Posted 8:58 PM by Blah blah

Thomas Rothman: Chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
Cast of The Matrix Reloaded. (Entertainment)

Excellent educational interview with Thomas Rothman about the movie business. I love this kind of talk. "Thomas Rothman, chairman of News Corp.'s Fox Filmed Entertainment, talks with Charlie Rose about the success of 20th Century Fox's X2: X-Men United, consumer adoption of DVDs and his concerns about downloadable movies." He started as an entertainment lawyer.

Listen to the Charlie Rose interview. (12 min.)

Also, Charlie interviews the cast of The Matrix Reloaded. "Producer Joel Silver and actors Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss talk with Charlie Rose about the filming of The Matrix Reloaded and the impact of making the movie on their personal lives." The Matrix Reloaded has too much philosophical mumbo-jumbo for my blood.

Listen to interview. (42 min.)

Posted 6:11 AM by Blah blah

Comments or Not? (Blog)

I'm wondering if you guys would like to be able to write comments on my blog again. My old commenting system with HaloScan still exists.

A main problem I have with using comments is it slows down page loading. Every remotely hosted system I've tried has been overloaded with users and new accounts. Every one has eventually crashed.

A second problem is people don't seem to want to comment much here. Maybe they are too busy, too afraid, I don't know. I'd suffer the slower page load only if more people use comments.

A third problem is the stalkers and other nasty jokers who've visited me. We might see a rise in them.

What do you think? Bring back comments? We could try it for a week.

Posted 12:56 AM by Blah blah

Computer Science: More Thumbs Down (Technology)

Computing's Lost Allure (NY Times):

"At the height of the Internet boom in the late 90's, computer science talent was in such demand that recruiters offered signing bonuses to students who agreed to drop out of school. Now, spooked by layoffs and disabused of visions of overnight riches, many undergraduates are turning away from computer science as if it were somehow cursed....

Berkeley's experience is mirrored elsewhere. At Carnegie Mellon University, applications to the School of Computer Science for next fall are down 36 percent from their peak in 2001; applications to Virginia Tech's computer science department have declined 40 percent since 2001. At M.I.T., renowned for its computer science curriculum, 20 percent fewer freshmen declared electrical engineering and computer science as their central focus this spring than did in 2001 or 2002."

Posted 12:14 AM by Blah blah

Soulmate Calculator: Why I Will Never Meet Anyone (Relationships)

Tira mentioned this very cool site about soulmates. Tira is a fascinating woman, if you haven't read her yet. She's an "overpaid secretary surrounded by 'angry, perpetually stressed-out lawyers' while 'enjoying a normal, balanced, happy life' as an underworked musician." She, like Bich Ngoc (in our photo below), is in Washington, D.C. She's a "secretary/musician/activist," a single mom, has been on the radio, a Filipina, a Libra like me, and a very sensual lesbian. :D

(Tira, you might be interested in saying hi to Bich Ngoc. BN knows a lot of musicians and helps promote singers like Fisher. She's also a political activist.)

Tira writes way more juice than I, like some of the people she links. Like this girl Bunnie (aka Metrosexual)---whoo ee! HOT hot hot writing.

The soulmate site is SolveDating, with sections like The Soulmate Manifesto. I tried entering my preferences into the Soulmate Calculator, which "will calculate the number of American singles you must meet to find your soulmate. It uses the latest statistics from the U.S. Census and the National Center for Health Statistics."

My first, careless try shows I deserve a thousand lashes for my unrealistic pickiness, giving me a probability of 6.47211020769928E-08 for meeting my soulmate. It says I need to meet 15,450,911 American single females to have a decent chance.

If I give myself 3 years to do it, that means I must meet 14,110 American women/day, almost 10 women/minute. Taking a more realistic frequency, say meeting 1 woman every 2 weeks, it would take me 216 million days to meet all 15 million women. Or 593,000 years. By then I'd be a doddering 600,000 year-old idiot, slobbering more than Kirk Douglas, trying to hook up with the majority of single women, who tend to be below 25.

Reading the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau statistics on this site may be very depressing for you if you are very picky, like you want:

- a man six feet or taller (15% of the male population),
- a Korean (0.4% of the population),
- a Filipino (0.7%),
- a Chinese (0.9%),
- or a woman between 25-29 who's never been married (7%).

Believe it or not, pure Asians only make up 3.6% of the U.S. population, or 10.2 million people.

Which means if you want to increase your dating chances, you need to date: 1) white folks (75% of the U.S. population), 2) outside the U.S. (i.e. import from Asia), 3) divorced people with emotional baggage, 4) virtually and have cybersex, or 5) change your sexuality.

Sigh.

Posted 6:45 PM by Blah blah

Practical Stuff (Personal)

Busy fixing my car today and tomorrow.

Had a flat yesterday, on the highway. Parked in the emergency lane and scaled a high fence to reach a phone. Found myself in the back of a bakery. Smelled all the fresh dough while I called AAA and the bakery workers stared at me.

(This isn't the first time I've had to climb something to escape from a situation. I used to work at a museum. One Friday night, I left work by a back door which led to a courtyard. This courtyard had 12-foot high walls that are usually open. That night, they were shut, and the back doors locked after me. I was trapped. No one would come to open the walls until next Monday.

Not wanting to become the museum's first human skeleton exhibit, I thought of something I'd seen in that Jackie Chan movie Rush Hour. Seriously. I moved this trash can up next to the wall and stood on it. The tips of my fingers were still several feet from the top. I had a backpack too. I jumped and barely caught the top of the wall. Got out of there feeling like a bad-ass kung fu monkey.)

Changed all my tires today and will change all my brakes tomorrow. Costco gives a great, low-cost deal on tires, compared to Goodyear, where I first went. By sheer coincidence, I met the bakery guy from yesterday at the auto shop where I fixed my car today. The mechanic also maintains that bakery's trucks!

Did you know our environmental laws are so strict in California that it's illegal to carry more than FIVE tires in your vehicle without a permit? You may have dozens in your garage, but more than five tires constitutes "hazardous waste" and you can get a ticket. You learn these kinds of things at auto shops and used tire centers.

Also met a very interesting Indian guy at Costco's tire center and got his number. He left the corporate world five years ago, after 15 years of R&D engineering at AMD. And my auto mechanic was a Greek guy who reminded me of Anthony Quinn. He said My Big Fat Greek Wedding was only so-so.

Today inspired me in such practical ways! I learned so much about the world from a flat tire.

Posted 2:45 PM by Blah blah

My Housemates (Photos)

I live with my friend and his girlfriend. They're actually planning to get married, and I'm gonna be one of his best men. I need to make a speech at the wedding. Should I talk about him leaving his socks on the carpet, the way she wears silk lingerie around the house on a regular basis, the scented candles they light every night as part of a silent ritual? Gosh, I've known him longer than his girlfriend. I've been there through the exes, through the ups and downs, through the family dramas. I've been lucky to be a small part of it.

Pix of my housemates, taken at our house for a consulting website. On the side, my friend has been getting into independent IT projects. This is our home! Click for full-size.


My housemate's recent birthday:


See my older pix of my housemates and their friends.

Posted 11:56 PM by Blah blah

Shy's Blog (Internet drama)

Friends have been telling me tonight about Queen Shy's temper tantrum about me on her blog. Go read it if you like, for some high-powered entertainment.

I hear she needs two things: Valium and a spell checker.

I honestly have no interest in reading her blog, unless she posts naked pix of me taken with a hidden camera.

(Well, I guess pix of HER would be better... :p)

Posted 11:34 PM by Blah blah

The Way You Walk (Technology, Funny)

My first response: HAHAHAHA! Pentagon System Hopes to Identify Walks (AP):

"Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new antiterrorist surveillance system.

Operating on the theory that an individual's walk is as unique as a signature, the Pentagon has financed a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology that has been 80 to 95 percent successful in identifying people.

If the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, orders a prototype, the individual 'gait signatures' of people could become part of the data to be linked together in a vast surveillance system the Pentagon agency calls Total Information Awareness.

That system already has raised privacy alarms on both ends of the political spectrum, and Congress in February barred its use against American citizens without further congressional review."

But what if he walks like Ze Frank in How to Dance Properly? A definite terrorist walk. Hehehe...

Posted 7:52 AM by Blah blah

Why I Left RBJ

For those of you interested, I have written a detailed letter about why I left Rice Bowl Journals for good. Please email me for the details.

Posted 12:30 AM by Blah blah

Bich Ngoc, Sandy, and Brent (Photos)

I had dim sum with Sandy, her boyfriend Brent, and Bich Ngoc today! Our talk was really fast and funny, and we ate much shrimp. We teased Bich Ngoc for her "Daria" look. Hehe... She bubbled with talk like how she as a journalism student had to fight to get stories from the police department. She also took a rambling journalism class recently from Richard Reeves. Sandy and Bich Ngoc actually are from the same city! Sandy talked about their noisy upstairs neighbors and how they had to keep hitting a broom handle on the ceiling. Brent was very cool too. He told us a way to spam spammers with a Perl script.

By the way, Bich Ngoc and I are not really only as tall as a chair. We are kneeling.

From left to right: I, Bich Ngoc, Sandy, and Brent. Click pix for full-size.