conclusion of the brother gift survey

Thanks to all the suggestions about a gift to give my brother for his birthday. I ended up getting him...

A kindle 3!

And a gift card for kindle books!



Tom called me on the phone, and we were talking as he opened the Amazon box. When he saw the big envelope (containing the gift card), he asked, "Oooh, is this a Minted birthday card? Did you send me a personalized card?"

I said, "The box shipped directly from Amazon! How would I have gotten the card into the Amazon box?"

Though, at Minted we just hired the Amazon engineer who coded their packing slips and shipping box sizing algorithms, so maybe I could've somehow gotten her to do it before leaving!

Another gift that Tom got was a trip to San Francisco, from his buddy in LA. So he is going to come visit next weekend. I wonder if I can convince him to go to a drag brunch show with me. A friend gave me his groupon for it, and it's expiring.

updated bucket list

I've now done one of the items on my bucket list. This is the updated list:

1. Take my dad to Russia on a trip.
2. Have a family.
3. Eat at Gary Danko.
4. Have a small, live Christmas tree in my home. Decorate the tree. Here is an example of what the tree could look like:

breeze

This photo reminds me of Burning Man, even though it's 1). clean, and 2). next to a beautiful river, as opposed to miles away from any water. It's making me want to go for a weekend to Burning Man!

The best moment from Burning Man 2009 was sitting on top of a precarious four-story metallic structure, with Misha and Omst.

Elizabeth said, "At Burning Man, you see these couches that hundreds of people have sweated on. If you saw that in the Mission, you wouldn't want to go near it. But here you just sit right down on it, wearing very little clothing."

birthday gift for my brother

I need to buy a gift for my brother's 24th birthday in 10 days. What to get him?

He likes indoor rock climbing, video games, and Japanese films.

source code

Darn it!

I just saw that there is an upcoming movie called "Source Code".



I got all excited because I thought it's a movie about coding. A real coding movie, not one where two teenagers type for 15 seconds and hack into the Pentagon. Or where the protagonist lands on a borg-looking alien mothership from light-years away and finds a convenient USB port.

I thought that maybe in the movie "Source Code", the characters would be solving some challenging problem. Maybe first they are stuck, then they come up with a solution. They start to celebrate, but it turns out be O(N^3)! They get discouraged, and shout at each other. One of them leaves in anger to take a walk by the river, where he sees a leaf fall onto the ground. The leaf inspires him to come up with a O(log N) solution! Then he races back just in the nick of time and presses "i" in his vim editor in order to start typing the code. I want a big close-up of his fingers as he types that initial "i".

Anyway, this is the description of the movie "Source Code":

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he's ever known, he learns he's part of a government experiment called the "Source Code," a program that enables him to cross over into another man's identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack. Filled with mind-boggling twists and heart-pounding suspense, Source Code is a smart action-thriller directed by Duncan Jones

WTF! What a huge letdown! This has nothing to do with source code!!!

but those koreans are even closer to japan

Talking to my brother about reports of radiation reaching Southern California due to the Japan nuclear reactor meltdown.

niniane: are you scared about the radioactive plume?
Tom: not much i can do about the radioactive plume
Tom: i can do with a few extra appendages
niniane: what will you do with them?
Tom: play starcraft 50% better

chinese currency rap battle!

an entertaining video

My college friend Victor: "haha my whole life's effort learning cantonese is now worthwhile thanks to this video"

poem

I like this poem.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS
Portia Nelson


1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost...
I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit
My eyes are open; I know where I am;
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

oinksy!

I want this:



Is the fur (hair?) soft, or is it bristly? I want to hold this little pig as I fall asleep.

fire extinguisher!

Sitting in my Mountain View townhouse with Azer.

Me: "The townhouse complex just sent an email. You need to put the fire extinguisher out onto the front steps on Saturday morning. They're going to inspect it."

Azer: "I'll do it right now. Where is it?"

Me: "On the balcony." [walking over to balcony, looking all over it without finding the fire extinguisher]

Azer: "Is it in a closet?"

Me: "Yeah, we should probably know where the fire extinguisher is, in case of a real fire."

Azer: "I bet the townhouse complex isn't actually doing anything to the fire extinguisher. This whole thing is just so that everyone will find their fire extinguisher."

Me: [lol]

interesting Soviet Union house

The architecture of this house is really interesting:



It's from this Guardian article about architecture in the Soviet Union.

what makes people into fascinating characters?

There are some people who fascinate me. They could be a movie character. One is my personal trainer Megan, who always has an interesting dating story or work dilemma. Another is my Seattle friend Wenarto, who throws elaborate dinner parties where he conscripts the guests to act in his youtube videos.

I was mulling over what makes these people so fascinating.

There's a guideline to writing fiction, wherein you ought to devise characters with strong motives. One book said, "If your character's only desire is to drink some water, make that desire very strong. Make him parched, and craving water as though his life depends on it."

The examples I gave both have strong passions. Megan is humorously opinionated about every area of her life. Wenarto lives to sing opera in youtube videos, and cook feasts of capon.

Is that the primary factor? Perhaps it is also because these individuals are not self-conscious. They rarely get embarrassed, and proudly own up to all their foibles.

chinese commercial about IM

I like the scene where you see the mom's QQ instant messager friend list, and it only has 1 contact (her son).

pot of meat as art!

J Michael designed how the "pot of meat" photo could be artistically made into a series of panels!

---

Also, my colleague suggested that I color-correct and crop the photo:

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Here's another suggestion from the comments, courtesy of Jordan Brock:

photos of where I live and work

My former colleague from Microsoft came to visit this weekend. He took some photos that I quite like.


View from my window.


Candid shot at Minted.

pot of meat as a canvas print

I'm planning to make a canvas print to hang in my living room or kitchen. I'm thinking about this photo that my brother took of my mom's cooking:


Would that look good as a 16" x 20" canvas on the wall of my kitchen? So far, two people I polled said that it's unappealing to have a large photo of food up-close.

Luxembourg

We only stayed in Luxembourg for one day. I really liked our hotel. It had nice lighting, and a free mini-bar of sparkling water and juices. I tried to drink everything in the mini-bar.


Fruit at the breakfast buffet.


Waffles and jams at our breakfast table. We sat and ate for over an hour.


A pretty church we went to. It was snowing outside.


In the afternoon, Tom decided that he wanted to see a museum with great architecture. We could spot it in the distance but couldn't see a straightforward path there. We started to walk in that direction.

We walked for 45 minutes. One cab passed us during that time but wouldn't stop. Finally we came to a set of ice-covered steps. A sign indicated these were the right steps to the museum. But when my brother tried climbing the steps, they were too slippery from ice.


We kept walking, up a snowy incline, which eventually led to these train tracks. We could see footsteps leading to the tracks, and the other side of the tracks seemed to be a path to the museum. We then had a debate about whether to cross the tracks.

My mother thought it would be fine. My dad loudly proclaimed that it was an absurd idea. He said, "Tomorrow the newspapers are going to carry the headline 'Chinese Tourists Found Dead on Train Tracks; Motives Unclear'. They'll speculate on why this Chinese family was crossing the tracks. To steal a national treasure? Suicide? No one is going to guess that it's to see this museum."


Finally we gave up, and walked 45 minutes back to the hotel.


My brother and dad sitting in the lobby of the hotel.

My bucket list

Last night I had dinner with Elizabeth.  We went to Press Room and had flights of wine and carpaccio.  She pushed me to make a bucket list.  Here it is:

1. Take my dad to Russia on a trip.
2. Read a bunch of books.
3. Have a family.
4. Eat at Gary Danko.

I hope I can do these! 

Zurich

The most striking thing about Zurich is how expensive and rare the restaurants are. There are few restaurants, and almost none open before 10am. A bottle of water cost about $7. A slice of bread and some cheese would cost $12. We were torn between hunger and sticker shock.


A church next to the train station. We walked along this path every day.


The fruit is actually made of some other substance. The oranges seem to be really oranges that were scooped out and filled with cream.


View from our hotel room. We were very jetlagged and slept from 2pm to 8pm every day, then went to forage for dinner. We woke up at 4am every morning and waited for the sun to rise.


Fondue! We ate cheese fondue, meats with oil fondue, and meats with broth fondue. It was as tasty as I dreamed it would be.


My brother photographing the dessert at the fondue restaurant.


We went into Sprüngli, a chocolate shop. My brother drank hot chocolate and ate chocolate cake. My parents drank nothing and ate nothing, because the shop was so shockingly expensive.


A champagne-flavored ... I forget the name of this type of pastry. It's very small. This single-bite pastry cost about $3.


A fountain which has frozen over.


My parents on the train to Luxembourg. There are a lot of little towns in the European countryside. I thought it would be a beautiful view of snowy mountains, but instead it seemed to be one beige-colored town after another.


Me and Tom on the train.

books

I am in Luxembourg with my parents and brother. I'm reading a bunch of Kindle books on the plane, train, at night in the hotel.

One thing about the Kindle is very annoying. When you press on the directional knob, if your finger twitches at all (so that the motion is not straight down), your Kindle will delete the book instead of opening it. I've accidentally removed two books in the past day. There is no way to retrieve them until I return to the US, because the Amazon wireless doesn't extend to Europe for my device.

Anyhow, I just finished "Kitchen Confidential". Stephen King said once that people love reading about other people's jobs. It's so true. This entire book is an autobiographical account of a chef's career. My brother commented that he previously thought being a line cook would be fun, until he read this book. It takes a lot of strength to lift 100-pound cuts of meat or masses of dough. Also you need to be time-sensitive so that the sauce is created at just the same time as the meat and side dishes, so that nothing gets cold. Plus everyone's food needs to arrive at once, so it's a mastermind synchronization operation. On top of that, the chef needs to be creative at combining ingredients to taste good, plus he needs to be a strong people manager who can soothe egos, recruit cooks, and fire delinquents.

Next I'm going to read "Complications" about how surgeons are fallible humans, who start out scared to press down the scalpel on actual skin. The book opens with a frightening story about the author as a hospital resident, struggling to perform a heart operation for the first time. He forgets important instruments, his hand slips when he's putting a wire into the patient's artery, and he keeps poking the clavicle when he means to slip the tube under it. I was flinching every couple of paragraphs.

The top Facebook games also center around taking up a profession: Restaurant City, Farmville. Someone should write Surgeon Room as a game.

If you know of any other books that eloquently speak about an interesting profession, send me the recommendation!

quips from my brother

Me: "So I have this friend Victoria..."

Tom: [smiling] "Does she have a secret?"

---

We are in a hotel in Luxembourg with an ambilight television. There is a light source behind the TV which emits light to match what is on the screen.



Tom: "The resolution on this TV is terrible! Why isn't it all HD?"

Me: "Maybe there are some HD channels that we haven't found yet."

Tom: "If I were this hotel manager, the TV would be automatically tuned to HD as soon as it turns on. Plus the ambilight is using RGB interpolation instead of LAB 1976."

[various questions about color interpolation removed]

Tom: "This TV is trying to distract me from its crappy resolution by literally using smoke and mirrors."

---

Me: "My friend Alco does a type of martial art that's supposed to be very deadly."

Tom: "What is it?"

Me: "Krav something."

Tom: "Krav maga? That's the deadliest type of martial arts!"

Me: "Yes, he's a black belt or something."

Tom: "That's the hand-to-hand combat used by the Israeli army."

Me: "Also, he can dismantle and re-assemble a gun very quickly."

Tom: "He's probably more deadly than his gun!"

Me: O_o

poem about boredom

A snippet from a poem referenced by my friend Lillers.

We did invent boredom,
a fruitful state.
It hid the size of our desires.
We were spared many murders,
many religions
because we could say, "I am bored."
A kind of clarity
came when we said it
and we could go to Paris or the movies,
give useful parties, master languages,
rather than sink our teeth in our lover's throat
and shake till things felt right again.

impatience

My CEO likes to say to me, "You have a warped sense of time. You think a lot of time has passed, when it's only been five minutes."

It is true. I had not realized before, but I am very impatient! There are times when I've thought, "Why hasn't so-and-so replied to my email?!" and I search for the thread to write a demanding followup, only to find that I had only sent my email the night before.

The state of feeling impatient is uncomfortable. I am in this state of discomfort multiple times per week, where I'm waiting impatiently. I would like to lessen this feeling.

I heard from one startup founder that his investor will send followup emails every hour until he gets an answer. That seems a bit too pushy, but it is one solution.

Or perhaps I can try some type of meditation, where I imagine myself as a cactus in a timeless desert, or focus on breathing, or some such.

If you are impatient, how do you deal with this? If you are patient, what is your emotional reaction to people like me who are impatient? Do we seem inexplicable?

Hollywood separations

Scarlett Johanssen and Ryan Reynolds are getting divorced. I'm sure most of you have no idea who these celebrities are. But I am saddened by this. There are so many Hollywood splits recently.

hats

I wish I could wear a hat every day. But it would be weird if everyone else is in jeans and I'm wearing a hat. It's stifling that it's only really acceptable to wear a huge hat one day out of the year.












What can I do to create occasions where it's acceptable to wear a huge Victorian-style hat?

ways of the wor[l]d

Mitch: "I met these two girls last Saturday, and they're so aggressive!"

Me: "Why, what did they do?"

Mitch: "I texted one of them a few days later, and she answered within five minutes with an excited reply."

Me: "Wait, but you texted her first. How is that aggressive?"

Mitch: "I dunno, it just was."

Me: "Is she attractive?"

Mitch: "Not really."

Me: "I see. If she were really attractive, then the same behavior wouldn't be aggressive, right?"

Mitch: "Oh, I choose the wording based on the situation. In that case, I would say, 'Wow, this girl is so responsive! It's awesome!'"

frank lloyd wright

I'm reading a book of historical fiction based on Frank Lloyd Wright's life. It's called "Loving Frank".

It's making me very curious about visiting his houses, and seeing how the interior blends with the exterior. Also seeing how sometimes the ceiling is low to create coziness, but other times it feels lofty.

Also, this book makes his love affair sound so all-consuming. It's hard to imagine that he and his mistress would both leave their children for a year to live together in an Italian villa by themselves. It seems such a foreign concept for them to put their own passion above seeing their kids over an entire year.

But it's also rather inspiring, to hear a story of people who believe so strongly in their work and their love that they would endanger perfectly comfortable lives for it.

---

UPDATE: My friend Brian saw this post, and said he enjoyed visiting Taliesin West in Arizona. I had no idea there was a Frank Lloyd Wright house so close by -- I only knew about museums on the East Coast like Fallingwater or the Guggenheim. Now I am gripped with excitement over the prospect of going to visit! They have night tours and desert walks and behind-the-scenes tours!!

pastries and moving

I had some friends over for tea yesterday. Afterwards my apartment felt cozier, so I suppose it was an unanticipated housewarming.


I bought these pastries from Golden Gate Bakery, which is just five minutes' walk from my apartment.

LG had only eaten egg tarts once previously (he claims from Safeway). He was pleasantly surprised how a properly-cooked egg tart can be far tastier.

I've ended up walking to Chinatown a couple times during the past week. I like hearing the kitschy music from little shops. It reminds me of being in some parts of Beijing, and also of the Chinatown section of Santiago in Chile.

Now that the apartment is warmed, I am realizing that moving turned out to be more psychologically taxing than expected. I'm going to minimize the number of times I move, during the rest of my life.

cute

This baby is so cute (from this Minted holiday card):


Sitting at work this afternoon:

Me: "Babies in costumes are so adorable, especially when they look unhappy about being in the costume. When I have a kid one day, I'm totally going to put them in all sorts of costumes."

GP: "What if your kid is happy in the costume?"

Me: "That's okay. Happy is good too. Also, I'll leave them in the costume all day. Eventually they'll get unhappy about something."

korean music video

Omst & Lori showed me this. The dancing is really nice! Also I like the way it sets up the story. Though the ending is a tiny bit odd.

chrome extension

This chrome extension is really funny: Add the terrifying visage of Jimmy Wales to every web page you visit.





One of the user comments on this extension:

Chrome extensions might as well close shop. This is the alpha and omega of extensions. No other is needed.

game mechanics!

The game-mechanics line was the best.

beauty

For a few weeks, I've been bemoaning my uprooting from Mountain View. Today I woke up still in a funk, but over the next 15 minutes, it dawned on me that there is beauty all around me! San Francisco is a gorgeous city.

View from my living room ten minutes ago:


Omst is visiting from Toronto and staying with me. Today I'm going to a pilates class a few blocks away, and then we're having breakfast at a cafe.

Me: "San Francisco is so beautiful!"

Omst: "It's actually raining right now."

Me: "Why do you have to be like that?"

couch!

I just bought this couch from overstock!

I hope it will look good in my San Francisco apartment.

By the way, this photo is a stock photo from the Overstock catalog. It is not an actual photo of the couch. I am waiting for the couch to arrive in 1 to 6 weeks!

Tunez

Me: [walking upstairs] "Oh, nice song. What is it?"

Azer: "Farez, a new Persian rap."

Me: "I like it."

Azer: "I'm organizing all of my music!"

Me: "Spoken like a guy with a broken foot."

Azer: "Yep."

mental distress over moving

Tomorrow I'm moving a few items of furniture from my Mountain View townhouse to my new San Francisco apartment.

I'm totally distressed over it!

All day I've been stressed to no end. I'm hiring professional movers who will do all the furniture disassembly and packing into a truck, and yet I am still in great stress.

Faram said it's obviously due to moving out of a place where I've lived for six years. As soon as he said that, I protested, "I'm not totally moving out!" Just the words are causing me stress.

I set down roots in this house! Now I'm pulling them out. It's really unnerving.

But the view in the new apartment is good. Here's another angle that shows more of the Bay view and less of the Financial District cityview.


If you know me, you should come by to visit the apartment! Maybe that will help it feel more like home.

BlogZero

During a discussion on what to name the new server.  We decided to give it a logical sequential name.

B2: "That saves us the trouble of coming up with names."

Me: "Are you going to name your children KidZero, KidOne, etc?"

B2: "Yeah!  Then when they ask why their name is KidTwo, it'll be clear."

Me: "What if one of them runs away? It'll be really obvious when you introduce them.  'Here are my kids: KidZero, KidOne, and KidThree."

B2: "Should've had a failover for KidTwo!"

Me: "Or just redistribute the love amongst the remaining kids."