still counting...

The major news outlets were reporting a death toll of 68,000 as of three hours ago.

Honestly, the numbers were counting up so fast they were starting to become meaningless. Then, I got an email this morning from a friend who had flown home to Sri Lanka for the holidays. He was on an east coast beach with some friends, and had to run inland, climb trees to escape the waves, sleep on a "big rock", and get airlifted via helicopter, but he's now safe at home in Colombo. One of his friends is still missing.

It's a bit sad that it takes a personal connection to truly drive home the enormity and horror of such an event, but I guess that's human nature.

Here's a tidbit for the scientifically-minded:

The tremor, the biggest in 40 years, may have caused the Earth to wobble on its axis, permanently accelerating its rotation and shortening days by a fraction of a second, U.S. scientists said.

Really makes you feel small and insignificant and ephemeral, doesn't it?

tsunami animation

Yesterday I was morbidly fascinated with checking the news every hour or so; the experts finally decided the earthquake magnitude was 9.0, and the death toll just kept on growing. I believe it's at at 24,000 now; a not-at-all-subtle reminder that nature is still one of the scariest forces on the planet.

Here's an animated GIF tracing the path of the post-earthquake tsunamis, with an elapsed time counter. It took about 100 minutes for Sri Lanka and India to be hit. I guess early warning systems (like they have in the Pacific) might get more attention after this.

earth shudders

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake centered near Indonesia was reported earlier today. Wow. I didn't know they came that big. It sounds like over 6,000 people have been reported killed so far, either by the earthquake or its resulting tsunamis. Most of the casualties were in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India.

Thoughts:
- The largest earthquake I remember hearing about (ever) was the 8.3 magnitude event centered in Hokkaido last year. Then again, I don't have a great memory for these things; it's not really the kind of event you like to remember.
- The last earthquake of personal significance to me was the "9-21" Taiwan quake; magnitude 7.6. I remember cursing the jammed phone lines.
- The largest earthquake I personally experienced was the 7.0 Loma Prieta quake. I was 80 miles away from the epicenter, and it was quite enough excitement already.
- I was curious, so I looked up the devastating 1906 San Francisco quake. Its magnitude was estimated at 7.8. However, much of the damage was caused by fire.

A couple of months ago we had a 5.0 (or so) tremor in the Bay Area. I made fun of a friend who was excited about his "first earthquake", and told him that if he had to ask other people if they felt it, it wasn't a real earthquake. In retrospect, given my affinity for earthquake-prone regions, I should shut my mouth, not to mention knocking on wood, throwing some salt over my left shoulder, and crossing all my fingers and toes...

small island

There are about 22 million people in Taiwan, which is about two-thirds as many people as there are in California.

Why, then, is it that every person that I meet that is from Taiwan (or whose parents are from Taiwan) is somehow related to me, or knows someone who is related to me? And, everywhere I go, I run into Taiwanese people that are somehow connected to me. I'm tempted to blame my grandmother and her nine brothers and sisters, but that doesn't always work either.

I met a friend in summer school at Berkeley, in a Latin class. It turned out that she was the second cousin of a guy whose father plays golf with my dad. That same guy later went to MIT and lived in a frat next to my dorm.

My second cousin is now the president of the Association of Taiwanese Students at MIT. Her brother goes to Columbia with my sister, where he hangs out with a guy who I first met over ten years ago, at a dinner party with our parents. My sister also became good friends with another girl at Columbia, who we later discovered was a third or fourth cousin a couple of times removed.

My sister now has a new FFXI buddy whose family runs a pharmaceutical company in Taichung. Based on that information and their last name, my mother was able to figure out exactly who this friend was, and how we knew him (and his family).

And on it goes...every classmate or colleague who I meet, who is from Taiwan, is somehow traceable to a distant (or sometimes not-so-distant) relative or family friend. I thought about it for awhile, and decided the community of Taiwanese-Americans is much smaller and is likely to be more closely networked, and that's why everyone knows everyone.

But, that doesn't explain this: Yesterday, for my birthday dinner, we went to Alice's, which is one of my favorite Taipei restaurants; a steakhouse with super-yummy black pepper steak sauce. We ran into a guy who turned out to be my uncle's wife's cousin on my dad's side, and my great-uncle's wife's nephew on my mom's side. Scary.

GQ Taiwan

My sister, my brother, my cousin and I stopped by the new Mitsukoshi department store in Tien Mu today, and my sister bought a copy of GQ Taiwan.



Our aunt (more specifically, our uncle's wife) has a friend named Lin Chi-ling, who is a model here in Taiwan. Apparently, her career has really taken off recently, and my sister spotted her on the GQ cover in a really nice dress.

the big three, dismantled

Wow. Billy Beane better know what he's doing.

Three days ago, he traded Tim Hudson to the Braves. Just today, he traded Mark Mulder to the Cardinals. That leaves the A's with Zito, Harden, and...umm...Redman? Is he still around?

If this works out, I'll gladly admit that Beane's a genius, but I can't stop thinking about three other guys from Oakland...Mullin, Hardaway, and Richmond. Let's think for a second; how've the Warriors done in the 15+ years since Run TMC?

commercials as cultural barometers?

I arrived in Taipei yesterday, only to discover that it's over 20 degrees Celsius here, and humid. At least I was somewhat intelligent and brought layers, so only half of my clothes are useless.

Anyway, I was watching TV this afternoon and made a couple of observations about the commercials. First, more than half of them are in Taiwanese (as opposed to Mandarin Chinese). I don't remember exactly, but I'm fairly certain that this was not the case, five or ten years ago.

Also, the commercials here seem to rely a lot less on putting young, good-looking people on the air. For example, I saw several ads for cold medicines, featuring very average-looking, middle-aged women, telling some (only moderately attractive) young adults that a particular product would cure their colds. To me, it was quite a contrast, compared with American cold commercials, which typically feature impossibly young and attractive mothers ministering to their cute-as-a-button kids.

choices, choices

A tidbit I found on an internal Sales blog:

In 2003, there were more households with internet access than households with children. By the end of 2004, there will be almost as many households with broadband access as with children under 18.

Statistics courtesy of eMarketer and the US Census Bureau.

United Premier

I'm flying to Taipei on Friday, via Tokyo.

When I was buying my airlines tickets, I had the option of flying direct, for about $200 less, on a different airline (EVA). Unfortunately, EVA is not a United partner, so I wouldn't have received United miles.

I really enjoy my Premier benefits, especially the Economy Plus seats and early boarding, since I hate checking in baggage. The priority standby list also came in handy a couple of times this year, and there's the Premier reservations line, if I want to get a real person on the phone ASAP.

Anyway, I calculated and figured out that this trip would put me over and give me Premier for next year, so I caved and bought the more expensive, one-stop tickets. Yes, United, you win.

prenuptial agreements

At lunch today, we got onto the subject of prenuptial agreements. The group consensus seemed to be that they were strongly recommended, almost a necessity.

For me, the best argument is that a prenuptial agreement dictates what happens in case one party dies. While wills and trusts can be modified, prenups are binding agreements. Existing assets can be allocated to children from a previous marriage, aging parents, siblings, and/or other relatives. Besides, if a couple can't get through negotiating a prenuptial agreement, what does that say about their relationship?

But I digress. The whole discussion made me wonder about the current percentages (the number of couples who sign prenups, out of the number of total marriages), so I went back to my desk and tried to find out.

According to several sites, it is very difficult to track numbers on prenups, because they can be written at home and do not need to be filed until they are about to be enforced. However, according to anecdotal and indirect evidence (lawyers drawing up prenups, number of divorces which are settled using prenups, etc.) the numbers have been on the rise since the 1970s, and prenups are widely used in the United States.

There is more resistance abroad; for example, the Chinese are about evenly divided on whether prenups are a good thing. One reason is that according to Chinese superstition, it's unlucky to mention divorce, when a couple is about to be married. Honestly, I think it would be more unlucky not to mention it.

Tora!

I just realized it's Pearl Harbor day.

I'll have to see if I can Tivo a showing of Tora! Tora! Tora!; it's a very good Pearl Harbor movie told from both the American and Japanese viewpoints, and I haven't watched it since I was about ten.

rose bowl blues

Even more perplexing than the NFL's quarterback rating formula (max 158.3) is the BCS college football ranking system: Cal has been denied a Rose Bowl berth.

I'm not a big college football fan, but even I can see how frustrating it must be to have rules like this:

The champions of the six major conferences automatically receive six of the eight berths in the four big-money BCS games, and Cal was hoping to land one of the two BCS at-large berths, which would have put the Bears into the Rose Bowl.

Utah took one of those at-large spots because of a BCS rule instituted in 2001 that guaranteed a team -- such as Utah -- from a non-BCS conference an at-large BCS berth if it finishes in the top six of the final BCS standings. Utah (11-0) finished No. 6 and will become the first team from a non-BCS conference to play in a BCS game when it plays in the Fiesta Bowl against Big East champion Pittsburgh, which is 8-3 and ranked No. 19 in the AP poll.

Another rule added in 2001 provides that a team from one of the major conferences, such as the Big 12 or Pac-10, is guaranteed an at-large BCS berth if it finishes in the top four of the BCS standings. If either of those two selection rules had not been added, the Rose Bowl would have been free to take Cal, and Rose Bowl officials made no secret of the fact that they preferred the Bears.

So, the 10-1 Bears, whose only loss was to #1 USC on the road, by six points, will play #23 Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl.

UTC

From the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

Why is UTC used as the acronym for Coordinated Universal Time instead of CUT?

In 1970 the Coordinated Universal Time system was devised by an international advisory group of technical experts within the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU felt it was best to designate a single abbreviation for use in all languages in order to minimize confusion. Since unanimous agreement could not be achieved on using either the English word order, CUT, or the French word order, TUC, the acronym UTC was chosen as a compromise.

where is Macedonia?

I found this tidbit in an article about Oliver Stone's new Alexander:

With the world waiting and wondering where the president will start the next war, Bush chose as his first major foreign-policy decision of his second term to recognise Fyrom by its "proper" name as the Republic of Macedonia, prompting paroxysms of Greeks anger across the globe and Athens to vow to block Macedonia's entry into the EU and Nato.

In other quasi-political news, last night's West Wing focused on Taiwanese independence, and did a not-awful job of addressing the current tensions, if not the historical motivations. I'm still trying to figure out what it meant when Josh got overruled by CJ, after he was convinced by the older Congressman (Hurtt?) to give the Taiwanese some leeway.

free credit reports

How did I not hear about this earlier?

Starting today, residents of California (and 12 other states) can get a free copy of their credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus, once a year. Better yet, there's a centralized website for requests: www.annualcreditreport.com (for some reason the site requires that the URL be pasted into the browser).

I'm thinking I'll request one now, and save the other two for later.

BART to San Jose

Just got back from five days in Texas, sans Internet.

Our flight home was delayed an hour, but we couldn't call the person who was picking us up, because we left Houston at 5:30am Pacific, so she ended up coming to the airport twice. Ick.

As we were waiting for our baggage, I was thinking, if it weren't such a pain to take public transportation (Caltrain + BART) to the airport, I might actually do it. I've never understood why BART wasn't extended to the Peninsula a long time ago. Even now, the only expansion under construction is to San Jose.

women in Asia

Numbers and facts extracted from various news articles and websites:

- In China, the gender imbalance for newborns is currently at about 117 to 100, and as high as 130 to 100 in Guangdong and Hainan. That means, in 20 years, when these babies become adults, there will be 117 men for every 100 women. Japan Times

- Japan's estimated 2004 fertility rate is 1.38 children per woman. CIA Factbook

- Around 40 percent of South Korean women are single at 30, compared to 14 percent twenty years ago. SFGate.com

- In Taiwan, the divorce rate is estimated at 25-30%, which is twice as much as it was 10 years ago. Interestingly, divorce laws in Taiwan were changed in 1985; previously, men had exclusive rights to their wives' property and personal belongings. MercuryNews.com

watch out, trick-or-treaters

I guess they weren't kidding about inspecting your Halloween candy for drugs.

My favorite:

LARGE ELECTRONIC CAPACITORS CONTAINING HEROIN IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Can't even trust the geeks.

Taipei's cloaking device

No, not that kind of cloaking device.

A company in Taipei is planning to build a city-wide wireless network, covering about 100 square miles, and costing US$70 million.

A few US cities have announced similar plans, but I'm thinking this one has a better chance of becoming a reality. First of all, the cost projection is much more reasonable than Philly's estimated US$10 million (plus an ongoing yearly cost). Secondly, the project seems to have broad support from city officials, due to the proposed 1-3% revenue tax. Finally, Taiwan seems to be on a roll with major projects:

Taipei's subway system (of 4 underground lines and a light rail line) was designed, approved, and constructed in record time. There are several expansions under construction through 2006. Kaohsiung, not to be outdone, is opening its own subway system (of 2 lines and 2 more in the future) in 2005.

Taipei 101, completed this year, is currently the world's tallest building, at 509 meters. It has built on the success of the adjacent Warner Village shopping center, also a recent development, and helped revitalize eastern Taipei.

A new high speed railway, based on Japan's Shinkansen, is scheduled for completion in 2005, and will transport passengers from Taipei to Kaohsiung in 90 minutes. Currently it's a four to six hour ride, or a one hour flight.

On the other side of the world, San Francisco has finished tearing down the Central Freeway, and has no plans to build another highway through (or under, or around) the city. I've taken to encouraging my parents to move from Marin to the Peninsula, so I can avoid slogging through two hours of tourist-infested traffic to go visit them.

fight club

A friend of mine is moving to Seattle, so last night a bunch of us took him out for dinner, and then we all went to B Street Billiards to shoot some pool.

I was standing around, waiting my turn, watching the Kings game, when ESPN interrupted the game to show footage of a huge fight at the Pistons-Pacers game. Apparently, Ron Artest fouled Ben Wallace pretty hard right near the end of the game, and Wallace responded with a hard shove. When it was all over, both benches had cleared, O'Neal, Artest, and Steven Jackson had landed punches on Detroit fans, another fan had thrown a chair, the refs had called the game, and the Pacers had exited the stadium under a barrage of beer, popcorn, and other concession goodies.

ESPN figured out what sports fans really cared about, as usual, and started running the tagline, "What will the suspensions be?" Here's my guess as to what will happen:

- Artest and Jackson will be suspended for the season. They both went running into the stands to attack fans, which is comparable to Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, for which he got 68 games.
- O'Neal will be suspended for somewhere between 20-40 games. He did punch a fan, but the fan was on the court.
- (Ben) Wallace will be suspended for 4-8 games. He shoved Artest, which is a 2-4 game penalty, but then he threw a folder at him, which doubles it.
- Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace will be suspended for 2-3 games. They were both involved in some pushing and shoving on the court.
- The rest of the Pistons will be suspended for one game. The NBA is pretty strict on the rule that if you leave the bench, you're suspended.
- The rest of the Pacers might also be suspended for one game, since they also came off the bench, but it's possible some of them could argue that they were getting out of the way for their own safety.

I guess the next question is what lawsuits will be filed. Artest and Jackson will likely be sued, and maybe O'Neal also. Looks like the Pistons just took out their biggest division rival in one night.

two steps forward, one step back

Republicans in Congress are seeking to suspend the sale of RU-486 for six months while they review its approval.

I believe their logic is that since one person died after using RU-486, it must be dangerous. Let's not forget that when one event follows another, that indicates causality. Of course, no one has ever died from a miscarriage.

saying sorry

I ran across these sites the other day:

sorryeverybody.com and apologiesaccepted.com

I think it's a little self-righteous to apologize on behalf of other people, but it was interesting to look through the photos.

sunrise, sunset

Yesterday afternoon, I was trying to figure out what time the sun would set, so we could shoot some hoops before it got dark. Thanks to Google, I found this site from the US Naval Observatory, which can be used to generate a full year's worth of daily sunrise and sunset times for any US city. Yummy.

images from Iraq

Maybe this guy will be the Matthew Brady of the Iraq war. (Flash required)

death of a hard drive

The other day, my work computer started making strange (and annoying) clicking noises, so I filed a ticket, and the Helpdesk people diagnosed the problem as the hard drive going bad.

That afternoon, they came by with a new hard drive, swapped it in, and I was up and running in about ten minutes. All of my data except the binaries I'd compiled were in my home directory (stored remotely on the network) so I just ran a couple of compilations and I was back in business.

I did lose my local installations of Firefox and Thunderbird, but luckily Ops had added both to our standard Linux desktop configuration at some point, so in effect I just got a version upgrade.

Yay Firefox!

Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 1.0 today!

I've been using Firefox since 0.7 and it kicks Internet Explorer's ass. It's way better than the regular Mozilla browser too, from a stability standpoint.

Trust me, once you've tried Tabbed Browsing and Find As You Type, you'll be hooked.

WB night

I spent most of tonight catching up on episodes of Gilmore Girls, Everwood, and Jack & Bobby. It's really too bad that WB is messing with their schedule: I can't stop watching even the Sorkin-less West Wing, so I'm going to have to give up on Jack & Bobby, though I really liked the episodes with the religious Arab student and the sexual harassment case.

Anyway, I finally saw the episode where Rory gets kidnapped by Logan and the "Life and Death Brigade". I'm not going to get into the whole big discussion about secret societies and I'm not going to comment (very much) on the surprising amounts of time and money those poor hardworking Yale college students have on their hands.

I am going to say that Logan's character is really starting to grow on me. He's not as boring as Dean, he's not as annoying as Tristan, and he's not as angsty as Jess. He's not good looking, but he's definitely charming. And, in the words of one TWoP poster, "Holy crap, if Logan picked out that gorgeous dress (for Rory) then he's definitely a keeper...or gay."

The Incredibles

I went to see The Incredibles last Friday, and in my opinion, it did live up to the hype. The story was simple but nuanced, and the visuals were stunning, as we've come to expect from Pixar. The characterization was fairly good: I did cringe a bit at Elastigirl turning into a stereotypical soccer-mom type, but I liked the wardrobe artist Edna (I hear she was voiced by the director) and the subplots for the children, Dash and Violet. Plus, the movie was genuinely funny; not in a slapstick way but in an intelligent way.

This afternoon I was reading a Slashdot review of the movie, and I ran across an interesting comment about the "weird streak of Ayn Randism" running through the plot:

There were a couple of lines thrown in like "And when everybody's super, then no one is," announced by the bad guy. Or when Dash is told by his parents that everyone is special, he retorts with "that's just a way of saying that nobody is."

This movie encouraged exceptionalism in a way that was striking for a kid's movie. It actively lobbied against the idea of everybody being unique in their own way, it argued in favor of there being Nietzche-esque supermen among us who should be lifted up above the masses for the betterment of society.

I don't know if I agree that the movie was subscribing to a Rand-like belief system, but I like that the question was raised at all. When was the last time anyone came out of a Disney film debating philosophy?

post election quantitative analysis

In the last couple of days, there have been lots of red and blue maps floating around online. Unsurprisingly, they show a vast divide between the Northeast/West and the rest of the country.

Here are some more interesting maps:

From USA Today, a county-by-county map:


From informedpublic.com, one of many snarky what-if maps:


From the New York Times, a US population density map:


...and a map weighted by electoral vote:


From a professor at Princeton, a shaded county-by-county map:

post election day thoughts

It looks like Bush has beaten Kerry, as of Kerry's concession speech this morning. Here's hoping no liberal Supreme Court justices kick the bucket in the next four years. Otherwise, Roe vs. Wade may be the stuff of history books.

According to some political analysts, the difference was the Bush did a good job of getting his core constituency, the religious right, to go out and vote. As a result, the higher turnout wasn't as good for Kerry as people had predicted.

Overall, nationwide voter turnout was just under 60%, which is the highest percentage turnout since Kennedy beat Nixon. Very cool, but we can still do better. I will continue to beat my dead horse about Taiwan's 80% voter turnout.

Ohio didn't close their polls until almost midnight, even though they were scheduled to close at 8pm, because the lines were up to four hours long. It's ridiculous that people have to wait that long, but I think it's awesome that the voting precincts refused to close until everyone got their chance.

For the first time, San Francisco used an instant runoff method to elect their City Supervisors. I'm a big fan of this method, since it really helps out third party candidates, and also seems like the most fair way of counting votes. Basically, everyone ranks one candidate as his/her first choice, another candidate as his/her second choice, and so on. The voter can stop ranking at any time; he/she isn't forced to rank all the candidates. Afterwards, all the first place votes are counted, and if no candidate has a majority, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and his/her votes are allocated to the other candidates according to the second place rankings. This continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes. The primary complaint against this method is that it's confusing. I'll conceed that lots of voters are morons, but can they really not even understand ranking their choices?

Governor Schwarzenegger is certainly making his mark on California politics. According to the polls, Proposition 66, which would have restricted the three strikes law, is likely to fail. It was showing strong support up until last week, when Arnold voiced his opposition. Granted, it also could have been the last minute ad blitz that made the difference.

Dan Gillmor says:

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.

Yes. I want my new party.

California gets propositioned

There were 16 statewide propositions on the ballot for this election. Consequently, the volume of useless propaganda (for decision-making purposes, anyway) that California voters have been subjected to over the past few weeks has been astounding.

I found the pamphlet sent out on behalf of Governor Arnold especially disturbing, yet amusing, with its one-liners ("Job Killing Health Care Tax!") and its handy-dandy pull-out "cheat sheet".

I myself spent most of last night looking at the "impartial" summaries and the actual text of the propositions, trying to figure out what they really meant. As a result, I felt pretty good this morning about voting on all of the state and local offices and issues.

However, after doing a pretty thorough investigation of all the third-party candidates, I abstained from voting in the presidential election.

Ju-On

Yesterday, for Halloween, a group of us got together to watch Ju-On, the Japanese horror movie that The Grudge is based on. It was certainly creepy enough, but I felt like I was waiting for a twist or a revelation of some sort which never came.

Afterwards I went and searched online for an explanation, and found this timeline which helped clear up at least the sequence of events, but I still feel like the movie doesn't hang together well. Maybe I just don't get it.

pumpkin time

I'm going to a pumpkin-carving party tonight; it'll be the first time in three years that I've carved a pumpkin.

Last night, in preparation, I went to Safeway to buy a pumpkin. On the way there, I remembered that it was lunar eclipse night, so after I parked my car I looked around for the moon. It was about 8pm, which was perfect timing; it was just after it had started to get really dark, and before the eclipse started to wane at all.

So, for about 10 minutes, I had a very good view of a large brown moon. Honestly, I was less than totally impressed. I've seen some solar eclipses, and those have been much more spectacular.

Others have been calling the color "blood red" and remarking on the eclipse's coincidence with Halloween. I guess it would have been cool if the eclipse had actually happened on Halloween night, and I'd been young enough to be out trick-or-treating.

What's the world coming to?

From uk.gay.com:

One of the fashion world's most celebrated gay relationships may be over, according to press reports.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have reportedly split up after nearly 20 years together.

However, fans of the pair's clothes can take heart - apparently the couple will continue to work together on the D&G brand, which has become one of the world's biggest.

jetlag is for wimps

Okay, not really. I used to think that people who had severe jetlag were just being wimpy, but since then I've decided that there are several factors that contribute to jetlag, and some of them are not controllable. Still, I do think there are things that can be done to reduce the effects of jetlag.

Things that can't be helped:

- Air sickness: If you get sick on airplanes, chances are you're going to feel horrible once you get off. Dramamine and/or other pills can help, but those have side effects too. My sister gets horribly airsick and she can't eat anything on planes except bread and water, so she is always weak getting off a plane, especially after 12-hour Asia flights.

- Not being able to sleep on the plane: One of my theories about jetlag is that what you do on the plane and what you do on the first day that you arrive in a new time zone is crucial. If you plan everything right, and force yourself to sleep or not sleep on the plane, you can do a 12-hour shift in a day or so. I've done it several times myself after flying from Boston to Taipei. Unfortunately, if you are unable to sleep on the plane, you're pretty much screwed. I'm pretty lucky since I've always been able to sleep anywhere: a carpeted floor, on the window seat in my HS library, in any MIT lecture hall (6-120 especially), in a bus/train/airplane seat, on a dining table with a blanket...

- Getting sick easily due to lack of sleep: Junior year in college, I averaged 4 hours of sleep, and I pulled all-nighters on a regular basis, but I hardly ever got sick. Now, I go to Vegas for the weekend, average 6-7 hours of sleep, and get sick. Getting sick is pretty hard to control. Eating and hydrating properly does help a little bit, though.

Things that can be helped:

- Sleeping according to the new time zone as soon as possible: When I get on a plane, I figure out what time it is at the arrival location, and do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing there. When I get on a 10:30pm red-eye on the West Coast, I figure out that it's 1:30am on the East Coast, and I go to sleep ASAP. When I get on a 1:00pm flight in San Francisco, I figure out it's 4:00am in Taipei, set my watch alarm for 10:00am Taipei time, and go to sleep ASAP.

- Eating and drinking properly: I like to take food and especially water onto planes with me. That way, you can eat whenever you like, not when the airline decides to feed you, and remain properly hydrated throughout the flight. Nothing makes me feel like crap as much as being dehydrated.

- Fighting through the first day: Now, back to my theory that the first day in the new time zone is the key. If you succumb to jetlag and sleep at 7pm on the first night, then you're pretty much screwed the next couple of days. If you fight until 11pm before you crash, you're in much better shape the next day. I find that if I fight through the first day, I don't have to fight very hard to get through any of the subsequent days. The best way to fight through jetlag is to play video games. Passive activities such as watching TV and reading books aren't nearly as good. Video games demand your complete attention, as well as hand-eye coordination. The other way to deal with the first day is to cram in so many activities that you can't sleep. For example, on last week's Boston trip, I arrived on the 7am red-eye, and I was scheduled to meet our group in the hotel lobby at 8am, before a full day of interviews starting at 9am. Similarly, my mom used to book us on a trans-Pacific flight leaving Saturday morning, which would arrive in Taipei Sunday night, and we would be expected at Chinese school at 10am Monday morning. It's amazing what you can do when you have no other choice.

I wonder if I'll look back at this in ten years and conclude that it's only young people who can ward off jetlag. Although, my mother usually does a pretty good job.

busy Boston week

I was in Boston most of last week doing recruiting. It was kind of fun; usually when I go back it's just for a weekend, and usually for someone's wedding, so I never get to do much. This time, I had almost two whole free days just to hang out and visit with people. It was still pretty hectic though, now that I think about it.

Let me think...

I took the Tuesday night red-eye, and checked into my hotel Wednesday morning with just enough time to shower before I was supposed to meet up with the whole group at 8am. Interviews started at 9am, and pretty much ran through the rest of the day. I did get to eat at the food trucks for lunch (Goosebeary's!) We did a feedback session and then I went to meet a friend who was in town from New York (and some of his co-workers). We went to a nice French-Cuban place near Harvard Square called Chez Henri, which was fun except that the three of them were Yankees fans and so did not greatly enjoy the screaming and hollering coming from the bar in the next room (mostly during Damon's grand slam).

The next day I woke up late, went to the Coop to pick up some more MIT gear for my mom, and then spent the rest of the day walking around Boston. I dragged a co-worker down to Kenmore Square, where we fought through a horde of crazy people to grab a couple Red Sox AL Championship T-shirts, gawked at the broken signs and glass, and wondered about the police investigation on Landsdowne Street (we later learned about the Emerson College student who was killed). We had lunch at the Elephant Walk, went to Dunkin Donuts, walked around Newbury Street and Boston Common, and then finally wound up at BU where we were supposed to answer questions after a co-worker gave a talk. Afterwards, some of us headed out to the Pourhouse, where there was supposed to be an MIT alum event, but as far as I could tell, only about 30 people showed up. I won a Budweiser baseball cap by answering some cheesy 80's trivia question, we had some burgers, and then we stopped by Crossroads before heading back for almost 6 hours of sleep.

Friday, I had another full slate of interviews, but afterwards a friend took me to eat at Oishii, a very small (14 seats) but very good sushi restaurant. Apparently one of the chefs used to work at Nobu. We had dessert and coffee at a little place in Davis Square, which was nice because the temperature was getting down into the 30s. The next morning I met some friends at Mary Chung's for Saturday brunch, and then visited another friend's apartment in Brookline before having dinner at a Southern restaurant called Magnolia's. Afterwards, I crashed in front of the TV watching Game 1 of the World Series, and then caught an early morning flight Sunday morning.

Whew! Boston was fun and nostalgic, but I'm glad to be back.

As an aside, the entire greater Boston area has become Sox-crazy. Every other window has a ALCS pennant in it, and most people have a Red Sox logo somewhere on their person. The Patriots are finally starting to get some love too, with their incredible 21-game winning streak and two Super Bowl wins. Seems like it's still a baseball town, though.

Neopets

Neopets is a website that allows users to adopt and care for their own virtual pets. Kind of like Tamagotchi, but online, and instead of just feeding your pets, you play games to get money, and then use the money to buy the food. It's extremely popular with the under-10 crowd, and my mother has been addicted for the past year or so.

Anyway, I recently came across this article. Apparently, some parents in Australia got upset about their children playing Neopet games like blackjack and poker, and as a result the gambling-type games have been disabled for Australian Neopet owners. Personally, I would be more worried about the advertising-type games.

I told my mother, and she couldn't understand the fuss. Then again, my mother has always been unusually cool.

atheism

Here's a random quote that I liked:

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

Millionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Kerry

I just read a very intriguing article entitled "Millionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Kerry" which tries to explain why the uber-rich tend to lean Democrat.

My favorite part:

On Wall Street, veterans speak of "f***-you money": the nice round figure a guy needs to set himself up for life, buy (and decorate) multiple residences, create trust funds for kids, and still have enough cash to buy expensive toys and pursue new business ventures. At a certain point—somewhere north of $10 million—wealth may become "f*** you and f*** you, Republicans" money.

I object to the "guy" part, though.

storage media

I just recently finished backing up all of my digital photos to CD. I made two copies of everything, but I still felt a little weird deleting the photos from my hard drive.

I wonder what the numbers are on the reliability of CD as a data storage medium? Is DVD any better? Tape backup? Those USB sticks that are so popular now? What's the state of the art in consumer data storage media?

biking to work

The other day, I was getting crap from someone about not biking to work. I do live 3-4 miles away from work, and I agree that being afraid of drivers and weather are not very good reasons not to bike to work, so here's my primary reason: I use my car as a mobile garage.

Just of off the top of my head, here are some of the things that I keep in my car so that I can have them whenever I want them: two crates of water, two six-packs of Gatorade, a couple of Power Bars, a first aid kit, extra tape (for jammed fingers), a nice basketball and an old basketball, a frisbee, a softball and glove, bug spray (lots of mosquitoes next to the Bay when you're playing sports outdoors), warmup pants, an extra jacket and an extra sweatshirt, two boxes of Kleenex, hockey skates and a stick (I may have taken the stick out recently), my tennis racquet and three cans of balls, one pair of basketball shoes, one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of cross trainers, one pair of sandals, sunglasses, sunscreen, baby wipes (for hands), a towel, duct tape, and a cell phone headset. Honestly, if you wanted, you could go look in my car right now, and find all of those things.

Granted, I could bike home to get those things before going off to do whatever, but frequently they're useful at unexpected times, and I'm an inherently lazy person. And so, because other people are lazy like me, we end up with these terrible foreign policies based on our need for oil. Sigh.

winless no longer

The Niners won today! In overtime!

My overall expectations for the Niners this season are somewhere below basement level. I've already mourned the death of the golden era many times since the mid-90s, with the Niners missing back-to-back playoffs in 1999 and 2000 (for the first time since the 1970s), Jerry Rice leaving in 2001, and the Niners getting shut out two weeks ago, for the first time since before I was born.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to come back from basketball practice, only to learn that Tim Rattay had somehow pulled off a miracle 4th quarter comeback today, after being behind 28-12 with 8 minutes to go. Granted, Julian Peterson, the heart of the Niners defense, went down in the first quarter with a season-ending torn Achilles tendon, but at least my team won't set an NFL record for ineptness by somehow managing to go winless. Not this year.

women in computing

I recently went to a talk by the authors of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing.

Some of the data presented was interesting. For example, they showed that women and men tend to enter college with different levels of computer experience, which negatively affects women who are considering the computer science field. They also found that women were more affected than men by bad teaching, poorly formulated curricula, and non-constructive criticism.

I definitely agree with the first point, and my suggestion is that all high schools have a mandatory computer class requirement, where real computer science is taught, instead of the usual touch typing, word processing, and spreadsheet skills. I am curious as to the reason behind the second observation; I'm not satisfied with the hypothesis that women are intrinsically less confident, whether for natural or environmental reasons.

On the other hand, there was quite a bit of material presented (mostly by Jane Margolis and not Allan Fisher) that I found irritating. I think it just pisses me off when people think and act like they have me all figured out, and try to tell me things about myself that aren't even true. Immature, huh?

I was trying to pinpoint the source of my irritation, and I think it boils down to this: Those of us who are women and have been successful in pursuing a career in computer science aren't really the women that these studies are about. We are "double outsiders" (a term I heard during the subsequent Q&A session) since we are neither men, nor do we conform to the "normal" woman stereotype.

We are told that as women, we needed extra help in order to succeed in computer science classes. Except we didn't. We are told that we didn't grow up with PCs and video games in our bedrooms, and that we didn't seek out computer experience in junior high and high school. Except we did. And, we are told that we don't code in our spare time, and that we don't enjoy talking about computers with our friends outside of work. Except we do.

This is the reason, I think, that I find most analyses of women in computing irritating, and sometimes insulting.

yearly Vegas pilgrimage

Just got back from Vegas after three days of gambling, shopping, eating, and other random fun things.

This time around I finally saw "O" by Cirque du Soleil, which I had been resisting because of the ridiculous price tag ($125 for rear orchestra). I grudgingly admit it's worth the price of admission, if only because of the coolness of the special effects.

I'm mostly awake today, but I'm feeling a kind of tiredness that is unrelated to sleep deprivation (I slept for 10+ hours when I got back) or physical activity (unless walking around outlet malls counts as exercise). I plan on much television-watching and book-reading this week.

presidential debate

I watched bits and pieces of the debate last night, in a conference room at work. Some thoughts:

- To me, it's telling that both President Bush and Secretary Rumsfield seem to mix up Osama bin Laden with Saddam Hussein on a regular basis.

- Jim Lehrer is the man. He asked good questions, he was respectful but authoritative, and he kept the audience in line. Although, I wish he could have said something when he asked if the invasion of Iraq made it more or less likely that we would use force in another country, and the president ducked the question.

- I try to avoid watching President Bush speak, because it makes me ill. As a result, I was surprised and horrified by his speaking skills, while others apparently had lower expectations.

- I still don't like Senator Kerry. He did a good job as a debator, and he made some great points (not hard to do in his situation), but he's too much of a lawyer and a politician. If he loses, I think that will be why.

I was listening to the radio after work and one of the radio commentators said he was an "isolationist libertarian" and a registered Republican but he was going to vote for Kerry because for him, this was a one-issue election, and that issue was the war on Iraq.

To me, this is a two-issue election. I can't vote for President Bush because of the terrible mistake he has made in declaring war on Iraq. I can't vote for Senator Kerry because he has said the US does not have an obligation to help Taiwan, at a time when US military support is crucial to Taiwan's future. I also dislike Ralph Nader very much. I guess I will research other "third party" candidates.

geek alert

I was watching Everwood on Tivo tonight, and I was absurdly excited to see Dr. Abbott putting in a new computer system in his office, complete with a Dell Ultrasharp 2001FP monitor.

I have two of those at work, mounted on a set of monitor arms, and I don't remember how I did without them. I'm thinking of buying one for my home computer.

cooking for engineers

I ran across this blog the other day, thanks to the new blogger nav bar. I really like the way the recipes are written; compared to standard step-by-step recipes, it's much easier to see which actions apply to which ingredients.

hard contacts vs soft contacts

Yesterday when I was playing pickup, a rebound deflected off of an arm and hit me in the eye. I was wearing hard contacts due to some dry eye issues, so it hurt more than usual, and my left contact popped out and fell on the ground. I yelled at everyone to stop moving, picked it up, rinsed it off in the water fountain, and popped it back in.

To me, that incident perfectly illustrates the pros and cons of hard contacts. It hurts pretty bad when you get hit in the eye. Also, if you step on one, it's done. On the bright side, you can use plain water to rinse them, and you don't have to worry about them drying out your eyes.

Actually, there are a couple additional downsides. Hard contacts are less comfortable in general, since you can kind of feel them in your eye all day. If you ever get a speck of dirt in your eye while wearing hard contacts, it'll hurt like hell. Plus, no one has made disposable hard contacts yet, so there's all that cleaning overhead and worrying about losing them.

I've been switching back and forth depending on how dry my eyes are in a given week.

do I look like an HR person?

When engineering candidates come onsite, we usually schedule them so that they jump right into technical interviews, rather than having a meeting with a recruiter first. It's expected that they will have talked to the recruiter over the phone already, and given limited HR resources, it makes more sense for the candidate to get a wrap-up meeting than an intro meeting.

Today, I was the first person on an interview schedule, and apparently the candidate thought I was an HR person, until I started asking him technical questions. Envision this:

me:	How was your flight? Did you come in yesterday?
him:	Good, yeah I got in yesterday evening.
me:	So, do you want anything to eat or drink?
him:	Sure, I'll have a coffee, thanks.
me:	Here you go. Okay, so how would you reverse a linked list?
him:	Eh??

I'm not sure what to take away from that experience. Maybe I should stop making small talk with candidates. Maybe I should make sure to wear clothes with big MIT logos. Or maybe I should just be amused.

dentists

I keep forgetting to schedule my next dentist appointment. It just isn't the kind of thing you have a lot of motivation to remember.

Although, I've been mostly lucky when it comes to teeth. I still have all of my wisdom teeth, and none of my dentists have ever suggested pulling them. I've never had braces, and I've never had a root canal. (Knock on wood.)

Once I did have to have four fillings, but I made him do them all together so I wouldn't have to have novacaine twice. I don't understand why dentists think it's better to come back again and again, for multiple fillings. I swear the worst part of going to the dentist is when you can feel him aiming that needle all around your mouth. Ugh.

hero, again

Someone sent me an article about Zhang Yimou's Hero, which does a better job than I did of examining the message of the movie:

Nameless chooses loyalty, and his own death, after a long conversation with the King of Qin. The king asserts that Nameless’s quest is only negative, he acts out of hatred and revenge. He reveals that he himself is misunderstood, that the king’s strength is used for the sake of unifying a great Chinese nation, a nation that will comprise “everything under heaven” (this crucial phrase was translated in english as "our land"). And the king asserts that the truest understanding of Nameless’s martial art is to choose peace, which the king asserts is also the end of what he does. Attaining universal empire will finally bring peace to China.

The king’s speech in effect asserts there are no claims the individual might make that the state must honor. A powerful, unified China, which finds its strength in his kingship, should be the object of everyone’s devotion.

It's a bit too creepy for me. Too bad, because otherwise it's a beautiful movie.

airport codes

Recently I came across this interesting article that explains the origin of some of the more confusing three-letter airport codes.

Some tidbits:

Some special interest groups successfully lobbied the government to obtain their own special letters. The Navy saved all the new 'N' codes. The Federal Communications Committee set aside the 'W' and 'K' codes for radio stations east and west of the Mississippi respectively. The lack of these letters puts a crimp in the logic of some codes: if the city starts with a 'N', 'W', or 'K', it's time to get creative! Norfolk, Virginia, ignored the 'N' to get ORF; Newark, New Jersey, is EWR, Newport News, Virginia, chose to use the name of the airport to get PHF -Patrick Henry Field.

Lacking both 'W' and 'N' Washington National has a code of DCA for District of Columbia Airport. The newer Dulles airport just outside D.C. was DIA (from Dulles International Airport); however, the DIA and DCA were easy to confuse, especially when hastily written in chalk on a baggage cart, scribbled on a tag or a handwritten air traffic control strip, so we are stuck with the backwards IAD.

Oh, still wondering about the world's busiest airport, O'Hare International, and its ORD code? Well once upon a time, before the editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Colonel Robert McCormick suggested a name change as tribute to pilot Lt. Cmdr. Edward "Butch" O'Hare, USN, there was an airstrip well to the northwest of Chicago with a quaint, peaceful name -- Orchard Field.

what's a dialect?

In Taiwan, the native dialect is Taiwanese, and the official language is Mandarin Chinese. (Although, there is a push to make English an official language as well.)

Taiwanese and Mandarin are similar in syntax, but very different in pronunciation and intonation. Someone who understands Mandarin will not understand Taiwanese. For the most part, words can be translated directly, and are represented by the same characters in writing, but direct translations often sound awkward and sometimes are incorrect. For example, the word for "run" in Taiwanese corresponds to the word for "walk" in Mandarin.

The other day, I was talking to someone about the distinction between dialects and languages. My argument was that Romance languages such as French, Spanish, and Italian are just as similar (perhaps more so) than different dialects of Chinese such as Taiwanese, Cantonese, and Shanghainese. Her comment was that all Chinese dialects use the approximately the same written characters to represent the same words, which sounded reasonable to me.

But, why are Spanish and Italian written differently? It comes down to the usage of a phonetic alphabet. I bet that historically, words in all Romance languages sounded almost the same. As pronunciation began to diverge, spelling would also be forced to evolve. For example, Old English is significantly different from Modern English, even in writing, to the point where it is unrecognizable by native English speakers. In Chinese, characters represent whole words or parts of words, and they aren't constructed phonetically. Thus, different "dialects" can share the same characters. (For now, I'm ignoring the difference between the "Simplified" characters used in China and the "Traditional" characters used in Taiwan.) In fact, even Japanese kanji are just a subset of Simplified Chinese characters.

So, to go back to the initial question: What's a dialect? What's a language? Where do we draw the line?

celebrity sighting

Yesterday, Jimmy Carter waved at me, but I wasn't paying attention. The person I was sitting with said "Hi!" back, just as I looked up.

9/11

I wrote this on Saturday, but wasn't sure if I wanted to post it, since it's not entirely coherent. I've decided one can't be expected to have coherent thoughts on such a world-changing event.

Random thoughts:

- I saw today that flags were at half-mast, but honestly it took me a second to realize why. Should I feel guilty about that? I wasn't affected very personally by the attacks, so perhaps it's a little snarky for me to say this, but I don't feel that we should wallow in grief. We should remember, but we should move on.

- I was reading an article about how teachers are choosing to address the cultural and political impact of 9/11 rather than the emotional aspect, now that we are several years removed. Not sure what I think about that. I hope the teachers aren't using the event to promote their own political agendas.

- I guess my second cousin must have been married almost three years ago. Her wedding, originally scheduled for mid-September, was postponed after her maid of honor went down on Flight 11, on her way to the wedding. That was my closest connection to a 9/11 victim. I remember that even at the time, it felt like there was a significant gulf between the East and West Coasts, in terms of personal loss and overall emotional impact. My sister was a freshman at Columbia that September, and for a while pretty much all she wanted was to go home.

- I was in New York last year, and it was strange seeing the subtle changes to the subway maps. Makes me feel like we're living in an alternate universe. I used to take the PATH train from Hoboken to the WTC...it sounds pretty callous, but one of the things that really makes me sad is that the big Borders bookstore, that I used to hang out in after work, is gone.

- I think "on September 11th" will be the "when Kennedy was shot" moment for our generation. On September 11th, I was still sleeping when my housemate ran into my bedroom and told me that the one of the WTC buildings had just fallen down. I did go to work that day, but I came home early, and my housemates and I watched CNN until we were sick to our stomaches, and switched to Tivo-ed episodes of Friends. One can only take so much.

- In Taiwan, significant events are often referred to by date, such as the 2-28 massacre, or the 9-21 earthquake. In this country, we tend to name events, such as the Loma Prieta earthquake or the Boston Tea Party. Why do we refer to 9-11 by date?

- Has this country become more united or more divided since 9/11? I myself have become increasingly disgusted with politicians who play the 9/11 card to try and gain votes. I am also saddened by the increased prejudice towards Arab-Americans, and even those who resemble Arab-Americans. I'm thinking specifically of a Sikh friend who, due to religious beliefs, has a beard and wears a turban. He's the most friendly, easy-going personality I've ever met, but he was removed from an airplane on the way from Boston to San Francisco because some people were uncomfortable with his presence.

- Has the world become safer or more dangerous since 9/11? As an American citizen who travels several times a year, I lean towards the latter. In particular, anti-American sentiment is at all all-time high, which was glaringly obvious watching the crowd boo the American Olympians, at the Athens Games.

- A high school friend came to visit me this weekend. He's still in college, having spent a year in Japan, a year in Paris, and a summer in Ireland. He is of Chinese ethnicity, was born and raised in California, and currently lives in DC, but is determined to move to Europe after graduation. I almost envy him. This country has too much baggage, and I have little faith in our leadership and our populace. I wish every American citizen were required to spend three months living in a foreign country (yes, even Canada), before being allowed to vote. We've gone from being dumb and happy to being dumb and angry, and as we've seen in the last few years, that's a potentially explosive situation.

basketball update

A bunch of us joined a women's basketball league in Menlo Park about a month ago. Since then, we've been slaughtered by an average of over 30 points. So, we decided to look for a new league.

I was convinced that the San Carlos women's league would be easier, so we started to look into that, but we found out last week that several of the women in the Menlo Park league are also in the San Carlos league. I guess it's a small world, when it comes to women's basketball.

We're still going to give it a shot, and if we're totally out of our depth, then I guess we will go back to playing the Campbell Novice league. Frankly, there aren't a lot of options for a group of short Asian girls who've only been playing for a little over two years. It's too bad more women don't play.

tech support

At work, we have a helpdesk that serves the whole company, from sales and marketing to engineering and operations. Sometimes the person on the other side of the line knows less about my system than I do, and sometimes he/she is really helpful in solving my problem.

While I was waiting for a helpdesk guy to debug my frozen Xsession a couple of days ago, I was thinking that a good optimization for a helpdesk/tech support system might be some kind of user categorization.

From what I hear, there are usually several "tiers" of tech support. The first tier consists of people reading from scripts and following flowcharts. If the problem doesn't fit in the flowchart or is otherwise too complex, the customer is escalated to the next tier. The frustrating thing about this is that every time I call with a new problem, I have to convince the first tier people that I know what I'm talking about, so they'll escalate me up. Ideally, I should get credit for not asking stupid questions, and get automatically escalated when I call again.

Companies store all kinds of information about users anyway, why shouldn't they store a couple extra bits of data which describe the user's level of technical expertise? Let's take DSL as an example. If a user calls up her ISP and says that she can't ping the gateway, she should get some "techie-points" and the call should probably be routed to someone who actually knows what ping is. She should get bonus points for having run traceroute and having correctly rebooted all applicable hardware, and so on. Net result: tech-savvy users have good customer support experiences, companies don't waste knowledgeable support resources on clueless users, and everybody wins.

I wonder if Speakeasy does this already. The only reason I would think not is that I've never talked to a support person there who didn't know what he/she was talking about.

discussing religion

I've vacillated between atheism and agnosticism for the last ten years or so, but I do find the practice of organized religion interesting from a cultural and sociological standpoint. The Old Testament, for instance, has lots of great, timeless stories, and beautiful writing. I love this line from L.M. Montgomery (in a WWI context):

The age-old cry--"Joseph is not and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away." How the mothers of the Great War echoed the Patriarch's moan of so many centuries agone!

But I digress. Although I'm pretty much secular myself, in high school, I was good friends with a devout Presbyterian (daughter of a minister) and a practicing Catholic. We often had great conversations about religion; we talked about faith and logic, the spread of Christianity in Asia, the role that religion plays in communities, and other topics.

Consequently, I was rather surprised when I went to college and found that some people got very upset talking about religion at all. I didn't understand, if a person had so much faith in something, why he/she would have a problem with exploring the roots of his/her beliefs.

Recently I asked this question of a friend, and his answer rang true to me. His analogy was that asking a deeply religious person to justify his/her faith was equivalent to asking a person involved in a serious relationship to justify his/her feelings. While some might consider logical analysis of religious ideas interesting from an intellectual standpoint, those who have a very deep personal connection with their faith might see those same probing questions as attacks intended to poke holes in their cherished beliefs. I would likely feel similarly if someone took a microscope to my relationships with my friends and family.

I guess the thing to remember is that there is a strong emotional component to religious belief. However, that does rather confirm my theory that logic and religion can't easily be mixed.

digital photo prints

A year and a half ago, when I was unemployed, I managed to catch up on organizing and ordering three years worth of digital photos. Since then, I've fallen so far behind that my Costco.com photo center account expired, and all my old photos got erased. (Actually, I'm happy about that. Saved me from having to delete them by hand.)

Anyway, I was recently looking at photo sites and was amazed at the increased variety and quality. I used to order from Ofoto, Shutterfly ($0.49/print), and most recently Costco ($0.24/print). Now prices are down in the low 20 cent range all around, and there are coupons and special deals to be had all over the web.

I think I'm going to give winkflash a shot; they charge $0.18/print (no coupons required), offer free shipping, and I've found several great reviews of their photo quality, as well.

engineering productivity

What's the best way to kill engineering productivity? Two words: brain teasers.

At lunch today, we were talking about interviewing and interview questions. Although we all agreed that most brain teasers did not make good interview questions, we were nonetheless diverted into the conversational black hole of asking brain teasers.

Question 1: There is an airplane with N seats and N passengers. The first person walks in and sits in a random seat. Each following person sits in his/her own seat if possible. If not, he/she sits in a random seat. What is the probability that the last person will sit in his/her own seat?

Question 2: There are 25 racehorses, but only 5 horses can race at a time. Assuming that every horse runs every race in exactly the same time, and each horse's race time is distinct, how many races does it take to determine which 3 horses are the fastest?

We did manage to solve both problems before leaving the cafeteria. Eventually.

hero

Some people from work are going to Shoreline to see Zhang Yimou's "Hero" today. I decided not to go, since I've seen it twice already, first in Taiwan a couple years ago, and then last year at a friend's house on DVD. (Imported? Yes. Pirated? Not sure.)

I did like many aspects of the movie: the gorgeous cinematography, the casting (it's nice to see Jet Li keeping his dignity), the unhurried pace, and of course, the fight scenes.

However, I was disturbed by the "moral of the story", which seemed to imply that rebelling against authority was bad, and individuals should sacrifice to the "greater good"; in this case, a unified China under the rule of a tyrannical emperor who believed in ethnic cleansing and trapping people inside of the Great Wall.

For me, it's way too easy to draw a parallel between that ruler and the current totalitarian Communist regime, and from there, it's not difficult to see the movie as pro-China propaganda. Of course, I'm biased.

Even so, it's a little surprising to see a movie like this from Zhang Yimou, who has historically had difficulties with the Chinese government regarding the content of his movies.

mmm...chocolate

Today I went to a "chocolate tasting" event at work. The founder of Cocoa Pete's (also the founder of Pete's Wicked Ale) talked about the process of chocolate making, we sampled a variety of chocolates paired with beer/wine/soda, and finally we had a most excellent chocolate-themed dinner.

It was fun, yummy, and I learned quite a bit. Apparently, in Europe, "dark chocolate" must be 35% pure chocolate, while in the US, it only has to be 15% pure chocolate, unless it's semisweet or bittersweet, in which case it must also be 35% pure chocolate. Incidentally, there is no difference, technically speaking, between semisweet and bittersweet chocolate.

Similarly, European "milk chocolate" must be 25% pure chocolate, and American "milk chocolate" only has to be 10% pure chocolate. No wonder theirs tastes better. Also, so-called "white chocolate" has no chocolate at all, it's just cocoa butter and sugar. Mmm...fat.

the never-ending tire saga

About 3 months ago, I went to Yosemite with a bunch of friends. As I mentioned previously, I took a nail in my left front tire, and had to get it patched at the Yosemite Garage.

More recently, I noticed that my tire seemed to have sprung a slow leak. I had to fill up my tires about every two weeks, and then every week, and then every few days. At that point I started to look into getting new tires.

The Tire Rack was highly recommended by several, so I browsed around and found that Michelin was offering a $50 rebate on a set of four tires. Michelin makes a very nice Ultra High Performance All-Season tire called the Pilot Sport A/S. However, at $135 a tire, they were significantly more expensive than my other choice, Pirelli's PZero Nero M&S, at $101 a tire. I waffled for a couple of days, and managed to forget completely that the rebate was expiring at the end of the week.

The following Monday, I was all ready to buy, so I clicked rapidly through the checkout process until I discovered the rebate had expired. I sulked for about a week, not wanting to admit defeat. It's horrible when you lose money due to your own laziness. I kept thinking if I waited long enough I would discover another coupon or rebate. Finally, last Sunday, I caved to reason and bought the tires.

Monday evening, on my way home, I took a nail in my left front tire. My new tires arrived Tuesday afternoon. If I had gotten the tires with the rebate three weeks previously, I would have just been out $135. I guess the moral of the story is that procrastination pays? Maybe a better moral is that lots of times, things just work themselves out, in the end.

As an aside, it really kicks ass to live just minutes away from work. Tuesday morning, I called up a co-worker at 10am and he swung by and picked me up on his way to work. That afternoon, I convinced another co-worker to come by and talk me through putting on the spare. Last time I had a flat, a bunch of guys did all the work, so I wanted to make sure I learned how to do it this time. I figure if I know how to change a flat, maybe I won't get one.

To Say Nothing of the Dog

A few years ago, a friend recommended Doomsday Book to me as a good example of "science fiction lite". I think it was a term he made up himself, and after finishing the book I told him I didn't really think it was science fiction at all.

It was my first introduction to Connie Willis, and in the years following I read through pretty much all of her fiction. She does reuse certain character motifs, but her writing is engaging and her books fun to read.

My favorite is To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a light, funny, clever book inspired (and named after) Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. Recently, I recommended it enthusiastically to a friend.

A few weeks later, she returned it, having been unable to finish it. I was perplexed, so I talked to another friend (also a Connie Willis fan) and we came to the conclusion that even though Willis' books are light on explicit scientific theory, they do involve a certain amount of logical reasoning, skepticism, and focus on detail. In short, they require a techy thought process.

For example, the plot of "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is based heavily on time travel, and the protagonist spends the first hundred pages or so in a time travel-induced daze. As a reader, it's difficult to remember that the main character's interpretation of events may not be entirely trustworthy. Also, like a mystery writer, Willis expects her readers to retain seemingly innocuous plot points until they become significant. One of the reasons that I enjoy her writing is that I am forced to concentrate, rather than being fed a simple, easy-to-follow plot. Others may not agree.

I still highly recommend Willis' books, especially "To Say Nothing of the Dog", "Doomsday Book", "Passage", and "Bellwether", but I will probably shy away from recommending her and other "science fiction lite" writers to less technical readers.

bagborroworsteal.com

Ran across an article about bagborroworsteal.com this morning. It's being described as "NetFlix for purses". Pretty clever idea, actually.

Marine World

I went to Marine World this weekend, for the first time since I was 12.

Marine World got bought by Six Flags a couple of years ago, so instead of just having shows, like Sea World, it now has lots of roller coasters. I went on Vertical Velocity, Zonga, Medusa, and a bunch of bitty rides, and I think that was about all my head could take. Must be getting old.

I've decided 21 is the best age to be. Everything's legal, and your body hasn't started falling apart yet. Too bad I didn't know it then.

more PRC bullying

I'll let the article speak for itself:

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) -- China is pushing for the removal of advertising posters supporting Taiwan's Olympic team from 500 baggage carts at Athens airport, a Taiwan official said on Friday.

Games organizers, under pressure from China, have asked Taiwan to withdraw the posters, said Lin Chia-lung, head of the Government Information Office.

I guess it's been a whole year since they made Miss Taiwan cry by bullying her into wearing a "Miss Chinese Taipei" sash.

what happened to Prince and Lady?

Last month my sister and I ordered a new set of "Little House" books on eBay. Like many of our books, our old copies had been literally read to bits, and we were getting sick of dropping pages and having to put them back in order.

It arrived a couple of weeks ago, but I was busy then, so I just finished rereading the books this week. Some thoughts...

- It must have really, really sucked to give up that house with the glass windows in Indian Territory. I wonder what happened to it?

- Was Mr. Edwards a real person? The whole walking forty miles in a blizzard part makes it seem like he must be made up, but wouldn't it be cool if he was real?

- "Farmer Boy" always makes me hungry. The mealtime descriptions are just delicious; I have to think really hard after reading them, to remember how plain the food really was back then.

- The two year gap in between "On the Banks of Plum Creek" and "By the Shores of Silver Lake" is still a little strange. I did some web surfing and discovered that someone has written a new book about that time; it talks about the Ingalls' living in Burr Oak (Iowa) for several years before returning to Plum Creek.

I've always liked all the books in the series except "The First Four Years", the last one. It's not written in the same style as all the other books, everything that happens is depressing, and it's somewhat disjointed. If the story had ended with "These Happy Golden Years", I could've imagined that Laura and Almanzo went on to be prosperous farmers, like the Wilders in New York. Instead, "The First Four Years" gives a glimpse of the poverty that they endured for most of their lives.

What a disappointment Almanzo's life must have been to him. In "Farmer Boy" he seemed like an especially precocious farmboy and horseman. In "The Long Winter" and "Little Town on the Prairie" he seemed courageous, dashing, and ahead of the game, with his superior team of horses and his own homestead claim. Given his promising start, it's especially disheartening to read about him ending up crippled and poor, losing his claim, and leaving De Smet for Missouri.

Speaking of horses, I've always wanted to know: What happened to the beautiful Morgan horses, Prince and Lady? At the end of "These Happy Golden Years" Almanzo uses them to drive Laura home after their wedding, and a pair of "brown horses" is mentioned a couple of times in the first few pages of "The First Four Years", but then they are never mentioned again. There's nothing anywhere on the web, either.

fat what?

A friend pointed me to fatwallet.com the other day as a good site to find discussions on credit cards and rewards information.

Since then, I've used it to find an 8% cash back offer at a sporting goods store, some informative postings comparing various digital photo sites, and several promotion codes for various online shopping sites. I'm trying to figure out it's not more popular. Are people just too lazy to do a little research to save a little money?

reading speed

According to this test, I read somewhere between 800-900 words per minute. Woo-hoo! Way too much YA fiction as a child, I suppose; I read over 250,000 pages during my fifth grade school year.

Though, there are a few flaws in the test. You have to scroll down once you're finished with the first screenful, and you can't read very fast while you're scrolling. The other problem is that the test passages are mostly fiction and fiction is way easier (and faster) to read than non-fiction, at least for me.

Paul Graham on hackers

I was reading Paul Graham's essay entitled Great Hackers this morning. He seems to have clearly and concisely enunciated several opinions that are common among techy people, although he is somewhat extreme in his views:

Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work. But if you make enough money, you get to work on whatever you want, and for that reason hackers are attracted by the idea of making really large amounts of money. But as long as they still have to show up for work every day, they care more about what they do there than how much they get paid for it.

I'm not sure that this is entirely true; it seems to assume no other especially interesting and/or time-consuming hobbies. A really good programmer might make a pile of money and decide to quit her job completely, because what she really wants is to only program when she wants, on things she's interested in, and no job can guarantee that all the time. Instead she gets a pilot's license and travels around the world for a couple of years. Of course, she would have to bring along her laptop.

A great programmer might be ten or a hundred times as productive as an ordinary one, but he'll consider himself lucky to get paid three times as much.

This is a fact that often seems to be completely ignored by management. All programmers are not created equal. It's not even that the best programmer is twice as good as the worst programmer. The worst programmer should actually count as a negative when it comes to calculating man-months (which are mythical anyway, as we all know), since he probably makes mistakes that waste everyone else's time. No, the best programmer is certainly orders of magnitude better than even the average programmer, and should be valued accordingly. I say this as an about average programmer, myself.

Here's another interesting quote:

When you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, you're not just making a technical decision. You're also making a social decision, and this may be the more important of the two. For example, if your company wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent choice to write it in Java. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python.

[...]

Business types prefer the most popular languages because they view languages as standards. They don't want to bet the company on Betamax. The thing about languages, though, is that they're not just standards. If you have to move bits over a network, by all means use TCP/IP. But a programming language isn't just a format. A programming language is a medium of expression.

This is a very good point. I code primarily in Java nowadays, and Java is awesome in that it takes care of a lot of details for me and prevents bugs like memory leaks, but it makes me lazy. I think ideally companies should hire programmers that are skilled in multiple languages, and give them the freedom to choose from a (small) set of languages when starting on new projects. Different types of projects call for different implementation languages.

His thoughts on office space are dead-on:

After software, the most important tool to a hacker is probably his office. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. But hackers use their offices for more than that: they use their office as a place to think in. And if you're a technology company, their thoughts are your product. So making hackers work in a noisy, distracting environment is like having a paint factory where the air is full of soot.

The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot to say about cubicles, and with good reason. All the hackers I know despise them. The mere prospect of being interrupted is enough to prevent hackers from working on hard problems. If you want to get real work done in an office with cubicles, you have two options: work at home, or come in early or late or on a weekend, when no one else is there. Don't companies realize this is a sign that something is broken? An office environment is supposed to be something you work in, not something you work despite.

Regardless of the reason, whether it's productivity or something else, engineers usually demonstrate a clear preference for offices. We had a engineering satisfaction survey at work earlier this year, which posed the following question, "Given the exact same space (same size, desk area, window access, etc.), I would prefer to work in a... (a) Cube (b) Office (c) Don't care (d) Other." 70% of respondents answered (b) Office, 8% answered (a) Cube, and 17% answered (c) Don't care.

On managing engineers:

Hackers like to work for people with high standards. But it's not enough just to be exacting. You have to insist on the right things. Which usually means that you have to be a hacker yourself. I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.

The problem is not so much the day to day management. Really good hackers are practically self-managing. The problem is, if you're not a hacker, you can't tell who the good hackers are. A similar problem explains why American cars are so ugly. I call it the design paradox. You might think that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? By definition you can't tell from his portfolio. And you can't go by the awards he's won or the jobs he's had, because in design, as in most fields, those tend to be driven by fashion and schmoozing, with actual ability a distant third. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. American cars are ugly because American car companies are run by people with bad taste.

Many people in this country think of taste as something elusive, or even frivolous. It is neither. To drive design, a manager must be the most demanding user of a company's products. And if you have really good taste, you can, as Steve Jobs does, make satisfying you the kind of problem that good people like to work on.

Lastly, here's a quote about talented people in general:

Because you can't tell a great hacker except by working with him, hackers themselves can't tell how good they are. This is true to a degree in most fields. I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent.

This rings true; what appears as false modesty to others is probably just ignorance. After all, if you consider yourself the norm, why shouldn't everyone else be just as smart or fast or talented as you?

Anyway, I'm glad I took the time to read through the whole essay. Graham's ideas are original and quite discussion-worthy, and more impressively (for a technical person), they are presented in vivid and well written detail. Go read it!

LAN party

I've been invited to a Starcraft LAN party. How geeky am I?

I haven't actually played Starcraft in about 3 years, so this should be interesting...

feature request for PayPal

This insight came in an email from a friend this morning:

"PayPal is un-Chinese because it doesn't let you refuse money."

seagulls

Went to go see the A's play the Rangers today. It's the second time in a month I've seen Rich Harden pitch, and he's very impressive in some ways (pitch speed, strikeouts) and not so impressive in other ways (control, walks). Here's hoping his control improves, quickly.

There was a brilliant defensive play sometime in the middle innings, when it was still close; Mark Kotsay gloved a ball just over the fence and robbed Teixeira of a 3-run homer which would have made the score 4-3. Soon after that, Eric Byrnes hit a 2-run shot and it was pretty much a blowout from there on out.

Sometime during the bottom of the eighth, the seagulls started to circle above us. A friend and I were trying to figure out how the seagulls knew when to show up; did they just know that weekend games would end around 4pm? Did they wait until some cars started to leave the stadium? Did people start to throw their food on the floor? It must be a pretty good method, because I've been to many a baseball/football game, and the seagulls have shown up every time, without fail.

pro sports

There's been a lot of talk lately about Kobe Bryant being selfish. With both Phil Jackson and Shaq leaving, it does seem like Kobe must be making noise and forcing the team to give him what he wants.

I was discussing the whole Lakers debacle with my roommate last week, and I came to the following conclusion: Kobe is just a guy trying to advance his career.

Imagine for a second that Kobe works for a typical Fortune 500 company. He has a regular job, but he's very talented and sees a lot of potential for career growth. However, he feels that one of his co-workers (Shaq) is getting in the way of his career advancement, and he also doesn't really get along with his team lead (Jackson). It's not that he and his co-worker don't do good work together, but he feels that he could do better (and get more recognition) flying solo. If I were in that situation, I'd talk to my boss (aka the Lakers front office) about rectifying it, and I imagine most other people would too.

The problem is that with pro athletes, we (the public) don't like to think about the fact that playing ball is their job. We like to imagine that they all play purely for love of the game, loyalty to the team, and the pleasure of the fans. Career ambition isn't palatable to sports fans; it's fine in a 9-5er, but it isn't okay in a pro athlete.

As a footnote, I really wonder if this whole selfishness question would have come up if Kobe wasn't being tried for rape. Regardless of whether he's guilty and/or convicted, Kobe has lost a lot of good faith, and people are way more eager to brand him as a selfish pro athlete than they were before.

new shoes

I just got some new basketball shoes last week, and played with them this morning. They're the "And 1 Madness Mid", in black and silver. Look to the left and drool. Actually, they were pretty cheap, especially since "big kids" sizes run about $20 less than the men's (for the exact same shoes!). I've never really understood it, but I've always taken full advantage. I thought it was a justified purchase. The treads on my old pair are all flat and there are really truly holes in the lining. I didn't want to injure myself wearing ratty old shoes. That's what I told myself, anyway.

Scandinavia pictures

I finally got around to sorting through the 800+ pictures we took in Scandinavia.

Here's a sampling:

Copenhagen

Legoland

Skagen

Gothenburg

Oslo

Stockholm

it's alive!

I finally got a Gentoo installation up and running on my "new" machine, by downloading yet another version (2.6.7-gentoo-r8) and compiling pretty much the full kernel.

At first, networking was still broken, but I poked around in the Gentoo forums and read something about strange interactions with APIC (or ACPI?) neither of which I needed, so I took those out of the kernel and then everything worked beautifully.

I set the hostname as "stud-finder", which is something of an inside joke, but still goes with my theme.

Next up, a fresh installation of Windows 95 for my eight-year-old Pentium Pro 200, aka "the-wrench". RedHat 7 + Gnome turned out to be too damn slow.

campaign contributions

I just spent the last 10 minutes typing zip codes into this campaign contribution search site. I guess this kind of information has always been publicly available, but it's fascinating (and a little scary) to be able to get it so quickly and easily, thanks to the internet.

bloglines

I recently started using bloglines, a feed aggregator.

When I started this blog, I checked a box for "Publish Site Feed" but I didn't really know what it meant. After reading a bunch about the Atom-RSS war and all the ways that people were starting to use feeds, I decided I should at least try out a web-based aggregator.

After several weeks, I've gotten used to going to a single website to see all of the latest from Slashdot, Plastic, and dozens of other discussion sites and blogs. Bloglines is a great site; lightweight, easy to configure, and works great on several browsers (although I'm still getting used to the new UI, which got pushed out today). I do have one feature request: I often click on "Display" to get all the latest, and feel compelled to read through all of the new posts. I wish there was a way to say, "I've read all the posts up to here, save the rest for later."

Though I do wonder, if everyone starts reading online content through aggregators, if content providers will be able to keep relying on advertising for revenue? It would suck if ads started getting incorporated into the feeds themselves.

computers suck, yet again

I inherited a 4-year old Pentium III 500 a few weeks ago, and decided to try out a new OS: Gentoo Linux.

Since I've never installed any distribution except RedHat, I invited a friend over to help me; he'd recently installed Gentoo on a couple of systems, and had the CD lying around.

We spent awhile walking through the (pretty well documented) installation process, and finally started to compile the kernel. After we got back from dinner, we rebooted the machine, and guess what, it froze during the init sequence.

His next idea was to boot up Knoppix (an awesome "rescue" CD version of Linux) and copy over the config to feed to genkernel. Unfortunately, it was pretty big, and the subsequent kernel compilation ran until about 1:30am before we gave up and went to sleep. The next morning, I rebooted the machine, and guess what, I got a kernel panic during USB Mass Storage initialization.

I guess the next step is to download a new kernel.

doing the baby shower thing

A friend and I hosted a baby shower for a co-worker at my place last weekend. Neither of us had ever thrown a baby shower before. In fact, I'd never even thrown a bridal shower before. I felt sure that hilarity would ensue.

In retrospect, things didn't turn out too badly. The games we picked were simple but fun (I think the guests enjoyed the baby food taste test the most) and the decorations, prizes and favors were a hit, especially with the two under-5 guests. I also got a chance to make my favorite dessert, the Double Chocolate Mousse Torte (see Epicurious for details) and eat finger jello. Mmm...red jello.

Afterwards, I managed to clean up, eat, shower, and get myself to the city for a 8pm housewarming party (well, I was an hour or two late). I got there just in time for vodka shots and a fresh batch of lemon cookies.

home sweet home

We didn't get off to a great start, with 1 lost passport, 1 missed standby flight, and 2 pieces of missing luggage in the first two days. Luckily, things worked out in the end and we only lost a day of travel time.

Scandinavia was lovely, especially Norway (although we only got to see Oslo). Denmark was nice but not spectacular, probably because I'm not a big fan of old buildings. Legoland was the best thing there. Sweden was my favorite of all three; the people were helpful, friendly, and high-energy, the food was good, and the cities were a great combination of old and new.

That having been said, there's nothing like a week away to make you appreciate home. Not that I didn't have a good time, but travelling always has its disadvantages. Top 5 things I missed:

- always available high speed internet!
- Asian food, healthy food, and especially work food
- nice sheets and nice towels
- having a selection of clothes and shoes to choose from in the morning
- down time, especially Tivo time

I haven't had a chance to organize my pictures yet; if there are any especially interesting ones I'll post them.

hello from Stockholm

I'm currently sitting at a free internet terminal at City Backpackers in Stockholm. I'm visiting Scandinavia for the week, and it's been really fun and really enlightening. Every day I marvel at how I can just open my mouth, speak English, and any random person will understand me. We are obviously doing something wrong with secondary language education, in the US. I'll write more when I get back.

Vienna Teng at the Montgomery Theater

Last night I went with some friends to see Vienna Teng at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. We had a horrible time trying to get there; the Julian Street exit off of 87 was clogged about a mile back, and was barely moving at all. Finally we called a friend who told us how to get there using the next exit (duh). It was a perfect illustration of why it's necessary to know where you're going, instead of just blindly following Mapquest directions.

Anyway, the show was really good! A couple of the pieces gave me that almost painful feeling that you get when you see or hear something really lovely (music or otherwise) and you're a little bit sad because you're not sure you're going to be able to get that loveliness back, ever.

I'd never heard Vienna in concert before, even though she's actually a friend of a friend of a friend, or something like that. I enjoyed the geek references (Vienna used to be a software engineer at Cisco) and comments about Taiwanese parents. It was also kinda cool to see Eric, who I've met once or twice, playing cello along with her regular violinist and two other band members.