From Sam Lee, who works at Hotwire.com:

2004 Fall / Winter Holidays: Best days to fly

Cheapest time to fly:

"Shoulder periods" before, between and after the major holidays:
Nov 1-19
Nov 30 - Dec 16
January 4 or later

If you must fly around the holidays...

Best bets:

Nov 20-23
Thursday, Nov 25 (Thanksgiving Day)
Saturday, Nov 27
Monday, Nov 29
Dec 17
Dec 24 &25 (Christmas Eve & Day)
Dec 29
Dec 31 & Jan 1(New Year's Eve & New Year's Day)
Jan 3

Avoid:

Wednesday, Nov 24
Friday, Nov 26
Sunday, Nov 28
Dec 18-23
Dec 26-28
Dec 30
Jan 2

I have to pick up my diploma at some point.

I'm too cheap to pay the $12 to have them mail it to me, but I also don't want to take time off work just to pick it up. It doesn't help that the Registrar's office is only open from 10-3 on weekdays.

I've had some chances to pick it up (namely, while I was waiting for a few hours between graduations this past May) but I always forget to do it.

At least I still have 4 more years to pick it up before they destroy it.

My company had a team building event earlier in the month, and one of the activities was to dress people as mummies by using toilet paper.

Not that you could tell, but I'm the guy holding the blue plastic bag. Notice that one of the mummies is lying on the ground-- I think she was taking a nap.

Fantasy baseball all-stars that I've dropped from one of my teams, which is in a 10 team league (I've also included their current Yahoo! player-rater ranking in parenthesis):

Adrian Beltre (5)
Dropped for Kelvim Escobar (145) on June 8th. I already had Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock on my roster, so I dumped the current ML HR leader because he had some injury issues.

Jason Schmidt (9)
Traded for Josh Beckett (228) on April 5th. I was worried about Schmidt's offseason shoulder surgery. I should've been more worried about Beckett's blisters.

Ben Sheets (28)
Dropped for Adam Eaton (153) on April 8th. Sheets' first start of the year was his shortest. Had I waited 2 more days, there's no way I would've dropped him after a 6 IP, 0 R, 0 BB, 10 K performance.

Jeromy Burnitz (32)
Dropped for LaTroy Hawkins (128) on May 16th.

Carlos Lee (37)
Dropped for Wilson Alvarez (159) on May 12th.

Livan Hernandez (82)
Dropped for David Riske (254) on March 20th. I wanted a closer-- too bad I didn't get one.

Despite all these bad moves, I'm in 2nd place in this league. I ended up making trades to get Carlos Lee and Livan Hernandez back onto my roster, but I just wonder how I'd be doing with Beltre, Schmidt, Sheets, and Burnitz as well.

More about my TV:

When I got home, I found out that I bought a 32" refurbished Sony WEGA flat screen, but the warranty is for only 3 years.

As Allen and I were carrying the TV from the car, I tripped over a cement parking block and my rear end hit the ground. Fortunately, Allen and I were still able to hold onto the TV. Of secondary importance, I was not injured.

But seriously, that thing weighs A LOT. Allen and I were carrying it from the Emery Bay parking lot to the first floor, but it was so heavy that I called Georgia to help us carry it from the first floor elevators to my apartment (about 150 feet). My lower back is pretty sore right now.

But wow...watching "24" on it yesterday with all the lights out... that was pretty nice...

I've been looking for a new TV since Albert moved out (and took his TV with him), and so my roommates have been asking people if they have any hookups. Apparently Paul Hwang does since he works at Sony, and he found out about a deal today.

But the catch was that I had to buy it at the store (which is in the south Bay) by 5 PM, so Allen drove to buy it and pick it up.

I had my phone on silent when Paul called, so he called Basile instead, who called Allen. And so I was the last person to know I was buying a TV today (I gave the OK as soon as I called them back.)

And as I was in the middle of writing this post, Allen called me back and said that he was able to get an even better deal-- $350 for a 32" Sony flat screen, refurbished with a 4 year warranty. I owe a few people dinner after this, but who cares? That's an awesome deal.

Interesting fact of the day:

Ashlee Simpson's album, Autobiography, has been #1, #2, #1, and #1 in the 4 weeks since her album was released.

Jessica Simpson has never had an album at #1.

Vent of the day:

Microsoft Excel has some formatting quirks that don't make a whole lot of sense. For example, if you type "1-49", Excel will write out "Jan-49".

If you then format the cell to text instead of a date, it will write out "17899".

Why? Excel treats XX-YY as a date, where XX is a number less than or equal to 12 and YY is a two-digit number. It stores this date by counting the number of days that have passed since January 1, 1900. (January 1, 1949 is 17889 days after January 1, 1900.)

Of course, the way to avoid automatic date formatting is to add an apostrophe before 1-49, since this will treat the entry as text. But still, that was really confusing the first time I tried it.

South Korea is currently 8th in the Olympic medal count with 15 medals:

Medal, Sport, Event
Gold, Archery, Women's Team
Gold, Archery, Women's Individual
Gold, Badminton, Men's Doubles
Gold, Judo, Men's -73kg
Silver, Archery, Women's Individual
Silver, Artistic Gymnastics, Men's Individual All-Around
Silver, Judo, Men's -100kg
Silver, Shooting, Women's Double Trap
Silver, Shooting, Men's 50m Pistol
Silver, Table Tennis, Women's Doubles
Silver, Weightlifting, Men's 69kg
Bronze, Artistic Gymnastics, Men's Individual All-Around
Bronze, Judo, Men's -60kg
Bronze, Shooting, Women's Trap

Blog/xanga posts that have pictures from Daniel and Gower's wedding:

Kay Chang
John Chi
Roy Chung
Dennis Chon, but look below and you'll see the only picture from the wedding that he posted.

I'm sure a lot more people have posted pictures online... let me know if you have some you want to share.

This picture is so hilarious that I had to post it even though I'm stealing it from Dennis Chon's xanga.

Thanks to Basile for showing me how to post pictures on my blog. Comments about these pictures are on the previous post.


2004 KCPC B Team

angry ahjushi

Allen really wanted me to post these pictures from the KCPC softball tournament, but since I don't know how to get the pictures to appear on my blog, here's a link to my picture site.

The work picture is from my post on February 5th.

The softball pictures are of the KCPC B Team and an angry ahjushi at the tournament. You'll notice that Mr. So (on the far right) is in our team picture because we only had 9 players and we needed him at catcher.

The angry ahjushi was the coach for another team and was yelling really loudly at his players in a way that only a Korean ahjushi can. I guess you had to be there to appreciate how funny it was to watch him...

Update of my past week:

-Recovered from dislocating my shoulder a couple Saturdays ago at the KCPC softball tournament.

-Frantically finished up my responsibilities at work before I left for soCal on Wednesday.

-Was supposed to caravan with Allen on the drive home to soCal but lost him as soon as we got onto the freeway.

-Finally played with my sister's dog (which she had been telling me about for a few months), and watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm with my sister and brother-in-law. The show's pretty funny but no one really watches it because it's on HBO; it features Seinfeld co-creator Larry David and is shot without a script.

-On Friday night, Allen, G1, G1's friend Dan, and I had a two-hour sequence that was pulled out of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. It took me about 15 minutes to explain everything to Basile, so I'm guessing the story works much better orally rather than in writing.

-Mejeld and Gower's wedding on Saturday. Congratulations again to the newlyweds. It was great to see everyone, and it was a long day that started with me and Kevin driving around soCal for 2 hours in the morning. Of course, it ended with a lot of dancing.

-Played random games with Basile and Mike Lee on the drive back up to the Bay Area. Thanks to Sammo's inspiration, we listed as many movies that started with the letter "N" that we could think of (which was amazingly only 1), as well as all of the fast food chains we could think of (a lot more than 1).

Gross moment of the day:

I was going to the water cooler to fill up my water bottle when I looked at the bottom of my bottle and saw a bunch of green specs. I guess this is what happens when you use the same water bottle for a year and only wash it once during that time. I hadn't noticed anything like that before, so hopefully this happened over the weekend (and not 10 months ago).

And yes, that water bottle is now in the trash.

Singer Rick James passed away today.

He's most well-known for his 80s hit Superfreak, but of course I'll remember him mostly because of Chappelle's Show.

Rest in peace, Rick. We'll miss the laughter that only the phrase "I'm Rick James, B****!" can bring us...

Quote of the day comes from President Bush, who said the following today:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

From Billy Madison, which I saw yesterday on TV:

Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

WARNING: This post is entirely baseball-related. Don't expect to be entertained if you're not a baseball fan. Or even if you are.

I'm tired of everyone bashing Paul DePodesta for the Dodgers/Marlins trade, where the Dodgers sent Guillermo Mota, Paul LoDuca, and Juan Encarnacion to the Marlins for Brad Penny, Hee Seop Choi, and Billy Murphy.

I'm especially tired of the argument that this is a bad or "risky" trade because it disrupts the team chemistry of a team that's in first place. Even if that were true (but I don't think it is), why should that be how we evaluate the trade?

Shouldn't we evaluate a trade by how it helps or hurts the team on the field, rather than going into some subjective notions about how it might impact a completely subjective (and possibly irrelevant) thing such as team chemistry?

And what is it about Paul LoDuca's leadership that is so indispensable anyway? That he's "led" the Dodgers to three non-first place finishes since he became the starting catcher? That he hustles a lot? Studies have proven that catchers have an insignifcant affect on the performance of their team's pitchers (I can e-mail you that article if you're interested), so I'm not sure what separates LoDuca from any other slightly above average catcher.

The argument that the Dodgers shouldn't have fixed what wasn't broken is ludicrous. Paul DePodesta's job as a general manager is to improve his team, not sit on his laurels while watching what other teams will try to do to beat him. That type of attitude is what cursed the 2003 Angels. Bill Stoneman kept that team the same as his 2002 championship team and watched his players regress to the mean.

And yet that's what so many people in LA wanted. That the Dodgers had played so well in July is a reason why they should make the moves they did-- because that type of hot streak is not gonna last the entire season. There will be a lot of people blaming the trade on why the team cools off, but they were playing over their heads that month anyway.

Brad Penny and Hee Seop Choi will help the team now, but they're also young and cheap, so they'll help the team for the next several years. Penny becomes the Dodgers' best starter and the following is a list of Choi's most comparable players (according to Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system):

David Ortiz
Carlos Pena
Paul O'Neill
Pete LaCock
Mo Vaughn
Sam Horn
Cliff Floyd
Carlos Delgado
Jim Thome
Paul Sorrento

That's some pretty nice company, even if there are a couple no-names like Pete LaCock and Sam Horn thrown in.

Mota is a great reliever, but he's 31 and can't get much better from here on out. Middle relievers are the easiest players to replace, and the Dodgers do a good job of finding relievers out of nowhere. Yes, they'll miss him this year, but you'll get much more out of Penny's remaining 65 innings than Mota's remaining 30 innings.

And we all know how LoDuca fades after the All-Star Break. Of course, it's not like he's a great player anyway. As a 32 year old catcher, he's past his prime and has only had one season where his OPS was over .731. Encarnacion has a lifetime .311 OBP and is a corner outfielder.

If you have some non-mushy reasons of how this trade hurts the Dodgers as a team, I'd like to hear them. I just can't think of many myself.

Weekend update:

-Played poker with my co-workers on Friday night. Had fun watching one of my managers get a little tipsy and entertain us with his antics. Afterward, we played Bust-A-Move on Playstation 1.

-Softball on Saturday. The "B" Team won our first game 29-11 and lost the second game 38-4. We'll be playing next weekend too.

-Funny moment: Georgia Dave was carrying a watermelon during the softball tournament, and was having fun scaring the KM people by tossing the watermelon up in the air... and of course, he ended up dropping the watermelon in the process.

-Watched Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle afterward. It had its moments, and is pretty much what you'd expect it to be.

-Helped Albert and Stephen move into their new apartment on Sunday. They're living in the city in an apartment that has two stories. It's the first time I've seen an apartment where you can enter through the 4th floor or the 5th floor.