Dead Man Eating

I came across this interesting web site about the "last meals" of prison inmates before being executed on Death Row: dead man eating

Since these are primarily from Texas and surrounding states, most entries look like this:

gary lynn sterling, texas, august 10, 2005
chicken fried steak, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, 
French fries, pecan pie, sweet tea and a vanilla milkshake.

kevin conner
indiana
july 27, 2005
from Dairy Queen: four chili dogs, onion rings, a banana split 
and an Oreo-cookie Blizzard ice-cream drink. 

Then I came across this entry. I like this guy's taste:

robert dale conklin
georgia
july 12, 2005
a filet mignon wrapped with bacon; de-veined shrimp sautéed in 
garlic butter with lemon; baked potato with butter, sour cream,
 chives and real bacon bits; corn on the cob; asparagus with 
hollandaise sauce; French bread with butter; goat cheese; cantaloupe; 
apple pie; vanilla bean ice cream and iced tea. 

Prison officials said he ate the entire meal, cleaning two plates.

Vanilla ice cream is very popular as part of the final meal. I bet it's because vanilla ice cream is soothing in that mother's-milk return-to-breastfeeding type of way.

Sex in video games.

I'm currently googling for the sex video in Grand Theft Auto. It is taking longer than I expected.

...

Once upon a time, when I worked in the games industry, I was captivated by the idea of making a porn game. The game would be all about porn and simulating sex using your avatar. You would walk around in a virtual environment, meet other players, chat with them, and then simulate sex. There would be 3-d graphics, character animation, customizable skins and avatars, and full-motion video. It would be a massively multiplayer online realistic porn game (MMORPG).

...

I found this hilarious article about the sex patch, with a choice excerpt:

"The game is now being taken off the shelves all over the country and
re-labeled with an "AO" rating. This is much stricter than the "M" rating
the game originally received. According to the ESRB website:

Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons of age 17 and older.

As opposed to the stricter AO rating:

Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older.

What pisses me off more than anything is that I paid for a game rated for
17 year olds, or possibly 17 and 1/2 year olds, tops. What I got was a
game rated for 18 year olds instead."

...

I wonder if Google would support me in making my MMORPG. Ha.

Netflix.

I love that I can watch previews using Netflix. Go Netflix!

Couplets

We went to the outlet mall. I bought a long red strapless dress and a fancy costume headdress with feathers and fake fruit.

Tom put on the headdress. He's so tall and skinny that he looks very funny with the tall headdress.

"You should wear that to AsiaSF," says Peter.

I concur enthusiastically.

"I hope I can get in," says Tom.

"Just tell them your ID is under the hat," says Peter. "Say, 'It took me 3 hours to put the fruit on, but let me get the ID ...' and then they'll say, 'No, don't take off the hat!!'"

Eggs.

For dinner last night, we cooked meat on a griddle, then wrapped it in romaine lettuce with hoisin sauce.

"I'd like an egg," Tom says. "Can we grill an egg on here?"

My mother went to the fridge and brought out two eggs. She wiped clean one corner of the griddle, poured on canola oil, and cracked the egg against the side of the griddle. She poured the egg onto the griddle, where it quickly bubbled and turned white.

"Look how easy this is, Tom," I said. "You should buy a griddle, or a George Foreman grill."

"It looks easy because Mom is cooking it," he replies. "If I'm doing it, it won't be easy."

"Come on," I say.

Then Tom told a story. "Mom taught me how to make poached eggs. You put oil in a pan, heat it, and then put in the egg. So I was doing it at home. I put the oil in the pan and heated it. It didn't seem to get hot -- there wasn't much smoke coming off of it. So I turned up the heat, and kept waiting. After about 20 seconds, the oil suddenly all turned black, and then the pot cracked."

I laughed and laughed. I translated into chinese for my mother, and she laughed and laughed. "How could this be?" she said.

Boxes.

We rented a U-Haul on Friday to carry back all of our furniture from Bombay Company. There were 9 boxes total -- our chair and ottoman, two large mirrors, bookshelves, curvy dresser with marble top...



We unpacked a few items on Saturday, in a rush before Nicole the housecleaner came. We hauled the boxes out and dumped them next to the recycling bins.

Yesterday I go to check my mail and I see a typed note stapled to the wooden beam above the mailboxes:

   Our dumpsters are a mess!
   Boxes must be flattened!
   Boxes must be cut to fit in the recycling bins!
   Professional cleaners must be informed of the rules!
   Take responsibility for your boxes!!

"I wonder if that's a response to my boxes," I think to myself. "Okay, I'll remember for next time."

I sort through my mail and go to recycle the junk mail. When I get to the recycling bins, I see my boxes scattered all about, as I'd left them. They are large and heaped above, next to, and between the recycling bins.

I start to break them down, rip them so that they fit.

"Well, at least no one knows it was me," I think.

Then I see the packing slip on every box:

"Bombay Company.  
Ship to: Niniane Wang
         XXX Central Ave"

New York Times calls it...

The trailer for "In the mood for love",

The New York Times says, 'Dizzy with a romantic spirit that has been missing from the cinema ... forever.'

What a great quote!

Lunchtime conversation.

(Edited. Note this conversation is from 2005.)

With my coworkers. We're having a conversation about bonds and stocks.

Jordan: [explaining how raising interest rates depreciates the bond market]

Kevin: I'm very risk-averse.

Jordan: Would you ever lend someone money? Say they'd pay you interest. But there's a chance they could go bankrupt.

Nadim: Say I needed money.

Kevin: Well, I would lend you money, Nadim, because we're friends. But not for financial reasons. It'd be because helping my friends makes me happy, and that's the purpose of life -- happiness.

Jordan: [shocked that conversation has suddenly become so philosophical]

me: [delightedthat conversation has suddenly become so philosophical] But is happiness really the metric that you're trying to monetize? Let's say you could be ignorant and happy. Most people wouldn't choose that. They'd rather have more knowledge, even if it makes them less happy. So what is that elusive metric that we're really optimizing? ... Let's say you love someone, and then they die. You'll be really sad, but many people would prefer that to not having known the person, even if they would've been happier that way.

Kevin: You were happy before they died, so the integral over all time is still positive.

me: But maybe not as positive as if you'd spent that time doing something else that made you happier.

[more discussion]

me: I'm happy we're discussing this. I think about this once a month or so, and I can never come up with the metric. It would make life so much easier, if you had one metric to optimize for.

Jordan: When slashdot introduced the karma rating, all the users began madly to try to make that number go up. So I can imagine if people had a life rating, they'd all work on making that number as high as possible.

Kevin: Instead of PageRank, we'll have LifeRank.

Nadim: [solemnly] I know what my metric is. It's money.

me: [laughing]

Nadim: No, I'm serious.

Jordan: [to me] So all that time you spent considering the metric and debating what it is, he already has it figured out!

Kevin: [laughing] And he doesn't even need to calculate it himself! Someone else computes it for him!

me: [to Nadim] But you don't go around buying fancy cars or clothes!

Nadim: I don't spend the money. I'm a miser. You know DuckTales? I identify with that character, who's-it, Scrooge MacDuck.

Tom.

me: Tom, who wears the pants in your relationship?

Tom: She does. She has the pants and the belt.

Peter: Oh no! At least get the belt back.

Tom: Why, to hold up my non-existent pants?

Pruning.

I started to prune my roses today. Peter kept me company, working outside on the black wrought table and chair, while I was pruning.

Halfway through pruning, with a heap of discarded branches at my feet, I decided that I would use Google to actually read about pruning, as opposed to just going by the seat of my pants and cutting off branches that got in the way or were shaped too strangely.

"bring the remaining canes to at least half height being certain to 
make your cuts above an outward facing bud on the canes"

What are canes? And the buds are at the ends of the branches, so how can I cut above them?!

"Make your cuts at a 45-degree angle"

A little too late!

"Most rose pruning is done in the spring, with the blooming of the 
forsythia as a signal to get moving."

Hm, what if all the other plants you have other than rose bushes are weeds??

Then I read this wonderful article that began:

PRUNING ROSES 101
by Nanette Londeree, Consulting Rosarian
There seems to be a lot of mystery surrounding rose pruning, as well as lots of 
"rules" to follow in order to do it correctly. If I have learned anything over the 
last decade of pruning hundreds of roses, it is that roses are very forgiving. If
you cut too high, too low, at an inward facing bud rather than an outward facing 
one, in the long run, it really will not make a lot of difference. If the resulting
growth does not grow in the fashion or direction you desire, cut it again to correct
it. Once you realize that there is not too much one can do wrong, it makes the whole
job much easier.

The whole job is indeed much easier! Thank you "Nanette Londeree"! (That's an odd name. Though she would probably think my name is odd as well.)

Funny moments of my job.

Today we get a report that this email:

> Date: May 3, 2005 5:03 PM
> Subject: Running late
>
> Be there for the meeting as soon as I can.

triggers the following Gmail ad:

> Pain During Intercourse? - www.EndoKnow.com - Get a Customized
> Discussion Guide. Summary of Symptoms & More - Free!

I laughed out loud 4 times over this.

Public perception

me: [reading a press article praising my team's accidental feature leak as a brilliant strategy for trickling out the word slowly] They called us "marketing geniuses".

J: [laughing] Yeah, I saw that.

me: This is because we work at Google. If we were Microsoft, they would've called it "another evil ploy to maintain their monopoly."

A passage I like.

From Shanidar, a story about a man who was a rich noble in a futuristic alien world but who decided to abandon his wealth and live with neanderthal cavemen:

"And Goshevan?" he asked. "He was happy with the beautiful Lara? He
was happy, wasn't he?"

"He was happy," I said, trying to slip my old hand from the young
man's grip. "He was so happy he came to regard his body lice as his
'little pets' and didn't care that he would have to pass the rest of
his days without a bath. His stuttering, which had embarrassed him all
his life and caused him great shame, came to a sudden end as he found
the liquid vowels and smooth consonants of the Devaki language rolling
easily off his tongue. He loved Lara's children as his own and loved
Lara as only a desperate and romantic man can love a woman. Though she
had none of the exotic skills of the courtesans with whom he had been
so familiar, she loved him with such a strength and passion that he
came to divide his life into two parts: the time before Lara, which
was murky and dim and full of confused memories, and the time after,
which was full of light and joy and laughter. So it happened that
when, the following midwinter spring, she pointed to her belly and
smiled, he knew with a sureness that he had not spent his life in vain
and was as happy as a man could be.

Phone call with my little brother

me: "So I hear that Mom is advising you every day to dump your girlfriend."

Tom: "Yeah."

me: "Aha, now you are in the situation I was in! Well, still in. Dad is against my relationship, and Mom is against yours."

Tom: "Yeah, maybe we should swap."

me: (incredulously) "You want Dad to be against your relationship?"

Tom: "No, you date Eileen, and I'll date Simon. Then our parents will say, "Aiya! Swap back! It was better before!'"

me: [laughing]

Tom: "But Eileen might say, 'I don't want to swap! I like this way better.'"

Angry at self.

I am once again taking my body for granted and not sleeping enough. It's 3:45am and I'm working. I'm going to sleep 5 hours and then be incredibly tired and less productive tomorrow. What am I doing?

Biased?

In China, this January, in a cab with my entire family. I'm due to fly out the next morning at noon.

My mom, lamenting: We only have one more day together!

Tom: Hey!!!! I'm leaving in 3 days! You only care about Niniane. If she were leaving next week and I was leaving tomorrow, you'd say, 'We only have one more week together!' and then, 'Oh yeah, we have to take Tom to the airport tomorrow. That child is so much hassle.'

Tonight.

A lot of conversations tonight. I'm still at work and it's 1:30am! But it's not due to working late. It's due to staying and chatting with people.

...

Best moment of the night.

Tao: I had this coworker at Infineon who was so good at meeting women. He was an Indian guy, kind of short. He could meet someone and strike up a conversation in 2 minutes. We would go to Subway, and I'd be standing in line and turn around, and he'd be talking to some lady at a table and exchanging cell phone numbers.

Sam: What's that guy up to now?

Tao: Oh, he's still working at Infineon.

...

On phone with Tom.

Tom: This is like you saying to me, 'Tom, I wish I'd known about these steamed buns 2 years ago! I would've eaten so many!' and me saying, 'Niniane, maybe you would've eaten so many that you would get sick of them by now.' and then you would say, 'No! I would've eaten one every day, and I would've eaten 365 more steamed buns!!'

me: [laughing]

Tom: It's like Picard. "I wish I didn't have a fake heart. I'm going to change it. Oh crap, I'm no longer a captain. I better get shot in the heart with a phaser."

me: [still laughing] He was stabbed through the heart with a spear! It wasn't a phaser!

Tom: No, at first he was shot with a phaser, but at the end he was stabbed with the spear.

...

Tom: So I don't understand why she gets so stressed out.

me: When people care too much about something, then they stress out and they procrastinate! You never get that worked up about things. Well, very few things. Like, if you didn't leave enough time for studying for your final, you would just calmly decide, 'Ok, I need 8 hours and I only have 6. I'll just study the 6/8 most important things.' You wouldn't kick yourself for it, and you wouldn't feel bad. You'd just do it and move on. But people that really care about everything, they feel bad and regret, and it feels so awful that next time, they purposefully procrastinate.

Tom: Yeah, I guess I just don't get that worked up about anything.

...

Little miss muffet

Apparently all spiders in the US are harmless except for black widows and brown recluses. How can you tell whether a spider is a brown recluse? Apparently there is a small violin-shaped mark on the back of the spider. So when you feel a sharp pain and realize that you are being bitten by a spider, allow it to continue so that you can calmly examine its back for violin-shaped marks.

Alas, I did not perform this inspection.

While doing this research on Google Images, I encountered one of the most disgusting images I have ever seen. This rivals the time that Dan had a cyst removed from his arm and showed us digital pics of the gaping wound. Here it is: disgusting spider pic.

Spider.

I just got bitten by a spider, for the first time in my life.

I was sitting in my cubicle, working, and my wrist suddenly experienced a sharp jabbing pain. I looked down and there was a light brown spider about the size of a nickel, on my wrist. I flicked it away and it scrambled off (but is still alive and in the proximity of my cube!).

Now my wrist is throbbing and there is an expanding red circle around the bite. I am going to search on Google to see if A. I can find out what type of spider it is, and B. whether I should do some sort of medical manuever.

Conversations from India.

Chris: The cleaning staff threw away some of my stuff.

me: Like what?

Chris: One of my half-used candles.

me: You brought candles all the way from the US?

Chris: No, they were in the gift basket.

me: [flashback to first day at guesthouse] Wait, that's right, there were candles in that gift basket! You took both of them?

Chris: There were 5. I took all 5.

me: That gift basket was for all of us!

Chris: (patronizingly) Do you want one of my candles?

me: One of your candles?! No, I want one of my own candles back, thank you.

Chris: Fine. [picks up his laptop bag, starts moving toward door to leave]

me: [noticing that he's holding a roll of toilet paper] Why are you taking toilet paper?

Chris: I might need it. I have kind of an upset stomach.

me: Don't you think they'd have it at the office?

Chris: They ran out on Sunday.

me: Oh, ok.

Chris: [gets to door, pauses with hand on doorknob] By the way, this is your toilet paper.

me: What?

Chris: Yeah, you don't have toilet paper any more in your bathroom.

me: You stole my toilet paper?? [starting to laugh] Why did you do that?

Chris: I thought you'd left for work already.

me: (laughing) You are the worst roommate ever!!

---

me: Can we get them to bring us more exotic fruits at the guesthouse? Right now we have apples, bananas, oranges. I want papayas, mangoes, weird Indian fruits.

Lalit: They actually ship this fruit from the US. The apples are from Washington. And the oranges are from Florida.

John: So don't tell them you want exotic fruits, because they'll bring you apples and oranges.