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...