I find females fascinating. I was talking to SugarShock's sister yesterday and she was saying how when they (3 girls) were growing up, when they played Life, they would let each other replay the job portion until everyone was a doctor or lawyer, which had the highest salary at $25,000. Meaning, if someone got stuck being a teacher ($12,000), they'd just replay it until they landed on lawyer/doctor. Same thing with having children. Point is, and maybe I'm misunderstanding, but yeah, it seems like competition wasn't the main point when they played; they wanted everyone to win.

That's absolutely fascinating to me. I dunno, guys just need a little bit of competition for games to be fun, even if it's nominal. People who are too competitive or take it too personally are no fun, but neither are those that aren't competitive at all. Maximum fun is achieved when the people you play with aren't overcompetitive but they honestly try. That's why I enjoyed the Eric/Arthur Bohnanza games so much.

But having no competition at all... I dunno if guys could do that. What I think it is is this - we need some sense of purpose. And competition provides that. I think that's sometimes why guys can get so devoted to a game - it provides a clear sense of purpose. But anyway, yeah, take away the competition, and there's no "point" to the game, and that makes it hard for guys. Even if the goal is camaraderie or whatever, there's still no point to the *game* if that makes any sense at all. So yeah, we need to keep score, even if it's not accurate and even if we don't really care who wins or loses, because a score provides the nominal point. I dunno, maybe that's just me, but that's how I feel about it.

She was also saying how her women's college didn't really have a rival school. If anything, they felt a kinship with the other women's schools. Again, interesting.

The thing that's weird about it to me is that, I dunno, women definitely are competitive. I dunno, I grew up with a sister, and I've seen my female friends, and it's there, I think. It's just, females compete in more subtle weird ways. Whereas males are more straightforward and direct about it, even setting up specific clear rules for it like in sports. I dunno, that's interesting to me.

Or maybe I'm just talking out of me arse. Isn't the first time. Nor the last.

I've said this countless times but yeah, my extended family is really different from almost any other Korean families I know and I wonder a lot how that affected me. We got together with some relatives on my dad's side this weekend and I was just struck by that again. I've mentioned this before, but one odd thing about my family is that people in it married Caucasians. The unusual part is, these people aren't (just) in my generation or my parents' generation; they're in my *grandparents'* generation. And this is on both sides of the family. So both my mom and dad have cousins who are half. How many people can say that? I dunno, I think that's kind of cool.

So one thing maybe related to that is this - almost everyone in my extended family is very competent in English. Not all 100% fluent, but comfortable, if that makes any sense. And again, I think that's unusual. Some peoples' parents are pretty good, but their great-aunts and great-uncles? Jieun always finds it hugely bizarre. But yeah, that's what I grew up with.

How did that affect me? I'm not sure. One thing is, I know what Thanksgiving is supposed to be like. And believe you me, there is no kimchee involved. And that is one thing to be thankful for.

Apparently in Korea the trend among married couples is that the wife calls the husband "oppa" (older brother). Friends (again, just from what I hear, I have no clue) do this all the time, but it's percolated into marriage. My parents hate it, think it's odd. I think it's somewhat odd myself, but whatever, it's a LIFO culture; nothing makes sense to me.

My question is, well a few questions, actually. What do the husbands call the wives? And does it ever happen in Korea that an older woman marries a younger man? It must happen, right? Then, do they still use oppa? Or something else?

Another question. A friend from Korea was visiting and she was talking about a friend who works in a clinic and about the insane numbers of women having abortions there. Like some women having up to 7 abortions. My question is, what is the church's stance on abortion in Korea? For some reason, I get the feeling that the passionately pro-life stance of the evangelical church is a peculiarly American thing. But I have zero data to support it so I'm probably totally wrong. But I'm curious.

While waiting for Survivor last night I caught the last part of Access Hollywood. SN. Pat O'Brien is one of my favorite sports broadcasters. Especially his stuff with the Olympics and tennis. I remember his last tennis broadcast on CBS, I think the U.S. Open, after he announced he's no longer going to be doing sports stuff, and his last words were to his son, basically "Daddy's finally going to be home." It was sweet. A little awkward though, because Mary Cirillo (who had great chemistry with O'Brien, zero chemistry with John McEnroe) wasn't sure what to do and just awkwardly said "nice". But yeah, I remember that.

Where was I. Oh yeah, Access Hollywood. Did anyone else happen to see the Matrix Revolutions preview?

***** Matrix Revolutions Spoilers *****

I dunno, looks like there's more Architect level cookiness. I swear, they showed a scene where Neo is talking to Orson Welles as Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. We'll see I guess, but it looks odd.

Some honeymoon notes. Random.

So Tahiti is French territory, something like that, so tons of French people go there to vacation. One interesting thing about the French is that they drink wine with every single meal. Even on the plane, to the Frenchmen, they served these little bottles of red wine. Red wine with airline food. Love of the game.

The French's reputation for having B.O. is well deserved. Egad.

Have you ever tried using a French keyboard? It's absolutely maddening. It's similar enough to the QWERTY layout that it makes you want to type normally but different enough that it's impossible to do so. Like, certain letters are all mixed up. Punctuation is all over the place. One thing that made absolutely no sense to me - the top row, the numbers, are shifted, meaning you have to use shift to type the numbers. Huh? Does this make any sense at all? Logique? Ou etes-vous?

A useful note: "pepperoni" is not a meat in Tahiti. We learned that the hard way. Nor is "pizza sauce" what we think, the red tomato based stuff. "Pizza sauce" is something you add to your finished pizza, kind of like we do with parmesan and/or red pepper. It's essentially spicy olive oil. Kind of interesting. But pizza's greasy enough. Why you'd want to make it *more* oily is beyond me.

Everyone assumed we were Japanese. We were constantly greeted by "konichiwa" and given Japanese menus at restaurants. My question is, do Koreans vacation overseas? And where do they go? Will they ever reach a point where they pass out Korean menus to tourists? I dunno.

You like the new icons for jack and this page? Actually, you can't see it unless you're using Firebird or if you've bookmarked those pages in IE. Whatever, I'm a loser.

I think I wrote before about this thing I read that really impacted me, how the guy was saying if people are valuing the world over Christ, the goal is not to get them to love the world less, but to love Christ more. I think I'm starting to have the same attitude with getting drunk. I dunno, I don't think I'm gonna tell people to not get drunk anymore. Instead, I'm gonna tell them to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Whatever that means. But yeah, I dunno, the whole don't get drunk thing, I dunno if that works and even if it does I think it misses the point.

Honestly though, I'm not sure what it means experientially to be drunk, or even what a buzz is. I'm not a huge drinker, and when I do drink, it's almost always with food. Never did the high school drink to get wasted thing. So yeah, not sure what a buzz is. I have gotten dangerously sleepy before. Is that drunk? Maybe it is. But I didn't feel nauseous, nor did I have a hangover, just got sleepy. I dunno.

So yeah, no more "don't get drunk" from me. Just, be filled with the Holy Spirit. That's all.

So wait, I'm confused. So you know, Margaret Cho has a big gay/lesbian following, and I had been that it's because she herself is a lesbian. I think actually the person who told me this thought I was stupid for not knowing that.

It turns out we know a distant relative of hers who went to her (Goth) wedding and she says she's straight. Huh? Then why the big gay following?

Pastor said something last week that stuck with me. In regards to the Holy Spirit, and the extremes people can have. One extreme is putting so little emphasis on the Spirit that practically, you live like an atheist.

You know what? I think I was somewhat like this for a while. I acknowledges the Spirit with my words, but in my actions, I dunno, I acted as if everything was based on my own effort and doing, didn't even leave room for the Spirit to move. I dunno, I think I just acted as if everything good that happened depended strictly on my own effort, no more no less. And in certain ways, that's practically like being an atheist. Just something I'm ruminating over. I dunno, honestly, the Holy Spirit confuses me. But I'm learning.

Stolen from Becky S3o...

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Interesting, huh? Maybe not. I dunno. One thing I learned in my linguistics classes is that the humans use a lot of grammar as we read. It's not that we start from letters, then figure out words, then take the words, figure out sentences and so forth. We actively use grammar while we're reading, so it's almost top down instead of bottom up. This can be evidenced by the kind of mistakes we regularly make. The classic example is:

"The horse raced past the barn fell."

Most people, when they read that, see it as ungrammatical. But it's all in how you parse it. If you see raced as not something the horse itself did, but something that the horse was involved with, more like, "The horse, the one that was raced past the barn, fell." then the sentence makes sense. But most people don't parse it that way. This is seen as indication that we don't take the whole sentence and parse it, but base how we parse things on a grammar as we go.

Anyway, that's why most text and speech recognition programs don't do too well, compared to humans. Their grammars are too limited, they don't use enough linguistic info. They're completely bottom up in their processing. So like, no machine could understand the top sentence. So it really makes sense to build more grammatical understanding into text/speech recognition systems to improve them. But there are drawbacks which I don't remember. Technical / computational complexity? Over specificity? Something like that.

Speech recognition is actually really interesting. There are so many problems with it. Like, most people don't realize that the way their vocal sounds break down, the basic vocal parts, don't correspond to the written syllables. That becomes a problem because when a machine doesn't understand someone, they tend to speak slower and "clearer", but they start splitting up their pronunciation according to written syllables instead of their natural phonemes and that just confuses sytems more.

Whatever, boring, I guess.

If you're really concerned about the long term and not being greedy, Slim (as if he reads this page), you should be investing in broad index funds, not individual stocks. You won't get rich quick, but long term you'll do well (in all likelihood better than you would picking individual stocks), and you mitigate the risks.

There are tons of reasons why (good) index funds are better than individual stock picking, especially if you've decided to think long term and not be greedy. One being hidden costs. With individual stock picks, every transaction you make incurs a fee. Plus you have to track the tax consequences yourself, and they can be significant. With index funds, assuming you buy and hold, you don't incur the same short term capital gains taxes, which gives you a net advantage.

I dunno, I could go on and on but yeah, the point is, chances are you'll do as good with index funds and with none of the work or worry. Like, your 20% annual return (which is, I think, an extremely unlikely long term goal) is essentially the same as the YTD return of the Wilshire 5000 index ending 8/31 (18.41%), the index our (meager and little) mutual fund tracks. Again, with zero research required, no work, and far less risk.

I dunno, whatever, just my opinion, but yeah, I'm a big fan of index funds. And I do think they win out in the long run. I dunno. I just think when analyzing your returns, you need to consider their net return (after fees, after taxes) and compare them to how you might have done with a mindless index fund. See if it's worth the work.

Do you think all gunners are insecure at heart? Most? Some? None? I'm going to say 75% of gunners are driven by insecurity. Backed up by zero data.

I think a lot about how to make my kids self-motivated, but it's a balance I think. I don't want them to be gunners either. I don't know which would be worse, if my kids were gunners or slackers. Given my personal sentiments against gunning (just for myself) I think I'd prefer slacker kids but who knows. Self motivated without gunning though, that's what I'd want.

Have I ever told this story? So my dad got a PhD in EE from Ohio State. Anyway, he was applying for jobs and I think he was applying to IBM, and I think it was his first interview. So they asked him about himself, and he says to them, "I'm lazy." Reason being, his belief is that great scientists in the past were somewhat driven by laziness, by a desire to get more things done with less effort, something like that, and that that's the impetus for progress. Of course, with his English, that message didn't get through, all that came through was that he considered himself lazy, and the interviewers were like, "Uh... that's not a good quality." Whoops. He didn't get an offer.

Here are the secrets I know for Street Fighter in the arcade:

• Dhalsim reset the game - From Street Fighter II. There's a way to make the game reset using Dhalsim, so if you're hopelessly behind you can use this cheap trick so that your opponent loses a quarter also. It's actually kind of cool. The screen flicks off and on and then you see the ROMs being tested and stuff. Powerful.
• Guile reset the game - Also SFII, same thing as Dhalsim, but a different key combination to make it happen.
• Guile freeze - SFII. You can make Guile freeze in a weird position. Useless but cool. You can flask kick out of it.
• Guile "handcuffs" - SFII. Guile does this move and the opponent's character gets frozen right next to Guile. Without knowing the next trick to get out of it, if time runs out while they're still frozen the game freezes and you have to reset it.
• Guile "air throw" - SFII. This glitch where Guile makes his throwing motion even if the opponent isn't in his grasp and shortly after the opponent falls down as if (s)he were thrown. It's the only way you can get out of the handcuffs. Good people can use this in combos. The best I got was the flash kick -> air throw combo. Some people could pull off 2 air throws in succession by doing them in opposite directions but I never managed to pull that off.
• Vega screen scroll - SFII Championship Edition. Actually, I don't know how to do this but I do know it exists. It's a lame glitch, but it makes Vega scroll rapidly up and down the screen. No use, just a glitch.
• Zangief superplex - Super Street Fighter II. My favorite glitch. In SSFII, Zangief has 2 different piledrivers, the original 360 one and a new one where you use the kick buttons. Anyway, there's a glitch where he can do the second one no matter where the opponent is on the screen. (S)He can be on the opposite side of the screen, and when you initiate the move, they warp to you. Few people know about this trick, and it totally disorients them. Awesome.

  The thing is, it only works on the normal version of SSFII. They made this tournament version of SSFII where it's 8 machines linked together, one screen per controller, and it works in like a tournament style. They had this at Tilt in Vallco. Anyway, yeah, the glitch doesn't work in this version, just the normal one.

There's one other thing I'd do to maximize my weekly play at Aladdin's Castle - I'd go through every single machine there and check the change slot. You know, where the token falls if it didn't go through correctly. I averaged one token a week, so I actually played 2 times each week.

I'm going to say exactly 0 people cared about this entry. I don't think anyone that reads this page played Street Fighter, which I find odd. Anyway.

Catching up on some comments...

Yeah, it's not just a lack of information about sports teams that makes rooting for another team hard, it's that all your friends are against you. There's something about sports that brings a community together, absurd as that sounds, but it does, and when you're a fan of another team, you don't just stand outside it, you stand in opposition to it, and that can be tough. Should my kids go through that just because my dad's a Reds fan? I dunno, not a huge hardship but still.

It's not just that there's a bulge, it's that particular bulge.

Oops, sorry Dave. I always bring up the same things on this page, over and over. I always forget I brought it up before. I dunno, it's interesting, I have an incredible memory for facts, terrible memory for conversation. Jieun is the exact opposite. That's why I'm great at keeping secrets. I end up forgetting them after a while.

Have I really told people to start thought pages? I guess I have, just can't remember. Only person I remember telling to write was Adrian. Prolly when I was in school I used to do this?

I'm trying to figure out why the medical entries are boring also. I think part of it is too much terminology. Snore. Maybe they all seem repetitive?

Are the arcade entries that boring? I guess they are. But I dunno, it was just an important part of all of our childhoods, I think. I remember when I first got my Nintendo, it was like magic, like playing an arcade game in my house. Amazing. Jieun tells me that when her family got theirs, they had a little trouble hooking it up and when they (she actually) figured it out, they did a little impromptu dance / hug. I dunno, I just think it was critical to our generation. Maybe I'm wrong.

In other boring, xanga-esque news, we got our fridge replaced. On Saturday, it started making this loud noise that got progressively louder. Like, imagine a loud dishwasher. Triple that sound. And imagine it being on pretty much constantly, day and night. That was our fridge. The maintenance people, when they heard it, said, "I think you have a diesel powered refrigerator." I was going insane. Thankfully, replaced now. But stuff like that makes you appreciate the little things in life. Like not having a leaf-blower caliber sound going off in your apartment constantly. That's always nice.

Fascinating. Sandy Chi responding to Scott Kim's page. The power of jack.

So we ate at Blue Stones, this new Korean place in Sunnyvale. It's actually really good, except for the Naeng Myun. Anyway, their menu prominently features this thing called Black Angus Deckle. It's all over on the menu, in every combination special, and everyone seemed to be ordering it. Any clue what this is, and why it's such a big deal? I dunno, it just looked like slices of meat to me.

I guess I'm still wondering about what fine Korean dining could be. Maybe it's like this one meal I had at that nice place in LA Koreatown, I forgot the name, but the one with incredible architecture inside. I mean, by far the nicest architecture I've ever seen at a Korean restaurant. Anyway, it was bbq at your table style, and one of the things we had was steak, and it was a really good steak. That was kind of different. I dunno.

Every time I talk to my mom she makes it abundantly clear that she thinks I'm wasting my potential. Without really explaining well what "potential" is. Or offering any helpful advice as to what to do, other than "make a difference in the world." That's specific and practical. That and "get a PhD". Literally in anything, the field is irrelevant.

The thing is, I feel the same way. Dunno about the potential thing but I feel like I should be doing more with my life but I have no idea what that means. I don't know what fulfilling my potential means. I know for certain it doesn't mean maximizing my money-making potential. That just depresses me. I dunno, I said this before, but going through that Stanford class book, I dunno, I just get this impression that lots of people are into maximizing their money-making potential and that depresses me. That's not the type of potential I care about.

There are a few fields I feel are above that. Like medicine. But medicine is about the only thing I know for sure that I don't want to do. Education, I dunno, not that much appeal to me. Ministry, I dunno, I just haven't felt called. I've actually in my life felt called against full time ministry. So it's odd because these "noble" things I'm fairly sure I don't want to do or aren't called to do.

Like I said before, the problem for me is choice. When there's no choice, I excel I think. Was that way in high school when there was just a single path to take - get into a good college. I think now, if someone just mandated to me the field I had to be involved in, I would excel also. It's this dangling carrot of choice that makes me second guess myself and keeps me from "maximizing my potential", whatever that means. But does that mean I should just sort of randomly choose a field? Would that solve anything? I dunno. But yeah, sometimes I wish I had no choice in what I was doing. I think I'd accomplish and achieve more.

I dunno, I'm kind of depressed and frustrated because I feel like I've felt this way a long time and don't know what to do. All I know is, like I told my mom, I want to follow Jesus. But I don't know what that means practically. I think I've been holding myself back from pursuing more status, money or influence because I want to just pursue Jesus, but it's becoming clear to me that sitting around doing nothing going nowhere isn't following Jesus either.

And I get pissed at myself because one, I'm complaining and whatever in the midst of being given so much, which just sucks, and two, it never changes, I don't do anything. But I just don't know how to act when I'm not sure how to follow Jesus. It's not like I'm doing nothing, I have a fine job, whatever. I just don't know how to pursue "more" without knowing what more God wants from me. Is that even possible? To know? I don't know. I just know I want to pursue more.

Sorry, weirdo entry. I dunno, my parents bring out weird parts of me. I think I once said how I didn't cry for a period of about 16 years. That's not totally accurate. On maybe 3 occasions, my parents still made me cry. About the randomest things. I remember I once almost cried arguing with my dad about recycling. Totally random. But yeah, I dunno, my parents just press some primal keys in me. It's odd.

I think the last time I really felt God spoke to me was in regards to church. Dunno if I've ever written about it. But yeah, back when we were looking for churches, that was the last thing I really prayed consistently and often for. Anyway, we heard about Baylight and I dunno, for lots of different reasons beyond just emotion that I won't get into, I felt like God was calling us there. So I was making some bold claims at the time. Adrian can back this up if he remembers. Like, I was saying how that was definitely the church we were going to commit to before we had ever visited it, gone to a single event, or met anyone from the church.

In fact, again, I won't get into it, but yeah, the first event we went to almost turned us away from it. But whatever, I dunno, I just felt led there even if it didn't make tons of sense and Jieun actually initially didn't see what was so special about it. And yeah, I think it's where God wanted us and it's been a huge blessing in many different ways. I dunno, I just feel like a lot of things Godly people were telling me ended up coming true, very Oracle-esque (Carrie Ann Moss's last speech in the Matrix Oracle, not Larry Ellison Oracle). So it's not like God never leads me and Jieun to risky places. And I guess that's good to remember. It's just I haven't felt that with vocation yet.

One of the principles I ascribe to, even if I live it imperfectly, is all substance, no show. Like, the way I pray (publicly) is really straightforward. You know, some people pray differently than they speak, like they get impassioned or use a different voice, and whatever, that's fine and dandy for them, I have no problems with it. Just for me, I speak when praying like I would any other conversation. That's just my style.

When I was growing up, I refused to do the swaying and other physical flourishes that some of the other talented kids did when playing piano. I was 100% against it. Just, to me, it looked incredibly pretentious, and it seemed more like for show than for making it actually sound better. Like, did people actually do that when they practiced at home? Don't they get dizzy? So with piano, the principle was all the emotion in the playing, none of the flourish in the show, if that makes any sense. So, I'd be fairly rigid while playing, but I dunno, I think I got the emotion out. Like, for things where the adjudicator didn't see you directly, I always got high marks for stuff like that.

Why am I writing this? No clue. I'm just thinking about one of those things that few of my Stanford friends I think know about me - I was employed by the Stanford music department. As an accompanist. Nothing big, just accompanied a friend once a week for voice lessons, maybe a recital? Can't remember, but yeah, they actually paid me for it, which was nice.

Frosh year I actually took a piano accompanying class. I thought I didn't have the time (or money) for lessons so I took the accompanying class instead and it turned out I was the only one in it anyway so it was fine. Anyway, I drove the professor crazy because he kept wanting me to be more physical in my playing, the whole hand flourishes and torso swaying thing, and I refused. And that's my boring story with no point.

I'll be honest, all these comments about my page is giving me some performance anxiety. I'm telling you, this page is inane and boring more often than not, so yeah, just low expectations, that's all I'm saying. To prove it, another boring entry:

So I'm not that great a swimmer. I'm not awful. Like, I took swimming at Stanford one quarter and I clearly didn't belong in the beginner class, but I was the worst one in my intermediate class (or it might have been advanced intermediate... not sure).

One thing that did hold me back was my refusal to wear a Speedo swimsuit. I was the only one there going trunk style. But I dunno, I just can't do it. I subscribe to Dave's principle regarding men's clothes - if there's a bulge, not good. If there's a crevice, not good. Speedos can be both those things, and yeah, you're in the water, but still. I dunno, I just can't do it. Way too European for me.

So yeah, that didn't help, but in general I wasn't that great. I honest to God nearly drowned during the butterfly lesson. I know, butterfly is hard, but I mean, I wasn't just showing improper form, I was close to death. Not good times. Bad times.

The other thing that holds me back is this - for some reason, I just can't exhale underwater. It gets into some primal fear I have about running out of breath or something, but it's just hard for me to exhale. So, when I take a breath, I have to both exhale and inhale. So I end up taking these really long exaggerated breaths every other stroke.

I don't think that's good. After I swim, sometimes my neck hurts, and I think it's from twisting my head so much to do those exaggerated breaths. I dunno. Anyway, that's my boring story.

Ohio State has seriously got to get rid of its obsession with overtimes. I nearly had a heart attack watching today's game. And I wonder what Tressel and those players pray about after the game. Hmm.

So a question. Is there such thing as upscale Korean food? Does that even exist? If so, what does it look/taste like? I dunno, it just seems like every cuisine has an upscale (and expensive) version. French of course. Italian. American. Japanese. Chinese, kinda. I've been to an upscale Mexican place in the city. There seem to be tons of upscale Vietnamese places opening up in the Bay Area.

So what about upscale Korean? Is there such a thing? And if so, what's it like? I dunno, I just can't even imagine it. Would it be like Filet Mignon bulgogi?

I liked the Red Violin a lot also. Does that make me pretentious? Pedestrian? I dunno, I just found it interesting and entertaining. Jieun loves the movie. Partly I think because there are so many languages in it. That's her passion. Languages.

I dunno, I really liked the ending. Just, to truly appreciate the best things in life, they need not to be analyzed but experienced. That speaks to me because it's contrary to my nature. I dunno, always a struggle. As the wise Charlie Peacock once said, "You can only possess what you experience - truth to be understood must be lived."

Long, rambling, boring entry. You've been warned.

I wonder whether I'm going to make my kids be fans of the same sports teams I'm a fan of, or if I'll let them make their own decisions. The reason is this - it's tough growing up being a fan of a non-local sports team that isn't great. It's different if you're a grown up transplant. You still spent your formative sports fan years with a local team. Or if the non-local team you root for is really good. You still get coverage.

But yeah, growing up a fan of a non-local team can be hard. Like, I was a Reds fan because of my dad. When he was in Ohio, the Reds were incredible, the peak of the Big Red Machine. So yeah, I was also. But you get a lot of flack from your friends, hardly any coverage of your team, stuff like that.

But at least when I was growing up the Reds and Giants were in the same division so there was some exposure. It must suck if, e.g. you're a Falcons fan in an AFC city. SN. When I was younger, I classified major U.S. cities as being NFC or AFC cities. And don't ask me why, but I thought of NFC cities as being hip, and AFC cities as being backwards. No clue why, maybe it's just I followed the NFC more. So yeah, when my dad said we're moving to Houston, my first reaction was, Houston? It's so backwards. It's an AFC city.

So anyway, it's nice rooting for the same teams as your father, but I'm thinking about it, and if my kids were Reds fans, I dunno, that's kind of odd. They're basically Reds fans because of their grandfather, and that's stretching familial loyalties a bit, no? I dunno.

Someday I'm gonna write about my 7th grade filipino girlfriend. I dunno, just looking back it kills me because we were so immature. I think part of it was just the shock that someone actually liked me - that took a while to get over. But yeah, like I've said before, we never talked at school and actually only had a handful of phone conversations. We wrote notes, and it was almost entirely about baseball. She was a huge Giants fan, me a Reds fan. So we'd write notes about how much the Giants/Reds suck and how awesome the Reds/Giants are. Did we ever talk about feelings? I doubt it. So that was our relationship in a nutshell. Notes about Giants/Reds, 3 phone conversations and assiduously avoiding each other at school.

I have no idea why Henry is in such a tizzy. I'm not even sure if he's in a tizzy. Was it something I said?

Anyway, when I said the most recent decline, I meant late 90s early 2000s one. Not the mid 80s one.

In case it's not clear, I don't disagree with anything Henry said except on 2 points. One, he originally said that they've gotten better at making money now. I think that's wrong. But as to his main point, it's always been about profit, I obviously agree.

Two, he thinks (not even very strongly I think) that it's less R&D money now that's responsible for the lack of creativity today. I disagree with that. For two reasons. First, the bandwagon non-creative mentality was getting strong back before the current downturn, in the late 90s, back when game companies had way more money. That's the whole point of the 3D thing. That even Capcom, who was successful with Street Fighter, felt they had to do a 3D thing (remember Street Fighter EX? You don't? I do). The entire industry being uncreative predates the shrunken market, so it couldn't have been a result of it.

The other thing is, if these uncreative new games are being driven by lack of R&D, you'd think they'd be cheaper. But they're not. They're these expensive, technically impressive, boring games like Jurassic Park and Star Trek Voyager. Spending that much on a rehashed concept seems more risky to me, not less.

Anyway yeah, less R&D $ now, sure. I'm just saying, that can't be why everything is so uncreative now. It *might* be a sustaining factor. I personally think it's caused by stupidity and laziness. That's my point I guess. I just think, in my arcade experience, that the most successful games are the creative ones, and it's independent of technical achievement. Even simple but original games like Puzzle Fighter do well in the arcades. So being uncreative in the pursuit of profitability is the wrong track to take. But what do I know.

But are you aware of how bad the arcade industry is now? It's gone through various rises and falls through the decades but apparently now is the worst it's ever been.

So we played Pictionary again. Fairly humiliating. Four teams, our team the only one with no females on it. It was pretty close between the other three teams. We didn't make it halfway across the board. We spent significant time just one square from the start. When the other teams were 2/3 across the board I started making sarcastic comments like, "Oh no, now we're in last place!" We sucked.

I think what makes girls better isn't that they draw better, it's that they guess better. Some of those all plays the other teams won, I have no idea how they guessed it based on the pictures drawn. There's just some weird sort of female intuition type stuff going on. That's the advantage girls have, I think. Comparing pics, it's not that our pics were that much worse, it's just we couldn't guess as well.

But actually, no, our team had some pretty horrific drawings. If I had to categorize them I'd call them "avant-garde". Lots of abstract art going on with our team.

I've gotten fairly good at Texas Hold 'Em, I think. I've accumulated $30,000 in play money online. You start with $1000, so that's pretty good. Everything's skewed because it's play money but yeah, I'm learning a lot.

As the wise Kenny Rogers says, you have to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Knowing when to hold 'em is relatively easy. It's knowing when to fold 'em that's the interesting part, and something the best players all know well. Also, the best players realize that the point is to extract the most from others when you have a good hand, and minimize your losses when you don't. That sounds basic, but a lot of people don't seem to realize this.

Like, lots of players take risks that are way out of line with the potential payoff. Like they'll go all-in before the flop. That makes no sense. If you have a bad hand, you're risking like thousands of points for a potential gain of like fifty. That's not a good risk/reward ratio. If you have a good hand, you're scaring people away and minimizing the amount you get from your good hand. Also stupid. So either way, it's generally a bad play.

So yeah, the size of the pot is an important factor I think. I dunno, I still make sucky moves though. I've slowly reduced the number of times I make those stupid emotional moves but I still do it, and that holds me back.

Boring.

Dave may be somewhat wrong in analysis but he's right in a more important sense, Henry. In my opinion. Just, the trying to get tons of money out of kids is way more blatant now than it was back then. In the "old" days with a lot of games you could play for a while on a single quarter. Nowadays, games like that are few and far between. Most games have you pumping in quarter after quarter, probably most require more than a credit to play. It's just more blatant now.

Henry says they've gotten "better" at making money now. I disagree. Dunno if you know this, but arcades in the U.S. have been suffering for a while, money wise. I mean, for years and years. There are lots of factors outside their control, like the rise of quality console and computer games. But arcades and arcade game companies have hurt themselves also, I think.

I dunno, a lot of it to me is the whole boxing pay-per-view thing. Game companies taking a short term view. One thing McDonald's is incredibly astute about is the realization that you have to reign kids in early. That's also true for arcade games. Thing is, lots of arcade games have priced kids out, So they're not just losing current customers, they're losing future customers. I dunno, I'm probably the only one who still goes to arcades from time to time but yeah, that this is happening is fairly obvious if you visit an arcade nowadays. Not only is it way more sparse (generally) but the age demographic is totally different. I dunno. The whole Dave N' Buster's concept is like the culmination of this trend, that arcade games aren't for kids anymore.

Anyway yeah, arcades and arcade game companies are suffering, so I don't think you can say they're gotten better at making profit. They may make more money per play, but if way less people play, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I dunno, I have a lot of opinions about arcade game pricing. In the heyday of Street Fighter II, it was really interesting. You could put that machine anywhere and it would make a ton of money. Unless you charged 50¢ Then virtually no one would play it. It was fascinating. If you went somewhere (most notably certain movie theaters) and saw an unplayed SFII machine, you pretty much knew it was because they were charging 50¢. Anyway yeah, the money pumping games nowadays kids can't play, and that's bad for the industry.

Dave's also right in that arcade games used to be way more creative in the past than now. It was always about profit sure. But in the past, I think companies tried to increase profit by making more original games. Now, companies just try to ape whatever is hot and maximize the quarter throughput factor. I dunno, go to an arcade now and the games all seem to fit in the same categories. First person gun (Time Crisis), music-sim (DDR), fighting (Street Fighter), racing, other random sim games (like that snowboarding game with a board you stand on) and classic games. Where's today's Marble Madness? 720? Elevator Action? Games just aren't very creative anymore.

I could go on and on about arcade games. I dunno, I never really got into computer games, don't have a new console, but I've always gone to arcades. So yeah, I've seen a lot of things and have lots of strong opinions. What a loser I am.

Anyway, one of my hobbies the past month has been this arcade game emulator called Mame32. It's incredible - you can play the actual game ROMS. It's like playing the actual arcade games on your computer. I've been playing from time to time the 1942 series (including one Japanese version - you fight *against* the Allies! Wacky), Double Dragon, Gauntlet, and Arm Wrestling (another very original game). Street Fighter is too hard to play with a keyboard.

Seriously though, I could go on for pages about arcade games. I should stop.

For some reason, I haven't been able to connect to ESPN.com this past week at work. It's shocking and disturbing how much that interferes with my lifestyle.

Our pastor made an interesting claim last Sunday. Regarding the idea, love the sinner, hate the sin. He was saying how Scripturally, that's untrue - God hates the sinner. But it's complex. Because He simultaneously loves sinners as well. But yeah, if you read Scripture, you find that God doesn't just hate sin, but hates sinners as well.

I haven't looked for this enough to know if it's true, but I appreciated the spirit behind saying it. That being, don't dumb down Scripture, just say it like it is. It's more complex to say God both hates and loves sinners, but if that's Scriptural, say it.

I dunno, my mantra is, life is complex, so it's only right that if Christianity is true, not just epistemologically true but true to our experience, that it be complex as well. When we dumb down Christianity it *might* make things more accessible. But when we say it like it is I think it's way more relevant.

Uh, believe you me, this page is not deep. Don't be deceived.

Someone was saying to me how they don't think of me as skinny. That's so utterly bizarre to me. I've said this countless times, but I was so skinny for so long growing up that it's inextricably ingrained in my self-perception. I don't think I'll ever be able to think of myself as anything but skinny.

I dunno, I'm healthy about it I think, but yeah, I do think a part of me understands the heart of anorexia and chronic plastic surgery indulgers. There's just something about the heart of your self-perception that's really hard to change, regardless of the amount of external fiddling you do. And that's odd to me, how your self-image isn't necessarily linked to your external appearance.

What's weirder for me is that I think I know how I look, but my self-image still runs contrary to it. Like, I don't think I'm unhealthy about this stuff. I've gained a bit of weight and I'm way more comfortable with my body now. It's just, at heart, I still think of myself as unbearably skinny. Even if I know that's not how I look, I feel like that's who I am. And I'm not sure that will ever change.

So yeah, kinda gets back to the Eddie pre-surgery thing. But yeah, people who have met me more recently and who don't think of me as skinny (not just thin but skinny) I dunno if they fully understand who I am. I just think in certain fundamental ways I still act like I'm a skinny guy. It gets to the heart of who I am. So people who have never seen my like that, I dunno, it's kinda weird to me.

But whatever, no one fully understands anyone so I guess it's irrelevant.

So here was one interesting idea in GoNY. Wasn't original to the movie, wasn't even explored particularly well in the movie, I'm just saying it reminded me of this.

Sometimes, there's a fine line between love and hate. Like, I'm sure we all know examples where someone cheats on the other and then the other hates the cheater passionately. And I dunno, like in the movie, sometimes there are people where you can only love them or hate them, nothing in between.

I know this is just me, but I find that fascinating. Like, you'd think that love and hate are on the opposite ends of the emotion spectrum. But if that were true, that immediate switch from love to hate wouldn't happen, I think. Just, if you were accustomed to loving someone for a long time, you'd think it would take at least some time to move from love, to indifference, then to hate. But no, it switches immediately.

So I think sometimes there are two parts to emotion. One part being intensity and the other like a good/bad switch. And it's easier to switch the second one than the first. That's how the cheating phenomenon works. I dunno, I'm probably wrong but yeah, movies like that where they hate each other and then switch in the middle of an argument to love I completely buy. I dunno, I just feel like it's real by experience.

Wait, you're joking, right Henry? I can't tell. I hate Cranium passionately. They should call it Brain Stem - it's only fun for people without higher level brain capacity. At Toys R' Us they should file it under "Games For Dumb People". Am I being harsh? Yes. Yes I am.

I'm actually leaning towards voting for Arianna Huffington, even though I'm philosophically opposed to the recall, Gray Davis sucking and all. Is that bold? I dunno. What I like is that she's the only candidate I've heard with the sand to (rightly) take on Proposition 13, specifically in regards to businesses and property valuations. Which is way more realistic than those people who say they will balance the budget with few cuts and no new taxes. Seriously, Prop 13 needs to be dealt with for any real long term solution I think.

And I like her response to someone who asked if such a policy might scare away businesses owners who are already thinking of fleeing California due to taxes and operating costs. (as reported by Fox News via Jeff Wells at MoviePoopShoot.com. Third hand news information through a movie web site. Nothing but the best at dannychai.com) She got ticked off. "You're saying we need corruption and favoritism to keep businesses here? That's the kind of mindset that has created so many problems in this state." 100% agree.

I dunno, I can't express how much I'm against Prop 13. That colors a lot of how I feel I guess. We'll see we'll see. At this moment, no on recall, AH for recall candidate. Why not. It's a circus anyway.

The thing about Gangs of New York is, the DVD is awful. Like the menu animations are terrible. And you actually have to switch discs in the middle of the movie. What is this, 1998? What the heck? And the switch is in the middle of a scene. I dunno, it's an awful DVD, but a great movie.

I still can't get over Daniel Day-Lewis' presence in the movie. That's something that transcends acting I think. I thought Jude Law had incredible presence in The Talented Mr. Ripley also. Just radiated charisma. This is odd but, I also though Jennifer Lopez had a lot of presence in Out of Sight, a great movie. I'm really not sure if it was her or the direction, but yeah, I thought she had great presence.

Not that you care, but by far the best writers on jack.html are Scott and Janice. Both of their last entries were amazing. I'd rank Henry and Andrew next. Scott and Andrew by the way are only children.

So we played Pictionary the other night, after the boys beat the girls at Taboo. SN. Dunno if I've ever said this before, but yeah, I'm a fair Taboo clue giver. What I think I'm good at is guessing. I think I'm a fairly big asset to a team in that way. It's just like Trivial Pursuit before Genus V. When you play enough, you get used to the Trivial Pursuit / Taboo ways. Like with Trivial Pursuit they frequently stick in little puns in the question that give away the answer. With Taboo, yeah, you just get a sense after a while of what people are trying to get at. I'm a loser.

OK, so the interesting thing with Pictionary was this. Again, it was guys against girls. So, at least at first, on All Plays, the guys would always start just drawing the item of interest, or the defining characteristic. Whereas women spent time establishing context. So like, with the word "skate", guys draw a shoe with wheels, girls draw the entire body first. With cow, guys draw the udder first, a defining characteristic, girls draw the entire animal, spots, and then hone in. I dunno, it was just interesting.

I'm not sure how much this says about the difference between the sexes but I do think it says something. Have you heard this before? Ask someone to look at their fingernails. What guys do is put their palm facing them, and bend the fingers over so they see their nails facing down. Girls turn their palms facing away from them and look at the entire hand, nails facing up. What they say is that guys just care about looking at the nails, girls want to see their nails in the context of their hand. I dunno, interesting to me.

Gangs Of New York: 4 stars. I dunno, I really liked this movie. I can't remember what other people thought, I think they were mixed, but yeah, I thought it was fantastic. Interesting ideas, incredible sets, good acting. Daniel Day-Lewis had incredible presence in this movie. Can you teach that, acting wise? Presence? I dunno, it was fairly amazing.

I was thinking about the common denominator behind my good friends and I think it's this: it's vitally important to me that people are good at heart. I dunno if that makes sense. But you know, everyone sucks in different ways. It's just, some people are fundamentally good but weak, and others are just bad at heart. None are beyond the reach of God's redemptive power, and it's not a permanent thing, but in terms of who I click with most, it's those with good hearts, I think.

It goes without saying that the heart I admire most is Jieun's. I think this was part of my bed convo with Dave? But yeah, her capacity for good frequently astounds me. I dunno, it's just amazing sometimes.

I think I have a problem. I've been playing No Limit Texas Hold 'Em like crazy. 6 times in the past few weeks with people, and this week I've been playing online with Slim. Last night played online with Dave, Joe, and Simon. Good times. This is after having gone to our church's guys' Poker Night. I dunno, not good.

I'm getting better. Like, I won poker night last night. But I dunno, I still suck. I've been losing tons of play money online. Which is good I guess, just, there's no temptation to play for real money. If I can't even win with play money, what's the point. But yeah, the reason I suck is still the 1% problem, that 1 out of every 100 times I react emotionally instead of logically that wipes me out. Just like in life. I dunno, you can learn a lot about life through Texas Hold 'Em and Dr. Mario. At a geometric rate.

BTW, the cntl-enter thing to surround what you type in the location bar with "www." and ".com" works in Firebird. Shift-enter surrounds with "www." and ".net". cntl-shift-enter surrounds with "www." and ".org". No one cares.

"When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation -- thought and life are one." - Thomas Merton

Egad, that quote (from this month's Christianity Today) hit me like a load of bricks. Just the thought substituting itself for life thing. I think that's exactly what I'm doing.

I think there are 3 levels of being - existing, thinking, and truly living. Something Eddie once said (actually has said many times) sticks with me a lot, how for a long time in his life he just existed. He didn't think at all. You know, I think the past couple years I've done the same thing, I've just existed, not thought. Actually, I need to qualify that. This applies mostly in regards to vocation and calling I guess. But yeah, no real substantive and conclusive thought about it, just kinda did my thing, went on existing.

I think very recently I've been thinking more about vocation, but that's all it's been, just thinking. And practically, there's no real difference between that and just existing. Either way I'm just paralyzed into doing whatever I'm doing. I just feel vaguely more unsettled about things when I think about. But no change, nothing like that.

I dunno, I don't want to do that anymore. I've been saying this over and over, but I don't want to settle anymore, I want to be deliberate, I want to feel called, I want to know why I'm doing something and really do it - I want to live. To reach a point where thought and life are one I guess. That's an awesome phrase. "Thought and life are one." But what does that mean practically? No clue.

I know this rambling makes sense to no one but me so sorry, sucks for you. I guess what it is is this. Kinda at least. I don't think I've been ever been deliberate about my future. (Outside of church and marriage. Which I guess are 2 huge things. But whatever.) That's why I settle, I just kind of sidle into things. That goes with the schools I went to, the jobs I've had, whatever. And I dunno, I want to be more deliberate about things.

Maybe this is heretical but whatever. I've been thinking about it and you know, I think I like Zachary's and Pizza Chicago in the Bay Area better than the real Chicago pizza at Giordano's. I remember the first time I went to Giordano's with the Hong clan in '00 I was a little underwhelmed, but I attributed that to unreasonably high expectations on my part. But having gone again, I dunno. My thing is, I like what I like, and I'm sorry, but I just like Z and PC better. Maybe I'm missing something.

The hot dogs and Potbelly's lives up to the hype though. Yum yum.

As you may or may not know, my family wasn't a typical Korean one in many ways. I've mentioned the English speaking thing before I think. The other thing was the way roles worked. I dunno how accurate this is, but my impression is that in other families, the father was somewhat distant, and the mother more engaging. It was the opposite in my family. Not that my mom was not loving or emotionally cold or anything, far from it, she was great. It's just in terms of personality and roles, if that makes any sense at all. Probably not.

So I wonder a lot if and how that affected me. I think it did. Like here's an example. When we were kids, there was only one TV in the house, and when there was a disagreement about what to watch, my sister would win out at least as much as me. I want to say more. So we got stuck watching lame shows like Land Of The Lost a lot. The point is, we interacted as equals, I think, and I'm going to say she was even "stronger" than I was, personality wise. Definitely more stubborn.

I just wonder how that happened, if it's just a pure personality thing or the way my parents were came into play at all. I dunno, I still remember being shocked when I first met Dave and Tina. They were the same age as us but the way they interacted was so radically different. Like she was so deferential, called her oppa, all that kind of stuff. It was just completely shocking.

I'm rambling. I dunno, I just wonder how much the way my family was related to how I am, like, why I want to be the "weak" leader, why I want to be upfront about being weak or whatever. I dunno, I think it frustrates Jieun because that's not how Korean families work. Korean men are supposed to project strength. But I dunno, is that right? Is that what I should do? Anyway, yeah, just random stuff I'm mulling over. It's just really interesting to me how much women want to feel secure, how that drives a lot of how they interact with men, and how men are supposed to address that.

I'm delirious. My buddy Benadryl has turned on me. Et tu, Benadryl? Et tu?

Benadryl: My best friend.

Uh, dunno who this is but someone from www.chp.edu seems to have that worm that's going around and you're sending me a bunch of junk. Anyone know someone who works at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh? Do a virus scan. You're infected.

I feel like I just fought a war.

So last night during small group, my entire body broke out into hives. It's very odd. Nothing like this has happened to me since I was a little kid. A long time ago, I got hives after eating (I believe) plums and it was so bad I had to go to the hospital. So I've avoided plums (it's the skin than gets me) since then and everything's been fine. No clue what set it off last night. Everything I ate, I normally eat so not sure what it could have been. Just odd.

Anyway, it was surreal, because it all happened during Bible study. I'm trying to lead this study, and meanwhile I watch these spots appear and grow on my arms and a warm, itchy tingling sensation engulf my chest, back, legs, and neck. I dunno, it's hard leading a study when all you want to do is rip off your epidermis.

Anyway, it's good knowing doctors. There was one there last night and she gave me good advice, like taking Benadryl (the fastest acting antihistamine) and a cold bath. I'm feeling better now, just really groggy from the Benadryl. Not that anyone cares.

It's interesting what leadership styles people jive with. My style I think has always been, be the "weak" leader. So like when I lead a Bible study for example, I put my weaknesses up front when sharing. It's always the first thing I talk about.

I'm finding that doesn't resonate with everyone, they like their leaders to be a bit more "strong". Jieun's actually kind of like this in regards to our marriage. So like, she kind of doesn't want to know my weaknesses in certain ways. If I'm driving and lost, for example, she doesn't want to know. She literally wants me to lie about it, pretend that I know where I'm going. Or if I'm unsure about anything, she doesn't want me to tell her.

I dunno, that's interesting to me. So figuring out how to be the best "leader" in different aspects of my life, I dunno, I'm still working that all out.

I think an easy temptation (dunno if that's the right word) for Christians is to get lost in a cause as opposed to actually loving people. Putting yourself behind some cause is an easier thing to do than the messy business of actually loving people.

I'm against that. So I'm against the Alabama justice guy and the people who support him. I dunno, just my opinion. Who really cares about a monument? Does it change anything practically? No. But people want to make a stand because it's easier to stand behind a cause than to actually love people.

I'm against certain opponents of abortion for the same reason. Whatever your stand, just the passion some Christians have against abortion to me doesn't make sense. Like, why do Christians not have the same passion against world hunger? Where are the radical world hunger activists? So yeah, I dunno, I think it's about more than the issue itself, it's about identifying with a stand because that's an easy thing to do.

Anyway, yeah, like with a lot of things, when I turn the lens on me I find myself guilty also. In different ways. Like when I put the focus on being polite or considerate instead of actually loving people, I think I'm doing that. Getting lost in an abstract cause of being/doing right than actually being motivated by love. I dunno, maybe that doens't make sense to anyone but yeah, we're going through Colossians in small group and the last study just emphasized that, where our motivations lie. And I think a lot of times I'm motivated more by doing "right" than on being loving. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this but yeah, whatever, it's on my mind.

Jieun's been finding some white hairs on my head lately, which I find kind of disturbing. Not that they're the first. It's weird but I had tons of white hairs in high school. Then when I got to college, all of a sudden they all disappeared. Apparently they're slowly coming back. How does that happen? I guess a hair turning white isn't permanent? The follicle reverts or something like that?

I remember after my mom went through chemo, when her hair started growing back it came out incredibly soft and black. It was amazing. For some reason that memory really sticks with me. Something about new beginnings I guess.

One of Hanah's friends said her favorite pizza place in Chicago was Pizzeria Uno. I thought that was odd. Just, it's a national chain, how can it be the best?

Anyway, the chain doesn't seem to be doing well, at least in California. Both the Cupertino and the Santa Clara stores are gone, replaced by the Rib Crib and China China, respectively. We found out the hard way, driving to both in an attempt to use a coupon (buy one get one free). Oh well.

Got together with some jr. high / high school friends tonight. No limit Texas Hold 'Em. We played by my house rules I mentioned before, and it works pretty good. I think it's a good way to run a game.

It's kind of odd hearing about people I haven't seen since 8th grade. I wonder what they're up to. I wrote about this before, but a couple years back I saw this girl that I hadn't seen since 5th grade and our reactions when seeing each other were exactly the same: you're so tall! But anyway, yeah, I wonder how they turned out.

The Rolling Stone cover story on Mary Kate and Ashley ("America's Favorite Fantasy" it says. What the heck? Sickos) is actually kinda interesting. Anyway, they're fraternal twins, not identical. But why is it that same gender fraternal twins usually look really similar? They should look as much like their other siblings as they do each other, right? But the fraternal twins I know all look really really similar. Odd.

Have you ever looked at the nutrition info at Jamba Juice? Most of the things there have around 450 calories. That's more calories than a Quarter Pounder or medium french fries at McDonald's. And all the calories are from sugar. You're basically paying for sugar and vitamins. And it doesn't even fill you up so you eat more on top of that. I dunno, it's crazy.

Freaking learn to read Henry. I never said it's cleaner you fool. I said, when you shower in the morning, you face people clean. When you shower at night, you never face people clean. So your entire post is irrelevant. I'll grant you everything you said. Doesn't matter. I'm just saying when you shower in the morning, you face people in the morning clean. Shower at night and you never face anyone clean.

Question for you though and your bed is sacrosanct ways. You're married, right? Doesn't that make your bed dirty? I dunno, just, there are certain marital activities that do that.

Yes, I went there. Sucks for you readers.

Summer of 1997 I read The Ragamuffin Gospel. It's kind of interesting, because in the middle of reading it, our family was rattled by something fairly big, and I still remember how that changed the way I read the book.

I actually didn't like the book that much. But there was something he said, not even a main point, that's stuck with me. That being, no one on earth will ever completely understand you. I have no idea why but knowing that has been a tremendous encouragement to me since then. It's not a particularly positive thing, not particularly encouraging, but for some reason, just knowing that has provided some measure of support to me.

Random.

The sad thing is, our bedroom bathroom is way dirtier than the "guest" bathroom.

I don't understand night showerers, the ones who shower right before going to bed. You realize that you sweat while you sleep right? So when you wake up in the morning, you're dirty again. You never face the world clean. And that's just odd to me. I shower in the morning because I like the feeling of facing the world clean. Why you would want to never be clean for people, I don't get.

When I was in high school, we played a lot of cards. During lunch and after school. The game we played most was that Vietnamese game, at least I think it's Vietnamese. My Vietnamese friend introduced it to us. We called it 13. Other people call it Big 2 or VC or Posoi Dos. Whatever, we played it all the time.

The way we played, it must be played with 4 players max (it was called 13 because everyone had 13 cards. So can't have more than 4 players. If only 3, you set 13 cards aside.) and since a lot of people played, we'd have several tables going, with a ranking system. So, like, if you won a game at your table, you moved on to the next table the next game. If you finished in last place (we didn't stop when someone won, we kept playing until all the places were established), you had to move down a table for the next game. The middle two stayed where they were. I dunno, it was pretty fun.

The thing is, we played differently than anyone else I know. I dunno, maybe it was Vietnamese rules or something. But in my opinion, our game was a lot more fun. Let me explain how we played.

So, to lead a round, you can play a single card, a pair, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, or any run of cards (straight) from 3 to 13. So if someone plays a run of 7 consecutive cards, you must beat it with a run of 7 higher consecutive cards. You have the match the number of cards played on the run. No full houses, no flushes. Interesting, right? There's more strategy I think. Like, say you have a run of 9, someone plays a run of 5. Do you split up your run? Or wait to play it? Interesting nuances.

There were other rules also. If you had a "triple-double", that is 3 consecutive pairs (like 4-4, 5-5, 6-6), then that beats any pair. A quadruple-double beat any triple. However, they can't be played on their own, like you can't lead off with a triple-double, you can only use it to beat a pair. Again, a little nuance that made things more interesting. Like, a 4-4, 5-5, 6-6 is super powerful if a pair is played, but if you're left with it at the end, it's almost useless. You're forced to play 3 weak pairs.

Also, a 4 of a kind could beat any 2 (the high card). So like, 4 5s could beat a 2 of hearts. The thing is, they could *only* beat a single 2, they can't beat any other card. Can't beat an Ace. Can't beat any pair or anything. Just a single played 2. But unlike the triple-double, you can lead off a round with a quadruple. So yeah, lots of interesting nuances and strategy.

I dunno, I've played a lot of Big 2 games since college and I still think our rules were the most fun. It's worth a try if anyone's interested. Which is probably no one. Did even Karen read this post? Unlikely.

Young apparently thinks I cried more during Eddie's wedding than Eddie. That's false. I didn't actually cry at all, just teared up during the hugging the parents thing. Eddie was clearly crying then. I think.

I just have to say that Charlie won my eternal respect with all he did for the bachelor party, wedding, and post wedding. It's insane. I dunno, he just deserves a lot of credit.

I'm against when things take a short term view and not a long term view. I personally think that's a reason why sports is going down the drain.

Lots of people have said this, but sports has moved more and more from being about a sporting competition to being entertainment. So like, go to the ballpark and they have a bunch of inter-inning entertainment, like dot racing, sausage racing, different stuff. It's all about entertainment. This is true at any major professional sporting event.

Short term, sure, be more entertaining, attract more people. Problem is, and again, tons of people have said this, but long term, if you present sports as just being entertainment, it becomes just one more entertainment choice. You lose what makes sports special and different and people move on to other equally compelling entertainment choices. I think that's kind of happening now. People see sports as just another thing to do, like a movie, like whatever. So they treat it as such, not something special.

I really think boxing is going to die for similar reasons, and not just the corruption. It's always been corrupt. But a while back they decided to take the short-term route with pay-per-view. Have people pay to see it, make tons more money. In the short term. Problem is, by limiting the access so much, you no longer gain young fans. That's a key - people become sports fans for life early on and if you miss that window, the opportunity is gone. I think boxing is missing it, and the repurcussions won't be fully felt until years from now, when the kids who care nothing about boxing grow up and the old fans die. Even now, I mean, who really cares about boxing besides a few old people? I was watching this Ali documentary and it's way different from when he was boxing, when everyone cared, he was the biggest figure in sports, and everyone saw Howard Cosell covering his fights.

There was this debate about the whole Kobe thing recently, and whether it might be good for the NBA. Some argued that it is, and again, I think that's a short term view. The NBA has all been about the short term view. Like, they decided in the 80s to base their marketing more on particular players, less on teams. Worked in the short term. Problem is, when those players, especially Jordan, move on, the NBA lost everything it had based its marketing on and had to start over. I think that's partly why the NBA has struggled popularity wise the past few years.

As far as Kobe goes, I don't buy that any publicity is good publicity. I dunno, I believe in the power of families and I do believe that bad publicity turns families off from the NBA. And those repurcussions are felt in the long term, not the short term. I dunno. All of this is out of my butt but whatever.

What I've been wondering recently if we're in danger of doing that in the church also. It's clear that church should be cultural relevant. I just worry that we go too far, kind of present it as just another thing to cater to certain needs of individuals. So that if it doesn't do it for them, people just move on.

I dunno, the church is not just another thing to make people feel good about themselves. It's not a support group. It's not a self improvement group. It's special in that it celebrates the truth, you know? I just think we need to be sure that we emphasize what's special about the church, not try overly hard to be like other things.

What on earth am I talking about? I just bored myself. Egad.

I'm glad though that it started out hard. I dunno, just more than maybe anything else in my life I can be sure now that if it goes well, it's 100% God's doing, and that's good for me.

So I've played No Limit Texas Hold 'Em 3 times in the past 2 weeks, and I'm starting to get a feel for it.

One thing I realized is that it's way harder to bluff in real life than on TV. Two reasons. One, since the stakes are way lower (or nonexistent), people are less hesitant about matching crazy bets. Secondly, newbies don't know what they're doing and people stay in way more than they should. So it's really difficult to bluff someone out. Like Adrian the other day stayed in until the end with a 6 and a 7. Huh?

The other thing I realized is that I play poker like I live life. Since it's easier, I'll describe how I play poker. I play logical, sound poker almost all the time, but it's punctuated by these rare occasions when I'm completely and illogically driven by emotion. As it turns out, in the end it doesn't matter that I'm logical and sound 99% of the time. The 1% emotional outbursts wipe me out. Just like in life.

I'm also forming strong opinions on how a no limit game should be run. If it's being played for money. And that is, they should be divided into 1 hour (or any other reasonable) blocks. At the beginning of each block, people should start out with the same amount of money. So if you lost money in the last block, you can buy back in, and if you won, you must sell the excess. And if you get wiped out in a session, you can't buy back in until the next session. I think things work out best that way.

I think I'm growing, a little bit.

Like I keep saying, the theme of my life is take the easy road. So like, everything I get involved with, it's easy for me. Programming, it's easy. Doing music stuff at church, easy. Nothing I've been involved with has really been hard, or at least, nothing I've stuck through with.

Anyway, I'm currently involved with something that's been really hard, just a struggle every single week. Basically, my natural ability isn't enough. Predictably, I wanted to give up. But with Jieun and others' help, I was encouraged to stick through with it. I dunno, find a small measure of hope in that. It feels like progress.

This and basketball and maybe some social interaction things are possibly the only things in my life that I do that don't come easy. And this particular is significant because it has spiritual ramifications. It's just one of the first times in a long while when I've really had to depend on God for things to go well, not being able to depend on my own ability at all. And that's kind of exciting.

Really hard though. I'm afraid I'm gonna burn out.

I'm not evil. Just stupid.

I loved Scott's last entry. I dunno, I just relate a lot. Except for me, it's less that I'm motivated by fear of failure and more guilt, which is similar but different.

The difference between Scott and myself I think is that I'm profoundly lazy. At least, I used to think so, but I've been questioning that like I wrote before, in regards to how I'm gungho about church and stuff, just nothing else. What it might be is that nothing has captured my passion enough for me to see it as worth the effort. So my life has always been take the easier road.

Have I ever explained why I dropped pre-med and went CS? Do people even know I was pre-med? I'm actually just one (P Chem) class short of fulfilling the premed requirements. That's a heck of a lot of classes and labs I took for no reason. In the end, I just didn't think it was worth it. I wasn't passionate enough about it to stick with it. And I saw an easier way, CS. So I took it. But I don't think, if I'm honest with myself, that it was ever that I was passionate about CS. It was just easier than the med thing and I was lazy.

That's the story of my life I think. I'm motivated by a fear of failure and guilt. But because I'm not passionate about anything I take the easiest road I can that's still acceptable. And I dunno, that's a sucky way to live.

It is accurate that your wedding was (by far) the best planned wedding of any wedding I've been to. But come on, it's not like we did nothing. We set up, broke down and moved equipment, returned tuxes, shipped stuff to you, brought stuff to your parents, random stuff like that. One of us did the strip tease. I dunno, that counts for something. Relative to other weddings pretty trivial but come on, give us something.

One of the lasting legacies of Henry's wedding is the leftover alcohol. One of my "responsibilities" was to take the leftover stuff home, where it sat untouched for years. Recently I started using the vodka as rubbing alcohol, to sterilize stuff. I had been using it the other day when our worship pastor came by and I think saw it sitting open in the bathroom. I wonder if he was questioning what I do when I'm home alone. Whoops.

I finally got around to starting that Zakaria book. It's awesome. I dunno, I'm just on the 1st chapter and it's already inspired tons of thoughts.

Here's just one. So he traces a brief history of liberal democracy and gives credit to Christianity for being, unintentionally, one cause of it. What happened is that the strength of the church acted as a check against the power of various states, and in the process of limiting the power of monarchs the idea of personal rights arose. It's quite fascinating.

At any rate, he says something interesting, that the organization of the early Christian church was very loose. There wasn't a rigid hierarchy and the local churches were more or less independent. What he says is that it's this very lack of organization that caused the church to flourish in the beginning.

He also notes the Reformation as being significant in the rise of liberal democracy also, where the reformers acted as a check against an overly powerful and corrupt Catholic church. And that this was a good thing, as far as liberal democracy goes. (Also interesting and refreshing to me, he correctly notes that Luther and other reformers were closer to fundamentalists than liberals in modern terms.)

I thought this secular political analysis was fascinating. A friend asked me a while back whether I thought denominations were, essentially, sinful. And I didn't know. It seems like it's bad, it's division in the church, etc. etc. And I kept thinking about the Mormons, and how in Salt Lake City I was so impressed by the power and efficacy of a completely centrally controlled religion. I just bemoaned the fact that much of Christianity lacks this efficaty and power because it's so fractured.

I think I'm changing my mind. I think Zakaria is right in both cases, even more than he says. I think Christianity flourished at the start and after the Reformation because it went against a central hierarchical structure. And it helped along liberal democracy which improved the human condition.

So I now think the somewhat fractured nature of Christianity is a good thing, I'm going to say it was God's intent. Jesus could have spent a lot of time organizing structure when he was here (bodily), but he didn't. And you have God doing things like transporting Philip to random places to preach the gospel. I think this loose structure was God's intent. It's what caused the church to flourish from the beginning and I'm going to say it causes the kingdom to increase better even now.

My claim is, the LDS won't be able to sustain itself this way for much longer, with its rigid structure. What's a strength now will become a weakness later when (if?) it reaches a certain size. That's my claim, I guess based on the example of the Catholic church.

So yeah, I dunno, there are clearly bad things about denominations but I think from a larger Kingdom perspective, it's a good thing. I think it was God's plan. That's my claim.

Are humans the only species that wipes their butt after defecating? Do other primates do that?

I don't want to be a traitor to my mother culture, but I don't get Korean fashion sense at all. There was this Korean guy on the plane wearing dress shoes, striped slacks (not pinstriped, I'm talking alternating black/gray stripes), held up with an alligator skin belt, a short sleeve checkered green button down, topped off with a beige fishing hat.

I dunno, I just don't see how in any culture that look could be seen as fasionable.

But whatever, this is coming from fashion clueless guy. I just recently found out that Aldo shoes are somewhat trendy and popular among men. Gus mentioned it and since then I've found out that quite a few men have a pair. Like Joe wears Aldos. I literally didn't know that a company called Aldo existed a month ago. I dunno, I know nothing.

I had a couple realizations recently about myself. Not sure if they're fully consistent but whatever, consistency is overrated.

The first is this: I think I'm uninteresting. I'm speaking relatively here. I dunno, I just look at my friends, and I think they're more interesting / fun to be with / entertaining than I am. I dunno, just my claim. It's more pronounced / evident in person, I think. I'm going to say this page is reasonably (again, relatively) interesting, at least 50% of the time. But in person, yeah, I dunno.

Here's the other thing. I was thinking about a few people I've been having trouble becoming friends with. I'm using a loose definition of friendship, not like super close or anything, just casual friends, but even that, I dunno, it's been hard. Anyway, it's not that I don't like them or vice versa. And the problem isn't that we don't "click" - I think I'm friends with plenty of people with whom I don't click. It's something else.

And I'm thinking about it and basically it just comes down to the fact that they're cool. It's just really hard for me to be friends with cool people. Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that for me to be friends with cool people, it takes more initiative on their part for it to happen. It's not that I don't want it to happen, I just am not able to make it happen.

What's interesting to me is the fact that this bothers me now, that it's hard to become friends with these people. It bothers me because it's the exception. And that's like a 180 turnaround from high school. Up until high school, maybe even later, the default in my mind was that I could not be friends with people. There was just a small minority with whom I thought friendship of any kind was even possible.

Somewhere between then and the present that changed so now by default I expect to be able to become friends with people and get a little troubled when it's hard to do. That turnaround is fascinating to me.

I attribute only 10% of that to my social growth. The rest I think is indicative of my social environment. Just, I think my social spheres are really small now, and I've limited my exposure to "cool" people. Dunno if that's mostly good or mostly bad, still thinking about it. But I do think it deludes sometimes into thinking I'm more than I am and I need experiences like these to jar me back to reality: I'm cool and I never will be. And I have no problem with that.

Boring.

I caught the last half of Minority Report the other day.

I think I gave it a positive review before but I take it back - it sucks. It just makes no sense. Even the first time, the last climactic scene between Tom Cruise and Max Von Sydow (I think that's him) I thought made no sense, purely within the movie's system. I now see how it's possible, but it just brings up more confusing issues.

I think my basic problem with the movie is this: it tries to deal with both predestination and free will but does it in a wholly unsatisfying way that makes no sense. Essentially, they just completely ditch predestination, so the movie has nothing interesting to say about it. It's pointless. I dunno, I could go on and on about it, but yeah, the movie affirms free will always, so anything it might say about predestination is a sham, because there is no predestination in the movie, and once you lose that, you lose anything interesting. You're left with, people are more and less likely to take particular actions over others. That's not interesting, that's obvious. Boring.

I was saying this to Dave but yeah, like I always say, 12 Monkeys is the only sensical movie ever made about time travel. I think Matrix Reloaded is the only sensical movie ever made about free will / predestination. I hope Revolutions doesn't screw it up.

Xanga-style entry.

I'm a fairly cheap guy but for some odd reason I indulge in food. Not always. I'm generally cheap with food also. But I like food, and depending on the cirucumstance, am willing to pay a lot for good food.

I think the trip was a successful one food wise. We had our Chicago hot dogs, which Jieun and I both love. Tried an Italian beef sandwich, little too soggy for my taste. Chicago deep dish pizza - good stuff. One jewel - the last day we had sandwiches from Potbelly's. Delicious. They load tons of meat on bread, toast it (in a way better than Quiznos) and add many tasty condiments (including pickled carrots - interesting), all for $3.79 a sandwich. I dunno, I'm a fan.

The only thing I would like to have tried is a good Chicago steakhouse. But whatever, I'm pretty happy.

So one night we ate at Charlie Trotter's, which is sort of a foodie mecca. My opinion: great food but too expensive. I'm glad I went but don't think I'll ever go again. I had read all these reviews online that warned about the snooty service but our server was actually quite personable and down to earth, while still knowledgeable and attentive. It was a good time.

In terms of the food I liked the seafood courses better than the meat. In particular we loved this one dish, a skate terrine with caviar, mussels and clams, in a tomato broth with saffron infusion. I have no idea what either a terrine or infusion is, but it was delicious. The amuse gueule (an ahi dish), and this other hamachi dish were also quite good.

Their dessert philosophy is also interesting. It's a prix fixe meal but the desserts aren't fixed - they essentially keep bringing you different desserts until you want to stop. And the way they do it is, they apparently just make random desserts in the kitchen and the staff brings out whatever's ready. Kind of interesting. We ended up sharing 6 desserts, in addition to this sorbet.

Also interesting I thought were some bold combinations in the meal. So like, after the meat courses they brought out this pineapple and ginger sorbet. Again, delicious, the strong ginger added an interesting kick to the sweet-tart pineapple. The bold part is, they also added spices like thyme, pepper and sea salt, and topped it off with olive oil (dunno what to call it but ultra virgin olive oil - it's $100 a bottle). Bold. But it worked, I thought.

Another bold thing that worked - they topped a flan with goat cheese. It was actually delicious. And this rice pudding in a chilled peach soup - incredible. This and the tomato broth thing were similar in that the broth/soup was relatively simple but absolutely delicious.

Other things didn't work. Only one I can remember was one dessert, I'm going to say it was chocalatey with a sorbet, included a cilantro sauce. It just clashed in a weird way. But yeah, definitely interesting.

Anyway, yeah, delicious meal, but too much money. I dunno, I think I liked better the Lobster Iron Chef meal at Masa's. And I dunno, I don't think the meal we had at Julia's Kitchen in Napa was that much worse, and it was way less expensive. So, glad we went, doubt we'll ever go again.

You know, come to think of it, seafood seems to make a greater impression on me in general. Like here. Ron Seigel's lobster dishes. I love the origami sea bass and black pepper mussels at Straits Cafe. Can't really think of a meat dish that made that kind of impression.

Not that anyone cares.

When I was first learning to ride a bike, I'd practice going up and down the street, on the sidewalk. One of those first times, I lost my balance and my bike ended up on my next door neighbor's immaculate lawn. They were a nice retired couple. The wife, Helen, would sometimes come out when we got off the school bus and give everyone popsicles. Nice woman.

But at that moment all she saw was some kid with a bike on her lawn and I remember her yelling, "Get off of my lawn!!!" For some reason, I still think about that to this day, just how enraged she was. I wasn't trying to do anything bad, wasn't trying to mess up her lawn. It's just, I was still learning how to ride a bike and I lost control. She didn't understand that, she just thought I was some punk kid, and that deeply troubled me.

I think stuff like that still bothers me, even now. When people get upset at me and think I'm malicious. It's vitally improtant for me that people realize that it's not evil intent, it's just cluelessness, inexperience, or something like that. Why is it so important? I'm not sure. But it is. When people get angry at me and think I'm evil, it drives me crazy.

Our apartment smells more when Jieun is away. It's not that it's more filthy. I put dirty clothes in the laundry. I do the dishes. Everything's in its right place. It just smells more. It's most noticeable when I first walk in the apartment.

I don't understand that. I fully recognize that guys just inherently smell more than girls. There's a term for it in Korean, roughly, "bachelor smell". I just don't understand how girls neutralize that smell. That makes no sense to me. I can see how they don't make it worse. But how do they neutralize it? Guys' smell doesn't just disappear. How exactly does that work?

I dunno, just one more reason I dislike it when Jieun's away.

I seriously hope John's wife's powers of odor neutralization are powerful. I'm going to call her Glade.

Dave made an interesting comment about T3, which I haven't seen. He said it's one of the best 3rd movie of a series ever. I think he said top 3? Maybe top 5. Anyway, it made me think, what are the best 3rd movies?

Here are some 3rd movies I've seen. Austin Powers in Goldmember, Back To The Future Part III, Beverly Hills Cop III, Clear And Present Danger, Die Hard: With A Vengeance, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Karate Kid III, Lethal Weapon III, Return Of The Jedi, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Supercop. I'm going to say the top 3 are IJ and the Last Crusade, Supercop, and Clear and Present Danger. Dunno about worst. Actually, I think I saw Police Academy 3 also. That would definitely be the worst. But I think I've avoided a lot of the bad 3rd movies out there. Call me crazy, but I was even fine with Lethal Weapon III and Karate Kid III. I dunno.

I wonder if animals dream. Actually, no, I'm fairly certain they do. We used to have a cat, and the way it would twitch about sometimes when it was sleeping, I'm pretty sure it was dreaming. What I wonder is if they get disoriented when they wake up from a dream. Are animals able to distinguish dreams from reality? I wonder.

To answer why Emme doesn't talk, that's actually a really interesting question in epistemology. And the short answer is, she doesn't have a soul. I think like 17th century philosophers argued that communication, specifically verbal communication, is the only criteria we have for knowing that something has a soul. And that's how we "know" that humans have souls and animals don't. The fact that we can talk.

Some people were hardcore about it, arguing that mute humans didn't have souls. That's going too far. But generally, language is a key indicator of a lot of different things, I think, especially the existence of a soul.

I'm still thinking about what to do with my life. You know, in the background, there's always been music, as something I'm "passionate" about (relatively speaking). But I was thinking last night and I'm not even sure about that.

Here's the thing. I'm not sure if it's that I like music itself, or if it's the fact that I'm good at music that I like. I still suspect it's the first, but I'm not certain. I'm probably being overanalytical about it, but I wonder.

Just, in my mind, I want to do something I'm passionate about for its own sake, not something I like doing because I'm good at it, better than other people at it. For some reason, that makes a difference to me. And with music, is it that I like music? Or is it that I'm better than most people at it? Is that what makes me like it? Just being better than other people at it?

When I was a kid, I hated piano lessons. I remember I started to like it a lot more when I realized I was better than most people, when I started rapidly falling towards the end of the program (roughly ordered by proficiency) in my piano teacher's annual recital. So maybe it's just being better that I liked.

But then, my enjoyment of music skyrocketed when I started playing jazz in 7th grade. So there must have been something about the music itself I liked. But then again, maybe it was just that I could do something that no one else in the school could do. I dunno.

In college, I remember certain classes that I didn't like very much while I was taking them. Then I end up getting really good grades in them, and that completely changes my perspective on things. I find after the fact that I loved those classes. But I didn't really. It's just doing really well made me like it a whole lot more.

So yeah, there's no one thing in my life that I'm passionate about over all other things. The things I am somewhat passionate about, I'm good at. And I'm not sure whether I'm good at it because I'm passionate about it, or I'm passionate about it because I'm good at it. And for some reason that matters to me. I dunno, random and boring.

So we're going through a sermon series on the Psalms at church.

There's a fine line I think between being real and being self-indulgent. If that's the right term. I dunno, I respect it when people are real to how they're feeling, how they are, and don't just go along with how things are supposed to be. Who have the honesty to face up to their true emotions, something like that.

What I don't like is when it turns into self-pity and/or fatalism. Dunno if this makes any sense. Yes, this world sucks, and there's a certain nobility in being able to acknowledge that. Same with the fact that we ourselves suck. And that life in this fallen earth is inherently suffering. But I dunno, there comes a point when you can't just wallow in that knowledge but suck it up and be a (wo)man about it.

I dunno. I read this Chuck Colson commentary on Bill Bright and it was really interesting. Basically he was saying how not only did Bill Bright live well, but he died well also. He includes a quote from someone who says that God allows Christians and pagans to get cancer so that the world will see a difference in how Christians deal with it. I don't 100% agree but there's a kernel of truth in it. Yes the world sucks, yes life sucks, but realizing that alone doesn't make you noble. The critical thing is how you respond to it.

I dunno, no point as usual. Just, the Psalms are interesting, because a lot of them go on and on about how much life sucks. The thing is, while they don't necessarily end positively, they end hopefully. And I think there's a critical lesson in that. I dunno.

So I went paintballing for the first time over the weekend. I'm not sure if I'm a fan, still thinking it through. Mostly because of the last game. My problem is this: I play paintball like I do Counterstrike. And that is, with no mind towards defense. I don't hide much, just think about offense. Which means I get hit a lot. I might as well be wearing a big target out there.

The last game was the worst, a close quarters game where you're allowed to reincarnate if you get hit. I got hit a couple times and started over. Then, I got hit in the head. These players that bring their own gear have guns that shoot hard and fast. So it hurts. And if one hits you, a few more will also.

So I got pegged 3 times just above my right temple and it hurt like heckola. I immediately fell to the ground and just lay there in a sprawled position for a while, paralyzed by the shock and the pain. After minute I hear Irwin yell to me, "Are you OK?" And I thought about it, and said, "no". I wasn't OK. I dunno, it just hurt like crazy.

So yeah, I went out after that. Even being out of the game it sucked because the paint drips down into your eyes and you can't remove your mask in the war zone so my eyes are stinging and I'm tearing like crazy and just have to suck up until the game is over. Not good times. Bad times.

I ended up getting a sizable welt on my head, went down after some icing, and it's just a bruise now. I dunno, keep your head down when playing paintball I guess.

Whoa, boring entry. With no point. I dunno, I guess I just wonder why I'm like that with Counterstrike / Paintball, venturing forth offensively with no regard for safety. Because in real life, I never proceed without having tons of safeties and fallbacks in place. It's one of my faults; I'm too conscientious in regards to decision making. But the exact opposite in paintball, to my detriment. Weird.

Jieun's left town again. This time Puerto Vallarta. I have no right to complain. I did my road trip thing apart from her earlier this summer. Now she's doing hers. No matter that on our road trip, we packed 5+ guys into a (smelly) apartment. While she's "roughing it" at a Mexican resort. Not that I'm bitter.

It still kills me that people think I'm helpless without Jieun. Ohms had me over for dinner last night and gave me leftovers to eat today. Another family from church is having me over later this week. Which is fine by me. I have no pride; I'm completely willing to take pity. Pity is good. Free stuffs!

I no longer think Taiwanese food is bland. I do, however, think it's scary. Just, a large part of the ordering process involved figuring out what we would find edible, much less tasty. That's scary to me. Yeah, Korean has its own share of scary food items, but if this restaurant is any indication, in Taiwanese food the fear factor just seems more pervasive in the menu and more commonly eaten. I mean, even Henry didn't like one of the items we got (pig ear. Can you hear me now?).

So Taiwanese food: mostly positive. Not sure I'd go without a native though.

So Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life comes out today. The thing is, the first movie was called Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. So shouldn't the new movie properly be punctuated Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life?

There were times when I was growing up when I distinctly remember saying to myself, when I grow up, I will never be the way my parents are. Just in regards to certain things that I didn't like about them. Yet for all my hopes I find myself repeating all these things they do that bothered me. Which wouldn't be so bad if I was imitating the good with the bad. But I find I'm just following the trail of the bad. Like, if I had my dad's integrity and total sincerity in regards to faith, I'd be pretty happy. I don't though. But I'm picking up his bad habits I think. I dunno, I just wonder a lot how/why this is happening.

Should I write another observation about marriage? Does anyone even care? Here's the thing, it's not like I'm an expert on anything. I think I just get surprised by a lot of things in marriage just because I'm so clueless, if that makes sense. I dunno, I know nothing, and I suck. That's the point.

So here's what I've noticed. We start acting more like the other person as time goes by. With both small things, like mannerisms, and bigger things as well. So sometimes I sit and wonder, why does she do that? And I realize, I think it's because I do that. She picked it up from me. Which is sobering.

So I guess if there's a lesson, it's be the type of person you want to marry. Because in certain ways, that's who the person you marry will turn into.

According to the Merc, 18% of all dinners served at all restaurants in the U.S. come with french fries. There's something disturbing about that.

Not to say Eric is lazy, but one night last week we were figuring out if we should meet up for games and Eric says he can't stay up too late. He has to go into work early, he says. 11 AM. Everyone explodes in laughter. I dunno, I'm a lazy guy, but even I have my limits.

I don't understand why those are the only 2 possibilities, Dave. How about possibility 3: you learn to not be self-conscious with people in the "potential" camp? Yeah, maybe "impossible" but I don't see how it's more impossible than the other 2 options. And at least it's something somewhat within your control. I dunno. With God all things are possible I guess.

I think I've said this before but I don't like it when churches / modern evangelical Christianity over holify marriage. I fully realize I'm uncouth and unholy, but in this case I think I'm grounded in Scripture. Maybe I'm wrong. But yeah, listen to sermons on marriage and you'll hear stuff about how it makes you better ministers, you represent Christ and the church, all these holy things. But what about physical attraction? Desire? Where is that?

I dunno, all I'm saying is that when you read Scripture on marriage, desire is there. Paul treats marriage almost like a concession. Definitely not a command. And it's for those who can't handle their passion. The book of the Bible that's all (textually) about marriage and love is chock full of eroticism and desire.

All these other things, being coworkers, coministers, mutually encouraging, whatever, those are all good things and stuff that should happen if people do get married. I'm just saying, as to why people get married, Scripturally speaking, raw desire and attraction are a fundamental part of it. Only a part. But a fundamental one. So why whitewash it?

I dunno, maybe I'm placing too much emphasis on desire and passion and whatnot. It's just, that's what Scripture seems to say. And I don't understand how substituting what Scripture says about someting for your own ideas makes you more holy.

Random.

I think you're right, Andy. Survivor jury cares mostly about making themselves feel better.

I still think what I said is true in general, though. We can deal with people being dishonest with others. We don't like it, but we can deal with it. But we can't stand it when people are dishonest with themselves. Drives us crazy. That's my claim.

So I was flipping through the channels the other day and came across this show with Michael Card in concert. Now, I'm a fair MC fan. But I read this scathing review of him in the religion section the Merc a while back that colored my perception of him ever since. This section runs on Saturdays and includes book / music / other reviews of religious type stuff. Anyway, it was reviewing a recent MC album and trashed it, saying how, for someone with so much theological training, he had awfully trite lyrics and music. It was incredibly harsh.

So that was in my mind while watching this show and you know what? I think it's kind of true. All the new songs, the ones I didn't recognize, felt like rehashes musically. I dunno, it's just kinda sad. I think I said this before, but I've been to 3 MC concerts I think, and that was 2 too many. Doesn't matter how many new albums he comes up with, every concert sounds exactly the same. I dunno.

Phil Keaggy was playing with him though, and he was pretty dope.

The thing is, this show had tons of commercials, so I was flipping back and forth between it and WWE (aka WWF). Talk about entertainment whiplash. WWE was fairly entertaining though. Just, this one single match (an absurd 3 on 1 match) lasted like 30 mins. Utterly absurd.

I still think Vince McMahon's journey from announcer to evil owner to wrestler is one of the strangest things that's ever happened in American pseudo-sports. Bizarre.

I often think about whether my children's experiences will be the same as my own. Not that my childhood was ideal. It's just, I had a really good childhood, I think, so if my children had a similar experience, it would be a happy thing. The thing is, I just don't see that happening.

So like, we went camping this weekend. I dunno if I've ever mentioned this, but camping was a huge part of my childhood. For a long time, my family went camping at least once a year, and roughly with the same group of families every time. So I have a lot of fond memories of camping with certain people.

So with my children, I dunno if that's gonna happen. Not the camping part. We'll camp I'm sure. More the same group of families part. I just have no idea who that could possibly be, when I look at my life right now. And is it important? I dunno. I think the way we are right now, we know a good number of couples, are good friends with a decent number of couples, but I dunno if there's a core group with whom we do most things socially like my parents had growing up. I just don't know. And I dunno, it was just nice growing up with the same group of people.

Anyway, I realized that I spend a good amount of time trying to figure out how to maximally recreate my childhood experience for my kids academically, spiritually, socially, musically, and other ways. I'm not sure if this is a good thing. And I'm even less sure how possible that is. In a strange way, that makes me sad. I dunno if this makes any sense, but yeah.

Anyway, we did have a little Sunday devotional time and that made me happy. Just, that's one of the strongest memories I have of camping. Sunday mornings, when the grownups would gather in a circle around the fire and have a little worship time. They'd sing hymns and speak in Korean I didn't understand while the kids would screw around. I dunno, it was like a reassuring ritual that brought closure to the trip. It marked the last day of camping, time to go home. So in a little way, we recreated that experience this weekend and it made me happy.

Geez, boring. One random note. One afternoon while we were at a lake some animal came by and went through our food and trash. The interesting thing is, it took only a couple bites of an apple, but completely cleaned out this tub of cream cheese we had. I thought that was funny. Even animals prefer fatty foods to healthy fruits and vegetables. Random.

Reloaded note. It's my page, love it or leave it. Hopefully not too sporadically.

I find Agent Smith fascinating in regards to issues of personal identity. Another one of my favorite issues in philosophy. Basically, what is the core of a "person"? What is the criteria for saying a person is the same from one moment to the next?

The best answers involve issues of memory, and I won't get into details. The thing is, people in the past have argued (maybe some still do) that it's physical continuity that makes someone the same person. And intuitively, that's the standard we use as well. When we see someone that looks like they did before, we assume it's the same person. If they don't act the same, we assume they're having a bad day or something, or that they've changed. But we still say they're the same person, because it's the same body as before.. So in a practical sense, physical appearance is an important criteria in our judgments of personal identity.

What I find interesting is why Agent Smith maintains the same appearance. Because for a program, appearance is completely a construct, has nothing to do with the core algorithm of who/what he is. And is presumably easily changed. So why does he maintain the same appearance? What's the point of it?

Or maybe physical appearance is fundamentally important, even to programs? So like the Oracle is reluctant to change her appearance or it's some kind of punishment? I dunno, to me that's interesting.

I actually think physical appearance is fundamentally important to how people view themselves. I think it's deeper than us wanting to present ourselves in a certain way to others. I think in an important sense, how we look affects how we view ourselves, even if there's no one around. My claim is, even if we were stranded alone on a desert island, we would care somewhat how we looked. So if we were horribly scarred or something, it would affect us, besides the pain. The way we look is I think fundamentally important to us. I dunno.

You can wake up now Lorraine. Or not.

To clarify a previous thought.

There two parts to logic. One is the premises you start with. The other is logical deduction via inference. While the first one, the premises you use, may vary, the set of valid logical inferences always remains the same. So John, you're still illogical. To wit:

• "Boy I'm full. I think I'll have some more rice." Illogical.

• "I hate it when people are selfish. For example, Mr. X is always kind, generous, and self-sacrificial." Illogical.

What do you think people value more? Honesty towards others or honesty with themselves?

I was thinking about Survivor recently. It's weird but in the last tribal council, when the final two are pleading their case before the jury, the jury always really wants to see them being honest. It's weird because in Survivor, basically you have to lie to progress. There's no way around it. So if you made the final two, you must have lied to get there. The jury knows it. What they (the jury) want is honesty at the last council, want them to admit that they had to lie and deceive to get where they are.

That makes no sense to me. Everyone knows they had to lie. It's required to get that far. In fact, in many cases, at the end people actually respect people who lied well, like Richard Hatch or Rob. So why suddenly at the end do they value honesty? How on earth does that make sense? But every single season, the jury looks for that.

What I think it is is this. I don't think the jury cares that much about the finalists being honest to them, the jury. What they're really looking for is whether the finalists are honest with themselves. So someone who lied like crazy during the game but at the end is upfront about doing it, they demonstrate that they're being honest with themselves, that they realize that they were lying. Whereas someone who insists at the end that they played the game with "integrity", the jury feels like they're being dishonest with themselves, not owning up to how they actually were. I think that's what happened this past season.

That's interesting to me. And maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I think as far as Survivor goes, since people expect and even respect how people deceive others, that contestants value people being honest with themselves more than them being honest with other people.

I wonder how much of that is true in life. I suspect that it's partly true. We all lie. Partly because we're sinners. But I dunno, some of it is more subtle. Putting up fronts and layers around ourselves out of social norm or fear. We all do it, and we know we all do it. So I think that sometimes when people say they value honesty, at the heart of it, what they value is people being honest with themselves, even more so than people being honest with other people. That's my claim.

But who knows.

Two worship songs everyone should listen to: Jesus' Generation on United Live, and Blessed Be Your Name on some Matt Redman CD. Good times. Deep lyrics, but would take too long to explain.

Question about sports. Women and children, go away.

Dunno if you read Moneyball, I haven't, but some of the ideas in the book is that you can tell more about a baseball player and how successful they will be from careful statistical analysis than from traditional scouting, by looking at the player and their physical build, drills, and such. Basically, statistics tell a lot. And so, there's been somewhat of a sabermetric revolution in baseball, starting with Bill James and working it's way around. One of my favorite writers from this camp is Rob Neyer on ESPN.com.

My question is, so it's happening in baseball, why is it not happening in other sports? Will there be like a basketball sabermetric revolution? Where people start poring over basketball stats to get a better sense of a player's skill and potential? Rather than vague physical assessments, drills, and notions of upside? Or in football?

Because it doesn't happen right now. Especially with basketball. Everyone is drafted on vague notions of potential, nothing quantifiable, definitely not statistically. So my question is, is this something that will happen eventually with basketball, as it has with baseball? Or is there something special about baseball that lends it uniquely to statistical analysis?

I think it's the latter. And I think that's one thing I don't like about baseball. This caller recently called Rick Barry and was accusing a baseball player of padding his stats. Barry rightly called him out because there's really no such thing as padding your stats in baseball. The better your personal stats are, necessarily the better it is for the team. And that sucks, to me. It removes a lot of the team element. Baseball more than almost any other team sport is largely one on one, pitcher vs. batter. And it's this aspect of baseball I think that makes it so amenable to statistical analysis.

And I dunno, I like it better when you have to emphasize the team. Maybe sacrifice personal gain for the sake of the team. But anyway.

Should I share another lesson from marriage? Why not.

It's hard using logic in discussions between men and women. And it's not that men and logical and women aren't. As you know (maybe you don't) all logic is predicated on the premises. If you have faulty premises, you can reach any conclusion, for example. But yeah, the conclusions you make all depend on the premises you start with.

The thing is, what I've realized recently is that the premises we start with are often based on values, which are inherently subjective, so you can't make an objective judgment on them. So it's not a matter of objectively determining what's logical and what's not, but in dealing with the differing values.

A bad example: restaurants. I go to restaurants to eat. So all I care about is the food. Why should I care about ambience? We can go elsewhere for that. But we go to a restaurant to eat, so I care only about food. But other people value ambience, even more than the food. To me, that's "illogical", but it's not really. It's a matter of differing values, and they're both legitimate.

Or a friend was telling me how they had a choice of going to 2 places, one east and one west, and his SO didn't want to go west because she had just come from that direction. You could say it's not "logical" because driving is driving. Where you came from doesn't affect how long it takes to get anywhere else. But it's based on a value which I think is legitimate, not wanting to backtrack. I personally don't feel that way but whatever. It comes down to values. The value of distance being the only metric that matters and the psychological value of not wanting to backtrack.

So that's been a thing I've been trying to realize more recently. That it's not about logic vs. illogic, so I can't frame the discussion like that. It comes down to the premises, to the values, and that's what needs to be identified and resolved. Not that I'm good at it at all. But I'm starting to realize it more.

At what point exactly does a model become a supermodel?

It amuses me how naive kids can be. I was talking with a friend who's involved with a youth ministry and the teachers there had stumbled onto the kids' blogs where they let it all hang out, their foul language and their fouler lifestyles. Uh, not sure about the details, but yeah, they let it all hang out.

When the teachers talked to them about it, they were all shocked that they (the teachers) had found the pages. Completely shocked. Somehow they believed they could let it all out on the web and that all their friends would read it but no one else, teachers, parents, etc. would ever know about it.

How naive. I dunno. If you're gonna write on the world wide web, you have to expect that people are gonna find it. Friends yeah. But other people also. Neighbors, coworkers, teachers, even parents. It's possible they won't find it. But it's possible they will. To live in la-la-land and think only your friends will ever find it, I dunno, that amuses me.

So here's something I don't understand about the Reformed faith. Do Google search on it and you will see frequently mentioned that the Reformed faith is the most consistent Christian faith.

My question is, why is consistency such a big freaking deal? I ask this for a couple reasons. One, I rant about this all the time, but life isn't consistent. Secular philosophy consists in large part of problems, essentially inconsistencies in the way we think about the world. Life is inconsistent.

More to the point, I think Christianity is "inconsistent" in ways also. Which I jive with because life is inconsistent. Certain things are just mysteries and that's all we can really say. Like the central doctrine of the Trinity. It's rightly called the mystery of the Trinity. From a logical standpoint, it's inconsistent. You can't say it's one God and each person is just an aspect of God. That's inaccurate. You can't say each person is a God, so there are three Gods. That's heretical. Three persons, one God. It's a mystery. But true.

So if life is inconsistent, and in Christianity some central tenets are acknowledged mysteries, I don't understand why being the most "consistent" Christian faith demonstrates that it's closest to the truth.

I do applaud the Reformed faith's desire to be as close to Scripture as possible though. That's good.

You know what I find fascinating. Wet sand. Just, how is it that sand gets wet? Towels I understand. They absorb the moisture. Same with hair. But sand is just silicon, right? Tiny rocks? Discrete grains? Can sand "absorb" water? Or is sand being wet more about water binding grains together? An interparticle reaction as opposed to an intra one? I dunno, just a random thing I wonder about.

Fascinating. I can't believe the lack of fashion entries are generating the most comments. How odd.

So I looked at the Adidas indoor soccer shoes, Ben, and here's the thing. I want shoes that are a bit more versatile. So I could wear it semi-formally in the office with khakis, or just with jeans. Does that make sense? I think the Adidas I could only wear with jeans.

The Timberlands I thought I could do that, but all the feedback I've gotten from women, gays and fashionable straight men have been so negative I'm forced to reconsider. So I have no clue what to do. And until I know, I'm stuck with my '96 Nike Air Maxes. With khakis.

Why is it that gay men are more fashionable? Isn't that odd? But yeah, I take a gay man's opinion on fashion at least as if not more seriously than a woman's.

So I've been thinking about why I have no fashion sense, and part of it is inherent, but I think the roommates I've had didn't help. Henry is one of the most conservative dressers on the planet. He's against flat front pants (vs. pleated). And of course one of my first impressions of him was running into him studying out on the lawn at Stanford... in full Hilfiger gear. I'll never get over that.

John wears clogs almost all the time. And double breasted suits unbuttoned. Minus 3 buttons.

Don't get me started on Eric. If his nipples aren't showing, he's dressed up.

About the only fashionable roommate I've had in the past 5 years was Keith, but he was *too* fashionable. Just, if you're a guy and wearing stretch pants and you utilize the stretch, to me that's too tight. Not tite. Tight. For me at least. I dunno, baby steps.

There's another factor I think in my fashion cluelessness. It's that I like keeping clothes for as long as humanly possible. That's the tightwad in me. So like, the sneakers I wear I've had since about '96. My basketball shoes I've had since '94. They're vintage Nike Air Force hightops. I have this red shirt from '93. And I still wear some church T-shirts from high school.

I like to keep things forever, and don't like to buy things, so it's hard to keep up with fashion. I dunno. My closet slowly evolves with the 1 or 2 pieces of clothing my mom or sister buy for me each year but yeah, given my tendencies, I'm always behind.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I don't understand Wienerschnitzel's ad campaign at all. (I actually don't understand their name either but whatever.) Their mascot is a hot dog who's constantly on the run to avoid getting eaten. That's supposed to make me hungry?? Don't ad campaigns work better when you foster an affinity for or attachment to the mascot? Why would I want to eat something I'm fond of? I dunno. Just, one of my life principles is, when I'm eating something, the less animate it is, the better.

I think I've said this before, but I find it odd that society thinks that musicians can act, but that actors can't play music. What I mean is, we're much more accepting of musicians who go onto acting than the reverse. If they're bad, we ridicule them sure, but the idea of them acting, we don't. So like, Whitney Houston, Sting, Little Stevie, Mandy Moore, whatever, they go into acting and we think it's OK. But if an actor goes into music, I dunno, we ridicule it more.

The implication seems to be that we think acting is not as hard as playing music. And I think that's interesting.

Honestly, I have no thoughts. Work's kicking my butt from here to eternity. But whatever, love of the game.

One thought though. I'm kinda depressed. Just, I have no fashion sense. Which is fine in itself. It's just, I don't think I even have hope of getting fashion sense. So what happened is this. This weekend we went shopping for shoes, me, Jieun, and another couple whom I consider pretty fashionable.

So we played DDR yesterday with some people and they were impressed by my skills.

I dunno, I'm kinda embarrassed about playing DDR with people. It's two things. One, on an absolute scale, I'm not that good at DDR. I can do 6s and 7s sometimes, but yeah, I'm not all that good. So it's embarrassing when people say, oh you're so good at DDR. Because I'm really not.

The other thing is this, I dunno, it's kind of embarrassing that I'm as good as I am, even if in absolute terms it's not that great. Just, what am I, some high schooler in a predominantly Asian school? What on earth is someone my age doing playing DDR? I dunno, just kinda feel like a loser. But what can I do. I like it.

The 24 Hour Fitness on Lawrence is no longer open 24 hours. That sucks.

So a question. Why is it that Korean women are so good at golf? I was looking through the results of a recent LPGA tournament (don't ask me why. I have no clue) and it's insane. You have Se Ri Pak, Grace Park (Korean name Jieun - woo hoo!), Jeong Jang, Mihyun Kim, Heewon Han. Then you have the Korean Americans like Michelle Wie, Christina Kim, Jane Park, Irene Cho. I dunno, it's just bizarre.

I'll be honest, it always bothered me that Korean women did better in Olympic sports than Korean men. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, but yeah, my masculinity felt challenged a little bit. Thank God for short track speed skating and the 2002 World Cup.

Here are my favorite cheeses. Random. I dunno, I'm not a sophisticated cheese connoisseur but I do know what I like and that's all that matters.

• Goat cheese - my favorite. I've said it before and I'll say it again - Feta is not goat cheese. It can be made from goat's milk but it's not what's called goat cheese. No clue why I like goat cheese so much. It's kind of an acquired taste, I think, it kind of has this tang that people don't like sometimes. But yeah, love it. It's an essential part of a good spinach salad, and tastes good in other things also. I actually remember critical goat cheese experiences in my life. First was on a pizza at Chez Panisse cafe in high school. Yum. Most interesting in a salad was at Maya, where they make a little deep fried croquet with it. We had the cheese course at Gary Danko which was also awesome - like 5 goat cheeses to choose from. Good stuff.
• Cheddar - is that random? I dunno. I love a really good aged cheddar. Preferably undyed. At GD, they had a "vintage" cheddar. Eh. It was good, but not particularly better than just a normal good aged cheddar.
• Swiss - not really as much on its own, but this is my favorite cheese in sandwiches by far. There's nothing as good as a good ham and swiss cheese sandwich. Yum yum. La Baguette at the Stanford mall makes a ham and cheese on baguette with mayo and butter. It has off days, but when it's on, good stuff. Nothing like a good swiss in a sandwich.
• Blue cheese - in small doses. No clue how I came to like this. Actually, I know. We went to this random blue cheese "class" at Copia in Napa and I dunno, it gave me a new appreciation for it. I like it strong, but in small amounts.
• Mozzarella - also kinda random, maybe. But a really good, fresh mozzarella, I love. It's hard to find though. Those mozzarella loaves they sell in the supermarket generally aren't fresh enough. I dunno. The most interesting mozzarella thing I had was at Roy's. They made this salad with diced tuna sashimi, avocado, and mozzarella. It was just an interesting combination of flavors and textures.

I think Keith missed out on his true calling in life. I dunno, I was thinking about gifts for some reason, and Keith definitely has a gift - he can make everyone around him get into whatever he's into. Be it slang, anime, or whatever. I dunno, I'd say a hundred people could trace their Kenshin thing ultimately back to Keith.

So imagine if the thing he were getting everyone else into was Jesus. I dunno, it would be amazing, I think.

Some people (i.e. everyone) think I'm a loser for playing so much Minesweeper. And I am. Here's my question though. Is it any worse than watching TV? At least with Minesweeper, when you're done, you have a real (if meaningless) sense of accomplishment. I got a 99. Accomplishment. When you're done watching TV, what do you have? Nothing.

So that's my new life motto. "Minesweeper: Not Worse Than TV".

So my sister's into Cities and Knights of Catan now, and she says, like everyone before her has said, that you can't go back to original Settlers. Interesting. By the way, you have to read the instructions to Cities and Knights. They're hilarious. First of all, the overly reverential references to Settlers. They don't call it a game, they call it a "masterwork". Hilarious.

Also, the instructions take the time to explain that when they say "Settlers" they mean Settlers of Catan, and when they say "Cities and Knights" they mean Cities and Knights of Catan. My sister and I were having a field day with that one, the quote thing. "Hey, let's play Settlers!" "Huh? What's that?" "Oh, I'm sorry. Let's play 'Settlers' (with the finger quotes)". "Oh, Settlers of Catan. OK, let's play!" I dunno, absurd.

I'm not sure if people know this about me, but I like playing games a lot. You know, like Settlers, Bohnanza, stuff like that. I look fondly on the end of the 420 James era when Eric, Arthur and I played Bohnanza essentially every night while Keith ignored us to do other stuff. I dunno, good times.

It's sad because now, I essentially have no one to play with. I've been trying to get a Settlers game going for literally weeks. Frankly, I'm not sure it's ever gonna happen. So yeah, I'm kind of jealous of Dave and his gaming crew.

Whoa. I just got a 99 on Minesweeper. Finally broke the 100 barrier.

In other news, I got hung up on by a telemarketer today. Ouch. I can't think of a worse dis.

So here's something about women I think I'll never understand. Let's call it the Alex and Emma effect. I think that's the name of the movie. Whatever it is, it's fairly obvious, even on a superficial glance, that's it's a bad movie. What's more, it's gotten poor reviews. And Jieun and I have talked about this. We both know that the movie is, in all likelihood, bad. Despite all this, Jieun *still* wants to watch the movie.

I dunno, I'll never understand that.

Jieun literally said this phrase today: "Alex and Emma or Legally Blonde 2... decisions, decisions." Egad. Come by here, my Lord. Come by here.

Everyone in the world has been spelling her name wrong. It's Katharine Hepburn. With an 'a'. I dunno, just show some respect for the dead.

Henry asked me to list some things I've learned about marriage. I'll just list one. Something my pastor told me.

Intimacy leads to conflict. And conflict, well handled, leads to more intimacy. So marital conflict, in the form of arguments and whatever, are not to be avoided or grieved over. Assuming the goal is intimacy. Instead of trying to avoid it, the goal should be to resolve these conflicts well.

To avoid conflict is to circumvent further intimacy. And to be overly depressed about it is to not realize the role it has in furthering intimacy. It's not fun, but it's a necessary process in the growth of intimacy. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned.