blog.mchiu.com

The meaning of "moe"

So last year, for the first time in years, I had watched a Japanese drama called "Densha Otoko" (Train Man), which chronicles the life of an otaku who was chasing after a beautiful woman, and turned to an Internet forum site for advice, and how he won her heart. It was a pretty funny story, but there was one word in the drama that was used over and over again, but that I never understood was "moe" (pronounced like "moh-eh"). Asking my Japanese friends over here, they didn't seem to know what it meant either, so I just concluded that it must be an esoteric term of the Japanese nerds.

Finally, I have found a defintion for it. According to the blog site Gizmodo,

The term moé (pronounced “mo-EH”) describe the ultra cute, pure-hearted anime characters that pop up in anime, manga and video games these days, as well as the “burning passion” otaku feel for the objects of their various obsessions.

Now I guess I will have to go back and watch the drama again with this newfound knowledge. Oh yeah, and the reason for the blog entry in Gizmodo is because of a T-shirt that has "moe" written on it in kanji.

Gayest song ever

A few months ago, Jerry sent out in a group e-mail what we thought was the gayest song, and I think he voted for "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship.

The other day, while listening to the Howard Stern Show, he posed the same question, and the first song that came up was "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!, but the crew also agreed on "We Built This City" as one of the gayest songs ever. So they started playing the song, and Howard had a great line that he said over it:

Everyone's played this song at a party, and uh... straight guys started performing felatio on one another... immediately.

Peter looks like everyone!

Last week, I had an entry about how I think Asians think they know everybody because they think we all look alike.

And last month, I had an entry about how Peter once told me that he thought he looks like Tom Cruise.

Taking that into consideration, I remember Peter telling me once that he thinks that Americans probably would think that since he is Asian, they will probably confuse him with other Asian celebrities, such as Yao-Ming or Takuya Kimura... My thoughts were that if anything, William Hung would be a better answer.

Here are a few more Peter mashups for y'all to enjoy! :D

As Yao Ming:

Peter Ming	Yao Ming

As Yao Ming and William Hung:

Peter Ming and William Hung	Yao Ming and Peter Hung	Yao Ming and William Hung

As Takuya Kimura:

Peter Kimura	Takuya Kimura

So what do you think? Is Peter the all-around Asian looking kinda guy? I'll let y'all be the judge on that one...

Parappa power!

While living in Japan, I remember that one of my favorite PlayStation games was Parappa the Rapper, which was the first rhythm game I ever played, and the one that was the most fun for me to play.

Here are a bunch of videos that were inspired by the game:

Here is a video of De La Soul doing a song called "Say 'I Gotta Believe!'" Does anyone know who the chick in the video is? Oh... just found the answer on my own... apparently someone named "Double".
Here is an interesting video of people recreating one of the scenes in the game. Good thing they didn't make any mistakes so that the chicken chef didn't squawk.
Finally, here is a video of the opening scene to a short-lived anime based on Parappa the Rapper.

Good to see that the spirit of Parappa lives on!

Innovations in beer

Guess there are all kinds of innovations in beer these days. First, a Spanish brewer has modified its cans by putting a wrapper on top in order to keep the lip of the can clean. I guess the next time you raise your can, you can say "Salut!" with confidence. Oh wait... was that Italian? hmm... Next, I remember going to the Red Carpet Club in Tokyo, and they had one of the coolest machines I have ever seen: A self-service draft beer machine where you put a glass on this platform, press a button, and then it automatically tilts the glass, dispenses beer to a perfect pour, and then when it is about 90% full, it tilts the glass back upright, and starts pouring in foam. Now, a group of Dutch students have developed a robot that they claim can pour the perfect pint. They set out to create this robot for about $92, and plan to go into mass production with this.

The sushi video has been found again!

Here is the sushi video again... enjoy! :D

My brother's big mouth

So sometimes people ask me why I don't hang out with my brother so much, and the quick and easy answer is simply that the guy has absolutely no way to keep his mouth shut. If we hang out and something stupid happens, immediately, the whole world, including our parents, will know about it. I'm not talking just minor details here, but he will go into full detail about everything, where I somehow always end up looking pretty bad. It's the same with talking to guy. You can't say more than two words before he'll take your words, twist them around, and then tell the whole world about it, making you look like a fool.

brrreeeport comes to save the plight of the z-listers

This is a made-up world that I have seen pop up a lot in the last few days.

Robert Scoble's blog site, Scobelizer describes how A-list bloggers are keeping the Z-listers down, so he made up this word, "brrreeeport" for z-listers to write in their blog to be listed on a technorati page automatically. Now, if you do a Google or Technorati search for this term, it is just crazy how many hits you will get for this made-up word!

Pretty interesting how this has worked, and how only 3 days later, it has become such a huge hit. I guess the principle behind "The Tipping Point" is running in full-force here!

... and yes, this is my shameless way of getting included into it all... :D

White Castle V-Day with the Huangs

I guess I'm just obsessed with White Castle since I have never been to one, and it seems to be such a well-known establishment. Too bad we don't have any over here in California, but I'm sure glad that In N' Out Burger decided to start moving up north so we can have that at least over here in the SF Bay Area.

Anyway... Jerry's family has recently moved over to Chicago, so they had to trade In N' Out for White Castle, and the whole family had their V-Day over at White Castle. Here are their pictures:

Interesting... it looks like there were actually waitresses that served you?
	Either they got there really early, or this was not a very popular outing for V-day.
Jerry seems to be very happy to have White Castle, and Elizabeth seems to be rejecting it.
	Emily doing quality control on the holes in the onion rings. Correction: According to Jerry, it is a chicken ring, not an onion ring.
Wow.. looks like the end of "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle" when Harold and Kumar order and eat all the burgers and fries.
	Wow! A slyder for only 47 cents!!! (plus tax)
Lee Ann and Emily are craving some White Castle.

V-Day at White Castle

So my friends were talking about a promotion at White Castle for making reservations for Valentine's Day. I think Jerry said he had reservations, so gotta hear what he has to say about it.

In the meantime, here are some pictures Jason Perlow posted from his V-Day dinner there, and here is his blog on it.

He makes a good point about V-Day being over commercialized and just a good way to waste money on your loved ones. Interestingly enough, without really thinking about it, I spent my V-Day with Corey out in downtown San Jose. Since I was at the RSA Conference earlier in the day, I went over to the Fairmont to get a drink and to bug Frankie. It sure did get busy there, but I think it was mostly because of the RSA people. Corey and I eventually ended up at the SJ Bar&Grill, and had chicken BLT sliders. They didn't really slide down my throat, but they weren't too bad either.

Asians think they know everybody

Living here in the Silicon Valley feels like living in several Asian countries. You go to one area, and you have all the Vietnamese and Chinese places, you go to another area, and there are lots of Korean places, and other areas are just exclusively Chinese and Taiwanese, etc. Yes, there are a lot of Asians over here. One thing that annoys me recently is getting stared down by Asians. They always look at me like they know me, and in my mind I'm just thinking, "Yes, I'm Asian, and no, you don't know me". Now, if it were 30 years ago, when the Asian presence wasn't as strong, I'd be more understanding of it, but still feel weird about it I guess. The worst case of this happened a few months ago, when I pulled into a parking lot, and some dorky looking Asian guy was standing at the entrance of the parking lot, stared me down, and then even stepped in front of my car. He kept staring into my car, with this dorky smile, and I'm looking at him with a WTF? look. He finally realizes that I'm not who he is looking for I guess, and just turns away. Sheesh! People in the Asian community over here definitely are a bit racist to think that we all look alike. Damn immigrants...

Fat people on planes

Recently, Southwest Airlines got into a bit of trouble when they had to ask a passenger to buy a second seat because she was fat. Actually, the PC term used by Southwest is "Customer of Size". So they made the mistake of asking her after she boarded the plane, and had to pull her aside and ask her to buy a second ticket. Apparently, she had her armrest up and was partially in the other seat, but she denies it. She thinks they threw her off the plane because she is black. In defense of Southwest, there are studies that show that heavier customers mean more fuel costs though.

Speaking of fat people and planes, I have a few experiences of my own with fat people on planes:

Like most recently, on a flight out to Las Vegas, Corey and I were sitting next to each other on the flight, and Corey was in the middle seat. This one dude sits next to him, and is kinda fat, but tells Corey that he chose the seat next to Corey because Corey is so skinny. He he he... I just thought it was amusing, and I'm sure that it made Corey's day.

Another time, back in the days when I was travelling around a lot for work, I would sometimes get upgraded to business class. The first time I got upgraded, when I sat in the seat, it was so big to me, I felt like a little kid sitting in a grown-ups chair, and then thought to myself, are we Americans that big nowadays that they make these seats so gigantic? I barely filled half the seat, and was amazed that when I put on the seat belt, there was at least 7-8 inches of slack at the end. So I was sitting in the aisle seat, and then the woman who had the window seat came by. My first instinct was to get out of my seat, but she told me that she could fit through since there was so much space between my legs and the seat in front of me. So after she settled down, we started talking to each other, and that's when I noticed that her ass was so huge that it filled the entire seat. She was then telling me how she never takes economy, and had this really snobbish air to her, but my mind was thinking "It's pretty obvious to me why you don't take economy". Later during the flight, she had to get up to use the bathroom, and this was back in the days when in business class, every seat had a small TV screen that flipped up on an arm from the side of the seat. Every single time she got up to get out, her ass would inevitably knock my screen over. I found this to be hillarious, but had to keep my laugh to myself until she left.

The worst flight I had to take was on a flight to LA. Luckily, it was only a one hour flight. Unfortunately for me, I arrived to the airport late, so my seat assignment was all the way in the back in a middle seat. I am walking up the aisle looking for my seat, and finally located it, and thought to myself "You gotta be kidding me". Two huge dudes, at least 5'9" each, and both were occupying space of the middle seat. I somehow squeeze in, and that was probably the most uncomfortable travel I have ever had. Both dudes are so big that not only do they tower me, but they have so much mass, that I was basically suffocating in my seat. Luckily, 20 minutes into the flight, the attendant walks over and tells me that there's an open seat up ahead, and that made things easier.

I guess it's a difficult situation, and with the growing rate of Americans these days, I'm sure I'll be squished more by people bigger than me... Maybe it's time for me to take biz class... :D

My problem with the news of Michelle Kwan dropping from the figure skating competition

I have a problem with Michelle Kwan dropping from the figure skating competition in the Olympics this year. Before I go any further, don't get me wrong... I totally respect her decision to drop out due to her injury, and I definitely feel bad that she had to make such a difficult decision, which basically denies her the chance of ever obtaining the gold medal that she so deserves and has been working so hard to attain.

My problem with her dropping out is with the statements she made later about not wanting to stay to sign on as a commentator with NBC, or to even stay in the country for that matter. I am guessing that it was more of her publicist that I should have the problem with, but the fact is that Michelle Kwan just went with the flow.

Dropping out of the Olympics is one thing. The reason she had to drop out is totally understandable, and it is just too bad that things had to end this way. Ailienating herself from everything else is an enitrely different thing. Personally, I don't think she is really giving a valid reason to not want to stay with the team, and also for declining the invitiation to be a commentator for NBC.

If she had been more truthful with her statements, I could understand. In my mind, the reason she didn't want to stay in the country has more to do with emotional issues. If it were me, I'd totally want to get the fuck out of Dodge too after all that. It would be painful to me not to be able to compete, and have to watch everyone else skate, and eventually crown a winner that could totally have been me. Especially if I were as highly skilled as Michelle Kwan. Instead, she gave out some lame excuse of not wanting to be a burden to the rest of the team. That's just plain selfish of her if it were true.

She is part of Team USA, and part of being a memeber of any team is to support other players in the team, regardless of whether you are the star player or a bench warmer. If she wanted to leave because of her situation, I am sure that her team members would have understood as well, and would have let her go home too, and maybe that is really what had happened behind the scenes, but the way the press is reporting it, that is not the case. Instead, she comes off, at least to me, a bit childish because she doesn't want to have anything to do with the rest of the team, and she is trying to look noble by using an excuse of not wanting to cause distractions to other skaters.

The way I look at it, her staying at the Olympics would be more of an inspiration to her fellow team members to do their best in order to bring home the gold in her honor.

Then again, maybe I am understanding it all wrong, afterall, look at what happened to Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding in the past. If one of the competitors gets attacked, maybe all eyes will be on Michelle Kwan...

My card was duped

So my MasterCard got duped and was being used all over the place. Luckily, it's a card that I don't use very often, so that already raised a red flag with MasterCard. Next, the idiots who decided to go on a shopping spree with my card brought more attention unto themselves for using it only at gas stations. Like at Valero and Rotton Robbies. Rotton Robbies??? These are some frugal thieves! You just got free money! Wouldn't you use something better before you get caught? In any case, I was called to confirm my usage of the card in recent months, which has been absolutely nothing. They started using it this past Friday, and by Sunday morning, they had already hit 3 gas stations. There were no other activity reported, which makes me wonder what they were thinking? Maybe because of the high cost of gas, they were just buying jugs of gas? Hmm... but only idiot would hit 3 gas stations in 3 days... There is definitely something suspicious about that... Oh well...

Songs that I don't get sick of

In regards to an earlier entry about a song I couldn't get out of my head, I realized that there are some songs, no matter how many times I play them that I never seem to get sick of. Here is a short list (in no particular order) of some of those songs for me:

• Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega
• Hey Ya! - Outkast
• Girls, Girls, Girls - Motley Crue
• DA.YO.NE - East End X Yuri
• Fly Me To The Moon - Frank Sinatra
• Think - Aretha Franklin

I'm sure that there are more songs, but don't feel like listing everything since it would be a pretty big list of songs that constantly get stuck in my head, not to mention the Beastie Boys' "Slow and Low" that got me originally thinking about this.

So what are some of the songs that you get stuck in your head?

Interesting article on New York's Chinatown

Here is an article in the NYT about the transformation of New York's three Chinatowns.

It was an interesting read for me because while I was reading through it, I could identify with the author on many fronts. For example, when I was a little kid, I remember getting dragged up to the SF Chinatown with my parents on the weekends so they could buy different kinds of foods that we couldn't find anywhere else. (I also remembered how much I dreaded going up there because I thought SF Chinatown reaked like crazy, and was so dirty)

At the Kam Man grocery store on Canal Street, my parents would treat us to Haw Flakes, sweet tangy disks that tasted like bits of hard Fruit Rollups. The ingredients were listed as "haw" and "sugar," which left a generation of Chinese-American children wondering what exactly haw was. (It is the fruit of the hawthorne.)

I had the same experience. I remember the Haw Flakes, and remembered the ingredients were "Haw" and "sugar", but had no idea what was a "haw". The mystery has finally been solved, but now a new mystery emerges: what is a hawthorne? I guess it will remain as much of a mystery to me as Japan's sports drink "Pocari Sweat" remains a mystery to me: What is a pocari, and why am I drinking its sweat?"

It was also an interesting read for me because I was constantly comparing and contrasting other "Chinatowns" I had visited: San Francisco, Downtown LA, Yokohama, and all the new Chinese mini-malls that have sprouted up all over the Bay Area, LA, and Las Vegas.

The SF and NY Chinatowns sound like pretty similar type of places being that they actually have a bit of history associated with them, but newer Chinatowns in NY sound like they are more like the mini-malls that have been opening up. Yokohama Chinatown is by far the most distinct one I have visited since it tries to recreate a Chinese environment, but instead, has created something similar, but entirely different at the same time. Namely, the Yokohama Chinatown is definitely way too clean and way too expensive to be considered a "Chinatown" to me, and definitely does not emulate any Chinese city that I have ever been to.

As for all these new Chinese mini-malls and plazas that have been sprouting up all around the Silicon Valley these days, I guess it shows how strong the Chinese influence is over here. At first, I was pretty open to it all since it shows some cultural diversity in the area, but not I think it is a bit suffocating with new places opening up all the time. I guess the dot-bomb hit pretty hard over here, and people have all decided to open up restaurants now. In a way, it's knd of funny, but now it's kind of frustrating.

For my visit to the "Chinatown" in Las Vegas, my friend's fiancee, who happned to be a Chinese woman, was telling us that she wanted to eat in "Chinatown" one night when we were in Vegas. I thought it was interesting since I didn't know that Las Vegas had a Chinatown, and off we went to the Las Vegas Chinatown. It was just a little bit off the strip, and when we arrived, it was nothing more than another Chinese mini-mall, complete with a Ranch 99 Supermarket. Sheesh! We can get that anytime we're back in the Bay Area, and during dinner, my friend and I looked at each other with these looks of "Why are we eating this, when we could be having a nice steak dinner somewhere else?"

Making a Virtual Living

The other day, Jerry had asked me about the "Second Life" universe. I had used it when it was in beta stage, but felt that it was pretty similar to "There.com", and played with both, and couldn't figure out which one I liked more. It's like real life, but on the computer, so kind of like "The Sims Online", but you don't have to buy a retail box of the game.

But later on, I remember reading an article about people who would buy virtual real estate for thousands of real world dollars, and then charged other people rent for real world money to take up residence in the virtual world. In fact, Second Life does encourage this kind of trading, so it made it a bit of a unique case in the world of online games.

Here's a more recent article on Wired that describes this growing bubble in the Second Life world. It's amazing to me that people are quitting their day jobs to make money from designing in-game clothing and other items, or just by renting out virtual real estate.

Why I think Cindy Sheehan is Obnoxious

I really don't like to talk politics, and I am by no means an activist or anything, but Cindy Sheehan has really gotten on my nerves over the past year that I just need to vent out my opinion on the whole thing.

When Cindy Sheehan first came onto the scene, I felt sorry for her loss. I really did. It is very unfortunate that her son was killed in action, and is a terrible tragedy for her, her family, her friends, her son's friends, and others.

She started to come on the scene after her son's death in April 2004, and I am sure that we all felt sympathy for her, and hoped that by mourning through the press, she could get over this difficult period soon. Apparently, she is still grieving, and in my opinion, I think she is using her son's death as an excuse to become an activist against the Bush Administration.

Here is a recent entry in her blog describing how she was ejected from last week's State of the Union Address.

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

What was she thinking??? She then describes how she was ejected, and if her account is true, I don't necessarily agree with how they treated her.

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."

I don't know whether to look at her as being an idiot, selfish, arrogant, or all of the above? It's the State of the Union Address, which is being broadcast to millions of Americans all across the country. Have some class. This is not the time nor place to be demonstrating against the President. It is not a place to cause panic and distress to Americans either. Freedom of speech? It goes back to the age old argument of screaming "Fire!" in a crowded room, only this time, the crowded room contains nearly 300 million Americans. Who does she think she is to use the President's State of the Union Address as a podium for broadcasting her views to the rest of America?

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."

I told him that my son died there. That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.

She is only realizing the loss of her son now? So is she saying that for the past year and a half, she has just been using her son's death as an excuse to push her radical views and thoughts to the rest of America? Somehow, I feel cheated for giving her any sympathy at all.

What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shrit that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing.

What kind of question is this? Does she not know the answer? Is she really this dense? Is she even aware of how she is dishonoring all that her son was fighting for?

She seems to have a large base of supporters, and I am a bit disappointed in seeing what they have to say. It seems that there is a growing movement in the US of people who just simply hate America. I take it to be people who are sour grapes over the fact that Bush had won two elections. I am disappointed that we won both elections too, but I tend to look at things from a more absolute point of view:

Bush is now the President of the United States. To me, it is counterproductive to nitpick this fact. The people who bitch and complain this fact cannot come up with any hard evidence that the elections were rigged, and after 6 years, I think it's just time to move on, and live in the present, and not in the past. Instead of being against the President, since he is in office now, and will be for the next two years, why don't we try to support him instead in order to benefit us all?

The military has been shipped out to Iraq and Afghanistan. I too, was a bit disappointed that we had to decide on war, but the fact of the matter is that we have started it, now let's end it. To me, that doesn't mean pulling our troops back. That would just show the rest of the world that we can go an invade another country, take care of some stuff we wanted to do there, and then leave it in shambles. Instead, wouldn't it be better to support the military so that they can get their job done quicker, so they can return home quicker? With all of the demonstrations and anti-Bush/anti-military sentiments we have over here, I think it just shows a big disrespect to the men and women in the US military, like Casey Sheehan, who are risking their lives in order to protect this country from future attacks.

Have we all forgotten about 9/11? Have we all forgotten about the nearly 3,000 dead at the WTC, the Pentagon, and the planes? What about the pain, the sadness, the humiliation we all felt when we watched our nation go under attack so brutally? Are we simply just not mad enough to care anymore?

Ok... I know I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this, but according to Cindy Sheehan, the military is fighting out there to preserve my First Amerndment rights... :D

How *NOT* to source funding for your idea

I just got a funny message in my inbox:

Dear Investors:

I don't know if this will get me any funding but I just try to see.
I have an idea on creating a company who's main objective is
decorate solar cells.  I am looking for some seed funding to help me get started with this company. 
 I look forward to hearing 510XXXXXXX from any investor.
 
Thank much,
 

This e-mail was cc'd to at least 50 different e-mail addresses of venture capital people.

He might get someone to catch, but I highly doubt it. It is so obviously brute force by the way he blatantly cc'd everyone, that it was just funny to me. I also don't know what he means by decorating solar cells... I am assuming that it is some kind of tech with solar cells, but when I read it, I couldn't stop thinking of him painting pictures on the solar cells so you get something other than the boring black/purple color.

Oh well.. guess you just have to live and learn... Obviously, this is not the best way to learn though... he he he

What's up with all these "Hills" in Tokyo?

Looks like there was an opening ceremonies recently for Omotesando Hills as blogged here, and with a flickr photoset here.

Like the Roppongi Hills, I haven't quite understood why these buildings are named "Hills", since they don't remind me of a hill, and through the pictures, I certainly don't feel like it's a place out in the countryside.

For friends in the Silicon Valley, to give you an idea of what Roppongi Hills is like, just imagine a Santana Row enclosed in an extremely large and tall building -- the combination of restaurants, cafes, bars, shops, movie theater, and residences all in one gigantic building that's about 50 stories tall.

The Omotesando Hills, from the descriptions I am reading, seems more like a giant Row in the sense that it is 3 floors above ground, and 3 floors below, but with the similar facilities.

In any case, I am sure that compared to the Row, Omotesando Hills would probably be a more desirable location, being that it is in an area that is better known for art and fashion, compared to the fabrication of art and fashion in the Silicon Valley.

SuperBowl XL Ads

Just one more comment about SuperBowl XL...

One of the fun things about the SuperBowl every year is to see what interesting commercials will be shown. In fact, there are people who just watch the game in order to see the commercials. Remember the "Dot-Com Bowl" of 2000"? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! true, true...

Anyway... I was a bit disappointed with the ads this year, but there were a few good ones... You can find these ads on Google's video website if you missed any of them. I guess this year, everyone was waiting to see what GoDaddy.com was going to come up with, but it wasn't anything too spectacular, but apparently, there were several iterations of their commercial that had to be cut in order to make it on TV. You can check it out here.

Different views of the US

When I was living out in Taipei, one day, Duke and I were reminscing about California, and started talking about how we think Californians view the rest of the US. What we came up with was a really skewed map of the US that looked a little like this.

This picture is another similar type of map that must be the result of some Japanese game programmers on a drunken trip throughout the US... Interesting...

As you can see, the way Japanese and Californians look at the US are quite different. Wonder how I would draw up a map of Japan? Figure that 90% of Honshu island would be taken up Tokyo, while Sapporo takes up the entire Hokkaido island.

A tale of two Superbowls

So SuperBowl XL has come and gone, and the Steelers emerge victorious 21-10 over the Seahawks.

Watching the game, it had its ups and downs like any other Superbowl, but being that it was a pretty low scoring game, I was bored at that times, but still a good game.

Electronic Arts had run a simulation before the big game, running Madden '06 on an Xbox 360. The final score wasn't too far off with the Steelers beating the Seahawks 24-19, although the details of the games were off.

You can see it here.

Stupid Worm!

Stupid Woms!
If you had trouble accessing the site over the past 24 hours, I had completely reset my account and re-installed everything from scratch.
I was the victim of a worm attack. A few weeks ago, while working on the site, I noticed that some of the pages weren't displaying correctly. Not sure if anyone caught this, but whenever you tried to access the archives, the sidebars would not load at all, and randomly in the first paragraph of the first entry, there would be a link to an obvious clickthrough spam. I had to look through the code of several templates before discovering where it was coming from, and had deleted that code, however, after talking it over with my hosting provider, we decided that it was best to just completely wipe out my account, and start over.

Looking through my access logs, I figured that the best time to do that would be after 11 pm PST on Thursdays. Just my luck though... After getting home on Thursday night, I find out that my DSL connection is down, and the fuckers at SBC had no idea how to help me to fix it. Here's how my first call to SBC basically went:

CSR: Thank you for using SBC Internet Services. May I please have the phone number of your DSL line? (in an Indian accent)

Me: Yes, it's 408-xxx-xxxx.
CSR: Thank you sir. May I please have your phone number?
Me: Umm... yes, it's 408-xxx-xxx
CSR: (long pause)
Me: Uhh... Hello?
CSR: (short pause) Yes, Hello? Thank you for calling SBC Internet Services. May I pleas have the phone number of your DSL line?
Me: WHAT???!!! I just told you my number!
CSR: (long pause)
Me: Are you there? Hello?
CSR: Yes. Hello? Thank you for calling SBC Internet Services. May I pleas have the phone number of your DSL line?
Me: Huh? Can you hear me?
CSR: Yes. Hello? Thank you for calling SBC Internet Services. May I pleas have the phone number of your DSL line?
Me: Fine! It's 408.xxx-xxxx.
CSR: Yes. Hello? Thank you for calling SBC Internet Services. May I pleas have the phone number of your DSL line?
Me: I just told you my number 3 fucking times!!! What the fuck is your problem???!!!! Stupid Outsourced Fuck!!! *CLICK*

I calmed down, called again, and this time I get some other heavily accented woman on the phone who spent 45 minutes with me to connect and reconnect my whole network every which way, and couldn't get it to work... *sigh* The stupid bitch at the end told me that it was not SBC's problem, and that I should talk to the manufacturer of my hardware. She couldn't seem to understand what I was getting at when I told her that everything was working fine in the morning, no changes have been made, and all of a sudden, she's trying to tell me that every router, computer, and network card in my house has suddenly stopped to work? So I gave up for the night.

This morning, I called again, and I guess the outsourced call center I got connected to sounded like I was either in Mexico or the Phillippines. The guy walked me through a few steps, and in 5 minutes, I was back online! Sheesh! Not sure if it's a good idea to use those Indian call centers anymore. Moral of the story is that when you are calling tech support from California after 10 pm, just be aware that you may be transferred to India, and these fuckers have no idea what they are doing.

But I digress... back to my point about the worm...

So my account gets wiped out around midnight in my time, but I had no way to access it, so I wasn't able to get it back up until about 2 pm today, but now I have re-installed everything, put all the postings back up, and everything seems to look just about the same as it did before I took everything down.

In any case, that's the reason why the site was down for about 15 hours. Now, it's time for me to get back to blogging! :D

Get rid of that unwanted chi

I remember one summer when Jerry was visiting me in Tokyo, and we were waiting for a friend out by Hachiko in Shibuya Station, when we were approached by some dude who said he wanted to "pray" for us. Feigning an inability to communicate in Japanese (which wasn't that hard to do), the guy magically started speaking to us in English, and told us again that he wanted to pray for us. I think we said something to the effect of "umm... I think we're OK, but thanks anyway", but the guy wouldn't stop. So Jerry, being the curious one, decided that he wanted to know more, and the guy explained to us that he would ask us to bow our head, close our eyes, and then he would hover his hand above our head, and it would "suck" out all the negative energy in our soul. He then explained how he did this for his sick mother, and how she had healed quickly soon after he did this for her. Ok... what have we got to lose? So he asked us both to bow our heads and close our eyes, but then Jerry panicked and said something to the effect of, "How do we know this guy isn't going to rob us?" and then told the guy to do the prayer for us one-by-one instead. I think I still have the picture of it somewhere, and I'll have to remember to scan it and upload it one of these days. Nowadays, there is no longer a need for that! Well, provided that you have $249.99 to buy the MegaChi Far Infrared Pendant. Not only do you get a choice of two fashionable colors of Rhodium (that's the name of a color???) and gold, but it apparently rids you of negative energies like fear and doubt from yourself and those around you! And as an extra bonus, it also protects you from ELF and EMF waves caused by cell phones, microwaves, computers, etc! Whoa! What a deal! Now, using that same advanced technology, a way has been found to locally neutralize the devitalizing electronic pollution in the environment. The Pendant also utilizes far infrared technology, which is a frequency of invisible wavelength band of sunlight that warms and vitalizes the body for maximum vitalizing, energy clearing and the increased feeling of well being. The Harmonic Resonance Pendant also offers a screening from potentially harmful electronic pollution caused by the abundance of machines, gadgetry, and power lines, in a way that allows the body to operate more harmoniously within the earth’s natural resonance of 7-9 Hz. Yikes! Anything that causes me to heat up as result of infrared rays sounds like I will be pretty tasty after using it for extended periods of time! Mmm mmm good!