was equally yummy. It really is all about the food.

At the reception, I discovered once again how small the world is, especially with respect to Taiwanese people living in the US. The guest sitting to my right was a friend of the bride, my second cousin. She happened to have a brother whose fiancee works at Oracle and knows some friends of mine who used to work there. I also met a "cousin" of my mother's (really her cousin's son), whose daughter happens to be a good college friend of my sister's; they currently live together in the same suite. Actually, it's a little disturbing, if you think about it hard enough.

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Madeleine Albright visits, and I visit Hooters

Madeleine Albright was here yesterday, and she answered a lot of questions about her new memoir, Madam Secretary, and about her life and foreign policy in general.

One of my questions to her was whether or not she agreed with Senator Kerry's position that the US does not have an obligation to defend Taiwan, should China attack or declare war. I won't discuss her answer, since her visit was off the record.

However, it was interesting to me that several of my coworkers were surprised to learn of Kerry's opinion. I directed them to this transcript of a speech he made to the Senate, in which he clearly states:

"The Taiwan Relations Act does not commit the United States to come to the defense of Taiwan in the event of an attack."

I mentioned before that Senator Kerry's comments on this issue made me seriously reconsider voting for him. I wonder, were his position more widely known, how many people would do the same?

On a lighter note, we went to Hooters (at Fisherman's Wharf) for a birthday party yesterday night. It was amusing enough, especially when the birthday boys got decked out with strategically placed balloons and danced with the Hooters girls, but people certainly do not go there for the food. Ugh.

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

harder, but better

We played our last spring season game for the Campbell Rec Novice Women's Basketball League, on Monday. Last season we won the championship, mostly because of a few really good players. This season was much more frustrating, especially since we lost our team captain to a broken thumb in the second game of the season, but in the end, I think we improved more than we did the first season.

We started out losing 8 games in a row; the worst one we lost by a score of 39-9. Over the course of the season, we learned to play a 1-3-1 offense, switched to a man defense, and started to get a little better ball movement going. We won our last two games of the season and squeaked into the playoffs through a tiebreak method that I still don't understand.

Even during the last two games, I was feeling a bit frustrated; we were getting confused picking up men on defense when several subs came in together, and we were giving up a lot of fast breaks. Monday's game was a big improvement, especially since it was a playoff game versus the number one seed. In fact, I was quite happy; they beat us because they were good, not because we were bad.

Now to decide what to do about next season...

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

why is porn bad?

At lunch yesterday...

me:I don't understand why porn is bad.
coworker:Will you marry me?
me:I mean, from a legal standpoint.
coworker:Me too.

Seriously though, I still don't understand it. How can "regular" porn be considered illegal obscenity? I can understand it being illegal to exhibit porn in public, but what's wrong with porn being available, to be viewed in private homes? We (including John Ashcroft) shouldn't make things illegal just because we don't like them.

Sunday, May 02, 2004

is wireless hazardous? plus Giants vs Marlins

I find it disturbing that after being on the phone for a long time, I get a headache. I'm not even talking cell phones, just regular cordless phones. I know there isn't any conclusive scientific evidence that anything bad is happening to my head, but still...headaches are bad, right? Thus, proof by one example!

I wonder, should I also be worried that we're increasingly living in a cloud of wireless networking? I've had a wireless router since mid-2001, so I've had three years of wireless at home and work.

Speaking of wireless, apparently Pac Bell Park was set up with free WiFi access recently, although I didn't bother to drag my laptop out to the game yesterday. I spend enough time staring at LCD monitors as it is.

Yup, I went to another Giants game, Saturday afternoon. It was great weather for just lounging, chatting, and drinking lemonade. Schmidt pitched okay (although the Marlins' pitcher hit a HR off of him!), Barry walked four times, we got to see Benitez pitch, and the Giants won. Yay. Eh, I guess I haven't been a very enthusiastic Giants fan since the '94 strike.

In more Giants news, apparently the winning pitcher for the Giants on Friday was Tyler Walker, who went to my high school and was in my chem class. I wonder if I'm going to discover a middle school classmate in the majors, next?

 

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