My New Year's Resolution for 2004... buy more video games!

Haha... I'm planning to get the following games in March:
-MVP Baseball 2004
-Halo 2
-Fuzion Frenzy 2 (best party game on Xbox)

I played Mario Kart last night with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law for about 3 hours.

I wish that game was on Xbox...

You know how a frozen pizza comes with a circular piece of cardboard on the bottom?

When I was in elementary school I used to draw all sorts of strange things on those pieces of cardboard... create my own wheel of fortune, draw a baseball stadium, make my own game with it... now I can't imagine doing anything with it other than throw it away.

Why is it that our imaginations reduce to nothing when we get older?

I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet.

My sister and brother-in-law told me what they want, so I'm gonna go with them to get it when they come to Orange County tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get something for my parents then.

I went back to the restaurant that had the men's restroom sign with a boy urinating in a toilet. I made sure to check out the sign for the women's restroom, and yep, that sign was a picture of a little girl sitting on a toilet.

I wonder how many other public buildings use these signs.

Some of my class people played a 2.5 hour game of Cranium on Friday night. It took so long because we had 5 teams. Sammy Sohn and I won, haha... (Isabel was on our team for most of the game.)

I was somehow able to avoid embarassing myself in the charades, humming, drawing, and sculpting categories. Club Cranium saved me... whenever there was something really obvious that I didn't know, I'd just point to the other teams who knew what to do.

Something happened to my blog on Thursday. I published my last post at the time it says on Thursday, and it showed up on my post template, but it didn't appear on the site until I published this post.

I just got home right now. Since I have to go into work tomorrow, I wasn't planning on turning on the computer.

But subconsciously I did... it took me about 5 seconds to realize that I had turned on my computer.

In fourth grade I remember having a large hole in the sole of my left shoe. One time while I was playing tennis, a few inches of my sock spilled out of the hole.

That hole was so big I could've pulled out my entire sock from the bottom of my shoe.

You know how there's a little stick figure sign in front of a men's bathroom in a public building?

Well, I went to a restaurant with my co-workers last Friday, and the sign to their men's bathroom had a picture of a boy urinating into a toilet.

I didn't get a chance to see what the sign for the women's restroom looked like, but I probably don't want to know.

Betting odds for the 2004 opening day shortstop of the Boston Red Sox, as of this moment in time:

3-2: Nomar Garciaparra
2-1: Alex Rodriguez
4-1: Miguel Tejada
20-1: other

About 6 months ago, I dropped a glass cup on my left big toe, and there was internal bleeding underneath my toenail. My toenail turned black.

As the months have gone by, my nail has grown and now half my toenail looks normal. The outer half is still black, but it's been elevated above the normal half.

It wouldn't take much effort for me to rip off the outer half of my toenail at this point. I thought you'd all like to know.

There are no right or wrong answers in an interview question, but my co-worker's explanation is provided in the comment below.

Today's interview question comes courtesy of one of my co-workers:

Suppose you have 3 walkways in an airport. One of them goes from the entrance to the gates, and the other goes from the gates to the exit. Which direction would you want the 3rd to move?

You don't have to know anything else about this airport in order to get at the response I'm looking for-- so it has nothing to do with if the airport is a hub, where the baggage claim is, or anything else.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I heard this today at church:

Until very recently, women always had the buttons on button-up shirts suitable for left-handed people who dress themselves.

Legend has it that rich women used to have their servants dress them. So it was easier for right-handed servants (who would stand on the opposite side of the shirt) to dress the rich women if the buttons were set up that way.

Men have always had their buttons suitable for right-handed people who dress themselves.

Today marks the one year anniversary of a tremendous battle in FiCB blog history...

A pair of records were established:
Andy Chon: December 4, 2002- 212 hits.
Roy Chung: December 5, 2002- 208 hits.

I wear a sweater, warm-ups, and socks when I go to sleep, and I use 2 blankets. I'm still too cold.

I'm going to wear 2 pairs of socks tonight and see if that makes things any better.

Everytime I go to Subway for lunch, I have a dilemma. The 6 inch sandwich is too small, but the foot-long is too big.

If I get the 6 inch with chips I'm not fully satisfied.
But if I get the foot-long, I'm forcing myself to eat 3 inches that I don't really want to.

I don't really want to save the last 3 inches for later because I'd be too full to eat it as a snack before dinner, and I don't think I'd want it after dinner.

Georgia Dave apparently gets the 6 inch with chips and a cookie... I guess I should try that.

MTV's 22 greatest CDs (best albums in the past 2 decades) includes the following artists, which are approximately in order:

-Garbage
-Live
-Bruce Springsteen
-Janet Jackson
-Foo Fighters
-The Beastie Boys
-No Doubt
-TLC
-Radiohead
-Dr. Dre
-Linkin Park
-Eminem
-Nine Inch Nails
-Rage Against The Machine
-Lauryn Hill
7) Pearl Jam's Ten
6) Red Hot Chili Peppers' BloodSugarSexMagic
5) U2's The Joshua Tree
4) Metallica's Black Album
3) Guns N Roses' Appetite For Destruction
2) Nirvana's Nevermind
1) Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill

I wasn't particularly surprised by anything (OK, maybe Garbage making the list) until #1.

Maybe I don't understand because I'm not a woman, but I don't get how Jagged Little Pill was bigger than Nevermind or The Joshua Tree.

3 tips of advice about your credit score:

1) Pay your bills on time.
Most people pay their bills on time, so if you don't then you'll be considered much riskier than the normal person.

2) Keep your credit card balances low.
Almost half the population has a credit card balance of less than $1000.

3) Don't have too many or too few accounts.
What's too little or too much? Basically you should only open accounts as needed. There's no reason to have more than 4 credit cards, but you should have at least one. People with no credit cards are considered as higher risks than those who manage credit responsibly.

If you want to learn more, check out my company's website.

After putting on my contacts today, my eyes were kinda irritating me. This happens to me from time to time, so I didn't think much of it. But my eyes kept bugging me on the way to work today, so when I got into the office I checked the bathroom mirror.

Turns out that I wasn't even wearing my left contact at all! So I'll be at work today with only one contact on.

I've worn contacts for about 10 years now, but I think this might be the first time that I thought I was wearing both contacts when I actually wasn't.

My co-workers reference the movie Office Space all the time.
I need to watch it just so that I know what they're talking about.

I recently watched Seinfeld's Soup Nazi episode. Here are some of the soups mentioned in the episode:

-Mulligatawny
-Crab Bisque
-Turkey Chili
-Jambalaya
-Black Bean
-Chicken Broccoli
-Clam Bisque
-Split Pea
-French Onion
-Mushroom Barley
-Tomato Rice
-Lima Bean
-Gazpacho
-Wild Mushroom
-Cold Cucumber
-Corn and Crab Chowder

I used to think that I have bad luck and always pick the slow lane when I'm stuck in traffic. But I realized that's true mainly because it's painfully obvious when I'm stuck in a slow lane. On the other hand, it's very forgettable when I pick the best lane and whiz past traffic.

So because of this, I'm sure there are more people who claim to have bad luck in traffic than there should be.

I'm surprised by the number of people who brush their teeth at work after lunch. Especially since I work with a bunch of engineers who don't need to meet with clients.

Last week, Sports Illustrated had an issue about all 2,548 covers it has had in its 50 year history.

Here are some topics that have been featured on the cover:
-Autumn walks
-Ballooning
-Bird-watching
-Bridge
-Chess
-Cruising
-Dog shows
-Gold diving
-Island hopping
-Night driving
-Vacations

You can e-mail your friends if you see an ESPN.com article worth sending to them.

Today's most sent story on ESPN is their metrosexual quiz!

For further reference, see also the Page 2 article on metrosexuals, a photo gallery of metrosexual athletes, and a photo gallery of non-metrosexual athletes.

Great advice from Personal Finance for Dummies by Eric Tyson, who teaches at Berkeley:

-Don't go into debt for things that lose their value over time. Using loans for educational expenses is fine, but avoid paying interest on things like cars and clothes.

-Pay off your credit card bill in full. It's simple really-- if you can't pay it off, then you're using your credit card too much.

-Invest mostly in stocks when you're young, because in the long run you'll earn more money with stocks. But make sure to diversify! A no-load (commission-free) mutual fund is a great way to invest.

And one from me:

-Consolidate your loans if you just graduated! Our class's grace period is up this month, and you can lock in a 2.8% interest rate on most loans if you consolidate before the grace period ends. If you wait until after the grace period ends, the interest rate jumps to 3.4%

Yesterday I was talking with one of my co-workers about why Baltimore's football team is called the Ravens. I said I'd give him $10 if he knew, but he didn't.

Then one of my female co-workers walked into the room and I said I'd give her $20 if she knew why. But I forgot that she went to school at Johns Hopkins, which is in Baltimore!

She knew right away that Edgar Allan Poe lived in Baltimore when he wrote his famous poem, "The Raven." Fortunately, though, she didn't want the $20...

Congratulations Reverend Eugene!

It was great seeing everyone come and see his ordination yesterday.

And of course it was good to hang out with my class people this weekend. Even if all we did was sit around and eat... haha...

I just got an Xbox! Our place is now truly a bachelor pad...

-Xbox (with Madden 2004, of course)
-DVD player (only because the Xbox plays DVDs)
-cable
-high-speed internet
-putting green

70 women in the US die of anorexia each year, so the correct answer to the question in my previous post is A).

In order to have guessed at this question correctly, you probably would've had to approach this as an interview question and break it down in the following way:

1) How many women live in the US?
About 140 million.

2) What percent of women in the US have anorexia?
About .1%. Remember, this is not just teenage women; this includes babies, adults, and the elderly.

3) What percent of women who have anorexia die from it?
About .05%

Of course, if you're off on any of those calculations, you're still gonna get it wrong.

This is lesson 21B about statistics--
People generally have a hard time with population totals and subsets.

So when a journal accidentally wrote that 150,000 women die from anorexia each year, did anyone give it a second thought?

No, it seemed pretty reasonable. But actually, there are only 150,000 women who have anorexia each year.

How many women in the US die of anorexia each year?

A) 70
B) 700
C) 7000
D) 70,000

Take a stab at this question... I'll explain why I asked this in a future post.

Highlights from Hallelujah Night:

1) Seeing everyone help out and make it a fun night. I'm pretty sure the college students and EM had more fun than the kids.

2) Seeing everyone's costumes, and trying to figure out what people were supposed to be. Fred and Frank won awards for widest costume, while Eileen confused everyone by wearing her yellow jacket even though she was supposed to be a regular ant.

3) Of course, how could I forget Chongo swallowing a live goldfish and then throwing it back up...

This is my exciting world at work:

Fact-checking has me doing some pretty ridiculous things. I have to check that our charts are formatted correctly, so I literally have to hold up multiple charts up toward light and see if the borders and company logos match up.

Once that's done, I check the numbers by bringing my computer monitor right up to my face. Then I take the chart and put it up to the screen and compare the hard copy to what's on the computer. I do this for one column of numbers and then do it again... And again... And again... 1000 times. (I kid you not.)

All in all, it took me about 8 hours to do this.

Highlights from EM retreat:

1) Listening to Pastor Rich Craven speak about the Joseph narrative. It's amazing how well he spoke despite being sick (and not using any notes, which he never does.)

2) Seeing everyone all in one place. I feel so out of touch with FiCB, so it was good to talk to some people that I hadn't talked to in awhile.

3) Playing games and being the last person to get wet in the "Drip, Drip, Drop" game. At least I got Sumin back...

4) Laughing at Isabel when she applauded Chin-San for wanting a girl who was patient with guys. (This makes more sense if you were at Pastor Craven's Q&A.)

5) Conversation with Jason Cheung.

6) Seeing Dennis, Andy, and Joanna come up together during Open Mic time. Dennis, did you really come up with that rotting potato juice analogy on your own?

7) Staying up until 4 AM playing "Gang of Four" with Billy Ku, Georgia Dave, Kathleen, and Vickie. And of course, seeing Kathleen and Vickie scream at the top of their lungs when they won... even though we were in a room with 10 people trying to sleep.

Thanks to the deacons and officers for putting the retreat together.

I could wear a t-shirt and jeans to work everyday if I wanted. I guess that's one of the perks of being an engineer.

I met up with my misssions teammate today at Mosaic church in LA. The service was pretty interesting; it felt like I was walking into a club (well, I actually was, since their services are held in the LA Entertainment Center).

During service we watched clips of ET and a couple people spoke about how some of the themes relate to the Christian life. Next week the service will be based on the movie "Contact".

I'm in soCal for the weekend for a friend's wedding. It was a nice ceremony that was held in Bel Air Presbyterian Church, which has an amazing view of the valley.

The wedding was short and sweet (less than an hour long), but at the end of the ceremony, the pastor said, "I present to you Mr. and Mrs., uh,..."

At first everyone thought he was joking, but he seriously blanked out and forgot the groom's last name. It took about 20 seconds for him to complete that sentence.

And then at the reception we were enjoying our meal and realized that almost all of the back section of the room was gone. Friends of the couple's parents were sitting there, and they just bailed after eating their lunch. It was amazing how fast they got out of there.

For them, they just wanted to see the ceremony, eat a meal, drop off some money, and jet. They couldn't care less about traditional American ceremonies, slideshows, and toasts. Makes sense, since they're Korean...

This year's baseball playoffs have been nuts.

And there's an amazing parallel between the Red Sox and Cubs, the 2 most cursed franchises in baseball.

-Both were 5 outs away from the World Series, with a 3 run lead and no one on base.
-Both teams had the best pitcher on the team pitching at the time. You could easily argue that Pedro & Prior are the best pitchers in their respective league.
-Both pitchers were controlling the game going into the eighth inning, but then collapsed and stayed in the game while their opponent came back.
-And for the 85th consecutive year, neither team will celebrate a World Series championship.

The solutions to Simpsons trivia are included in the comment below.

Simpsons trivia:

1) What was the name of Homer's hair chemical solution?
2) What does Bart send Ms. Krabapple a picture of?
3) Who is the godfather of the Springfield mafia?
4) What was Homer's birthweight?
5) List the 3 other cities that Lyle Lanley sold monorails to.
6) Who has a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg?
7) Whose middle name is Jo-Jo?
8) How did Bart get kicked out of heaven?
9) What door does Bart pick when he's trapped in the tiger cage in Shelbyville?
10) Mike Scioscia is diagnosed with which disease?

I think I've become lactose-intolerant. I've been eating cereal everyday before work, and the results haven't been pretty. Fortunately, my co-workers haven't noticed. (I hope.)

I was so bored at work today that I made a graph of the likelihood of winning a head-to-head fantasy football matchup based on points scored that week.

My brother-in-law's league uses the following scoring system: 6 pts for TDs, 1 pt for 20 pass yards, 1 pt for 10 rush/rec yards, and the other settings are standard.

Here are some stats (yes, I know 5 weeks is a small sample):
Mean: 85.6
Median: 87
SD: 23.9

A team that scored 70 points had a 30% chance of winning the matchup.
80 points, 45%
90 points, 60%
100 points, 72%

One of the problems I'm facing with having the internet and cable is that I can go to so many different websites and cable channels to follow sports. I can easily waste hours reading about and watching sports. That's not good for someone like me.

This isn't very insightful; I'm just mentioning this to remind myself to stop wasting time.

People who live in the Emery Bay apartments:

-Albert Kim
-Allen Han
-Amy Jun
-Chris Yoo
-Eui Hwang
-Gee-Won Kim (OK, only on weekends)
-"Georgia" Dave Park
-Isabel Chung
-John Chong
-Mike Lim
-Mike Wee (David Wee's brother)
-Stephen Lee
-me!

I went to a get-together that my supervisor at work helped coordinate. We played volleyball and it was pretty fun. At the beginning of the barbecue we were watching this really weird movie that had some inappropriate scenes. People were making comments about how it didn't seem right that we were watching that kind of movie at 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon, but of course we kept watching...

I wasn't too surprised by how the get-together went. It was kinda awkward at times, but playing volleyball really helped loosen everyone up. I don't think I'm going to make every effort to make it out to these things in the future, but I won't mind going again if I have nothing better to do.

I went to Game 1 of the A's-Red Sox series with AHan, Georgia Dave, Eric Chen, G1, and Sammy Sohn (new guy in YAG). What a great game... I'm an Angels fan, so I noticed that there were some similarities between last year's Angels and how the A's won game 1.

The A's came back in the late innings.
The A's played stellar defense throughout the game.
The A's worked the count (or at least Durazo did.)
The A's had a great performance from the bullpen (after Rincon left.)
The A's had a hard-throwing rookie pitcher come out of the bullpen and get the win.

And of course, the walk-off suicide squeeze is something you'd expect from the Angels.

That's where the similarities end though. The Angels and A's have completely different approaches to the game. And the A's have a stronger rotation and a weaker lineup than the Angels had last year.

I was really tired last night, so I took a nap at 9 PM... what a bad idea... I woke up at 10 PM, and then couldn't fall asleep until 2:30 AM. I had a really hard time getting up this morning.

I need 8 hours of sleep... I've barely been making it through work even though I usually get 7 hours.

I just bought gas at Costco for the first time. $1.68 per gallon... that's unbelievably cheap... I'm saving $5 every time I fill up!

Why I hate the New York Yankees, reason #52:

-I was planning to go to an Oakland-Boston playoff game (in particular, Game 1, featuring Pedro vs Hudson). But since the Yankees get all the primetime TV slots, the first 2 A's-Red Sox games will probably be during the day while I work.

Skip this post if you don't care about fantasy football.

I just completed my second trade in Mejeld's fantasy football league, this time with Dennis Han (my year at Eastbay).

He got:
Marc Bulger (QB, St. Louis)
Kevin Faulk (RB, New England)
Ahman Green (RB, Green Bay)

I got:
Ricky Williams (RB, Miami)

This is a league that starts 2 QBs, so QB depth is critical. It also counts return yards, so Kevin Faulk's value is increased since he returns punts. Dennis also has Kurt Warner and Antowain Smith, so now he has both St. Louis QBs and both New England RBs.

Hopefully this trade turns out as well as my last one. I traded Adrian Peterson (RB, Chicago) to G1 for Darrell Jackson (WR, Seattle).

Top grossing movies since 1990:

2003: Finding Nemo
2002: Spider-Man
2001: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
2000: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
1999: Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace
1998: Saving Private Ryan
1997: Titanic
1996: Independence Day
1995: Toy Story
1994: Forrest Gump
1993: Jurassic Park
1992: Aladdin
1991: Terminator 2- Judgment Day
1990: Home Alone

Most popular movies since 1990 (as tallyed by imdb.com):

2003: The Matrix Reloaded
2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2001: Shrek
2000: Gladiator
1999: Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace
1998: The Truman Show
1997: LA Confidential
1996: Fargo
1995: Se7en
1994: Forrest Gump
1993: Jurassic Park
1992: Reservoir Dogs
1991: Terminator 2- Judgment Day
1990: Goodfellas

The most popular movies list is skewed because it's done by imdb readers. And of course, people who read imdb are not representative of the American population.

As a new employee at my company, I was able to get a free 15 minute massage. It was the first time I ever got a professional massage, and it was pretty nice.

On another note, I have $420 to spend on medical expenses until the end of the calendar year because of my company's benefits program. Albert (my roommate) has $3000 to spend. He says he might get an MRI just because it'll be free.

My picks for individual baseball awards:

AL MVP:
1) Alex Rodriguez. Part of me wants him to win this award just because he's been shafted so many times before. But if you look at it in terms of this year alone, his contributions offensively and defensively are greater than anyone else. Good leader and clubhouse influence... you can talk about Texas being in last place all you want, but he's added the most value to his team.
2) Jorge Posada.
3) Bret Boone.

AL Cy Young:
1) Tim Hudson.
2) Esteban Loaiza.
3) Pedro Martinez.

This is a close enough race that their final starts might impact this pecking order.

NL MVP:
1) Barry Bonds. Easy decision because of his superior OBP.
2) Albert Pujols.
3) Gary Sheffield.

NL Cy Young:
1) Jason Schmidt.
2) Brandon Webb. I'm not kidding. No one knows about him, but he leads the NL in Support-Neutral Value Added.
3) Mark Prior.

For those of you who want to give the Cy Young to Eric Gagne, I think you'd also have to put Billy Wagner in the top 3. He's been just as dominant.

Updated blog count for each class:

Total: 104
2000: 4
2001: 6
2002: 8
2003: 19
2004: 21
2005: 13
2006: 33

Blogs: 55
Xangas: 44
Other: 5

Websites: 16
Picture sites (I counted one per person): 26

I've been out of the blog loop ever since I went on missions. But at least I finally updated the left column of links today.

As always, let me know if you want your blog/website/picture site linked or not.

My company has a luxury suite at PacBell Park, and I put myself on the wait list a couple weeks ago hoping that I'd get to go sometime in 2004. But some people at my company bailed, so I ended up going last night! I went with Allen, G1, and Stephen.

It was pretty nice... we got free drinks (but not free food) and took a picture in Willie Mays' suite (too bad he wasn't there). It was my first time in a luxury box, and it was really nice to be able to go into an air-conditioned room and watch several other games at the same time (instead of freezing outside on a cold SF night).

I even met a co-worker who's a hard-core fantasy sports fan. He's gonna try to get me involved in some office leagues.

What I did this past weekend:

-Visited G1 at his place in Fremont
-Had dinner with Basile, G1, Kathleen, & Vickie (we don't even carpool to church together anymore, but we still meet up anyway)
-Watched Matchstick Men with AHan, Christina Yi, Deborah Han, Isabel, and Stephen
-Played Texas Hold'Em for about 7 hours (3 different times)
-Watched lots of football

I was randomly looking for a place to eat for lunch today in San Rafael, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a restaurant called San Jose Taqueria.

Now I wasn't sure if this was affiliated with the place in Oakland or not, but I decided to go there anyway. As I walked in, I noticed most of the workers were wearing aprons that had "San Jose Taqueria, Oakland, CA" on them. The menu was the same, and the food was San Jose Taqueria quality and quantity.

This is so sweet... all the other places in this area charge $7-8 for lunch, so getting a $3.45 regular burrito is a great deal.

I finally got a new computer. I have 80 GB on my hard drive, but I don't download music or movies, so I'm pretty sure I won't take advantage of all the space I have.

The only things I do on my computer is browse the internet, play fantasy football (yeah, I gave in this year), check e-mail, and use Word and Excel.

G1 says its ironic that I bought a new computer now, since I won't be using it nearly as much as I did in college.

Things I bought at Target yesterday:

-whisk
-large wooden spoon
-sink mat
-juice pitcher
-combs
-409 cleaner
-Windex
-toilet bowl cleaner
-milk
-bottled water (for an office potluck. Yes, bottled water was my contribution...)

Came out to over $30.

I'm going to try to budget my expenses... we'll see how long that lasts.

Random thoughts:

-I got up to Emeryville on Friday. I wonder when I'll ever finish unpacking.
-One of the best things about work is that we have a nap room. It's awesome. We can take a nap whenever we want to, for as long as we want, as long as we get our work done. I think I'll be taking advantage of that soon. I was starting to fall asleep during a 2.5 hour afternoon meeting.
-I was spacing out while I was driving on Wednesday, so I ended up in Sausalito. That means I drove 20 minutes past the freeway entrance to the Richmond Bridge.

I started work yesterday... dude... I work in the boonies... there were deer wandering around our office here in Marin County.

My job is pretty cool so far. I'm working at a company called Fair Isaac and I'm going to be analyzing credit scores with statistical software. I work at the company's headquarters, so there are over 800 people here and we have 3 buildings. I'm just getting my feet wet this first week so I haven't really done much.

I still need to get internet access at home. I bought a computer on Friday and still haven't used it (I don't have much use for it without internet access.)

I'm coming back to the Bay Area on Friday!
I'll be living with Albert Kim and Allen Han in the YAG dorm, Emery Bay.

I didn't keep most of the stuff that I had in Berkeley, so here's a list of things I need to buy this weekend:
-Computer
-Desk & chair
-Bed frame
-Mattress
-Chest
-Bookshelf
-Trash cans

And that's just for my room. There's some other things that we need for the living room.

You know you're getting old when...

your most enjoyable time at a mall is when you find a bench to sit on.

Chip flavors sold in Canada:

Ketchup (one of the most popular flavors)
Pickle
All Dressed (some combination of different flavors)
Buffalo wing
Tomato
Chili & cheese
Zesty taco
Salt & pepper
Fries & gravy
Roast chicken
Cheese & salsa
Cheddar & sour cream
Roasted garlic & cheddar
Smokey bacon
Xtreme chili
Sour cream & bacon

Quick geography quiz:

Which US state has the northern-most point in the country?
Which US state has the southern-most point in the country?
Which US state has the western-most point in the country?
Which US state has the eastern-most point in the country?
If you go straight south starting from Detroit, what is the first foreign country you will reach?

I'm back from Canada! Praise God for the work that He did while I was there... I've got lots to share, but I'd rather do it in person...

Grace Lee and I got home 14 hours later than we were supposed to because of the East Coast blackout. (Air Canada's operations are in Toronto, and so most of their flights were cancelled yesterday.)

It's good to finally be home to the state of future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger...

I take off for missions tonight, so that means I probably won't blog for at least 7 weeks.

Talk about major procrastination, though. I haven't started packing yet.

Some last minute prayer requests:
1) My health: I had this major headache earlier today, but hopefully I won't be sick during our orientation. I'm also told the mosquitoes are really bad on the reserves this summer.
2) Avoiding comparisons with my previous experience a couple years ago. This is gonna be a major challenge, especially in terms of my teammate relationship, because I can't go in with expectations.
3) The Native Canadians. For anyone who is a Christian, it's really difficult because Christians are outcasts in these communities.

Explanations to the "FiCB Common Bonds" are included in the comment below.

More games... now it’s "FiCB Common Bonds," where there’s something missing from the group.

For example, for the group, "Andy, Billy, Roy, Paul,..." the answer is Eugene, the remaining member of the Burbank Boys.

Here’s some more...
-welcoming, service, transpo, outreach, publicity,...
-Summer JAM, STOMP, Summer FiCB,...
-Pastor Eugene, Charles Sy, Pastor Ryan, Dr. Park,...
-Willard, Kleeberger, Strawberry, Oregon,...
-Sylvia, Isabel, Tommy, G1, Haejin, Eugene, Jae, Mike,...

Y'all got 4 of the 5.

The solutions to "FiCB Before and After" are my first comment below.

It's time to play "FiCB Before and After," where the end of the first half of the clue is the same as the beginning of the second half of the clue, and the clues relate to FiCB culture.

For example, the answer to "KCPC summer missions goes to the capital of our neighboring country" is New Mexico City

Can you solve the following?
"instant messenger provider hosts FiCB's favorite game in May"
"popular FiCB apartment complex dines at this meat-lovers' favorite"
"Basile Kuo's alter-ego probably doesn't do this as a recreation"
"Unit 3 dorm meets up here before a lunch date"
"typical set of gears on a bike plays a short crossword game"

Is snoring genetic, and do people snore more loudly as they get older? I hope not.

People are usually surprised when they find out I snore, but I don't snore 10% as loudly as my dad does. It's interesting to listen to him snore.

Here's what happened in the last 30 minute sequence:
First 20 minutes: He sounded like he was blowing on an amplified duck call, although not quite as high-pitched. He made this noise every 5 seconds.
Next minute: Peace and quiet.
Next 3 minutes: Loud again.
Next minute: He started choking and sighing really loudly.
Last 5 minutes: Snored quietly.
Then his breathing pattern woke him up.
He went to the bathroom, and then went back to the couch to sleep.

Pure entertainment. But if my dad has trouble sleeping through his own snoring, I don't know what that means for my mom.

I've now been to 4 of the BCD Tofu House locations (the soon doo boo place):

LA
LA downtown
Garden Grove
Cerritos

Allen took a ton of pictures while we were in New York. Here are his two pbases:
New York 1
New York 2

And here's the story of the dumbest thing I did in New York (or as G1 thinks, the past 4 years):

Tommy: Dang it! I left my camera at the restaurant (that we had left 15 minutes earlier)
Geny: Oh, I guess we'll just have to call the restaurant and go back and get it...
Geny calls restaurant:
Geny: Yeah, we just ate at your restaurant and one of us forgot our camera. Can you find it for us so that we can come back and get it?
Geny continues her conversation with the restaurant worker for a few minutes while we all just wait there...
Geny: Are you sure it's not there? Did you check the seat?
I realize that the camera has been in my pocket the whole time! I show it to Geny as she continues her conversation with the restaurant person.
Geny: It's not there?... yeah, I guess you're probably right...

Highlights from the 3 days G1, Allen, and I spent in New York:

-Walking and using the subway to get everywhere!
Times Square
Empire State Building
Ground Zero
Yankee Stadium
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Wall Street
Redeemer Presbyterian Church
Chinatown
South Street Seaport
Rockefeller Center
Gotham Comedy Club
ESPN Zone
Grand Central Station
And so many cheap eats

-Hanging out with Janet, Geny, and everyone else out in New York... Janet and Geny were great hosts!
-Allen's classic story about going to the wrong airport:
He went to SFO instead of Oakland, and then arrived 3 minutes too late for his flight...then he had to spend the night in the Oakland airport. Then his morning flight was delayed, and so he missed his connecting flight from Denver to New York... he ended up getting to New York 8 hours after he was supposed to get there!

In tomorrow's post, I'll describe what G1 describes as the dumbest thing he's seen me do in the 4 years he's known me.

While eating at Lawry's for the first time ever, my mom mentioned some things about me that I didn't remember because I was too young.

Apparently I liked to go on stage and interrupt other people's performances. When I was 5, I was at one of my sister's dance performances. During the middle of the performance I went on stage and totally embarrased her by asking if I could dance with her.

Haha... this wasn't the only time I did this. Another time I was watching a tae-kwon-do performance. I went up to the front of the stage and tried to copy what everyone was doing. Everyone was so shocked that no one took me off stage.

Looking at my Nedstats, I noticed the following:

Of the last 39 times a search engine has been used to find my blog, 8 of these searches included the phrase "Andy Chon."

1 of the searches included "Tommy Lee."

At the beginning of this hockey season, I wasn't expecting the Ducks to make the playoffs since they had finished in last place in their division the last 3 seasons.

At the beginning of the playoffs, I wouldn't have been surprised if the Ducks got swept by Detroit, a team that swept them the only 2 times the Ducks made the playoffs.

But what a magical ride these playoffs have been...sweeping the defending champs, beating the top seed, giving up only 1 goal in the Western Conference finals, and then coming within a game of winning it all... wow, it was crazy. I wish they won the Cup, but I'll still be going to a Ducks celebration this Wednesday in Anaheim.

More recent book purchases:

-Now, that's a good question! by RC Sproul. Sproul answers questions ranging from "Do you believe that God has audibly spoken to anyone since the apostolic age?" to "Should Christians use credit cards?"
-The Holiness of God by RC Sproul. Heard some good things about this...
-The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. Recommended by my small group leader my freshman year (Kenny Kang), but I never got around to reading it.

Every week since August 1999, Lycos has published the Top 50 phrases that users have searched for.

Here are the phrases that have been in the Top 50 every week:

-Pamela Anderson. And it's all because of Tommy Lee... j/k
-Las Vegas, which for a long time was the only city to ever make the list.
-Jennifer Lopez, who has been # 1 once, and # 50 once.
-Britney Spears, the most searched term of 2000.
-Tattoos, which is misspelled almost half the time.
-WWF, the only acronym that has always been on the list.

Final Fantasy and The Bible are terms that haven't been on every list only because of Lycos' recording methods the first few weeks of the Top 50.

And the most popular search item has been (drumroll please)...

Dragonball, which has been the top search item 25 times, and has never been lower than # 11.

This post is long overdue, but better late never than never.

During the past school year, our carpool on the way to church had a great dynamic. First semester it was G1, Basile, Vicki, Charlene, and me. Second semester Kathleen Song replaced Charlene, who was down in soCal.

Vicki would always talk to people about our carpool, and they'd be so confused about why she'd have so many interesting things to say about it.

Mainly it was fun watching G1 spaz out as he got updates on how his fantasy football players were doing, and teaching Vicki how to avoid getting jacked.

Good times, good times... I don't think I'll ever remember a carpool as much as this one.

I got $150 worth of Borders gift cards as graduation gifts. The 3 things I've purchased so far:

-Moneyball by Michael Lewis. A book about the organizational approach of the Oakland A's, a baseball team that's had sustained success despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.

Favorite quote from the book, by assistant general manager Paul DePodesta: "I hope [other teams] continue to believe our way doesn't work. It buys us a few more years [of success]."

Yeah, I'm an Angels fan, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the A's resourcefulness.

-Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best. Explains how statistics are manipulated by the media, politicians, and activists.

-A boxed set of 20 blank cards. I prefer to buy cards all at once so that I don't have to go out and buy them that often.

Recent TV shows based on the premise of finding "true love":

-The Bachelor
-The Bachelorette
-Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?
-Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?
-Who Wants to be a Princess?
-The Love Cruise
-Married By America
-Temptation Island
-Joe Millionaire
-For Love or Money

As long as people continue to watch these shows, they'll be on TV.

Spastic moment of the day:

I used a drive-thru ATM machine to deposit some checks yesterday. (Side note: Isn't it funny that we say "ATM machine" when ATM stands for automated teller machine?)

But in my haste to get home and catch the start of the Ducks win in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, I somehow left my wallet at the ATM... not good...but

Thank God that I noticed I didn't have my wallet when I got home.
Thank God I live only 2 minutes away from the ATM.
Thank God that I happened to use the drive-thru ATM, where a random wallet might be a little less noticeable than at a normal ATM.
Thank God that no one took the wallet that was sitting there for 10 minutes.

I'm going to New York!

I'll be there from June 12-16 with A-Han and G1, and we'll be hanging out with Geny and Janet Kang. I've only been to New York once before, but I didn't do too many tourist things when I was there.

Here are some things we're doing for sure:
-Going to Times Square at night
-Going to a Yankees game
-Going to Redeemer and hearing Tim Keller speak

Any suggestions for what we should do?

Things in my toiletries bag:

For my contacts:
-Monthly use toric contacts (for astigmatism)
-No Rub multi-purpose contact lens solution
-2 contact lens cases
-2 bottles of rewetting drops
-enzymatic tablets (contact lens cleaner)
-enzymatic cleaner case

For my skin:
-the 3 bottle set of Proactiv solution (for acne)
-Cleocin acne lotion
-Neutrogena sunblock/facial moisturizer

For my teeth:
-Crest manual toothbrush
-Braun electric toothbrush
-electric toothbrush head
-Colgate baking soda & peroxide whitening with tartar control frosty mint striped gel
-Glide floss

Random:
-Comb
-Norelco electric razor
-electric razor recharger
-Speed Stick deodorant
-nail clipper

I'm in the middle of packing right now. I realize I have so many clothes.

A less-than-scientific breakdown of the source of my clothes:
-My sister has bought 50% of my clothes (these are the perks of being a younger brother.)
-My mom has bought 35% of my clothes (most of which I've selected, but she's paid for.)
-7% of my clothes are ministry-related (mostly from church retreats)

-2% each:
Gifts from other people
My own purchases
From my dad's wardrobe
Random stuff

A lot of my clothes aren't the right size, but I still wear some of them anyway because I'm too lazy to get the right size.

It's my last full day in Berkeley, and G1 and I ordered a meal to go from Tako Sushi. We ordered:

-2 rainbow rolls
-1 spicy salmon roll
-1 spicy tuna roll
-1 tempura roll
-3 California rolls
-2 cucumber-avocado rolls

That's $37 worth of food for 2 people. We didn't come close to finishing it, but I still have food coma. I seem to get food coma from every meal I eat nowadays, no matter what it is.

Today's sign that I'm a hardcore Anaheim sports fan:

I didn't let my roommates tell me who won the Ducks-Devils hockey game because I watched the 12 AM-2 AM replay of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I couldn't watch the game live because of senior reception, which I thoroughly enjoyed =).

ESPN cut out a lot of the action and there were so many of the same commercials, but it didn't matter-- I had to see as much of the 3-0 Ducks' loss as possible.

Highlights from graduation and my parents' visit to town:

-Listening to Sylvia talk to her mom before graduation and explain her friends' nickname, Spotty, to her mom.
-Seeing my roommates throw rolls of toilet paper as I walked.
-Yelling, "You're the best, mom" into the mic because the guy wouldn't read my name as Tommy "I love you mom" Lee.
-Eating so much good food... Samwon, Zachary's, Jong Gah House, Macaroni Grill...
-Playing video games with my brother-in-law until 2 AM in the morning.

And of course, the post-graduation picture-taking madness... thank you for everyone who made it out. I was blessed so much I can't even put it in words...

It's funny how people use a word twice to emphasize its meaning. For example, "home" usually refers to someone's college dorm or apartment, while "home home" refers to a permanent address.

I'm "done" with finals this semester, and "done done" with finals forever.

Happy Birthday to Mejeld... and since he's a little bit under the weather, let's hope he'll get well soon. For his health, but also for my selfish reasons, since I'm sharing a graduation gown with him.

My graduation gown will be so nasty by the time I wear it. Mejeld will be out in the sun for over 2 hours on Friday, and G1 has an even longer graduation at Greek Theater on Saturday.

Playing Monopoly online has been pretty popular lately. I wonder where the trends will lie next... earlier in the semester it was Speed Scrabble, now Monopoly...

I figure one of the reasons why these games have been so popular is that they're quick to play. I think the Board Game Club needs to come up with a super fast version of Risk.

I had dinner at the DC with a random group of people (Billy Kim, Jason Park, Julie Oh, Katie, Frank, Dave Lee, Basile, and Dennis, who swiped us all in) and we were talking about walking on stage for graduation.

Some ideas that we thought about:
-Dancing. A couple years ago at the Haas graduation a couple guys did the fish line thing...
-Doing cartwheels.
-Taking off the graduation robe and showing off a sports jersey.
-Throwing out candy to the crowd.
-Doing a weird handshake with the professor who congratulates you.

Since the Spurs eliminated the Lakers on Thursday, we now know that the NBA Finals will not include a team from New York, LA, Chicago, or Houston.

That's interesting because those are the top 4 TV markets in America, and 2003 will only be the 2nd time in 24 years that none of these markets will be represented.

I was walking back to the library after dinner with Slum, Carolina, and Jung, and we were talking about Slum's height.

Jung: So do you have to get a specialized bed because you're so tall?
Slum: Actually, do you know the Pythagorean thereom? Where the diagonal is longer than either side? Yeah, well I use what I know... That gives me an extra 6 inches or so. I put my pillow in the corner of bed. You can ask my roommate...

That's awesome... for next year's senior banquet, you guys should get a picture of Slum lying diagonally along his bed while he's asleep.

Sports stadium and arena names that you might confuse for something else:

-Gaylord Entertainment Center (Nashville hockey)
-General Motors Place (Vancouver hockey)
-National Car Rental Center (Florida hockey)
-Staples Center (LA basketball & hockey)
-Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay baseball)

I just went to my last class of college, and I'm at the library for the first time in a month (that's a long time for me).

As I was walking to the library I saw a whole bunch of people out on Memorial Glade just lying down in the sun and enjoying themselves. I think I've only done that a couple times during college and maybe I'll do it again. The weather has been nice, so I should just study outside one of these days.

Hmmm... I might as well do that right now. See ya.

Mother's Day just came and went. So now I just have to take some time to thank my amazing mom for everything that she's meant to me.

I think my mom has been programmed to think that her time is actually not her time, but time to do anything and everything for the rest of the family.

She works 2 jobs to support the rest of our family, cooks a lot of the meals, provides some great humorous relief, and has the cheerful disposition of someone half her age. She's been willing to go to baseball and hockey games with me even though she has no idea what's going on.

She's put up with all the angst of my adolescent years, and always reflects Christ's unconditional love. She's a tireless worker, and is the type of person who will be laying down on the sofa after 12 hours of work and then gladly jump off the sofa and run an errand for me if I ask her.

And while she's not perfect, she's always been a woman of love, faith, and hope. And that's the most important thing. Thanks mom.

Bathroom reading material at Parker House:

-ESPN The Magazine
-Sports Illustrated
-Time
-PC Magazine
-Forbes
-Car and Driver
-this year's FiCB testimony booklet
-the FiCB testimony booklet from 3 years ago
-a couple Calvin and Hobbes books
-a Simpsons book (that summarizes every episode from the first 8 seasons)
-some IKEA catalogs
-some Dell catalogs

All 4 of us at Parker House just went number 2 in our bathroom.

Carroll went, sprayed the air freshener.
Tommy, spray.
G1, spray.

The seat must've been very warm for Basile.

I was reading an e-mail from the college pastor at my home church, Cerritos Presbyterian Church, and was amused by how similar things are at CPC and KCPC.

-Both Pastor Eugene and Dennis (CPC) will be taking their ordination exams on May 16-17 (pray for them!)
-CPC has a senior banquet later this month. Later that weekend they have a gathering with the whole church where they'll play relay races and win practical household supplies.
-CPC is playing in a summer softball tournament (OK, so all Korean churches do this).

Reasons why I prefer to use Yahoo! mail instead of Bearmail when I can't use Outlook:

-There's a 15 minute limit for idle time with Bearmail.
-Bearmail doesn't have rich text formatting.
-Bearmail uses your user name (such as thomasle) instead of your full name when other people receive your messages.
-Deleting messages from Bearmail removes them from the server.
-Sent messages aren't saved in your outbox.
-All messages are marked as new every time you log in, even if you've already read them.
-I'm not going to be able to use Bearmail once my uclink account expires.

I just came back from 4 different meetings today from 7 PM to 2 AM. The weirdest thing is that I'm actually gonna miss this...

It’s time to pass out some senior banquet awards…

Most likely to receive undershirts for his birthday
Billy Ku

Most likely to use a full-length mirror after using the restroom
Christina Ha

Most likely to use the word “verse” without referring to the Bible
David Slum Kim

Most likely to have spent Friday night rolling up dollar bills into lemon cores
Roy Chung

Most likely to appear in the next Wangta Production
David Wee

Most likely to have lost a bet before senior banquet
Andy Chon

Most likely to enjoy senior reception
Kevin Cho

Seriously, senior banquet was so awesome. Thanks to everyone for such a memorable night and for putting in so much hard work. The place, the playing cards, the skits, the slideshow, the outrageous costumes, I could go on and on, but everything was amazing. It was definitely a great look back at the past 4 years, and a great way to cap off college. Thanks again!

The font used for this text is Tahoma. It's a sans-serif font, meaning that there are no short lines at any of the tips of the letters.

Another example of a sans-serif font is Arial, which I like to use for e-mails because it's very easy to read. Sans-serif fonts are especially useful for signs and other places where legibility is critical.

I use a serif font such as Garamond for most of my word documents. Serif fonts are better for longer texts such as essays. But if we're talking about essays, then usually there's a page requirement and you don't want to pick Garamond because it's such a small font.

Courier New is notorious for being a large font, but other fonts such as Bookman Old Style can also make your essay longer without being as obvious.

The streak is over.

After blogging 24 consecutive days (and 29 of the 30 days in April), blogger's server problems prevented me from posting yesterday. I was constantly refreshing my blogger page all afternoon trying to post something, but it was not to be.

Some possible topics for my FiCB testimony (due this Friday):

-Breakdown of my four years of college.
-Taking Bible verses and analyzing how they relate to my experiences.
-The most important thing I've learned about the Christian faith while in college: how difficult it is to live by grace. Of course we all know that we're supposed to live by grace, but we're all programmed by this world to live by works.
-Books that have shaped the way I think.

Carroll and I called SBC to add his name onto the account a couple months ago.

They finally changed it a few days ago. Now the names are Tommy Lee Chiou and Corrall Chiou.

I'm a statistics major, and for some reason I thought 26 > 29 (refer to the birth month section of my last post).

The most common birth month is actually November, and February is the 3rd most common birth month. It's doubly strange that I would make that mistake considering my own birthday is in November.

Next year, I’ll be exploring data as part of my job. In preparation for that, I’ve decided to practice my skills using the Spring 2003 FiCB directory.

Here’s what I’ve found:
-There are 257 names in the directory.
-59% are females.
-69% have their cell phone number listed in the directory. Of course, more people have a cell phone, but some chose not to include their number in the directory.
-38% are freshmen. But the number of freshmen in the directory is always extremely high because freshmen are still deciding on churches.

Most common first initials:
J: 50 (19%)
S: 30 (12%)
E: 27 (11%)

Most common permanent home area codes:
714: 28 (17% of the 166 people who listed their permanent home phone number.)
818: 27 (16%)
562: 24 (14%)

Birth months:
January: 24
February: 26 (the maximum; 11% of the 246 people who listed their birthday.)
March: 25
April: 16
May: 21
June: 16
July: 13 (the minimum; 5%)
August: 15
September: 19
October: 14
November: 29
December: 28

But we already knew that there are more girls than guys, that almost everyone has a cell phone, that there are a lot of freshmen, that Korean parents like to name their kids James, Jennifer, or John, and that almost everyone’s from soCal.

What’s interesting is that there are more birthdays in winter and fewer in the summer and late fall.

Interesting fact of the day:

A random assignment of letters would be faster than our current qwerty keyboard design.

The keyboard we all use today was designed to force us to type slower. Back in the 1800s, the inefficient keyboard layout prevented typists from jamming their typewriters.

The businessman’s explanation: The qwerty keyboard benefited greatly from a first-mover advantage. The network effect of a standardized keyboard means that the switching costs outweigh the future stream of benefits of a more efficient layout.

When I graduate, I will have gone through high school and college by using a pair of computers that were purchased before 1997.

The desktop I had lasted until 2 years ago. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was a 166 MHz Pentium 1 with 32 MB of RAM.

The laptop I use right now weighs about 5 pounds and cannot operate without being plugged in. It's a 200 MHz Pentium 1 with 96 MB of RAM. The hard drive holds 2 GB of memory.

I'm not that poor or anything, so I've had the opportunity to get a new computer. But I guess I've had some strange desire to finish college with this laptop.

Convenient keyboard shortcuts around the desktop:

Alt + Tab: Cycle through open applications (the AIM user's favorite)
Alt + F4: Close the current application
Windows (the button that looks like the Microsoft Windows logo) + D: Minimize all open windows, thus returning you to the desktop

Word
Shift + F7: Launch thesaurus

PowerPoint
F5: View slide show

Today's headline in the Daily Cal:

"UC Contemplates Limiting Student-Faculty Romances"

The wording of this headline makes it seem as if there's much to "contemplate" about this issue and that there are so many student-faculty romances that they need to be "limited."

After reading the article, I learned that the headline was a bit misleading. But it's still strange.

Every year, the UC Berkeley statistics department has a t-shirt design contest. Some of my favorites from the past:

-Berkeley statistics: where mean is normal and deviation is standard
-Statistics means never having to say you're certain
-Mr. T: "I pity the fool who rejects this hypothesis!" T-test (circa 1983)

I don't listen to much music. I used to listen to a lot of alternative music in high school, but

[1] I have never downloaded a song from the Internet. Ever. This means I have zero MP3s on my computer.
[2] I own 3 music CDs, all of which were gifts.
[3] I don't own any music-related accessories (such as headphones, CD player, etc.)

I don't know if you'd consider this sad, funny, or scary. But it's true.

Hope everyone is enjoying Easter, the day that celebrates the resurrection of our King. And congratulations to those who were baptized and confirmed today.

Today's sign that I am truly a freak: I have the KCPC program for every service I've been to since September 3, 2000.

People patent some weird stuff.

This week's patent of the week is a machine that kicks the user's butt. The device allows for "self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user's buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms."

A truly amazing phenomena is happening at Parker House right now... Basile, Carroll, and G1 are all asleep. It's weird, because we're all usually awake until 2 AM. But today, they all went to bed before 9 PM. Carroll and G1 are recovering from a programming project they finished yesterday, and Basile just has strange sleep hours.

Another thing worth mentioning at 1 AM: Conan O'Brien is funny. I like his self-deprecating humor.

I'm in the middle of writing support letters for my summer missions trip to Canada. On Monday, I bought 200 stamps, 300 labels, 125 long envelopes, 160 small envelopes, and made 180 copies of my letter and response card. The total cost of these supplies was $101.60.

Fortunately, most of the people I'm giving a letter to are in the Bay Area, so I save on postage by being able to hand them the letter. But it's also good to send letters to people outside of Berkeley because many of them are working and are more capable of supporting me financially.

The most time-consuming part of support letters is writing the individual notes. I'm currently on the "C"s, so I have a long way to go. Let me know if you want one, and I'll make sure to get it to you.

I had dinner at Orchid last night and it reminded me of a time when someone looked at the menu and said, "They sell human beef?"

Apparently the person thought the first "n" in hunan was an "m."

The past 7 months have been the best time ever to be a fan of Disney's sports teams. Not only did the Angels win the World Series last October, now the Mighty Ducks have a 3-0 series lead in the playoffs against defending champion Detroit.

But of course, Disney's still trying to sell both teams...

During our officer meeting tonight, Pastor Eugene busted out the word "triangulate." Mejeld and I totally thought he was making up the word or something, but architecture students, boy scouts, and military personnel would know what the word means.

Basically it means to use 2 points to find the position of a 3rd point.

Parker House has only one bathroom for 4 guys, so we have to schedule our bathroom times on Sunday mornings.

Here was today's bathroom schedule for 9:30 worship:

7:15 Basile
7:35 Tommy
8:00 Carroll
8:20 G1

Basile tries to go back to sleep after he's done with the bathroom.

The following jelly bean flavors are sold by Jelly Belly:

-Buttered popcorn
-Buttered toast
-Caramel corn
-Dr. Pepper
-Jalapeno
-Peanut butter
-Toasted marshmallow
-Tutti Frutti

Speaking of Tutti Frutti, I got the Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity at IHOP today after the cancelled concession stand fundraiser. Instead of serving food and earning money for missions, we ended up eating out and spending money on ourselves!

Other than us and the UCLA Bruins, the UC system has some pretty strange mascots:

UC Irvine Anteaters
UC Merced Golden Babcots
UC Riverside Highlanders
UC San Diego Tritons
UC Santa Barbara Gauchos
UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs
UC Davis Aggies- They’ve actually gone through some mascot name changes recently; in the last decade, they’ve also been named the cows and the mustangs.

My favorite breakfast cereals:

-Honey Bunches of Oats with Strawberries. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t like this cereal. (Or at least the version with almonds.)
-Quaker Toasted Oatmeal Squares. This is probably the best cereal to snack on by itself.
-Cranberry Almond Crunch. The combination of cranberries and almonds… good stuff.
-Honey Nut Clusters. This cereal isn’t as well known, but it’s solid because of its sweet honey nut clusters and crispy wheat and rice flakes.
-Corn Pops. This is the one kids cereal that makes my list. It’s simple and sweet. But not too sweet.

Granola cereals are pretty good too. But after awhile I get tired of them.

Memorable moments from the senior-freshmen co-ed softball game:

-John Kim and Daniel Hahn showing up after losing in Korean taboo during small group. They're good sports. (If you were there, you know why I'm mentioning this.)
-Seeing Christina Ha making a guest appearance at a softball game.
-Seeing Katie run the bases and throw up her hands in total confusion.
-Seeing Becky toss the ball at Amanda.
-Alice Byun: "Christine Kim hits better when she smiles at the ball..."
-Chanting the Forever 21 song with the rest of the seniors.

Some things my roommates and I are planning on doing before I graduate:

-Go to Ghiradelli Square.
-Go to Alameda Sushi House (again).
-Go to Spenger's Grotto. (Notice the food theme here...)
-Go to a baseball game at Pac Bell Park. (Carroll's never been.)
-Play one last game of Risk.
-Play our first game of Scrabble (the official version, not speed scrabble).

Some movies I've never seen:

-Dumb and Dumber
-Face/Off
-Good Will Hunting
-Independence Day
-Jerry Maguire
-Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (I have seen Two Towers, which of course, didn't make any sense to me)
-Schindler's List
-The Lion King
-The Sixth Sense
-Titanic
-Any of the Star Wars movies (except for Empire Strikes Back)

And I just watched Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, and Fight Club earlier this year.

I now have 101 blog (or xanga) links on the left column of this page.

Totals from each class:
2000- 4
2001- 7
2002- 9
2003- 14
2004- 23
2005- 8
2006- 36

Blogs- 55
Xanga- 39
Other- 7

Blogs are still the majority, but the freshmen class is making the blog/xanga race close. I know there are some other freshmen using xanga that I don’t have listed here… I’m still trying to add to this collection, so let me know if I’m missing anyone!

I did my taxes for the very first time in my life today. Actually, the people in MLK did my taxes for me for free. (It's pretty cool; you just bring in your forms and answer their questions, and they do all the work for you.)

I owe the US government $313 (boo...), but I'm getting $165 from the state (yay!)

Wanna read a blog that had over 100,000 hits in March?

The blogger of Baghdad hasn't posted since March 24, so many of his faithful readers wonder if he's still alive. But he could simply be without internet access.

Or this could just be some hoax.

I played speed scrabble for the very first time tonight (for about 3 hours).

The best feeling is when you get on a roll and start jacking people. Saying, "Go!" four times in a minute is a good feeling.

By the last game, I was getting particularly uncreative. I used the words "quit" and "jet" twice and the word "dig" three times.

Wanna see how large my mouth is?

Just check out this picture, at Mejeld's pbase site. The picture was taken during the American Idol lip-sync contest at senior retreat.

More pictures from Mejeld's pbase sites:
Spring break/senior retreat
Senior retreat

(Am I setting myself up for senior banquet or what?)

Strange thing happened to me on the way home today. Jay, my former roommate, told me that I had some mail that I should pick up. So I go back to my old apartment and pick up the mail.

It was a letter with a whole bunch of forms from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). There were also a few checks written to INS that didn't clear. I guess this wouldn't be too much of a surprise, except for the fact that I'm a US citizen and that I've never contacted the INS for anything in my life.

Reading on, I found out that the letter was actually addressed to apartment 101, and not 301 (which is where I lived.) Jay picked up the letter thinking it was for me, but there's actually another guy with my official name (Thomas Lee) who lives in apartment 101. Weird...

This has been my sleeping schedule in the first couple days after senior retreat, as I recover from a fever and other cold symptoms:

Saturday night after retreat: 8-11 PM
Sunday morning: 12:30-8 AM
Sunday afternoon: 2-5 PM
Monday morning: 2:30 AM-12 PM

That’s 23 hours of sleep in my first 40 hours after retreat… well, time for me to get even more sleep!

Highlights from senior retreat:

[1] Class sharing time. Afterward, Mejeld suggested that we give each other hugs but some of us were like, "Are you serious?"... Yes, we're truly Korean...
[2] Speaking of being Korean, we played Korean taboo and some other loud Korean games. It was fun watching Billy Kim spaz out.
[3] The American Idol lip-sync contest. Pastor Eugene was Simon and his favorite saying was, "that performance had boh-tong (average) written all over it."
[4] Isabel taking pictures with all the guys... she was so uncomfortable...
[5] Hiking at Yosemite. Derek and G1 were in a group that was lagging, so Mejeld and I were pretty convinced that they stopped to eat. But they proved us wrong.
[6] The car ride back with Christina, G1, Haejin, and James Song. Christina is somehow convinced that Rick Fox is good-looking and articulate.

Thanks to Dennis for inspiring me to use brackets to number my remarks.

Notable quotables from LA Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal:

On whether he had visited the Parthenon during his visit to Greece:
"I can't really remember the names of all the clubs that we went to."

"I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok."

Before he won 3 championships with the Lakers:
"I've won at every level, except college and pro."

"I'm like the Pythagorean Theorem. Not too many people know the answer to my game."

And believe it or not, it was NOT Shaq who said the following:
"Yeah, I can go to my right and my left. That's because I'm amphibious."
It was some guy named Chris Washburn.

A quick comparison of calculus course numbers at UCI, UCLA, and UC Berkeley:

The sequence is as follows:
Pre-calculus
Single-variable calculus (for non-technical majors)
Single-variable calculus (for technical majors)
Multivariable calculus

UCI:
Math 1A-1B
Math 2A-2B
Math 2A-2B (it's the same course for technical and non-technical majors)
Math 2D-2E

At UCI, Math 2C is a course about infinite series and 3D geometry.

UCLA:
Math 1
Math 3A-3B
Math 31A-31B
Math 32A-32B

At UCLA, Math 2 is a course about matrices and probability.

UC Berkeley:
Math 32
Math 16A-16B
Math 1A-1B
Math 53

I'm sure you could come up with plenty of other examples of how counter-intuitive Berkeley's course numbers are. Does anyone know why?

I found out about this cool HTML feature that allows y'all to choose if you want the links on this page to use this window or open a new window. Check it out! (It’s on the top left corner of this page, along with the code for the feature.)

If the function doesn't work, uncheck the box and then check it again. It should work then. Otherwise, let me know.

Fearless forecasts for the 2003 baseball season:

-At the All-Star game, the teams are tied at the end of 14 innings. With no pitchers remaining on either team, commissioner Bud Selig decides to determine the winner by a coin flip.

-Oakland GM Billy Beane pulls off a three-way trade with the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals, acquiring both CF Carlos Beltran and P Mark Buehrle while only giving up some marginal prospects and magic beans. But the A’s lose in the first round in 5 games anyway.

-Barry Bonds hits his 661st career homerun on September 27th, passing Willie Mays for 3rd on the all-time list. The ball bounces to FiCB concession stand worker Fred Lee, who picks it up and dares himself to eat it. Told that the ball is worth $100,000, Fred looks into the TV cameras surrounding him and tries to swallow the ball whole, grossing out the American public in the process.

-Alex Rodriguez of the last-place Texas Rangers hits .350 with 65 HR and 160 RBI but fails to win his first MVP award. The AL MVP goes to Torii Hunter, who hits .300 with 35 HR and 110 RBI but is on the first place Minnesota Twins and is deemed to be "a positive clubhouse influence and an all-around scrappy player."

-The Los Angeles Dodgers squeak into the playoffs on the strength of NL MVP Shawn Green and NL Cy Young winner Eric Gagne. Manager Jim Tracy fields a starting lineup where Green is the only player to hit over .290, have over 20 HR, or have more than 85 RBI.

In Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, Green, suffering from a hamstring injury, limps up to the plate and smashes a dramatic walk-off homerun to send the Dodgers to the World Series. He does this on October 15th, the 15th anniversary of Kirk Gibson’s dramatic homerun.

-In Game 7 of the World Series, the Anaheim Angels employ the Rally Monkey in order to come back from a 7-0 fifth inning deficit and win their second consecutive championship. No Angels starter pitches for more than 5 innings in any of the seven games, but the Angels earn 6 playoff wins from rookie pitcher Bobby Jenks.

The misuse of statistics can literally make the difference between life and death.

One example? There’s a guy named Stephen Jay Gould who suffered from a rare form of cancer. The median mortality rate after discovering this form of cancer is 8 months.

What did he think when he learned that? Many people would translate that as meaning that he should expect to live 8 months, but fortunately he didn’t have that perspective.

Attitude and hope are critical aspects to fighting cancer, and when people expect to live 8 months, they usually do. But Gould understood that the median meant that 50% of the population lived longer than 8 months. He did some more research and found out that there were a few people who lived years beyond the median. Because of this, he kept up his hopes and lived for 20 more years.

The statistician’s lesson? The median and mean often don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes those 20 year outliers are just as important, especially if they inspire hope for others.

Yes, I realize that I reduced this heart-warming story to a lesson about statistics. I also realize I’m on spring break right now. But if you’re just as geeky as me, you can read a little more about this here.

Remember NBC "Must See TV" Thursday nights (when Friends, Seinfeld, and ER were all in the top 10 of TV ratings)?

Here are some shows that filled the 8:30 and 9:30 timeslots:
-Boston Commons
-Caroline in the City (starring Lea Thompson)
-Fired Up (NYPD Blue actress Sharon Lawrence)
-Jesse (Christina Applegate; yes, Kelly from "Married with Children")
-Suddenly Susan (Brooke Shields)
-The Single Guy (Jonathan Silverman)
-Union Square
-Veronica’s Closet (Kirstie Alley)

Can you imagine how many people (like me) wasted their time watching these shows?

Richard Midgley is money.

Go Cal!

I miss Calvin and Hobbes...

Calvin: How do bank machines work?
Dad: Well, let's say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine there's a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
Calvin: Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
Dad: Exactly.

Wanna read more explanations about life from Calvin's dad? Click here.

Today's sign that I watch too much SportsCenter and that I don't listen to enough music:

I have the ESPN highlight music stuck in my head. I like how each sport has a certain set of tunes.

If I were playing Jeopardy! and I could choose the categories, these are what they would be:

1) Baseball analysis theory
2) The rules of Monopoly
3) E-mail etiquette
4) Romans 8
5) Professional sports teams in Anaheim
6) Techniques to beat Minesweeper (the Windows game)
7) FiCB blog culture

On Saturday, a whole bunch of us treated Joel to some sushi for his birthday. His birthday is on February 26...

Slum Dave was making fun of G1 during the whole car ride to Alameda Sushi House. So Eric challenged Slum to avoid making fun of G1 for the rest of the night, with the loser of the bet treating the winner to ice cream... This type of thing has predictable results, and Eric was picking out his flavors 5 minutes later. But to his credit, Slum didn't take an offer for double-or-nothing.

Also, I learned reason 1,714 why Slum Dave is nicknamed "Slum":
He had a cut on his left thumb and couldn't find a band-aid to cover his wound. So what did he use? Duct tape, of course.

This makes me feel a little bit better about the time I used packaging tape to cover up a tear in my backpack...

It's time for sentence completions... POTCH-style!

1. By the end of Andy Chon's POTCH video, ____________ showed us that you don't need _____________ in order to serve.

(A) Roy... sympathy from all the girls
(B) Eugene... to be "heuge"
(C) Paul... a title
(D) Fred... to eat insects
(E) Jim Carrey... to be dumb and dumber

2. ___________ performed as an actor and a(n) __________; the latter helped us realize that "it feels good to be a Christian."

(A) Christine... bottle blower
(B) Janice... acapella singer
(C) Esther... body worshipper
(D) Billy Ku... rapper
(E) Kwan... dancer in a musical

3. The performance by _________ was hilarious; Pastor Eugene mentioned __________ .

(A) Kyu... his moves on Janet
(B) Dennis... how he looked into the camera and said, "You are beautiful, no matter what they say" after getting punched
(C) Carroll... that he said, "I'd like to break me off a piece of that"
(D) Chris Son... her gangsta-style bumpin' to "Do you want a revolution?"
(E) Kevin Chiang... his rapping skills

4. _____________ put in so much time and energy into POTCH; the _____________ has been getting better every year.

(A) The acapella group... singing
(B) The freshman class... skit and body worship finale
(C) Katie's small group... musical bottle performance
(D) The sophomore class... dramatic skit
(E) Everyone... combination of performances

Who said the following?

"Ooh, look at me! I'm making people happy! I'm the magical man from Happyland, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!... Oh, by the way: I was being sarcastic."

And for extra credit: Where did I find this quote written down?
(Hint: It's not where you'd expect, so there's no way you'd know unless you happened to stumble upon it yourself.)

In my internet marketing class today, our guest speaker talked about privacy issues. He mentioned the fact that companies can use any pieces of information they have about you to make credit decisions.

For example, let's say a credit card company knows that you spent over $1000 for alcohol last month. And let's suppose they know that people who do this are much more likely to default on their payments. Then if they want, they can use this information to reject your request for credit.

But of course there are lots of problems with this. What if you owned a small liquor store? What if you liked really expensive wine? These companies may not know this about you, and they may be rejecting you based on incomplete information.

The fact that you bought $1000 worth of alcohol last month does not mean that you will default on your payments. (Or as a statistics major would say, "correlation is not causation.") But some companies might not care, because to them it'd be more profitable to avoid offering credit to everyone in a certain group (even if it's totally unfair.)

It's interesting to see how dependent we all are on e-mail. Something that wasn't prevalent 5 years ago is so critical to our lives now... E-mail makes administration so much easier. Need to let 200 people where POTCH is? Just send an e-mail. But now that uclink isn't working this week, Becky won't be able to remind FiCB about the POTCH location. (It's at 105 Northgate.)

Or for me, I need to let the POTCH contacts know when they're performing. So I actually have to call all the group contacts... what a foreign concept. (Of course, this is where AIM would be useful...)

Just came back from the co-ed softball games on Tuesday night. As usual, there were about 40 people watching the freshmen team play. And then I watched the senior class team, where All-Star third baseman Becky An made not one, but two great stops at third base. Go Becky!

On another note, I am now officially addicted to blogging. Today during my stat lecture, the only thing I could think about was what I was going to write in my blog. I actually came up with three things, but decided to save some things for later. And then on the way to training for the "It is finished" t-shirts, I talked to Basile about blogs the whole time.

This is why I don't use AIM or play fantasy baseball. Because when I like something, I usually get carried away.

Fred: slugs::

(A) Sammy: jello
(B) Basile: candy
(C) Danny Yoon: Sharks fruit snacks
(D) Eileen: ice cream
(E) Christine: nutella/cheesecake/girl scout cookies/jelly beans/sixlets/you get the point...

All of the above!

Really old things you can find in my kitchen cupboard:

-1 large box of Sweet Tarts that I got in my care package from junior retreat. When I was a junior.
-2 boxes of year-old peanut brittle. I brought this up with me from Anaheim a year ago, but it's not very good.
-4 packages of spaghetti noodles. I got the 6 pack from Costco a couple years ago.
-The Costco box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal. I haven't touched this in a year.
-About 10 Zone bars that my sister dumped off with me a few months ago. I'm not a very picky eater, but these are really bad.

Things I eat a little more regularly:

-5 cans of canned vegetables (whole kettle corn or cut green beans) and 7 cans of Campbell's soup. These will probably only last me a few weeks.
-10 packages of cha-jang myun. Currently working on finishing the 24 pack.
-1 bag of Halls Vitamin C supplements. I highly recommend these if you're recovering from illness; they taste like candy.
-1 jar of Nutella. Mmm... hazelnut chocolate...

Some interesting facts I learned from the Perspectives missions course I'm taking right now:

1) William Carey, noted as the pioneer of the modern missionary movement, had a 5th grade education. But he translated the Bible in 30 different languages.

2) David Livingstone is one of the most notable missionaries in history, because he mobilized many new workers through his writings. But in all of his many years spent in Africa he says he only led one person to Christ... and he wasn't so sure about whether that person was truly saved.

I have a comment on Janet Kwak's blog that is worthy of being posted here:

My theory on when you know you're a Cal Student: if you've memorized the announcement the library people make at 9 and 9:30 PM...

In particular, you'll notice a difference in the two announcements: at 9, they say, "patrons wishing to check out library materials are encouraged to come to the Moffitt circulation desk soon."

At 9:30, they replace that last word soon, with immediately.

Yes, I'm truly a nerd for knowing that.

If you don't care about fantasy baseball, you can (and should) skip this blog.

If you do care, you should definitely check out the Team Health Reports at www.baseballprospectus.com. You can't neglect health before your fantasy draft. A few notable health risks:

Roy Oswalt.
He's kinda like Pedro Martinez. If he's healthy, he'll be the runner-up to Randy Johnson for the NL Cy Young Award. But here's why that's a big "if":
1) His small frame means that he has a smaller margin for error when it comes to mechanics.
2) The Astros do a poor job of keeping pitchers healthy. The Pedro comparison comes up again, because Jimy Williams' abuse of Pedro was the main reason why his 2001 season was marred by injury. That said, Williams did a decent job of protecting Oswalt last year until a September push to try to get Oswalt 20 wins.

Mariano Rivera.
Appears to be at full strength right now, but don't be too surprised if he's on and off the DL this year.

Ken Griffey Jr.
A lot has been made about his offseason workouts, but his hamstring doesn't appear to be able to hold up while playing center field over a full season.

Memorable moments from freshmen retreat:

1) Small group discussion time. Thanks for opening up... Group 1 baby!
2) The Friday night freestylings of Slim Slum-my. In particular, John Chi's rap rendition of "Above All Powers."
3) Dark Abe running around like a mad man during the balloon-popping game.
4) Pulling Fred away from a banana slug that he wanted to lick.
5) Seeing Slum's lanky body do flips on the beach, and Mejeld's insistence on trying to do flips when he can't even do a cartwheel.
6) Watching Mejeld and John Chi play the "hit-a-certain-body-part" game with a baseball.
7) Playing the flour game with Pastor Eugene and Eric. In particular, not being able to get flour on anyone other than myself, and head-butting the pastor.
8) Seeing half of Sinae get trapped in sand.
9) Listening to Eileen and Wonnie on the car ride back. In particular, how Eileen repeated everything she mentioned in her blogs last week.

Thanks to the freshmen class for making this class retreat so memorable...

All this time I was trying to add to my collection of links, I shoulda just walked 25 feet and asked my roommate with an e for his list of links... he's so popular that I should just periodically check with him...

I'm continuing to update the links portion of my blogger. So if you want me to add you or take you off, let me know.

Here's my fourth post of the day...

I received a call at 8:30 AM this morning from my brother-in-law. And like any other college student, I was sound asleep at the time. So was this an emergency? A family crisis?

Well, not exactly... he wanted to know who he should pick in the first round of his fantasy baseball draft. It was a crisis for him, of course, because he only had 3 more minutes to decide.

Something worth noting about this is that that I've never played fantasy baseball. And he's a hard-core fantasy sports freak. He plays in multiple leagues in all four major sports. (Yeah, he even plays fantasy hockey.)

But of course, I do own Baseball Prospectus 2003 and he wanted their insights (see February 27th post if you have no idea what I'm talking about).

Could I be any more generic? Now that I use the BlogOut commenting system, I now use the standard blog site (no, xanga is not the standard), the standard blogger layout, the standard commenting system, and the standard stat tracker.

Oh well...

At the suggestion of my roomie with an e, I conformed to the BlogOut commenting system that most people seem to be using. I liked how my previous commenting system allowed me to see who the last commenter was, but the comments were bunched up and were hard to read.

My apologizies to those who commented, but if I was going to make the change, it had to be now. So for those of you who commented, check out this set of comments...

I've been very sleep-dependent lately. Like today, I slept from 2 to 10 AM, went to class, took a 30 minute nap at the library, and then was getting delirious due to lack of energy at 11 PM.

I think sleeping so late all the time is starting to catch up to me.

Some highlights from the senior-junior social:

1) Finding one of the clues without even getting off the BART.
2) Seeing Billy Ku's very attractive corns.
3) Seeing Billy Kim dress up as Sarah Lee.
4) Hearing Sarah's interesting pet peeve again (she can't stand patterns of circular shapes, such as sprinkles on a cupcake.)

Genesis 17:19a

(NIV) Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son,
(NKJV) Then God said: 'No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son,
(KJV) And God said, ' Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed;

The King James Version doesn't even include a "yes" or a "no."

I was pretty happy to finally receive my copy of Baseball Prospectus 2003. For those who don't know what this is, it's a 550 page baseball book that produces cutting-edge, objective baseball analysis using nerdy statistical techniques.

One example of this is the Pitcher Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA) that they've developed to predict the chances that certain players will "breakout" or "collapse" with performances that are 20% better or 20% worse than their performance last year.

Amazingly, the system notes that Barry Bonds has an 18% chance to "breakout," or perform 20% better than his performance last year, which was worth 1.04 runs per game more than the average player (a major league record).

I just sent out an e-mail to ficb-chat about filling out a marketing survey, and sending out these e-mails always makes me evaluate how people react to e-mail.

Here's my breakdown:

1) I think the most important thing in an e-mail is it's title. If my title were to sound like other spam, people wouldn't even bother opening it, especially if they use web-based e-mail like hotmail or yahoo (since those services don't come with preview panes).

2) One thing I made sure to do was to make the e-mail as short as possible... if I'm going to ask people for a favor, it makes sense that I would spend as little of their time as possible. Plus, I needed to reassure them that the survey wouldn't take long, by citing a maximum number of minutes. Saying "a few minutes" doesn't work as well as "5 minutes" because there's no guarantee with how long "a few minutes" is.

3) Another thing is to provide fool-proof directions. But I have to keep in mind that I need to make the e-mail as short as possible, so this is a bit of a challenge.

4) Also need to make sure there's plenty of white space in the e-mail. Hitting the return key a whole bunch of times makes the e-mail so much easier to read.

5) Numbering steps is also helpful, like I've done here.

6) Finally, thanking them is always a nice touch. I don't want to sound like I'm forcing them to do anything.

Wow... I'm such a geek... most of this is from what I learned in my business communication class a few semesters ago. But the most disturbing thing is that I do this type of analysis with every e-mail and blog I write.

"Is there any college that puts a premium on good teaching? Is there any university that rewards--in pay and promotion--outstanding teachers? Always and everywhere in academia, recognition, promotion, tenure depend on what a faculty member publishes.

Teaching? Exciting the minds of undergraduates? Turning them on to learning? Weighing pounds of print the way butchers weigh beef, faculty fathers more often butcher those who show brilliance in lecturing or in the classroom.

Publish or perish is an option. Teach well and perish is for sure."

--Malcolm S. Forbes (1980)

Yesterday in small group bible study we were reading over Genesis 17:19.

In the NIV it begins, "Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and your will call him Isaac."
In the NKJV it reads, "Then God said: 'No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac;"

We were all pretty amazed at how different the translations were. It confused us about how to interpret the previous verse, because it depended on whether the translation was yes or no.

Wow, I've added the FiCB alumni to the links portion of my blogpage, so you'll have to scroll down even more to get to the bottom of the page.

Just came back from the freshmen and senior co-ed softball games...there were a ton of people at the freshmen game, especially because they were playing the KCPC oldies...

I'm not playing for the senior team... if I did I'd have something to do every night except Saturday, so I'll just fill in if they need me. OK, the real reason I'm not playing is cuz our team's named Forever 21... haha...

Most people left before the senior game, but they missed out on John Im's spectacular catch, both of Sammy's LONG bombs (his homers went past the 2nd base bag of the other field), and G1's juggling unassisted double play from the outfield... good stuff, but the game ended in a tie. All this while the girls had to persevere through various injuries (Jamie's hand and Isabel's leg were hit by softballs).

Good stuff...

I'm trying to add as many links to my blog site as I can... let me know if you want to be added!

Just checking to see if this works

I'm not sure how often I'll post