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.)