I think my most successful prank was at my old job a few
years back. I was working in the corporate environment and decided to come in
early and paste messages on the computer monitors of all my neighbors on my
side of the floor. It was about 10 or so cubicles. My intent was to show that
computers have feelings too. So I wrote things like:

"because you stare at me every day, you've made me so self
conscious." - the voice of your computer.

"i want to see the sunshine, please. can we go for a walk?" - the voice
of your computer.

"which will you chose? the red pill or the blue pill?" - the voice of
your computer.

"tell the truth, i won't get mad. who do you like better? me or the
phone?" - the voice of your computer.
(this one was for someone who was always talking on the phone.)

"just because you stay late every night, do you have to make me stay up
with you?" - the voice of your computer.
(this one was for someone who always worked long hours.. actually it was for
me. of course i put it on my own computer for misdirection.)

Anyways most people got a real good laugh out of it. In the end no one figured
out it was me. And I didn't reveal my secret until I after I left the company.
So in my mind I viewed that as a success.

I tend to prefer the subtle and clever pranks in general. Maybe it's because
I'm getting old. I've moved away from the college days where I covered my
friend's dorm room door closed with several layers of newspaper... topped off with the deviously enigmatic note "All Your Base Are Belong to Us". Later years I went more low
key like rearranging the name plates hanging on people's cubicles. In my opinion,
office pranks generally take more tact, because you can't do anything that
would be horribly disruptive. Otherwise you run the risk of pissing off upper
management and losing productivity. But I also think it's very important not to
take what you do too seriously. And lighthearted pranks help keep the
atmosphere fun and interesting.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

So in the process of my move, I'm asking for a new Comcast installation. And for the first time I see that their customer support is over a chat window... This should be interesting.

My friends and I have each had our shares of Comcast frustration before. I wonder if the confusion and shuffling around is mollified at all by taking it online. At least I don't have to wait on the phone... But so far I've already been transferred once... Let's see how it goes...

<about 20 minutes later...>

Hm... overall not bad. Waiting over IM doesn't seem that bad compared to waiting over the phone.. and if I had a question... I could just type it in without having to think twice whether it distract them or stops them in the middle of what they are doing.

Words.

Words are more powerful than actions because their effects are limitless. Actions can only take us as far as what we can physically do. Words extend to different worlds of possibility. The create wondrous worlds alive with cunning wizards, fierce dragons, extraterrestrial life, sentient computers and glorious gods.

Words are timeless. Actions only exist once as a moment in time. Historical records and stories handed down from generation to generation will still preserve the same effectiveness eons from now as it did when they were first written or spoken.

Words are funnier. A clever and humorous comment makes me laugh harder than any slapstick. I might give an exception to the grand scene in Little Miss Sunshine, since that was probably the hardest I ever laughed in my life. It was uncontrollable and an exhilarating pain shot from my stomach to my skin. But that was funny because of the lyrics to the song too, so I'll split the vote on that one.

Words move us. I always appreciate a genuine "Thank you", and because its so meaningful to me I never hesitate to say it myself. Having been in a relationship where I know I truly love the other person, I've come to also know that saying "I love you" is extremely important regardless of how much you do for them.

Words offer clarity. Actions can be easily misunderstood. Anyone in the working world can tell you how important communication skills are. Providing good words can yield prompt and proper. Whereas poor words can lead to much wasted and unintended actions.

Words offer abstraction. Poetry can be marvelously vague. Having this abstract nature allows it to take on more meaning than it normally could if it were precise. For example take the action of a soccer player kicking the ball toward the goal. There's nothing more to that action than what it is. But if you turn it into a short poem... "Goal in sight. He launches."... then that give it greater significance. The goal can represent the physical goal post as well as his ambition. The launch can signify the act of kicking the ball, him lunging forward, or the release of his desires. And it doesn't even have to be about soccer. This can very well be an astronaut embarking into space or a casanova at a shindig.

Words are the weapons of kings, generals, and the world’s most
influential people. This reminds me of the underlying message in the
movie Hero. <spoiler alert> There was the scene when the
calligrapher stood steadfast among the hail of arrows. “You Must
Remember! Strong as the arrows of Quing may be; though they will
shatter our cities and destroy our nation, they shall never extinguish
Zhao's Written Word.” And of course this point was hammered home when
the Nameless warrior described the two characters that changed  Broken
Sword’s direction in life and ultimately his own too. The words “Under
Heaven.” “The people have suffered years of warfare. Only the King of
Qin can stop the chaos by uniting all under Heaven.”

Words are beautiful. Words bring us closer to god.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

I was inspired by the Ask A Ninja Omnibus, Omnitres, OmniJeff, Omni World, and Omnipresent podcasts. This is my first attempt at an Omni-Blog. Alas I'm probably not as funny.

1) Here's a haiku I just wrote.

Smitten by your smile.
Your eyes draw me closer still.
Tell me your story.

2) One of the managers I worked with in my previous job had the nick-name Hugdy Bear. And one of my best friends is from Bear, Delaware. So I came up with this rhyme.

Budgy Wudgy wudg frum Bear. Budgy Wudgy's always there. So Budgy Wudgy wudgn't budgy wudg he?

Insanely dorky no? For a more familiar city you can try "Budgy Wudgy frum Bel Air".

3) After hearing the story on "This American Life" about testoterone, I was interested in how testoterone levels appear to be linked (in some cases) to passion of life, decisiveness, and competitiveness. I begin to wonder whether that's why many fellow men I know are either really interested in games or really interested in sports.

4) Emissions check? I can't believe I've owned my own car for more than 4 years, but never had to do a smog check before. So I had to research a bit to see what I had to do.

5) I always thought there only four tastes. Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter. Have you ever heard of Umami? It's the fifth taste! Krulwich on Science is one of my favorite NPR programs.

6) I met a girl from Tigland. She was awfully afraid of feathers. (Not many people get this joke.)

7) This YouTube video about Scrabulous is hilarious. "If you ain't got no vocab, take your dumb ass home."

8) Never actually watched the McLaughlin Group, but his voice does sound familiar. Probably stumbled across it while flipping channels. Anyway in a recent Fair Game broadcast, they found a guy who takes McLaughlin's quirky but poetic commentary (such as "Death comes in the night on cats' paws") and created catchy tune with it. It's called the McLaughlin Groove.

9) Yes, that is a new profile pic I uploaded on xanga and facebook. I think I get can get bored with my profile pics and desktop backgroundsts at times. It's nice for those things to be seasonal. I find that photoshop has very cool artistic effects that you can add to your pics. This latest one in particular was filtered with a watercolor effect.

10) A big "Hoorah!" for my fellow Asains. Did you all hear about the new lead singer for the band Journey? Here's a clip highlighting the story. Arnel Pineda has a voice that sooo complement's the songs that Steve Perry sang... to point that it's earblowing. (yeah, i know it's corny and not funny. mindblowing, but for the ear, har har.) These are the clips of two of my favorite Journey songs: Don't Stop Believin' and Faithfully.

Oh My God!
Faith Salie liked my suggestion of "vorare" for naming the new black.
She mentioned my name on the air.
Now I can die a happy man.

Got my 15 seconds of fame in. Here's the clip, jump to 48:20 (right at the end). I love coming up with clever names for things, and I think it would be insanely cool if this one goes down in the books. I mean it totally fits. A black that is blacker because it devours more light. Come to think of it, truncating the Latin makes it sound cooler, no? Vora black.

First off. Podcasts are soo much easier with iTunes. You can just subscribe to them.

On the latest broadcast of Fair Game, there is this really cool science story about a new technology where the blackest substance is ever made. It's a black that's blacker than any other black. They are already thinking of the applications of it in space, defense, fashion, and art.

And apparently there is no official name for this "super-black" yet. What would you call something like that? Got any ideas? I'll throw out a couple:

uberest blackest
null black
void black
hole-y black
peeotch black
go black and never come back black
ultimate super ninja black
devouring black
bluck

Or maybe spinning "devour" with Latin sounds better.

vorare black

There has been one cultural phenomenon that I have not jumped on the bandwagon for the longest time. And just yesterday I decided that it's just too long for me to hold out. So I did it. I got an iPod.

Man how did I ever live my life before that? I guess I was doing okay improvising. My largest music collection is at home, and that's when I play songs that I may miss listening to in a long time. If I need music to drown the background noise and concentrate while working, I usually log on to pandora on my laptop. In my car during my morning commutes, I listen to NPR news. On my drive home I either catch whatever is on the radio or I play my CDs. And when I go to the gym or do chores around the house I like to listen to podcasts, especially This American Life. But it's always been a little clunky to carry PDA to the gym. The iPod nano or shuffle's size clearly has the advantage in this area.

I first thought that my PDA would be the best choice for my mobile music/podcast collection, especially since I can  keep myself organized on it. But in terms of organizations I never got out of the habit of sticking with what works. For work it's a task list in Excel and a calendar in Outlook. For personal stuff it's a check list I put paper or white board, and a classic page by page calendar with colored post-its. I tried transitioning to the PDA and found the most annoying thing was that I couldn't get it to sync with my laptop or desktop at home. Some software compatibility thing I think, but at some point I gave up.

So I have to commend apple for making an excellent product. Both hardware and software. Syncing up the music and podcast files were a cinch. And having album covers to your music files... even your MP3 files are great. Yesterday I spent way more time than I should organizing my collection, and I was really pleasantly surprised at how both intuitive and easy to use iTunes was. As for the hardware... I took me just few minutes to figure out how the click wheel worked without the manual. It's quite an accomplishment to put all this capability into a device with so few buttons. Everything is minimalistic. But just today the iPod froze. Hmm... "Where's the reset button?" I wondered. I had to consult the manual for this one, but was glad it wasn't hard to reset.

Overall. Great product.

Yeah. This is not the most appealing of subjects but it's been annoying me the last two days. Feel free to skip this entry is you find it too graphic.

Nosebleeds are common and easy to stop, but they are significantly disruptive to your lifestyle. I follow the standard practices of tilting my head forward and pinching the bony part of my nose for 15 minutes. But more often is the case that I have to do it more than once before it stops.

They say the dry air and cold symptoms make it worse. I guess that's one other disadvantage of living in DC is that the winter weather often leaves the air dry. Never recalled having many nosebleeds as an adult back in CA. But last year and this year, they came in the middle of my workday. So it involved awkward trips to the bathroom.

Have cancel my interview with a prospective college hire. This incident happened like 2 minutes before the meeting. At least it didn't happen in the middle. I was cautious about it morning yesterday since I had just treated it before I went to work. Luckily enough JZ covered for me on the spot. Extremely weird that had to communicate everything to him with tissue over my nose.

Told my boss I was working from home the rest of the day. Figured I'd spare the office folks the scene.

So I rested yesterday and I thought I took care of it. But just earlier this morning it acted up again. Damn. Going to have to reschedule my meeting. I hope she doesn't think I'm making an excuse and blowing her off. I usually have to remind myself if ever I'm suspicious about a person possibly making up an excuse... that life does truly has moments like these when unlikely things occur. They sound like lame excuses if I explained them, but they really did happen. Like the time my garage door won't open and I can't drive my car to work. I think it drew a WTF reaction from my co-workers. Life can be really WTF sometimes.

Oh my God!!!

<spoiler warning!>

I just finished watching probably the most exciting Super Bowls I have seen. It started out really slow and I was more interested at the time of who would win the Super Bowl square in our office pool, than what was actually going on. There were no real big plays in the first three quarters, and I was looking for something that would actually capture my interest. (FYI, I'm neither a loyal follower of the Pats or the Giants. I just wanted a good game, and I heavily admire both Tom Brady and Eli Manning.)

For those of you with little football knowledge. Let's give the backdrop.
Patriots started out the season facing accusations of videotaping their opponent's defensive signals. But they proved their team can play fairly and kick ass, by pulling a 16 game perfect win regular season. The Giants were a struggling team. The landed the wild card slot and then pulled out win and win, being the heavy underdogs each time.

And then the final four minutes of the fourth quarter just exploded with awesome plays! 10-7 Giants to start. Brady makes a grand touchdown play to Moss with under 3 minutes on the clock and Pats lead 10-14. Giants time to shine. One of their 3rd downs come up just 1 yard short, and they decide to go for 4th and 1. The rush and get and elbow in for the 1st down. A little while later Manning assaulted by about 3 defenders clawing at his jersey, and miraculously comes out of that with two feet firmly planted and launches a bullet to Tyree who leaps in the air to catch it, keeps the ball planted between his hand and the forhead of his helmet, tumbles and flips backward on a defender, and holds on to the ball. This is shortly followed by a stylish touchdown play from Manning to Plaxico Burress making it. 17-14. 35 seconds left in the game. The Pats couldn't finish it off with a tie or a touchdown, and with one second left on the clock Giants got possession back.

Oh and there was a very odd sequence of events where reporters, fans, and and players were already celebrating before the last seconds was played out. People knew it was over, and probably didn't realize there was even time left. But this seemed to have infuriated the Pat's coach Bill Belicheck. Who just stormed off the field, and thus there was traditional sportsmanlike handshake ceremony.

And so that's why this goes down as one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history. But the word upset is really only a bad word to the die hard fans of the dominant team, and for people who don't root for the underdog.

Anyways, Wikipedia does a much better job of summing it up than I did. But wow. This sport is is exhilarating to watch!

Ever have one of those days?

You spend a good week or so building up a good communication with someone. And then one day, today, you blatantly misspell their first name in a message.

You write an email carefully, maybe an hour or so for 3 paragraphs. You read and reread it. Then send it off. 10 seconds later you see a grammar mistake. Then you spot a second word that makes your sentence sound retarded. Then before even a minute later you spot a third that was clearly a wrong word choice. Spell check can only help you so much, and the people who are careless still mess up.

A week ago you start a chess game, where you analyze and reanalyze your moves carefully before deciding. You do this for about an hour before making a move. You make an an elaborate Excel spreadsheet to forecast specific configurations. And then one day, today, you carelessly make a move in 5 minutes that ends up costing you the game.

Okay. You probably never had it played out just that way, but maybe you can relate to the feeling. Sometimes you try to be so careful, that you are not. Is this a common human phenomenon, or I am I just spiraling down into insanity?

God, I am so off today. I think I need a vacation.