Britney: Paris Is My Idol

Wow, just when you think she can't disgrace herself any further, Britney Spears says she looks up to Paris Hilton. How sad is that. I feel like Michael Jordan just came out of retirement again, and announced that he wants to remake his game by training under the tutelage of Ben Gordon.

Divorcing K-Fed was a a good move, but looks like it's one step forward, two steps backward for Britney. In the words of Justin Timberlake, "it's breakin my heart to watch you run around, cause I know that you're livin a lie..."

Brit-Fed Split Up

Britney Spears Files for Divorce

Now I'm really disillusioned. Nick and Jessica breaking up was one thing. But if Britney and Kevin couldn't keep it together, what hope do the rest of us mortals have??

Early Christmas

In the past, I think I've commented on how Christmas season seems to start earlier every year. It's gotten pretty ridiculous in the last couple years, as we're seeing Christmas stuff show up in stores before Halloween is even over.

At first, I think the phenomenon annoyed me, because I saw it as another representation of corporate greed imposing their will on the public. Kind of like Hallmark making up holidays, we see these retailers depending so heavily on the holiday shoppers that they try to stretch the season out as much as possible. (As if Christmas wasn't overly commercialized already).

But this year, I'm starting to see the whole thing a little differently. Not that I like the commercialization, but now I'm kind of glad that Christmas season is starting early. I mean, I love Christmas season - the movies, the songs, the overall "holiday spirit". If people want to make it last longer, I should be all for it, right?

In a way, I think I've started to depend a lot more on Christmas season to get me through the winter. Especially in the last few years, when it seems like the cold weather and shorter daylight of winter has hit me harder than it used to, when I was a kid.

Like right now, I'm already dreading the next few months of snow, blistering winds, walking out of work to gloomy gray skies. When it snowed that one day a couple weeks ago, I refused to bring out my heavier coat in one last act of denial, preferring to brave the cold temperatures in my thin windbreaker (it did not do the job). I find myself thinking more about when I could take a vacation to somewhere warm, to escape the Chicago winter for a while. And I'm already looking forward to next summer, even as summer 2006 barely ended a few weeks ago.

As I said before, I didn't always feel this way. I don't remember hating the winter that much when I was little. I remember it being cold, but it's not like I would ever dread an entire season. But yeah, now when I know winter is coming up, all I can think about is how much it sucks to leave work when it's dark already, the hassles of driving in snowy weather, having to bundle up in a million layers when I go outside just so I don't freeze to death, how the wool in my sweaters makes my neck itch, or the way my normally moist lips start to become dry and crack (yes, I still refuse to use chapstick). I just want it to be July again so I can wash my car, go to baseball games, and grill food on my deck.

Anyways, I guess what I'm getting at is, with all the depressing thoughts about winter, I especially need the happy thoughts about Christmas season to counteract all of that. Winter may suck otherwise, but what could be better to cheer everyone up with than getting multiple days off from work, exchanging presents, seeing the houses on your block decorated with lights, listening to Christmas music, spending time with family, or watching Home Alone and Home Alone 2?

Personally, it scares me to imagine what winter would be like without Christmas season. I seriously think a lot of people would crack during the long winter, if there wasn't anything to look forward to. So if the department stores want to bring out the holiday stuff a little earlier than expected, I will no longer complain.

Weak Stream

Haha.... Bill Simmons's take on the ads for BPH, which some of you might recall I wrote about a while back:

Common side effects from Flomax are "runny nose, dizziness and a decrease in semen; upon standing, a sudden decrease of blood pressure may occur, rarely resulting in fainting." Call me crazy, but wouldn't you rather have a weak stream of pee over any of those other symptoms? We should vote on this on ESPN.com's main page.

*****

I think I've had the following conversation about 5 times during the last couple weeks (with a different friend each time):

(The song by Brooke Hogan with Paul Wall comes on the radio)
Friend: This song is pretty catchy, I kinda like it.
Me: You know who sings it right?
Friend: No, who?
Me: Hulk Hogan's daughter.
Friend: What??! No way, are you serious?
Me: Yep.
(awkward silence ensues)
Friend: Wow. I did not know that.

Seriously, same exact conversation, just different friend. I understand though, that knowledge can be a pretty powerful revelation when you find out. I know because I experienced the feeling myself about a month ago. I, too, thought the song was catchy, until I realized who was singing it.

It doesn't help that the video is retarded and features our heroine Brooke "battling" (if you can call it that) some other skanky girl on the dance floor. Now whenever I hear the song and/or see the video, I can actually feel myself becoming less of a person. To share this feeling with all my many readers, enjoy below. Prepare to get served:



Yep. I think I finally reached my limit. The guy who obsessed about Britney Spears for years, liked O-Town and Eden's Crush when they were hot, draws the line at Hulk Hogan's daughter singing with Paul Wall rapping. Actually, I think Danity Kane has also crossed that line too, so yeah, they didn't make the cut either. Sorry girls. Don't worry though, I still bump that Ciara song (with Charmillionaire) in my car every morning on the way to work. Now that is a catchy song.

*****

I know I told myself (and everyone on this blog) that I was done with watching Laguna Beach, but what do you know, I got sucked into another season. At first it was easy to not care about the show, because none of the people in this season were that interesting or attractive, but MTV just plays that show so freaking much, and there's nothing else to watch sometimes. After catching a mini-marathon of LB this weekend, that Tessa girl kind of grew on me. She's not at the level of Kristin, but still something about her has that certain charm.

Maybe it helps that she's half-Asian, and I feel bad for her that all the other girls seem to hate on her for no reason, except jealousy. You can almost hear them saying to each other, "How dare she steal 'our' boys attention away from us? She doesn't even have blonde hair and blue eyes!" (or in the case of Cami, "disgusting rolls of body fat and the worst personality ever"). So yeah... even if Tessa's "character" does nothing for my race except continue to portray the "exotic looking Asian girl" stereotype, I'm still pulling for her out of sympathy.

Another thing drawing me into the show is the love triangle centering around Cameron. It is so inexplicable and ridiculous that I just have to see how this thing turns out. Actually, I guess since it involves 4 people (Cameron, Jessica, Tessa, and Kyndra), it's not technically a love "triangle". "Love quadrilateral" doesn't quite have the same ring though.

Of course, one of the reasons I decided to stop watching LB in the first place is because the show was definitely starting to feel too staged. I know the producers have to stir up stuff to keep things interesting and boost ratings, but I wish they wouldn't insult my intelligence too much. For example, the "scene" where Tessa supposedly sees Cameron cuddling with Jessica at his birthday party and storms out, is pretty blatantly obvious that it's spliced and edited to look that way. I really doubt that scene ever happened.

I guess by being 26 and watching a show about spoiled teenagers, I'm basically asking for my intelligence to be insulted, but still. I notice stuff like this as I'm watching.

Mock me if you will, but I bet you're still humming that Brooke Hogan song right now.

Severe Annoyance Alert

Whose bright idea was it to blare loud noises along with the severe weather alerts on TV? Those stupid alerts have been driving me insane all night. Do they really need to block out the regular audio of my shows with these obnoxious sounds to inform me of the storms that I can already hear outside my window anyways?

It's not even that the sounds themselves annoy me. What bugs me more is the idea that someone actually thought it was a good idea to make these weather alerts so annoying and intrusive. It's a freaking weather report! If I cared that much about weather, I would already be on the Weather Channel instead of watching South Park.

What makes it worse is that they override the sound on every single channel. I hate when people think something is so important that they expect everyone else to care as much about it as they do. For example, people who use the "High Importance" label in Outlook for every single email they send out, even when they're just forwarding you pictures of puppies.

Or, when someone sends out a mass invite to 200 people with instructions to RSVP. When that happens, it makes me wonder if they even know what RSVP means, that you are expected to respond whether you can make it or not. It's one thing if you mail out personal wedding invitations with stamped reply cards. In that case, I think it's okay to expect a reply. But if you're throwing a random get together on a Thursday night by putting the email address of every single person you've ever met, and their friends, and their friends' friends on a Evite list, please don't say RSVP. Just ask people to respond if they plan on making it.

Maybe You Just Like Handmade Things Cause You're A Tool

The other day I overheard some guy say something like "Yeah, I like handmade things, after all, I'm Italian".

It seems like I hear people say things like that a lot, but half the time I don't know what they're talking about. It's one thing if someone says "I'm British, so my teeth are super nasty", or "I don't like swimming, can't you see I'm black". At least those are commonly accepted stereotypes (I think).

But are Italian people really known as a culture that especially appreciates handmade items, more than, say, people from Greece or Switzerland? Or was this guy just saying random things trying to sound cool, but doesn't really make any sense?

If you ask me, I think it's the latter. I mean, you can say just about anything, then explain it by talking about your ethnic background, as long as the other person isn't of the same ethnicity. Even if your claim makes no sense at all, who's going to call you out on it?

Pretty nice system, actually. Sounds so easy, it kind of makes me want to start doing that myself. Next time I see someone I don't like, I'm going to kick him in the nuts. If he asks me why I did that, I'll just be like, "I dunno why, something about kicking people in the nuts just appeals to me. I'm Chinese, if you weren't aware."

Some other possible uses:

"Laguna Beach is the greatest show ever, I watch every episode! I think it has to do with my parents being born in Taiwan."

"I only use 0.7mm lead in my mechanical pencils. No self-respecting Asian would accept that 0.5mm crap."

"I don't need a separate mp3 player, cause my cell phone works fine as a music player for me. Only white people and Hispanics buy IPods."

See, you can use it in just about any situation. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go back and find that Italian guy who likes handmade items, and kick him in the nuts.

MN Trip

I took a road trip with some of the boys this weekend up to Minneapolis, mainly to watch the Bears play the Vikings on Sunday. Here's some pics from our mini vacation along with some of my thoughts thrown in...

We stayed at the Embassy Suites downtown, a nice 2-room suite. This is a pic of the "living room" area:


This is the view from our hotel window:


That's the Metrodome in the top left. I wish I could say there was more to the Minneapolis skyline, but that's honestly pretty much it.

We went to a sushi place called Nami, which was pretty good:


Walking back from dinner, we passed a place called "Gay 90's", so of course a picture needed to be taken in front of it.


Somehow, out of our group of 5, I was the only one who assumed that "Gay 90's" was a gay bar. For some reason, everyone else convinced themselves that it was just called "Gay 90's" but not really gay. Eventually, Piya looked up the place on the internet and confirmed that it was unequivocally a gay bar. But at the time, they had actually had me doubting my own common sense. "It has 'Gay' in the name! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!"

We stopped by the Mall of America for a bit. Not that impressed, basically just seemed like a bigger version of Woodfield, except with some carnival games in the middle. The Lego store was kind of cool though. A few pictures we took:







I like how Anuj looks puzzled as Chras is walking away in the last one. Oh, I almost forgot, I took a picture in front of the best store in the mall:



Saturday night, went out to a couple places. First was The Drink, which was a pretty nice bar, good atmosphere, cheap drinks. Afterwards we hit up a place called Spin, basically your typical club bumping loud dance music. Except someone must have really souped up the subwoofers there, cause I could feel my internal organs vibrating just being near the dance floor. This is the one pic we took there:



Finally, Sunday was the game. We brought a bag of beers (yes, a bag) to the Metrodome and hung out around the stadium for a bit before heading in. The area outside the stadium was actually pretty cool, a big crowd of fans just chilling with beers and mingling. There were a decent number of Bears fans there too, which made for good times and trash talking.



Inside the dome was not as great. The building wasn't designed that well, and is kind of crappy overall. The one thing that you notice is how loud the place gets when the fans start to make noise. I think there have been rumors that the home teams use speakers to amplify the sound, but either way, the Metrodome is definitely one of the loudest sports venue I've been in. Comparable to when I was at Allstate Arena for the Illini-Arizona game a couple years ago, except that time had more to do with the excitement of the game situation.

The game itself was awesome (if you were a Bears fan). For those of you who missed it, they basically went back and forth on field goals for most of the game, then fell behind on a terrible interception return for TD thrown by Rex. We caught a break when the Vikings fumbled in their own territory, then Grossman somewhat redeemed himself with a pretty TD pass to put us ahead for good.

A couple pics of the field (ignore the random guy's big head):





So that was basically the trip. Oh yeah, and we stopped by a couple casinos, but I don't have pictures of those. There were some good times had there too though.

One other thing I thought was funny is that a lot of places have signs that say "We do not allow firearms on the premises". I guess there's no concealed weapon law in Minnesota, so they actually need to specify "no guns allowed" at the Metrodome or at the banks.

The Aftermath

Had my first, hopefully not last, big gathering of 2006 at my place over the weekend, and it was a good time. Wish I could do it more often, but with my schedule lately, and everyone else's busy lives, it's hard to find a good day. Nevertheless, I'll try to make one more happen by the end of the summer.

Maybe next time we'll finally make it all the way around:





At least this time it spanned more than 1 picture. I went back through my blog to find last year's entry, and it looks like we didn't get nearly as far last time. (Here's the link in case you want to go back and see for yourself: http://dudo509.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_dudo509_archive.html#112415128383880099)

Kind of interesting that it was almost exactly 1 year ago, within a week. Since then I got some patio furniture, but that's about it.

While going through the archives to look for those pics, I read through some of my blogs from that time, which is always a little weird. I think I was actually a better writer and more entertaining back then compared to right now, not that it's saying much.

Sick Blog

One thing I've noticed over the years is that some of my most revealing moments of mental clarity seem to come when I'm sick. I don't know what it is, maybe it's a physiological thing where chemicals react to open up parts of my brain to function differently than normal, as my immune system takes over. Maybe it's the practical aspect of being forced to lie in bed, quietly and without distraction from TV, computer, or phone. Or maybe I'm not really thinking better, and I'm just mistaking delerious thoughts for clarity.

Anyways, as you may have assumed by now, I've been sick the last few days. Mostly just fever-like symptoms, but it did get bad enough at one point that I had to take time off from work, which I almost never do. At the risk of boring everyone else to the point that they start feeling sick from reading this, I thought I'd share some of the thoughts I had this time while fighting and recovering from my illness:

- Things in life have to change. This can be good or it can be bad. People often say "all good things must come to an end", and to be honest, I'm still not sure whether or not this statement is entirely true. But if it is true, well, I think it also has to mean that "all bad things must come to an end" as well. We just tend to not think of it that way as much.

- On the other hand, I forget which law of thermodynamics talks about entropy, but I'm learning more about how this applies to life. (For those who forgot all their chemistry, the concept of entropy basically says that the universe always heads toward disorder, unless extra energy is added to the situation. The example always used is that your bedroom always gets messier, unless you put in the work to clean it up).

As I think everyone our age would agree, life only gets tougher as you get older. The decisions you make become more and more critical, making every choice that much more stressful. The experiences you go through leave you with emotional baggage that never goes away, they only add up on top of one another. Financially, your expenses only get more burdensome and even though your salary grows, it gets harder and harder to save.

I often wish I could go back 5 years to being 21 again. But to borrow some words from Andy, life isn't like a video game. There's no reset button where you can start over whenever you want. Would be nice though.

- I also have to remind myself more lately, that money isn't everything. I know that it plays an important role in our society, and I'm not saying we should all become hippies. By the way, I'm not just talking about "cash moneeey" (cue Wilmer Valderrama), but materialism in general.

One thing I appreciate about my parents is that, even though they are Asian, and stereotypically stingy, they always raised me and my sister to not be too obsessed with money. I've always thought that one of the worst things that could happen to someone is for him/her to let their possessions own them. Though it should seem obvious, that the money we earn and the things we buy are there for our sake, the roles get reversed pretty easily and we end up becoming slaves to our possessions more frequently that it should happen.

Sometimes, with how much we spend on certain things, certain luxuries, we forget that these material goods are only objects. They may bring us temporary satisfaction but in the end, they can also cause us to lose track of things that are more important. Often times, like when I watch Cribs, I wonder if people simply spend money lavishly to distract themselves from what their heart truly longs for. Is each fancy car or added wing to their mansion merely another diversion to last them till the next?

And I guess that's what I fear about "letting your possessions own you". It becomes a problem when the monetary value of something overrules your better judgement and starts dictating the decisions you make. Deep down, I've always thought that I could have all the money in the world, all the luxuries that money could buy, but if it came at the cost of the values I was raised on, or caused me to lose certain people I loved, then I would never ever be happy.

I just hope I don't forget that. It gets tougher when you think about how hard you work for the money you make, how long it takes to save up those dollars, and how much some things you want are going to cost you. I'm pretty sure every one of us has at one point thought to themselves, "gosh, if I only had an extra $20K in my bank account, that would solve so many problems".

Would it, though? I mean, if every extra dollar you come across gets immediately sucked up by a new expense, what's the point? As Notorious BIG would say, the mo' money you come across, the mo' problems you see. It's up to us to recognize when enough is enough and take back control from material idols, nobody else can decide that for you. Eventually I'll probably write a full length blog on the downfalls of money, but I'll leave it at that for now.

- Taking a random 90 degree turn here, I was thinking about how a lot of the top actors in Hollywood are short. Tom Cruise is probably the first example that comes to mind, but I think a lot of other lead stars are shorter than we think. One that especially surprised me was Kiefer Sutherland, who I heard is only like 5'6 or so, and can only have other short actors/actresses cast in 24 so it doesn't make him look too small.

You'd think that in a cutthroat industry like the movie industry, casting would be so demanding that only the people who have all the "best" physical attributes could ever make it to the top. I know that a lot of it has to do with connections, but still. By any logical standard in showbusiness, being short has no advantage over being tall, at least when it comes to actors who play typical male lead roles. And I'm sure there's plenty of tall people out there who are good looking enough to audition for these same spots.

So it made me wonder if this phenomenon is a case of Napoleon Complex in modern day Hollywood? In other words, are these short actors succeeding in the industry because they've worked much harder than their taller counterparts, in order to compensate for their height? Has their "handicap" of being short caused them to pursue these roles more aggressively, hone their acting skills more diligently, and perhaps "whore" themseleves out more to make up for shortcomings?

Same explanation might apply to other areas, like ugly people succeeding in the radio world, or blind people becoming great musicians. Although the term "Napoleon Complex" tends to bear negative connotation, I'd argue that it might not be such a bad thing. So what if you are born with a disadvantage, and it causes you work harder, allows you to focus more on the things you are good at? It could result in success that you might have otherwise missed out on by the complacency of feeling like you're fine as it is. Of course, this is all good, assuming that your idea of "success" is not "starting wars and causing millions of unnecessary deaths in the late 18th-early 19th century".

(By the way, I found it interesting, as I was doing some additional reading on Napoleon Complex, that origin of the term was based on the assumption that Napoleon was unusually short, which was actually not true. By the typical standards of his day, Napoleon was of average height. So I guess he wasn't overcompensating for being short, the man was just a jerk who happened to also be a military genius.)

- The best part of getting sick, of course, is when you start to get better. You're still maybe a little groggy, muscles still sore, but you know your body is winning the battle and better times are ahead. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure endorphins come into play here too. But it's uplifting not only physically - it's a great feeling mentally and emotionally too.

When I was driving home for lunch today, that's exactly how I felt. Still not 100%, but feeling good, even happier and more upbeat than when I am fully healthy. I know it sounds stupid and cheesy, but I compare it to a sunrise. The sun's not fully out, as it would be at high noon, and it's still fairly dark, but the view of the rising sun is more beautiful than anything. The long night made you appreciate the beauty of daylight that much more, and it feels even better because you know you have the whole day ahead of you to enjoy.

Being sick is the same way. When your head is throbbing, vision a little blurry, you're shivering and burning up simultaneously, and your stomach is turning itself inside out, those are all reminders of how nice it would be to be healthy again. As much as I hate the cliche, "puts things in perspective", that's really what it is. All those things that stress you out normally, worries and self-inflicted headaches from every day life, they all become much less significant.

Maybe it really is just those endorphins acting, or maybe it's prolonged delerium from the fever. But I really feel like nothing can bring me down, as bad as things may get in my little world. Things may not always go the way I think they should, or the way I want them to, but right now I can say "whatever happens, happens", and feel a renewed sense that everything will work out fine in the end. I guess sometimes, even being sick isn't such a bad thing after all.

But I'm just glad to be back, baby.

Smells Like Updawg

- I think Chinese people have an inborn gene that makes us hurt when money gets wasted. Personally, I don't think of myself as an especially stingy person (I hope none of my friends thinks so either), but that doesn't mean I don't care about my money.

Last year, when I was getting ready to buy a house, I started planning a serious budget. I tried to take every possible factor into account, from the big stuff like work income, mortgage payments, property taxes, down to little things like cell phone bills, gym membership, and Laguna Beach DVD's. I tried to have everything planned out so I'd be able to not only afford all my payments, but still have some savings and extra cash to spend here and there.

Well, saving up some money in the past year has been somewhat of an uphill battle, to say the least. Still, about a month ago, I was going through my bank accounts and 401K, and feeling kind of upbeat about how I was doing. Finally my bills were under control, some interest was piling up, my account balances were going up noticeably, and I could see myself being able to spend some extra money on the side. Maybe take a little vacation, get into some side hobbies, or just go out a little more often.

That didn't last long, though. In the last month, all these unexpected expenses have been popping up left and right. I got yet another flat on my car (4th in 2 years) and ended up having to replace 2 tires at once. Gasoline prices jumped again for a few weeks, the hot weather sent my power bill way up, and there's been an unending stream of stupid charges here and there, ranging from the Schaumburg vehicle sticker to paying $20 cover at Y-bar (just because I was not a woman and happened to get there past 11pm).

By far the worst, though, was when my property tax bill arrived about 30% higher than expected. I was hoping this was a mistake, but I called up the assessor and they said it was because I moved in during the past year and that reduced my "Homeowner's Exemption" by about $1K. As he put it, a little "welcome to the neighborhood". No small chunk of change though.

I'm not sure if it's Schaumburg thing or a Cook County thing, but if you get a house around here, watch out for your property taxes the year after you move in. Kind of surprised it hasn't happened to anyone else I know yet.

- Took a mini road trip with some boys to the Sconz this weekend, for some rafting and other assorted troublemaking. Road trips are always fun, although I think the older we get, the shorter time it takes before people start getting on each others' nerves. Still, a fun time was had by all.

The best part was when we didn't die. We rented one of those 15 person vans to drive up, which according to Ryan, has such a high accident rate that his company refuses to insure it at all. Then on the way there, we were flipping through the newspaper and came across this big picture of a crash. Pretty much the same exact van we were in, all flipped over in a ditch and mangled, with the caption "15 die in van accident". An ominous sign if there ever was one.

- To go along with being one of the few people who doesn't think Family Guy is that funny, I'm thinking I might be the only guy who doesn't think the lead girl from PCD is that hot. She aiiiight, but kinda weird looking if you ask me. Oh, and the part in their video where she dances with the chair is a blatant ripoff of Britney Spears' "Stronger" video. Again, I am possibly the only person who would ever notice that.

Japan Loves Dudo509

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog on how my name was so generic that I didn't have to worry about getting "googled". Well, it turns out that if you go to the Japanese Yahoo! search and type in "Joe Chen", my first blog is the first result that returns. Pretty wild isn't it? Try it if you'd like:

Yahoo! Japan - type in "Joe Chen" and click Search

In regular Yahoo (U.S), I'm only the 3rd result. Not as impressive, but still way higher than I would have guessed. Looks like Google still does not recognize me within its first couple pages, which I consider a good thing.

Anyways, I guess that's one thing I have in common with Uncle Jesse from Full House. Underappreciated in his home country, but a superstar in the Land of the Rising Sun.

For loyal American readers of this blog, don't worry. I won't sell out to my Japanese demographic and turn this page into a bunch of weird obstacle course game shows, or hidden camera shows where they rig Port-o-Potties with hydraulics.

If you're curious to what I'm talking about though, here are a couple links (c/o Brian and Grace):

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/false-wall-prank.html

http://www.noob.us/humor/japanese-game-show-public-bathroom-prank/

1 Down, 29 To Go

This month marks 1 year since I closed on my townhouse. Which, of course, also means that I have now completed my first full year of mortgage payments - out of 30.

There's about a 0% chance that I will end up living here through the entire course of my 30-year loan. And I would like to think that I will be able to progress career and salary-wise to the point that I can pay off the mortgage earlier than that. But it's still a demoralizing thought that after all the work saving up for a down payment, and then the last 12 months of paying mortgage bills, I'm still so far from being able to say I truly "own" my house.

I used to think of a year as a long time. Now it's just a small step in a long climb back up to a debt-free life. Worse yet, if I look at how it breaks down in the amortization table, only about 20% of what I paid to the bank in the last year went to the house - the rest was just to pay off interest. Technically, the title of this blog shouldn't be "1 down, 29 to go", it should be more like "1.4% down, 98.6% to go".



On the plus side, I love home-ownership and I have no regrets whatsoever about signing my life away last year. It was scary at first, and sometimes still is. But overall, I do feel a good sense of accomplishment to get this far in my life. I can't recommend it enough to friends who are still deciding whether or not to take the plunge themselves, as long as you feel like you will be stable for a few years.

And for those of you who recently bought your first place, congratulations and welcome to the club!

*****

Edit: Link to article from DLo about what to consider when deciding between renting/buying

http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/05/23/renting-is-for-suckers/

Tools

I think my brain was a little fried at work today, but I was staring at my Internet Explorer browser, and noticed for the first time that one of the menus was called "Tools".

Well I mean, I always knew there was the "Tools" menu, but for the first time it amused me. I imagined clicking on the menu, and it opening up a list of names of people who are tools. Maybe it would look something like:

Job Fair Stuff

Don't really have a point to this entry, but I noticed that I still have a lot of the stuff I got at those college job fairs we used to go to.

I've got a deck of playing cards from Motorola, a bunch of t-shirts from Compaq and AMD, and a whole bunch of pens or highlighters from small companies I don't even remember talking to.

Raytheon gave me this cool little digital (as in electronic) clock/calendar thing, while Honda gave me a stopwatch, which I actually still use. Kinda impressive that these electronic things still work, 6 years later.

I wonder what happened to those little rubber balls that flash when you bounce them though, those were the coolest.

More Joe Chens

One of my earliest entries ever posted on this blog was about my name, and how it's way too common. I talked about the problems I had in getting a email account with my name (without having to add a whole bunch of numbers after it), or when I was at school in Taiwan and another guy named Joe Chen had the locker above mine.

Well, it seems this issue has even followed me to my current job. It doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while, I get an email at work that was intended for one of the TWO other Joe Chen's at this company. I guess it should only be expected that in a corporation that includes over 100,000 employees, my name wouldn't be unique. Fortunately, both of the other Joes are at a different location than mine, somewhere out in California.

So anyways, I got one of Cali Joe Chen's emails when I got into work this morning, and forwarded it to him. He replied later to say thanks, and I noticed that the timestamp between my email and his reply was almost exactly 2 hours apart.

It got me wondering about this other Joe Chen. We obviously already share the same name and employer, what about the rest of his life? Is his daily routine exactly like mine, except 2 time zones away? Like I get to work at 8 am every day, then check my email, look at Yahoo Chicagoland weather for kicks, and read the Chicago Sun Times for news on the White Sox, etc.

2 hours later, when it's 10 am here and 8 am on the West Coast, does Cali Joe Chen get to work and do the same thing that I did 2 hours earlier? Check his email, look up Yahoo weather for Orange County, read the LA Times coverage of the Dodgers or whatever?

What about around the world? There must be thousands of Joe Chens between China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. Is there a Joe Chen who wakes up in Taipei 13 hours after I do, goes to work, and reads the Taipei Times about the Brother Elephants (the most popular team in Taiwan's pro baseball league)? Can it be said that "the sun never sets on Joe Chen"?

See, these are the questions that confound a man when his name is so common. If you have a unique name, consider yourself lucky. I already promised to myself that when I have kids, I'm naming them something like Zoltan-59C or Seven. Seven Chen, haha I kinda like that. Actually maybe it should be more like Twenty-four Chen, I guess, since Joe Crede is like the Mickey Mantle of my day.

Although, there is one good thing about having a generic name like mine. I don't have to worry about masking or redacting (that's my new word now, thanks to the HGH investigations) my own name in this blog. You try to search for "Joe Chen" on the internet, and you'll have to go through page after page of fobby grad students before you reach my page (if at all). My name has made me practically "unGoogleable".

I Heart Joe Crede

(It's For The Kids)

I read this article today about how there's a new ringtone out there that can be heard by kids only, and not adults:

Students find ringtone adults can't hear

I didn't know that was even possible, but apparently it is, if you set the frequency at the right range. Kinda like those "dog whistles" I guess.

The news is alarming to me, though, because I didn't think there was that much difference between an adult's hearing and a child's hearing. It's not like with dogs and humans, this is human to human we're talking about, just different ages.

I know my hearing will go eventually, but I always thought your hearing didn't start degrading until you were elderly (like 60's or so), and by then, you probably have other things to worry about. But it doesn't "sound" (har har) like they are talking about grandmas and grandpas who need hearing aids. The article distinguishes between "5th graders" or "teenagers" and "adults", and if anything, I'm thinking that I fall into the "adults" category.

That's not cool. I guess my body is breaking down even faster than I thought it would. Next thing you know I'll be wearing sweaters in the middle of August and smelling like mothballs. Umm, let's hope not.

By the way, my favorite sentence from the article:

"As people age, many develop what's known as aging ear..."

Hmmmm... FASCINATING

DREams in Digital

If there are any girls reading this, you might want to skip this one. Seriously.

There's been a lot of commercials lately for these new drugs that are supposed to treat men's prostate problems. The two brands I see the most are Avodart and Flomax, and seriously, watching these commercials almost has me convinced that I need to see my doctor for BPH (which is somehow short for an enlarged prostate disorder, I have no idea how).

From watching the commercials, I gather that the main symptom is having to pee excessively often. Well that sure sounds familiar. Some of you may have already noticed that I'm always going to the bathroom. It's not to check my makeup or gossip about boys either.

It has been suggested to me in the past that I have a small bladder, which as you might imagine, isn't my explanation of choice. (I prefer to think of it as being because I have especially good circulation or a super efficient digestive system. That or I drink more water than everyone else.)

I'd much rather have a small bladder, though, than an enlarged prostate. I was intrigued enough on the subject of prostate disorders that I decided to do some digging on Google about it. I didn't get very far, because it isn't particularly enjoyable to read about some of the gory details on the subject.

But one thing I did learn, though, is that the common procedure for doctors to check for prostate problems is called a "Digital Rectal Exam". Most of us have probably heard of rectal exams, and they don't sound too fun do they. I am definitely not looking forward to getting those when I get older, to say the least.

But anyways, when I first saw mention of a test called the "Digital Rectal Exam", it gave me some hope. When I hear the word "digital", certain things come to mind. I think about digital music, digital cable TV, digital watches, digital tuning on your radio. Basically, I associate any "digital" stuff with modern technology, advanced electronics, etc.

So the first thought that came to mind was, hey, maybe someone came up with a nice, non-intrusive way to examine my prostate. Like some sort of mini X-ray or MRI or something that "digitally" scans that region of your body for abnormalities that does not involve poking at the rectum, I'm all for it.

I gotta be honest, I am all for any procedure that provides an alternative to rectum-pokage. It's like when you're a kid and you find out that you can take a vaccine in pill form, instead of getting a painful shot. Except multiplied by a factor of about 100, because shots only last a fraction of a second, and aren't nearly as emasculating.

Unfortunately, my excitement didn't last very long, as I did some more investigating into this so-called "Digital Rectal Exam". Turns out that in this case, the word "digital" was not used to describe an advanced electronic test at all. Nope, they meant "digital" as in the lesser used, definition #2 (reference Dictionary.com):

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=digital

Dig-i-tal
2. Operated or done with the fingers

So basically, the "Digital Rectal Exam" is just a fancier name for that same rectal exam we all hear nightmare stories about. Guess there's no escaping your friendly doctor's finger. All I could say is, wow. Who would have thought that in this "Digital Age" that we live in, they could call something "digital" and have it not be even remotely related to electronics? Maybe a better question is, who even calls fingers "digits" anymore? What are we, in 18th century England? And while we're at it, is there such thing as an "Analog Rectal Exam"? I shudder to think of what that might entail. (Okay I know, now I've gone too far. Sorry.)

Anyways, as I came to this cruel realization, I pondered whether the decision to call rectal exams "digital" was some elaborate joke played on the male population. In all likelihood, by the same man-hating lesbian who invented catheters. All I know is, the next time I see my old college roommate Ray, I will surely urge him to press his employers at GE Medical Systems to make "electronic rectal examinations" their highest research priority.

In the meantime, I guess it's digital rectal exams for all of us guys. That, and we'll have to maybe put up with taking some of these fancy drugs they're advertising. The good news is that apparently the only side effects they have are minor - such as "decrease in semen" (who needs semen anyways), or "fainting from standing up" (hey that sounds kinda fun actually). I think I saw "impotence" thrown in there too, for good measure.

Hmmm... in hindsight, I probably should have advised guys to skip this blog too. Oh well, too late now. If you would like to read more about Digital Rectal Exams (also known as the DRE, I'm guessing it's named after the doctor who invented it, the same guy produced Snoop Dogg and Eminem's rap careers, if I'm not mistaken), here are some more links:

http://www.webmd.com/hw/colorectal_cancer/hw4404.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rectal_exam

http://www.flomax-bph.com/jsp/toolsResources/ToolsResourcesController.jpf

The Skilling Connection

I was reading an article on the Enron the other day, when I came across an interesting tidbit. Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who was just convicted of fraud and a bunch of other good stuff related to the Enron scandal, is the younger brother of none other than...


WGN's weatherman, Tom Skilling

I'm pretty sure that I've railed on weathermen before in this blog, and probably have singled out Tom Skilling at one point or another, for being a waste of space. Little did I know that he was the brother of one of the central figures in perhaps the worst "white-collar crime" in recent history.

See, I knew there was a reason I didn't trust Tom Skilling. This merely confirms what I always suspected all along. That beneath that jolly smile and grandfather-like demeanor, lies a man with a twisted psyche. You can't escape genetics. Beware, if your last name is Skilling, you're bound to one of two possible fates:

1) Ruining the lives of thousands of hard working Americans by unethical management of a corporation, or

2) Ruining my life with your faulty weather predictions.

There are no exceptions. The world needs to rid itself of this scourge that calls itself the Skilling family, I say.

Spring Cleaning

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. Mine was about as busy as it gets. Saw Da Vinci Code (weak) and X-Men 3 (loved it). Went to an outdoor wedding, which was nice except it was ridiculously hot. Played some softball and basketball, where it was also ridiculously hot (in addition to lots of fuzzy plant crap flying around the air).

But I think the most significant part of the weekend, for me at least, was the day I spent cleaning and taking care of business around the house. After a long winter and busy past couple months, I finally had a chance to hand wash my car, sweep away all the leaves, dirt, and spiderwebs built up in my garage, and trim the overgrown hedge that was interfering with part of my driveway ever since I moved in.

Trimming hedges is harder than I expected. Here is a picture of my finished work:



Beautiful, isn't it. Consider the above photo as reason #1 of why you should never, ever let me cut your hair.

Update

Well it's been a while since I wrote anything, some of you may be wondering what I've been up to. First of all, work has been especially busy lately. You can all usually assume that is the case, whenever the updates get rare.

There have been some highlights from the last few weeks though. One was getting to see Shubes and Sandy get married. This marks the first of the original ~509~ clan to get hitched by the way. Some pictures from the wedding:





Yes, our hands say "5-0-9" in the first picture. Yes, I know that makes us all very lame. There were plenty of interesting incidents from that evening, none of which will be discussed in detail here. Let's just say there was some tackling, and also a gay waiter hitting on Ryan.

Another landmark day was Olivia's med school graduation, last week. It was really nice to see her walk across that stage, after watching the girl work so hard for the last 4 years and make so many sacrifices to get there. I know for a fact that I would not have made it myself.

As part of her graduation week activities, we went to a graduation ball and also a Sox game. You can take a wild guess on which one I enjoyed more. Here's a pic from the game:



Next memorable event was the engagement of Brian and Grace. Another couple takes the plunge. Not that it matters what I think, but I thought it was really great thing to see. Congratulations guys!

Finally, I have to talk about getting to go to watch Conan O'Brien taping at the Chicago Theater. Thanks to Chras's email savvy and generous offer to bring me along, we got to cross one thing off of the "Miscellaneous To-Do List" of life. Conan is definitely one of the funniest people in the world, if you ask me, and I loved watching his show ever since high school days.

Even better was that his guest for that show was Dave Chappelle. So you had maybe the 2 funniest people in the world on the same stage, and me and Chras were there to see them. Very cool, I will remember the experience for years to come.

I took a few pictures there, see below (note: the ones inside are bad quality because my phone camera sucks in the dark, and also because the ushers were yelling at people with cameras, so I had to do it surreptitiously. This led to the blurriness to go along with grainy. In the last one you can kind of make out Conan shaking hands with Chappelle on stage, so it's all good.):









There were some other highlights, but I don't have time to write about them right now. Gotta get to bed. Later folks.

Banker's Hours

Every now and then, I'll hear somebody at work use the term "banker's hours" jokingly. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but based on the context, I'm pretty sure it's a way of making fun of someone for leaving earlier than usual.

For example, if I see Bob taking off in the early afternoon at maybe 2 or 3 (our normal workday ends at 4:30pm), I might say "Hey Bob, keeping banker's hours, eh?" To which he would probably smile politely and make up some excuse for why he's leaving early.

I know, it's pretty dumb, and not that funny, but people actually say it pretty often around here. At least it's better than saying "touch base" all the time. There's this girl who sits near me and I hear her say it every single day. Makes me want to punch someone.

Anyways, what I think is funny is how bankers apparently got the reputation of being lazy and having a short work day, to the point that "banker's hours" actually became a term. Sorry Anuj, it's true.

It also makes me wonder, if engineers make fun of bankers for leaving work early, what do people in other professions say in similar situations? Like if a banker sees a fellow employee going home around noon, would he/she say "hey, keeping Kindergarten teacher's hours, eh?"

Or on the other side of things, say a Japanese businessman wants to leave the office earlier than usual, does he/she have to worry about a colleague making a derisive comment like "hey, keeping electrical engineer's hours, eh?"

Major League Gaming

A while back MTV did that True Life documentary on professional gamers, now it looks like they are going to take it to the next level and have an organized league with TV contracts and everything:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060417/ap_en_tv/video_gaming_tv_show_1

They say it could be the next big sensation, like televised poker in the last few years. I think, if done right, it could be even bigger than that. Could fantasy videogamer leagues be far behind? I draft T-Squared with the first overall pick!

Cartoon Wars

Not sure if anyone else has seen the last couple South Park episodes, where they take on the issue of showing Muhammed (the Islamic prophet, not the boxer) and also rip on Family Guy.

The episodes were pretty good actually. Of all the South Park episodes that try to have some political theme or message, this might be one of the most meaningful and important. At least in my opinion. I won't talk about the political stuff much here, you'll have to watch the episodes yourself and see what you think.

What I did want to talk about was the stuff they said about Family Guy. I know a lot of people love that show, which is cool, but I've tried to watch more than a couple episodes of it, and I just can't really get into it. I think I've mentioned this before on this blog. There are some funny parts, but overall I just can't say I'm a fan of the show.

At one point, I thought I was the only one who didn't "get" Family Guy, especially for someone who likes Simpsons, South Park, and just stupid humor in general. But based on some of the stuff that was said in the South Park episodes, I guess I'm not the only one.

(By the way, if any of you haven't seen the last 2 South Park episodes I'm talking about, and are the sensitive type to "spoilers", maybe you should skip the rest and come back after you've seen it. I really don't think I'm going to "ruin" anything by what I say, but just in case, that's your warning.)

Basically, their criticism of Family Guy is that their episodes have no real plot, and that the jokes are pretty much just random scenarios that pop up with no rhyme or reason. I never realized it before, but after they pointed it out, I do think that is exactly why I don't appreciate the show.

I don't know if every episode of Family Guy is like that, but they made up some mock clips of it in the South Park episode, and those clips were surprisingly dead on with the episodes I've seen of Family Guy. The family's just sitting in the living room, and out of the blue, the dad says something like "hey, remember the time I was ...", and then they go into a flashback sequence where they show that story happening.

Meanwhile none of it has anything to do with anything, it's like the writers just wanted to insert a scene that they thought would make people laugh. You get the feeling that when the writers try to construct an episode, a list of jokes or funny situations or pop culture references are written first, and then they figure out how to incorporate as many of them in half an hour as they can.

To me, it would be like Eminem writing a rap, by first coming up pairs of words that rhyme. Then trying to make sentences that end in those words, and finally to make the song, just put those sentences one after another. It just results in something that makes no sense and sounds awkwardly put together. Not that I have much experience in writing rap songs, but I would think that you should start by deciding what subject to rap about first, and then come up with the best rhymes from there.

I know, I'm expecting too much from a cartoon sitcom, it's not like writing poetry, or directing an independent film about gay cowboys eating pudding. I guess I just can't help but compare it to Simpsons or South Park, two of my favorite shows of all time. In its prime seasons, the writing on Simpsons was as polished and smoothly done as it gets. South Park came along, and it was a lot rougher around the edges and not as cleverly written, but still funny and smart in its own way.

As for Family Guy, I can see how fans think it's hilarious, and even how the random style is part of the show's charm. But personally, I have a feeling I may never really "get" it. I mean, I happened to watch some of Scary Movie 2 on TV the other day, and I seriously think even that had more plot continuity, than a typical Family Guy episode.

I don't remember the exact quotes, but in the South Park episodes, there was a part where Kyle said something to Cartman like: "How can you not like Family Guy? Its humor is right up your alley!". Which set Cartman off: "Don't you ever compare me to Family Guy, Kyle! EVER! I will kill you where you stand!"

Now, I may not get as pissed off as Cartman when people ask me how I can like Simpsons and South Park, but not Family Guy - but I understand.

Cults/Secret Societies

A subject that I seem to be hearing a lot about lately is on cults and secret societies among us. There was the whole Scientology thing, made most public by the recent South Park episodes. I also happened to read Angels and Demons a couple months ago (written by the same author of Da Vinci Code), which talks a lot about secret societies dating back hundreds of years in history. And just this morning, I was reading an article in the Chicago Tribune talking about how most of the sushi restaurants we eat at, get their sushi from a company that is closely connected to a Korean religious cult.

I guess I always believed that these things existed, but never really thought about them much. They made for good stories in movies (like The Skulls) or TV (the Simpsons' Stonecutters episode), but I just figured that kind of stuff was exaggerated for effect. In my mind, either those cults or secret societies used to exist and aren't really active anymore, or maybe they still exist, but don't really have any influence on "mainstream" society.

Now, I'm not so sure that I should take the subject so lightly. The sushi-Korean cult connection was especially surprising, since I love sushi and I go to sushi restaurants pretty often. Last weekend I went to Mirai in the city for the first time, and loved the food, but now after reading the Trib article, all these nagging thoughts are popping up in my mind.

When I was enjoying all those delightful fatty tuna rolls, was I providing financial support to some wacko who holds mass weddings and believes he is the Messiah? Worse yet, what if one day these crazy cult people decide to mess with my food in some mind-controlling or mass poisoning campaign, how would I know? Is it too late, am I already programmed to assassinate the Malaysian president at a fashion show at a later date?

There was also this Scientology article I read a few weeks ago, where this investigative reporter guy joined the group for a week and then reported on his experience. I don't know the credibility of this guy, but some of the accounts are very disturbing. And I'm not just talking about the wild stories they believe in, or the fact that the "religion" was started by a science-fiction writer, it goes way farther than that.

He describes about how everyone who joins has to reveal all their personal secrets, which go into a file that they can bring out to blackmail or discredit the person if they try to quit. Or how they have trained experts available at helping you max out your credit to pay for Scientology "treatments". How once you get sucked in, they can pretty much make you do slave labor as punishments if you piss off any higher ranking members (or as they call it, levels of Operating Thetans).

Then there's the discussion of secret societies like the Illuminati and Freemasons in Angels and Demons. Based on the inaccuracies and misleading facts I learned about when researching Da Vinci Code, plus the fact that it's a fiction novel, I would probably put the least stock in what's in this book.

Even so, I think some of the general "facts" mentioned are worth considering and thinking about. People formed these secret societies for a reason, and the fact that they have survived and perhaps thrived for so long says a lot. They obviously know what it takes to support themselves financially, and assert their interests in the political system.

How much of our banking system is run by those in these secret societies? What about the chancellors and professors at major universities, are they members too? Is it true that our senators, governors, and even our Presidents are members of these societies? Did they get to power because of their secret ties, and are their actions as government officials, bankers, CEO's, professors, etc., heavily influenced by the interests of these societies they belong to?

I don't know if I'll ever get those questions answered, but all the doubts that come up when I think about these things leave me feeling unsettled. I could be paranoid, but if any of it's true, I wonder if I could even do anything about it anyways.

Am I going to shun the entire educational system because I think I'll get brainwashed by cult ideology? Should I boycott all banks and store all my money in the form of gold bars, so that I'm not supporting some secret society? Most importantly, am I really going to stop eating sushi?

The answer is, of course, no way, I love sushi. Gonna keep eating it until I die, whether it's of natural causes or as a victim of religious cult's purging mission. Yes, I guess it's true, as they say, "ignorance is bliss".

Who Are The Ad Wizards That Came Up With That One?

Everyone knows that sex sells, and it is no surprise that plenty of commercials have always used sex appeal to sell their products. But one thing I've been noticing recently is that the way that it is used in more recent commercials has kind of changed, at least I think they have.

From what I remember, people used to always criticize beer commercials for always showing regular guys surrounded by hot chicks as they drank Bud Light or Miller Lite (I just noticed that, why does one spell it "Light" and the other spell it "Lite"?). The criticism was that the commercials were misleading and superficial - just because you drink a certain beer, doesn't mean you are going to get a lot of chicks!

I'm not going to argue that the message is stupid, but if you think about the way those commercials presented the message, they were kind of making those suggestions in a "subtle" way, if you can call it that. What they do is show the given situation in the commercial - and then it is up to the viewer to make that connection in their mind, presumably on a subconscious level. They don't come out and just say "hey, if you drink our beer/use our product, hot girls will be all over you", instead they simply show you that scenario and hope that you put it together and figure out the message. Not that it's a huge leap or anything.

Comparing that to some of the commercials I see today, I get the sense that the old advertising philosophy has been replaced by a much more overt, "beat you over the head" approach. Now, we see a guy using Axe body spray, immediately leading to a hot chick in an elevator, his friend's mother, or a bunch of cheerleaders jumping on him. Or we see a guy use a certain kind of aftershave or razor blade, then meets his roommate's girlfriend, who is immediately all over him, rubbing his face and calling him "Francesco". There's even a Harley Davidson commercial where a girl dates a bunch of guys but rejects them all, until the guy in a Harley comes along, and of course he scores with her.

I'm just waiting for a commercial for Microsoft Office to come out, where they show a guy using Corel Spreadsheet or something and getting rejected by every girl in the office. Then he starts using Excel, and all of a sudden the ladies are lining up to pivot his tables.

Whether it's a commercial for body spray, aftershave, breath mints, chewing gum, a motorcycle, brand of whiskey, or whatever it is, the message in these ads are much more clearly stated: "Use our product, and you will hook up." They don't just pose the scenario and let your subconscious mind make the connection, they basically come out and just tell you exactly what to think outright. The message is not just implied like it used to be, it's basically stated in a way that you have to be retarded to not understand.

Maybe I have overlooked old commercials that have done this in the past, but as I was sayinig, it seems like this is more of a recent trend. Ironically, I almost think beer commercials are more tame nowadays than they used to be, more about making you laugh than pressuring you to drink a brand to be socially accepted.

If it is indeed a recent trend, I'm not sure what exactly that says about our country's development as a whole. Does this mean that advertisers have given up on trying to make us think with their ads, by cleverly placing thoughts in the back of our minds? Have they decided that we are all like overgrown children who can be told what to think?

Maybe a more interesting question is, what's worse - when advertisers try to be sneaky and appeal to your subconscious, or when they don't even try to be subtle anymore, and simply make heavily exaggerated claims that can't be backed up? On the one hand, it would be nice to feel like they respect our intelligence enough for them to believe that they have to be clever in their marketing strategy. But then, if it's the same message they're trying to send, then why bother putting up the charade? No point in beating around the bush right?

One Ring To Rule Them All

Thanks to Chras's getting of tickets, and Anuj's driving/mini-grill, we had our first White Sox tailgate of the year, before watching the Ring Ceremony and the second game of the season vs. the Indians. It was a terrible game (Sox got blown out 8-2), a lot colder and windier than we expected, but everything else was perfect.

It's not often that you get to see your team receive its championship rings in person, but that was exactly what we got to see. Getting to remember the feelings of last year's run was great enough in itself, but I think the Sox promoters really did a great job of making it special. There was the cool highlight videos playing on the big screen, the free "replica" ring given to the first 20,000 fans to the stadium (it's nicer than it sounds), and the F-16's flying over the stadium after the national anthem, which were all very nice.

But the best moment for me the introduction of Aaron Rowand. If I had a favorite player from last year, it would probably have been Rowand, for his amazing defensive plays and just overall hustle. So of course I was sad when they traded him in the offseason. I won't write a whole long tribute for him like Dee Brown, but it was definitely cool to see him make it back for the ring ceremony. Judging by the crowd's reaction, I think a lot of other Sox fans felt the same way too.

Anyways, I won't write that much more about the experience, having already written plenty about the Sox last year. So here are some pictures (taken by my new phone, in case you were wondering):

Dee Brown



The other night, I was watching Dee Brown compete in the three point contest for college seniors, leading up to the Final Four, and it occurred to me that it would be the last time I'd see him in that Illinois #11 jersey competing on the court. I thought it would be a good time to write a goodbye for my favorite player of all time.

Since I started following Illini basketball, there's been a lot of good players. No doubt that Dee is among the best of them, but I don't think anyone could say that he was the best on the court. Up until this year (the weakest Illinois team during his 4 year career), Dee Brown has never been the best player on the court. For one, his backcourt partner from day one of stepping on campus as a freshman, ended up being the #3 overall pick in last year's NBA draft. But even if you don't count Deron Williams, he also was far behind Luther Head, now on the Rockets, and Brian Cook, now on the Lakers.

Dee's never been our greatest 3 point shooter, rebounder, passer, or dunker. He was usually the shortest guy on the court too, which is kind of a problem when you play basketball. The one thing he was known for was being fast, with the nickname "one-man fast break". But being fast alone doesn't explain how he got to be so popular.

It's impressive, if you think about it. Growing up around here, everyone's favorite player was Michael Jordan, no question about it. But that makes sense because he was by far the best player in the league. Yes, he had the personality too, but if he wasn't the runaway MVP every year, he wouldn't have been as universally worshipped.

Some people just have that extra charisma that you can't necessarily explain. Dee is obviously one of those people. It's not like other players haven't worn headbands before, or worn long socks, but so many of us have come to almost seen it as a Dee Brown trademark. Other players have popped their jersey for the camera in the past and gotten criticized for taunting - when Dee does it, people love it so much that it ends up on the cover of Sports Illustrated:



I guess what I'm saying is, there's no single thing about Dee Brown that makes him my favorite player, and such a great representative of our University. I loved watching a lot of Illini players over the years, and I was always sad to see each one of them go. Not only the future NBA players I mentioned before, but also guys like Marcus Griffin or Sean Harrington too. And if you ask me, nobody was more exciting to watch on the court than Frankie Williams. Even this year's other senior, James Augustine, for all his frustrating foul trouble, will be missed a lot for his flashes of brilliance and how he seemed to win the opening tip every single game.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Dee is a god or anything. He's had his share of frustrating moments, taken his share of terrible shots, and I can't argue with people who say he's overrated, because he probably does get more credit for some things than he deserves.

I don't know if he'll succeed in the NBA, either. Not only because of his height, but his shot is too inconsistent and his midrange game is too weak at this point. At the same time, he has so many intangibles that I wouldn't be surprised if he worked his way into a star. Right now it doesn't look good though.



But when all is said and done, I don't think I'll miss any player more than Dee. We will get players with more talent, who will put up much better numbers and may even lead us to a National Championship someday, but nobody can ever replace #11. Goodbye, Dee, and good luck in the NBA. Whether you make it or not, you'll always be our beloved Illini.

New Phone

As I mentioned in the last blog, I got a new phone recently. For some people they switch phones pretty frequently. But I tend to keep mine for years at a time, so this is kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

What prompted the change was that the headsets on my old phone kept breaking. I went through at least 3 or 4 new headsets in the life of this phone. I blame the design of the plug, with all the little flimsy pins and awkward hooks on the side of the connector. I know they need it for data capabilities and stuff, but it was much better when it was just like a simple mini-headphone jack.

Ironically (or stupidly, depending on how you look at it), my new phone uses the same exact headset as my old phone, so I guess I can look forward to having the same problems in the future. But first, more on my headset replacement saga.



Both headsets pictured above were ordered online during the last couple weeks, after my last one stopped working. They were both advertised as OEM, had the exact same model number, Nokia HS-5, and the hardware looks the same, but outside of that, the two could not be more different. You can see the packaging is different, but more importantly, one works like it's supposed to and the other one is absolutely horrible.

The one on the left was ordered off eBay, from some vendor in Hong Kong or China. It sucks. The sound in the earpiece is all echo-ey, the person you're talking to gets buzzing noises, and if you try to jiggle the connection, the call gets dropped. The one on the right, I got off Amazon. Works perfectly, no complaints at all.

You would think that a headset is one of the easiest things to make as far as electronics goes. It's just a wire terminated into pins at one end and a speaker at the other. Can't really mess up design that badly right? But I guess you can, and quality still makes a big difference.

To make me more mad, I thought at least I paid a lot less for the eBay one, but after going back and adding it up, I paid pretty much exactly the same for both. The eBay headset was something like $1.99 BuyItNow Price + $7 shipping + $2 insurance = $10.99 total. Insurance was mandatory too, when did sellers start pulling that crap? Amazon, the list price was $8.95 + about $1.50 for shipping and $.60 for tax = $11.15 total. Would have saved on tax too, if Illinois didn't happen to be one of the chosen states.

I always thought it was weird how the market culture on eBay or late night infomercials are so different from "traditional" retailers, at least in the way they price things. You don't usually see Amazon.com or BestBuy.com mark down the prices on their products and then jack you by rolling the cost into the shipping and insurance. In fact Amazon offers free shipping for a lot of orders and still has a pretty low price on everything.

So why do the buyers on eBay let sellers get away with all the BS shipping charges and mandatory insurance? There's no way it costs that much to send a little piece of wire to my house. It's not like it even got here that fast either. And if I wanted my shipment to be "insured", I would have asked for it. Am I the only one who thinks it's mentally retarded to pay $2 for insurance in case my $2 item gets lost?

Anyways, moral of my original story, if you're buying a headset for your cell phone, don't trust Chinese people on eBay. Not only will they sell you a terrible product, but you can get the the same thing, except better quality, for almost the same price on Amazon.

As for my new phone, it's pretty similar to my old phone. Looks similar, about the same size and shape. But it has a lot more features - 1.3 MP camera, takes videos, stereo mp3 player, MMC flash card slot, bluetooth and infrared connections, and more. My favorite feature, though, is that it lets you use any mp3 as your ringer. I think it goes without saying which song I copied onto my new phone first.

I'd been holding back on getting a new phone because most of the new models have cameras, and camera phones are banned from my work facility. But this one got such good ratings and had all the features I wanted, so I just had to pull the trigger. I guess I'll just have to keep it in my car when I go to work or leave it at home during the day.

On the plus side, I'm hopeful that the convenience of having a camera with me at all times will lead to more pictures taken and posted here. Can't say for sure if that will happen, or promise that the pictures will be interesting, but at least I know a blog with pictures is better than one that's just filled 100% with my tedious writing.

One last note, I know I've ripped on a lot of companies before, for being shady or having bad customer service, but in an effort to be a little more fair, here's a positive recommendation for once. I've been with 3 different cell phone providers now, and in my experience, I'm definitely most satisfied with T-Mobile.

They haven't been perfect, but overall, I have to say they are much better than Cingular or PrimeCo/US Cellular. You'll have to check for yourself if their coverage is good in your area, but I get very few dropped calls where I live.

More importantly, their customer service is very good. The plans and contracts are pretty straightforward, without a lot of the silly hidden fees I had with the other providers. And their reps at the stores are generally pretty helpful.

If you call up 611, they do give you that silly Kramer-Movie-Phone-esque "Why don't you just tell me your question" system that we all hate. But you can always press 0 and go straight to a live person, which is what I do, and from there the people are usually nice and knowledgable too.

So yeah, if you are completely confused by all the wireless provider commercials out there that accuse each other of having dropped calls, fees shorty fees, or bad customer service, that's my opinion. T-Mobile gets a Dudo509 blogspot thumbs up.

March Badness

It should go without saying by now that the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the greatest sporting event every year. Even though this year, the Illini got a terrible draw in the seeding and were bounced in the second round with the help of some shady officiating, you can't argue with the fact that overall, this tournament has been one of the most exciting ever.

But I'm not writing this entry to complain about the Illini, or even talk about the games. I just wanted to point out one drawback I noticed to the almost nonstop college basketball coverage of the last few weeks.

How can 63 games (64 if you count the play-in game) in 3 weekends ever be a bad thing, you might ask? Well, the basketball itself is great. But listening to all the play-by-play announcers, color guys, and studio analysts has got me talking all weird now.

Before March, whenever I wanted to describe something positive, I used to only use adjectives like "cool", or "great". Sometimes maybe "excellent" or "sweet", too, but that's about it.

Now, after listening to Jay Bilas, Dick Enberg, Billy Packer, Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis, Greg Gumbel, and everyone else on CBS or ESPN talk about the games for hours on end, I'm catching myself using their words like "spectacular", "terrific", "tremendous", "outstanding", or "incredible".

And no, I am not happy about it. I know it makes me sound like a fruitcake, but I can't seem to stop myself from using those stupid words. Like I got a new cell phone recently, and when someone asked me how I like it, I had to seriously fight the urge to say something like "this phone is outstanding!". Or last week on a day when it was sunnier and warmer than usual, I think I told a coworker that "the weather is terrific outside".

If any of you catch me using any of those words in conversation, feel free to kick me in the shin.

World Baseball Classic

As most of you know, I love baseball. I've written more than a few blogs over the years about why it is my favorite sport, as well as to express my love for the defending World Series champions, the Chicago White Sox.

I guess it should come as no surprise, since my family came from Taiwan, where baseball is the most popular sport. Although I did not realize there was a connection until recently, that my love for baseball was due to being Taiwanese (and not so much because it's a great sport to play and watch). I guess it's kind of like when Dave Chappelle realized that he loved fried chicken not because it tasted good, but because he was black.

Anyways, the new big thing this year has been the World Baseball Classic, set up by Bud Selig and the MLB offices. Supposed to be kind of like soccer's World Cup, except for baseball, I guess.

When I first heard about the WBC idea, and found out my beloved "Chinese Taipei" (Taiwan's "official" name in worldwide competition)* was going to be one of the 16 teams competing, I was excited. In part due to politics*, but also because it is a tiny island nation 1/4th the size of Illinois, Taiwan does not get to compete in these types of international events that often. So the rarity of the situation, combined with my love for baseball, peaked my attention for the WBC.

Unfortunately, after the following some of the first round of play, it has been a major disappointment in my mind. It's not just sour grapes because Taiwan got eliminated already, in case you're wondering. Here the main things that bothered me about the WBC so far:

1. Poor TV Coverage

Ok, so I don't expect the WBC to get the same kind of hype as the Olympics, or the NBA, College Basketball, etc. And I know that the games involving Taiwan are in Asia, many time zones away.

But take last Saturday as an example. The Taiwan vs. China game actually had a primetime start of 8 pm. I was at a sports bar downtown with some of the boys that night, a place that was filled with TV screens in every direction. Were any of them showing the WBC game?

The answer is no. Almost every single TV in the place was tuned to the Duke vs. UNC game. It turns out that we were at a UNC gathering of sorts, but still. I saw one TV turned to something other than Duke/UNC, and it was some high school basketball game. Might have even been a girls' basketball game, wouldn't that be a kick in the nuts.

Anyways, my real beef is with ESPN. Did you know that the Duke/UNC game was shown on three channels at the same time? They had the regular coverage on ESPN, the "above-the-rim" cam/JJ Brokeback cam on ESPN2, and the Cameron Crazies cam on ESPN U.

It's a cool idea, I fully admit, but come on. This isn't the freaking Superbowl. It's a regular season college basketball game, between two teams in the 3rd best conference this year, that had no impact on the conference standings! Yes, it's a big rivalry for those who happen to care. Yes, it ended up being an exciting game. Yes, it does make some impact on the eventual tournament seedings. But 3 channels at once to the same game??

Really, ESPN, you couldn't have bumped just one of the angles to show the WBC game? Turns out the Taiwan vs. China game was pushed to ESPN Deportes. If you don't know what that is, don't feel bad. Neither did any of the bartenders I asked to change the channel there. At one point I took it upon myself to go up to a TV and start scrolling through every single channel. Nope, couldn't find it.

Point is, if you want people to care about your precious World Baseball Classic, you better not make too hard for us to watch the games. I don't know about you, but to me, if you're at a sports bar and you can't find the channel, yes it's "too hard".

2. Half the teams are a joke

When you look at the teams involved, it's pretty ridiculous to see what countries got invited. Out of 16, maybe half deserve to be there. Since when do people care about baseball in Australia? Canada? China? Italy? South Africa?

(By the way, I know Canada just beat the US last night, so maybe that deflates my point a little. More on that later though.)

Whoever picked the teams to compete was really stretching it, to say the least. China's team has no major league players and is managed by Jim Lefebvre, don't know if it gets any sadder than that. The Netherlands team might have given China some competition for "most pathetic team" if they didn't happen to own the Dutch Antilles, thus allowing them to claim Andruw Jones. On Italy's team, the only recognizable name is Mike Piazza, an aging catcher who I don't think is even an Italian citizen.

Which brings up another problem, nobody seems to have set any guidelines for determining who plays for who? As much as I think A-Rod is a phony in general, why should he have had to decide what country to play for? It's the job of the tournament organizers to make the rules. How are we supposed to take the World Baseball Classic seriously, if players are allowed to flip flop and decide on a whim which country they want to "represent"?

3. It means nothing

This is the biggest problem with the WBC. First of all, to most of these players, these are nothing more than glorified spring training games. And anyone who watches sports, whether it be baseball, basketball, or football, knows that preseason games don't mean anything. For example, last season's White Sox finished in last place in preseason standings, but went on to win the World Series. In 1985, I think the Bears went 0-4 in the preseason before going on to become one of the best football teams in history.

Part of it is because the players aren't in full game shape yet. Some guys in baseball simply don't reach 100% until May or June.

More importantly, the games don't matter as much because many of the players don't give their 100% effort to begin with. If you're getting paid millions of dollars to play a sport for your MLB team, are you going to risk a career-ending injury diving for a line drive? Are you going to slide headfirst into home plate? In bottom of the 9th inning, will you reach back for that extra oomph to throw a 100 mph pitch, or play it safe and throw 92?

Then there's the players that flat out decide not to play, because it interferes with their MLB jobs. The Dominican is pretty well represented overall but even for them, Pedro Martinez pretty much blew them off. Team USA is missing Randy Johnson, Mark Buerhle, Roy Oswalt, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, and Barry Bonds, among others. The worst case might be the Japanese team - no Hideki Matsui, Kaz Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, or Kenji Johjima.

I'm not saying it's right to choose money over your country's pride. In this case, though, I can't say I would blame a player if they did. Because I don't think the WBC means jack when it comes to national pride.

See that's what I'm really questioning, is do we really think that a country's pride is at stake based on the results of the WBC? I mentioned Canada beating USA earlier - does anyone actually think this means Canada is better at baseball than the United States? Yeah right.

So if nothing really is at stake, how can they expect the players to take the games as seriously as the games in October? And if the players themselves don't take it seriously, why should fans?

*****

Before I stop complaining, I have to ask, who made up these 4-team "pools"? The Asia one makes sense, but that's about it. Canada, Mexico, United States... okay I see a North American pattern... but what's South Africa doing in there? And if you're going to stick the Asian teams together, then why is the Dominican Republic set apart from Cuba and Puerto Rico?

Which reminds me, isn't Puerto Rico as much a territory of US as Dutch Antilles is part of Netherlands? Why shouldn't Carlos Delgado, Pudge Rodriguez, and Javy Lopez be on team USA, just like Andruw Jones is on Netherlands? Oh wait sorry I forgot, your whole tournament is a sham and nobody set any rules that make sense. My bad.

Okay, okay, fine I admit it, so I am a little bitter that Taiwan got bounced in the first round. Why couldn't they put us in a pool with China, South Africa, and Italy? We could've definitely finished in the top 2 of that pool and advanced. No, we got stuck behind Japan and Korea where we had almost no chance. (By the way I think Korea could go far in this thing, carried by a strong pitching staff. I'm impressed so far.)

I'll tell you why the pools were the way they were - the people who made up the tournament set it up that way so they would get the results they wanted. They can't put team USA in a pool with other good teams, and risk having them get eliminated early (the joke may still be on them!). They can't put DR and Venezuela with Cuba and Puerto Rico, because they have to make sure all 4 of those teams make the later rounds. So you split them up and throw some cupcake teams in there, under the guise of making your tournament seem more "international" than it really is. Meanwhile, your arbitrary decisions only make it that much more obvious that the tournament is more about manufacturing hype, than it is about determining the world's best baseball country.

There are few things that bother me more, than when the purity of sports competition gets tainted by businessmen in suits. This may not be as bad as if the NFL changed its rules to favor a more popular team over another, or if the NBA fixed its draft lottery to give the big market teams the higher picks. But it's still something that undermines the credibility of the game.

Like I said before, if there were a legitimate rhyme or reason to the rules and set up of the tournament, I wouldn't be complaining. But there isn't. There's no consistent logic to determining what countries/territories should get their own team, to what players should play for which team, or to what teams should be seeded together in the same group.

As a baseball fan, I'll probably still watch what I can of the later rounds, and I would be thrilled if this WBC thing ends up becoming like soccer's World Cup someday in the future. But as it stands, I just don't see that happening, unless they make some sweeping changes.

*****

Jordan

On a more positive note, I don't know if it's just me, but I get goosebumps every time I see one of those new Jordan commercials. You know the one, where they show kids in different parts of the world playing basketball, and reenacting some of his most memorable highlights.

Here's a link to one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUkXsLXGjEI. Only thing is one of the kids looks like Tracy Morgan (a.k.a. Brian Fellows a.k.a. Woodrow)

Maybe it's just the cheesy dramatic music, but those commercials just get me. Not like any of us needed a reminder, but how great is Michael Jordan? How cool do you have to be, to have a commercial with random kids pretending to be you, and have everyone immediately recognize that it's you. Just by watching the way you palm a ball, drive to the basket with your tongue hanging out, or fake a defender off before hitting a game winning shot.

If there was ever any doubt, things like these commercials have convinced me that there will never, ever be another Michael Jordan. Not Harold Minor, Shaq, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James. Not Tiger Woods for that matter either. Some of those guys might be superstars in their own right, but they'll never come close to matching MJ's greatness.

School Punishments

Something I was thinking about was the ways they punished kids for misbehaving in school.

Up through grade school the punishments were pretty simple: if you were kind of bad, like refusing to share your crayons, you go sit in the corner for a while and think things over. If you were really bad, like you said the "A" word or "H" word, you get sent to the PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE (oooooooohhh). If you were really, really bad, like you said the "S" word or "F" word, they might go as far as calling your parents.

Starting in high school, the most common form of punishment was the almighty "detention". Late to class? Stay after school for half-hour detention. Caught roaming the halls without a hall pass? Maybe come in for SATURDAY detention (ooooooooohhhh). Basically, they're saying that you're supposed to spend 8 hours in school a day, whether you like it or not. If you waste any of it, you're making it up by staying longer than normal.

Which is fine. But what happens if you keep getting in trouble, show up to class drunk, or get into fights in gym class? Then, they SUSPEND you. They tell you to stay away from their building until they decide to let you come back. If that doesn't work, then they send you away forever by EXPULSION.

Now, I know that sometimes when school administrators do that, it's a matter of protecting the other kids from you. But I think the main point of suspending or expelling you is to get your attention and make you realize that going to school is a privilege.

Thing is, the same people who are punishing you by preventing you from going to school, just spent the last few years punishing you by forcing you to stay at school for detention. Is it just me or does that not really make sense?

Maybe it's something like the Simpsons episode where Homer gets sent to the "H" word, and they punish him for eating the forbidden donut. You might expect that the punishment to fit the crime would be to withhold donuts from him for eternity. But this was the "Ironic Punishment Division", where they decided to force-feed him donuts instead.

I don't want to get into a whole long discussion about the social ramifications of taking a problem child, someone who probably needs the education system the most, and casting him off instead. I just thought I'd comment about how school punishments seem to go from one side (detention) to maybe the exact opposite (suspension/expulsion).

By the time you get to college, I think you only get punished by the school itself if you break the "honor code" (which basically just means cheating, if I'm not mistaken). Other than that, as long as you can make the grades and don't get in trouble with the law, they probably leave you alone for the most part.

I've never tried it, and I don't recommend it, but I imagine you could be a Ku Klux Klan leader on weekends, impregnate dozens of women, and kick abandoned puppies off bridges for fun - as long as you show up to the exams and pass, you're all good.

Although if you live in the dorms, you might get some punishments for certain things. Lob a baseball at someone's window and break it? Pay for the repairs and apologize. Exceed the Internet bandwidth limit? They shut off your IP and make you call up and beg for them to turn it back on. Caught with alcohol in your room? Here's a CD-ROM, put it in your computer and take the Alcohol 101 course.

Then there's my favorite, the "bulletin board" punishments. Say you throw trash out your window, the RA or RD might make you create a bulletin board to tell people not to throw trash out your window. Or if you get caught on the roof, they might make you create a board to tell people not to go on the roof.

Of course, I was always a perfect angel in all my years of going to school, so none of this is firsthand experience. Except the bandwidth thing.