Visit to New York

Over the weekend, I also visited New York City, where I ate some pretty good food (which, you know, is really the only thing I really care about when getting out of Cleveland), and took a stroll through Central Park. On the way through Central Park, we went by Sailboat Pond (the boat in the below picture is actually a radio-controlled one):


One of my favorite things to do now in the City is to stop by The Green Tea Cafe [teamap.com] for some Mango-flavored green tea with tapioca balls. It's definitely my favorite place to grab bubble tea, and you can take my endorsement to the bank, because I have tried out three of the 800 bubble tea places in New York -- so obviously, my opinion is very authoritative.

Weekend Weddings

Over Memorial Day weekend, we trekked out for a wedding in beautiful Sparta, New Jersey. Having never been to Sparta before, we had no idea what to expect. The wedding was held at the Lake Mohawk Country Club, which overlooks Lake Mohawk, and it was without a doubt, the swankiest wedding we have ever been to.


The ceremony was held right at the lake-side, then we were bombarded with a dizzying array of hors d'oeuvres (like mini crab cakes, and mini chicken cordon bleus.), which would have been plenty of food. But then there was the full meal at the reception. It was top shelf the whole way.


They also had an incredible band. I have never heard a wedding band play multiple Led Zeppelin songs at a reception and actually pulled it off before.

More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

I Was an Idiot Child

I really was an idiot as a child. There is really no question. Take my 1st grade soccer picture for instance:


I'm the Asian kid on the left, in front. Ok, what exactly was I thinking? Notice:

• I'm wearing the wrong socks.


• I'm pulling up my shorts.


• I have a bowl haircut (You know how some people have "bad hair days"? I'm having a "bad hair life".).


• Due to the obvious brain damage, I was incapable of walking on the bottoms of my feet. Walking on the sides of your feet wears your shoes out really fast.


• Apparently, when the cameraman said "smile," the six-year-old me heard, "Show me your teeth."

Archos 504: Long Term Review

A few months ago, I wrote about how I bought an Archos 504 to replace my aging MP3 player. Since then, my experience with it has generally been good. I am still happy with my purchase, and I still use the device a ton.

But as most of you know, I can find a way to complain about anything -- even when I am 99% happy with something (as I probably am in this case). So, here are the nit-picky details:

• The buttons are difficult to distinguish without looking at the player. I need to be able to operate the player while driving, which means that I can't look down at it. Early on, I started putting tape over some of the buttons, so that I could more easily distinguish between them when feeling around (see below picture).
  
  
  The buttons are all on the right edge of the face, and two rocker buttons (so, really 4 buttons total) are covered in tape right now.


• You can't hear anything while fast-forwarding or rewinding (using the regular fast-forward, or the ultra-speedy fast-forward). My old player used to play little blips while you were fast-forwarding, which gave you an indication how much farther you had to go. With this player, you have to fast-forward for a bit, then take your finger off the fast-forward button so that you can hear where you are, then fast-forward more, etc.


• The button presses don't always register. If you hit a button to skip to the next track, for instance, there will be a split second where the player is devoting all of its resources to loading the new track. If, during that split second, you hit a button, that button press won't actually get registered. It would be nice if they could fix that, because skipping several tracks in a row takes too long now.


• The player occasionally locks up. I would say that on average, this occurs about once every 100 hours that I use the player (so, not very often). But it is annoying, and I can't figure out what triggers it.

Again, though, I'm really nit-picking. Generally, I am very happy with the player. And on my trip to Europe in March, I watched tons of movies on it while I was riding on trains and buses and planes, etc.

Pressure to be Funny

Sometimes I feel a lot of pressure to be funny. Which is kind of ridiculous, because it's not like it's my job to be funny.

The pressure to amuse other people is the most acute when I am writing. I know that my previous weblog was had far more readers than this one currently does. And I'm sure that part of the reason was that I made more of an attempt to make my posts funny to read. But eventually, it got to the point where I felt so much pressure to write funny weblog posts, that it was consuming too much of my time. When I wasn't in a funny mood, I would just stare at the screen for an hour, trying to will something funny to come out. It eventually became work, instead of something I did on the side for fun, which is why I stopped for a while.

I feel the same way about email sometimes. I get the impression that some people exchange email with me, because they enjoy the funny things that I write in them. And I feel if I am not "punching up" my emails with jokes and sarcasm, they're not going to be interested in continuing to exchange email with me. Which is completely ridiculous, because I'm sure that they're writing me because they like me, and not just because they want to be amused. Right?

It often feels like the comedian inside me is really a character that I play in order to prevent people from seeing how boring I am. I need to get out of that mindset. It's not like I'm going to make an effort to not be funny. But I need it to be more organic, instead of something that I work for.

Bryan's Questions of the Week

Looks like DJ Bryan [blogspot.com] is starting up his Questions of the Week [bankbryan.com] again. I have been finding them endlessly entertaining. For instance:

1. In what field are you regarded as a reliable source of expert advice, despite a complete lack of formal training?

• Carrie S: "I'm not sure how it happened, but around the age of 20, I became the person all my girlfriends came to for advice about whom they should do. In one instance, three years had gone by since I’d heard from one of my friends, and then I got a txt on my phone asking me whether a certain dude sounded like an appropriate sexual partner..."


• Tom K: "Blue balls."


• Matthew: "...I remain a reliable source of information on cock, though I am rather extensively trained on this matter."

Like I said, endlessly entertaining. Bryan has been doing a great job of finding thought-provoking questions. I wish I would have thought of this first...

New Case Logo

Since there are a lot of Case Alumni who read this weblog, I thought I would point out that there is an online survey [case.edu] going on right now, regarding the new Case logo. Here's one of the possibilities:


That's right... Apparently the trustees have had it with all of the "fat guy carrying a surfboard" jokes about the old logo, and are looking to switch again.

They seem to be switching logos about as quickly as they switch presidents. *rimshot*

Some of the logos actually look pretty nice... until you see the Case website with that logo on it. Ugh.

What the Hell was I Thinking?

Over the weekend, I found myself at The Garage Bar [thegaragebar.net] in Cleveland. Their jukebox is filled with all kinds of shit music, like Motley Crue and AC/DC. You know, the kind of music that I love.

The people I was with were kind of surprised that I seemed to know every word to every shitty metal song from the 90s. And I had to explain to them that unfortunately, my dream Jeopardy categories would be Motley Crue lyrics and obsolete computer chipsets.

Of course, I don't really look like the type that would be into metal. Well, at least, not now. But here's a picture of me from high school:


Now is the picture clearer? I'm not exactly sure what you would call the disaster that was my hair back then. But it is close enough to a mullet to be an embarrassment of epic proportions.

Linkage

• This weekend, I will be going to the Burning River Roller Girls roller derby [burningriverrollergirls.com]. I missed the last one, but the ones I have been able to see have been pretty entertaining. The reason that I missed the last one was because it sold out(!), so I will have to make sure to buy my ticket on-line before I go this time.


• Now that Heimlich and I have trips to New York in the near future, I am starting to remember all of the things I love about visiting The City. Of course, my trips are all about food. For me, it's all about what I ate, not what I saw, or where I have been. And when people ask me where my favorite places to visit are, the list has a high correlation to which places had the best food to offer. At this moment (and this changes a lot), I think that my favorite restaurant in NYC is Pongal [pongalnyc.com], which serves food from a region of India that is vegetarian. Their website kind of sucks, but just reading the on-line menu makes my mouth water.
  
  I would really like to try out Pure Food and Wine [purefoodandwine.com]. All of the food served there is organic, and is served raw. Their menu is surprisingly varied, and even have dishes like lasagna (although, obviously, all of the components are raw). Here's the review [nymag.com] of the restaurant in New York magazine that made me so interested.


• New York Sues Dell for Fraud [pcworld.com] - that pretty much says it all. Here's a quote:

  "Under that plan, DFS signs customers up for no-interest loans, then switches most of them to accounts with interest rates exceeding 20 percent without notifying them of the change... In many cases, DFS has harmed these consumers' credit ratings by incorrectly reporting their account as delinquent to the credit reporting agencies after they refuse to make payment on a nonexistent debt..."

  But wait, there's more:

  "...customers [were left] with inoperable computer equipment for a span of weeks or months, since their calls to Dell tech-support lines resulted in being left on hold, shuttled between departments, disconnected after spending hours on the phone, and finally rebuffed when they request a promised 'on site' repair, the lawsuit said."



• The Great Lakes Science Center [greatscience.com] is showing the movie Superman Returns in their Omnimax theater on weekends. Since I haven't gotten a chance to rent that movie yet, I might go there to check it out. I love the science center.

Pay by Credit Card in NYC Taxis

Recently, I saw this news article [guardian.co.uk] about new technology that is being introduced in NYC taxicabs.

Yeah, yeah, blah blah... Trust me, when I'm in a taxi in New York, the last thing that I want to be doing is screwing around with some poorly-designed entertainment device that is probably just as annoying to use as the ones on airplanes these days. The ones I have seen on planes have really clunky interfaces and really narrow viewing angles (what century is this?). They make you think they are recycling 486 laptops and putting DVD drives in them, or something.

Anyway, the item that really grabbed my attention was that you can pay by credit card now. Thank goodness! Every other major city in the world has taxicabs that allow you to pay by credit card. New York, ostensibly the cultural capital of the world, has finally caught up to the technology level in eastern European cities.

I can't tell you how many times I have resisted hailing a cab, because I have not wanted to pay in cash. Either I'm worried that I won't have enough on me, or I'm worried that I won't have the right bills for the tip, or whatever. Being able to charge it will save so much hassle.

I'm actually going to be visiting NYC twice this summer. Maybe I'll end up hailing a cab, and it'll have this blessed technology...

OS X Mouse Acceleration Problem

On Adam's weblog [livejournal.com], I caught a link to this article [tidbits.com] which describes the problem with the way that Mac OS X accelerates the mouse pointer.

I used to have to do a lot of video editing at work. And for that purpose, we had a G5 available. That was really my first in-depth experience using OS X. I had to use it all of the time. And I always had problems getting the mouse pointer over what I wanted to actually click on. First, I would way overshoot the target, and then it would take me forever to stabilize the pointer over the icon (or whatever I was trying to click).

The article explains:

"For mouse motion to feel natural (at least for most people), the [pointer acceleration] curve has to start by moving upward fairly moderately, then gradually flattening out as the value of X increases. Mac OS X's, curve, however, starts off by being too steep, staying too steep for too long, and then flattening out too abruptly. In practical terms this means that, frequently, as a user tries to use the mouse to move the pointer from point A to point B, the pointer motion feels sluggish. The user then tries to compensate for the sluggishness by moving the mouse faster, and the pointer suddenly goes flying across the screen and overshoots point B."

That feeling was incredibly annoying, and really gave me a negative feeling about OS X (along with all of the other annoying things about it). But I could never put my finger on what was wrong with the acceleration. But I had that problem, no matter how I adjusted the pointer speed. And for supposedly being such a user-friendly environment, you sure had to go through a ton of hassle to fix it.

Case Gossip

So, I'm not that far removed from Case Western Reserve University [case.edu]. I resigned (or my contract ended, depending on how you want to look at it) last year. But I already feel totally detached -- lots of renovations have been completed since then, there have been lots of turnover with personnel, and I have been almost completely cut off from all of the gossip and politics.

Over the weekend, one of my friends at Case pointed me out to this article [cleveland.com]. Apparently, a statistics professor claimed she was receiving hate mail, and threatened to sue because the University wasn't doing enough about it. Not only did the University investigate, but the FBI got involved too. And apparently at some point, she admitted to sending the letters to herself, landing her in a ton of hot water. I can't figure out what the funny/sad ratio is. But at least one stupid and/or insane person has been kicked out (now if we could just deal with all of the other mentally insane people...).

Looking back now, if I knew what I know now when I started at Case, I would have had a totally different approach to weblogging. I should have started up a Case gossip weblog. You know, like Page Six [nypost.com], only about Case people. You know, I could have reported all kinds of gossip and had blind items like:

• Which NASA mission specialist turned department head was recently spotted at a keg party, cavorting with undergraduate coeds and doing kegstands?
• Which Electrical Engineering research assistant has been dubbed The Phantom Pooper for breaking into people's offices and leaving fetid surprises on their desks?

Hobbit-Man: The King Returns

On kottke.org the other day [kottke.org], I caught a link to one of the most hilarious reviews [thenoiseboard.com]. It's of the last Lord of the Rings movie, and it's so crude and lowest denominator-ish, but it made me laugh.

I would think that it would be harder to really appreciate the review if you weren't a fan of Lord of the Rings, though. Here's a quote (does this really warrant a spoiler warning?):

"At the same time, the two other midget-men and the giant hippies have seriously fucked up that one evil guy’s tower (he was Count Duke in Star Wars: Every Cock in the Universe Up My Ass Part II), and they hook back up with Magneto, and also that chick with the bow and arrows and finally the Giant Midget with the Axe."

Holy shit. I guess it really does not take much to make me laugh.

Formula One Racing

This weekend, I am going to be glued to my TV, watching coverage of the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Spain.


I can't wait. For the first time that I can remember, there are legitimately four drivers who could win the championship right now. Over the past 10 years, there have been some spectacular battles between various drivers. But it almost always came down to an epic fight between the top two drivers. And it has usually been obvious who those drivers are, even at the very beginning of the season.

But this year, with the great Michael Schumacher in retirement, it's no longer clear even who the top two drivers are. Four drivers -- Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Mass, and the rookie Lewis Hamilton -- seem evenly matched in every way.

In the first three races this year, there have been three different winners. And the rookie finished 2nd in two of those.

This is going to be one hell of a season.

Picture of Felipe Massa's Ferrari from Yulete's Flickr Photostream

Stupid Windows Explorer

Whenever I'm booted into Windows, I always have a Windows Explorer window open:


I find that it is nice to quickly be able to switch windows to look for a file, or to transfer something, or whatever.

One of my biggest peeves with Windows Explorer is that the Undo doesn't always work. Occasionally, when I am typing on a laptop, the palm of my hand brushes the touchpad and causes some unexpected things to happen. For instance, sometimes a directory will be grabbed from the Windows Explorer window, and then dropped who-knows-where. And of course, the default in Windows Explorer is to move the directory if the target is on the same volume. And since I wasn't intending to copy or move a file, I have no idea what was moved, or where it was moved to.

So, now I have a misplaced directory somewhere on my hard drive, and I pretty much have no idea how to find it so that I can move it back. Naturally, the first thing I think to do is to hit the Undo button, but it doesn't allow you to undo that action.

Why the hell not?

Headshots

Over the years, I have submitted quite a number of technical papers to be published in conference proceedings or journals, etc. One of the things that has been becoming more common is for those organizations to request a picture of yourself to publish with your article or paper. I can't tell you how annoying this is. I guess this is one of the drawbacks to the ubiquity of digital cameras.

What am I, an actor? What difference does it really make to the reader to know what I look like? Ok, the real problem is that I look like a moron in every single picture that has ever been taken of me. Here are a couple of examples:



So, which one of the above makes me look the most like a responsible researcher?

Hair Salons

Last week, I mentioned that I was going to look for a new place to get my hair cut, because I couldn't take how annoying my current stylist was anymore. I took a walk around my neighborhood, and discovered that there are no less than 6 salons within a 10 block radius. So, I had plenty to choose from.

Going to a new hair cutter is stressful, because they usually don't cut it right the first time. Then for the next week, you have to answer the same question 1000 times:

"What happened to your hair?"
"I, uh... got really drunk and passed out. Then my friends thought it would be hilarious to give me a hair cut..."
"Remind me to high-five your friends the next time I see them, because you look like an idiot!"

Anyway, then you go back to the haircutter in a few weeks, and tell them what they did wrong the first time, and hopefully, they get it right from then on.

Due to the proximity of the wedding that we're going to (the first of this wedding season), it was not exactly the best time to be switching haircutters. But I was delighted when the new place cut it perfectly the first time. So, I'm fairly confident that they know that they are doing, and am definitely going back there.

Of course, with my luck, the fact that they cut my hair perfectly was a fluke, and they'll never cut it right ever again...

Big-assed TVs

Over the weekend, Heimlich and I went to a party at a friend's house. They had recently added an addition onto their house, and the whole thing was basically every American guy's dream.

They had a HUGE living room, with surround sound speakers built into the walls. The focus point, of course, was a 50" flat screen TV. Facing the TV was plenty of seating, including one of those suede couches that sucks you in, and makes you want to fall asleep. Off the living room was an enormous deck. The deck also had speakers that were hooked up to the TV, so that you could keep track of The Game while hanging out outside. And the deck had a nook for the largest grill I have ever seen.

I mean, really, if you told the average guy to design a house in the suburbs from scratch, this would be it.

Here's the funny thing... The whole thing put the idea in Heimlich's mind that we should look at larger TVs. I don't really think that we need one (or the new entertainment center and PVR that we would have to get along with it), but we're probably the only couple that we know in which the woman is the one pushing for a larger TV.

Baby Cory Cats

As I have mentioned before, I have a pretty large aquarium. One of the kinds of fish that we have are Corydoras Catfish (Cory Cats, for short). We have two kinds of Cory Cats -- Spotted and Panda. Our Panda Cory Cats reached adulthood a few months ago, and they have been having babies non-stop ever since. One of the babies is in the below picture (links to larger versions on Flickr):


There are probably about 10 baby Cory Cats in our aquarium now, and it is clear that we need to start moving them out. If we don't, they'll end up totally overrunning our tank. It's not that the fish get large -- they don't. They stay relatively small (the adults are around 2-3" long). It's just that they are breeding so quickly that we are going to end up having tons of them.

Here's another picture of one of the babies:


To get a sense of scale, I caught the same baby fish in a wider shot:


In the above picture, the baby fish is outlined in a yellow box. There is also an adult Rainbowfish swimming on the left. The tank is a 55-gallon aquarium, and the water level is lower than normal because I was in the middle of a water change at the time.

Anyway, we would like to give them to good homes. We love this type of fish, because they are always active (and therefore fun to watch), and they are constantly sweeping the bottom for food. They do best in groups. We'd like to give them to people who have established tanks and know how to take care of fish. If you would like some, let me know.

Haircutters Are Wack

I think that I am cursed. I always end up having these crazy haircutters (not crazy in a good way, mind you).

When I was in college, I used to go to this barbershop that was near the University. They gave the best haircuts that I have ever gotten. However, after a while, I started realizing that all of the people who worked there were obviously racists. It was kind of shocking, really. Up until that point, I really had no direct contact with anyone who was overtly racist. They didn't seem to have any problem with Asians, but I still felt that I had to stop going there. I felt that by continuing to give them my money was acquiescing or supporting their ridiculous viewpoint.

Right now, my problem is that the stylist I have been going to seems very uninformed about a lot of issues, but yet feels the need to constantly voice their opinions nonetheless. I mean, it would be one thing if the person had an opposing opinion to mine, but had a well thought-out argument for why they feel that way. It's another to believe in an opinion with absolutely no thought behind it.

I just can't take it anymore. I will need a haircut soon, and I'm going to start looking for another place to go. The whole process of getting a haircut is now very irritating to me, because I know that I will have to spend 30 or so minutes listening to someone drone on and on about things they know nothing about.

Ideally, I would like to be able to go to a haircutter, and just have my hair cut in silence. I don't need to talk to the stylist. I mean, really. That way, if they were completely insane, I would never know about it. Or, they should at least keep the conversation on innocuous things like the weather.