What about Asia (other than being a great audio clue on celebrity jeopardy)?
I'm going.
Oh, that's cool. When are you going?
Don't know, but before September 2008 and hopefully well before then.
Where in Asia (I've heard it's a big place)?
Don't know. It would be cool to see some of the nice nature stuff, but really want to see areas that are very different and probably more urban (seems silly to go there for the first time to hang out on a really nice beach - which is what I should be doing now if I hadn't made the mistake of starting laundry).
How long are you going to spend there?
Not sure, although probably something like 2 to 3 weeks. I figure it's silly to fly all the way over for much less, and much more would probably be tough to pull off at work.
What have you done to plan for the trip?
Absolutely nothing.
Who are you going with?
No idea - I'm looking for people to go with. If you are reading this and are interested in going let me know (well except maybe the google bot crawling the page - I'm not sure about traveling with a piece of software and it might have some trouble if we go to China).
So, um, what the hell are you talking about?
I want to go to Asia and thought I'd see what others have to say. This seemed like a good forum for doing that, and a good way of seeing if anyone else is interested. If you are reading this don't think I'm not talking to you, there are only so many people that read this, so imagine you got an email from me with about 10 people in the TO line. I think it is important to put down a time limit so it doesn't slip forever and September 2008 seems very achievable. I would put the date sooner, but I need to build up vacation time, and I don't know which season is best (see the question about research).
Why on Earth would you announce to the world (or at least the hand full of people that read this) that you are going if you have done nothing to prepare for it?
That much more motivation to actually pull it off (not quite sure what that says about me that I care so much about what others think that it is a significant motivator).
Anyway, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or especially if you have a desire to go, let me know.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
San Francisco, The Ancestor's Tale, and whatever other random thoughts strike me while I write about those two
The movie Click could not have come out at a better time for me. Normally for a major event at work (usually a tapeout - sending the chip off to be made) I'm willing to work a lot of extra hours knowing that it is a temporary situation. This time I felt the same way but I put a time limit on 80 hour weeks (it was around the original tapeout date) and now that the tapeout has been delayed multiple times I'm very glad I did (if you don't get the intro about Click - watch it again). Anyway, for the chip I'm working on Cameron works with a company up in San Jose so I've been spending a lot of time up there and will be heading up again this week (as usual, if you read this and know where I live, please don't rob me). Last time I was up there I stayed over the weekend so I got to see a bit more of San Francisco and San Jose. I walked around China Town and Little Italy in San Francisco - very cool area, will definitely try to get there again. San Jose - I thought Pal Alto and some of that area a bit north of San Jose was interesting looking, but I'm yet to be impressed by San Jose itself (except of course for seeing every tech company you have ever heard of). I did go to Japan Town in San Jose - it was a bit small but I went to a restaurant where you sit at the bar and they have little boats going around a moat and they are carrying plates of sushi and you just grab the plates you want off the boats. Oh - so the actually interesting thing I did up there was go out for a $500 dinner (for 3 people) at the Village Pub. It sounds like a little nothing place, but is apparently one of the places VCs go to make deals. One of my co-workers somehow had a $500 gift certificate so we decided to spend it to celebrate finishing the chip (or so we thought).
I just finished The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. I wanted to learn more about evolution. I think that you can defend the teaching of evolution without knowing much about it based on trusting the scientific community, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to also know something about it. The book had some good info on evolution (I feel a bit odd telling Dawkins that he had some good info on evolution...). Although a lot of the book is more zoological in nature (not that I really know anything about zoology other than what I figured out from this book). The book starts with humans and goes backwards through time and points out as our ancestor line meets up with that of other animals, plants... The thought is that going forward through time makes it seem like evolution had a direction in mind and at every splitting point you have to decide which direction to follow, vs in this case he makes on arbitrary choice to start with humans. I found the end interesting, he gets more into concepts of evolution and talks about the role of bacteria in plants and animals. I knew that there are a bunch of bacteria in our bodies and that some are good but I had no idea the degree to which we depend on them.
Well nothing else really came to mind while writing this so I guess the absurdly long title was for nothing.
I just finished The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. I wanted to learn more about evolution. I think that you can defend the teaching of evolution without knowing much about it based on trusting the scientific community, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to also know something about it. The book had some good info on evolution (I feel a bit odd telling Dawkins that he had some good info on evolution...). Although a lot of the book is more zoological in nature (not that I really know anything about zoology other than what I figured out from this book). The book starts with humans and goes backwards through time and points out as our ancestor line meets up with that of other animals, plants... The thought is that going forward through time makes it seem like evolution had a direction in mind and at every splitting point you have to decide which direction to follow, vs in this case he makes on arbitrary choice to start with humans. I found the end interesting, he gets more into concepts of evolution and talks about the role of bacteria in plants and animals. I knew that there are a bunch of bacteria in our bodies and that some are good but I had no idea the degree to which we depend on them.
Well nothing else really came to mind while writing this so I guess the absurdly long title was for nothing.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Hypothetical
This entire post is just hypothetical - in no way am I saying that any of this actually occurred.
So say someone (probably a male - the reason for this choice will come up soon) was flying for a business trip and due to traffic on some random freeway, oh let's pick a random number - say 5, he was running late and really only made the flight at all because his coworker who was going with him eventually pointed out they could take the car pool lane (assuming this randomly selected freeway number 5 has a car pool lane). Then once they reached the airport the person chose to carry his bag on rather than checking due to the time constraint. When he went through security they scanned the bag and said something along the lines of "bag check, shaving cream". Then the guard that came over said "did you know you cannot bring your shaving cream?". Then upon opening the bag and going through the toiletry kit the security guard discovered toothpaste and after-shave and threw out all these items (let's say the guy was lucky enough that his powdery deodorant was ok - apparently in this hypothetical world you can make a bomb out of a gel but not a powder or a gel covered by a powder).
So the big hypothetical question is: say after all this happened to this person would it be illegal for him to then go to his blog and tell the internet this story which seems to indicate that baggage scanners pick up metal shaving cream containers but probably not toothpaste or after-shave in plastic containers? I'm not sure why it would be illegal to tell this story, but thought it might be interesting to ask about the legality. This is in no way an attempt to tell people what baggage scanners can and cannot detect - it is just a hypothetical question based on a hypothetical situation.
So say someone (probably a male - the reason for this choice will come up soon) was flying for a business trip and due to traffic on some random freeway, oh let's pick a random number - say 5, he was running late and really only made the flight at all because his coworker who was going with him eventually pointed out they could take the car pool lane (assuming this randomly selected freeway number 5 has a car pool lane). Then once they reached the airport the person chose to carry his bag on rather than checking due to the time constraint. When he went through security they scanned the bag and said something along the lines of "bag check, shaving cream". Then the guard that came over said "did you know you cannot bring your shaving cream?". Then upon opening the bag and going through the toiletry kit the security guard discovered toothpaste and after-shave and threw out all these items (let's say the guy was lucky enough that his powdery deodorant was ok - apparently in this hypothetical world you can make a bomb out of a gel but not a powder or a gel covered by a powder).
So the big hypothetical question is: say after all this happened to this person would it be illegal for him to then go to his blog and tell the internet this story which seems to indicate that baggage scanners pick up metal shaving cream containers but probably not toothpaste or after-shave in plastic containers? I'm not sure why it would be illegal to tell this story, but thought it might be interesting to ask about the legality. This is in no way an attempt to tell people what baggage scanners can and cannot detect - it is just a hypothetical question based on a hypothetical situation.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Married Friends
Do you ever get the feeling that your married friends only talk to/im you in order to find out if you are dating anyone? And what does that say about marriage?
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Stuff
Well it's been a bit since the last post so I'll just hit a few random thoughts and events.
2nd to most recently - I just discovered why Irish dancing is all about doing crazy footwork while keeping the upper body perfectly stiff - normally seems very silly but it is actually ingenious - what other form of dancing allows you to get really into it and yet not spill or even shake your drink? I ended up at an Irish pub in Venice and the crowd was both the standard bar hopping crowd you'd expect in Venice as well as a few people who clearly had specifically picked the Irish bar and the band seemed to go back and forth between songs for each crowd. At one point during the Irish songs one guy started dancing and when I looked up from the crazy footwork I saw his beer held perfectly steady (and felt like I should be in a feedback systems class) and the whole form of dance clicked for me. (For those that are wondering - yes I just sat and watched - although at one point I did a little foot tapping from my stool).
Also that night I made an observation - in Boston I found quite a few good restaurants with indian, thai, vietnamese... food, although other than maybe a few in China town, I somewhat question the authenticity. In CA when I go on my own I am typically disappointed by the asian food, but when I go with someone from asia or of asian decent, the food is really good and seems to be more authentic. Of course there are a lot of other factors - such as who I hang out with and living in the city vs far outside and only driving in when I have plans with others. I will leave coming up with hypotheses on the topic as an exercise to the reader (note I said hypotheses and not theories, because ever since the intelligent design craze I try to use the scientific meanings of the words rather than the common english meanings - not that I'm consistent, but at least I did it once).
Most recently - went to Legoland - it was good to see my uncle and his family. Legoland is a cool place - it's actually more of an amusement park than I expected - I think a lot of the people may go not really caring about the lego part. But there are a few cool lego oriented items and of course the park is decorated in lego statues and there is a lego world area where they have different cities reconstructed in lego.
Boston - went to Boston to see friends from school. Very good time - thanks to Mike and Laura for letting me crash at their place - Laura, again, tried to starve me. Thanks to mom and dad for the plane tickets. Saw Body Worlds which was very interesting, and ate at most of the old spots. Would go on but most of the people reading this were there.
Not sure if Evan reads this but thanks for inviting me up to Pasadena.
In general:
I'm enjoying my job. It has a lot of variety (well within analog integrated circuit design) and moves at a good pace. Lately I have been putting in a lot of hours which is part of the reason for a lack of posts, although I set a time limit on the 80 hour weeks so I'm back to just a lot of hours rather than having it take over my life. For a while there I was dreaming about work every night. On the weekends I've been meeting up with people in LA - it's a bit of a drive but fun to get into the city and see the previous comments about food. Work has been taking me up to San Jose - ate at a few good restaurants but haven't really taken the time to explore the city while I've been up there.
I have a lot to say on the subject of the recent travel restrictions, but I think they have hit a level of absurdity it's not even worth pointing it out. But I will make one comment. After people used box cutters to take over planes the TSA outlawed sharp objects on planes. After a guy tried to blow up a plane with his shoe the TSA made people take their shoes off at security. After some people tried to blow up planes with liquids the TSA told people they cannot bring liquids on the plane (again resisting temptation to go into the flaws of that plan). So I cannot wait for someone to attempt (but not succeed) to get explosive powder on a plane by hiding it in their clothes. Actually I think the consequences could really help convince Americans to get in better shape and fight the obesity problem.
I do have a new proposal for baggage handling. I think that the airlines should give you the option to have your bags fedex'ed (or ups'ed or dhl'ed or some other company name as a past tense verb). Especially if you are heading home and you just have clothes and some toiletries in your checked bags wouldn't you rather have them show up a couple days later and know they won't get lost or damaged rather than maybe get them when you show up and have to wait for them at the baggage claim? Well hopefully all the airline execs are reading my blog and will implement this (just in case someone is reading this - I put this idea in the public domain - in case the airline exec is worried about me suing).
Alright I think that should be enough to hold off the "new post" comments for at least a little bit.
2nd to most recently - I just discovered why Irish dancing is all about doing crazy footwork while keeping the upper body perfectly stiff - normally seems very silly but it is actually ingenious - what other form of dancing allows you to get really into it and yet not spill or even shake your drink? I ended up at an Irish pub in Venice and the crowd was both the standard bar hopping crowd you'd expect in Venice as well as a few people who clearly had specifically picked the Irish bar and the band seemed to go back and forth between songs for each crowd. At one point during the Irish songs one guy started dancing and when I looked up from the crazy footwork I saw his beer held perfectly steady (and felt like I should be in a feedback systems class) and the whole form of dance clicked for me. (For those that are wondering - yes I just sat and watched - although at one point I did a little foot tapping from my stool).
Also that night I made an observation - in Boston I found quite a few good restaurants with indian, thai, vietnamese... food, although other than maybe a few in China town, I somewhat question the authenticity. In CA when I go on my own I am typically disappointed by the asian food, but when I go with someone from asia or of asian decent, the food is really good and seems to be more authentic. Of course there are a lot of other factors - such as who I hang out with and living in the city vs far outside and only driving in when I have plans with others. I will leave coming up with hypotheses on the topic as an exercise to the reader (note I said hypotheses and not theories, because ever since the intelligent design craze I try to use the scientific meanings of the words rather than the common english meanings - not that I'm consistent, but at least I did it once).
Most recently - went to Legoland - it was good to see my uncle and his family. Legoland is a cool place - it's actually more of an amusement park than I expected - I think a lot of the people may go not really caring about the lego part. But there are a few cool lego oriented items and of course the park is decorated in lego statues and there is a lego world area where they have different cities reconstructed in lego.
Boston - went to Boston to see friends from school. Very good time - thanks to Mike and Laura for letting me crash at their place - Laura, again, tried to starve me. Thanks to mom and dad for the plane tickets. Saw Body Worlds which was very interesting, and ate at most of the old spots. Would go on but most of the people reading this were there.
Not sure if Evan reads this but thanks for inviting me up to Pasadena.
In general:
I'm enjoying my job. It has a lot of variety (well within analog integrated circuit design) and moves at a good pace. Lately I have been putting in a lot of hours which is part of the reason for a lack of posts, although I set a time limit on the 80 hour weeks so I'm back to just a lot of hours rather than having it take over my life. For a while there I was dreaming about work every night. On the weekends I've been meeting up with people in LA - it's a bit of a drive but fun to get into the city and see the previous comments about food. Work has been taking me up to San Jose - ate at a few good restaurants but haven't really taken the time to explore the city while I've been up there.
I have a lot to say on the subject of the recent travel restrictions, but I think they have hit a level of absurdity it's not even worth pointing it out. But I will make one comment. After people used box cutters to take over planes the TSA outlawed sharp objects on planes. After a guy tried to blow up a plane with his shoe the TSA made people take their shoes off at security. After some people tried to blow up planes with liquids the TSA told people they cannot bring liquids on the plane (again resisting temptation to go into the flaws of that plan). So I cannot wait for someone to attempt (but not succeed) to get explosive powder on a plane by hiding it in their clothes. Actually I think the consequences could really help convince Americans to get in better shape and fight the obesity problem.
I do have a new proposal for baggage handling. I think that the airlines should give you the option to have your bags fedex'ed (or ups'ed or dhl'ed or some other company name as a past tense verb). Especially if you are heading home and you just have clothes and some toiletries in your checked bags wouldn't you rather have them show up a couple days later and know they won't get lost or damaged rather than maybe get them when you show up and have to wait for them at the baggage claim? Well hopefully all the airline execs are reading my blog and will implement this (just in case someone is reading this - I put this idea in the public domain - in case the airline exec is worried about me suing).
Alright I think that should be enough to hold off the "new post" comments for at least a little bit.
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