Sunday, November 30, 2008
New Years Plans
I realized the other day, as I was planning my trip home for winter break, that I have never spent New Year's outside of Iowa. This needs to change. I know it's late to start planning, but does anyone want to try to get together for a few days? Alternatively, if anyone has plans that I can leach onto that would be cool. There's like a 75% chance that I end up in the Bay area after graduation, so I would definitely be up for spending some time out there if people are around. Colorado is always fun too, if we're looking for a place where we know people...
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Are you fucking kidding me NY?
Today I took the subway to work, like I always do. I have never felt worse in my life than when I got off.
Most of the time, the train I take has no seats, people are always standing. A stop after I got on, a seat opened up and I settled back to take a nap until I got to work. As soon as the train reaches 53rd and Lex, in midtown east, it sort of empties out. A homeless guy got on and sat in the row of seats opposite me. At this time, there was a guy sitting about one seat apart from the homeless guy (approximately, because it's just one long bench), and another person next to this guy. A few stops later, as the train further emptied, and I was drifting in and out of sleep, I noticed that the non-homeless well-to-do NY banker guy had gotten up and moved down the car to another bench.
Further, as people got on, the entire bench where the homeless guy was sitting remained empty, and no one sat there even though there were no other seats. I was dumbstruck. How could people treat other people this way?
Another homeless person had been sitting quietly in a corner at the end of the same corner, with 3 large plastic garbage bags in front of her (the person was wearing a hood, so I couldn't discern gender). The bags were filled with what I guessed was empty plastic bottles and other recyclable material. The person got off at Penn Station, but before the doors closed, stepped back into the car and handed the other homeless guy a few dollars. I was amazed.
I planned to give the homeless guy some money before I got off, but I thought I had no cash. I later checked my wallet and did have $7, which I wished I had given to the guy on the train. As I write this, I am still feeling sick to my stomach at the way the guy was treated, even though he didn't show that he was affected by the people around him. I hope I never treat anybody like this, ever.
Most of the time, the train I take has no seats, people are always standing. A stop after I got on, a seat opened up and I settled back to take a nap until I got to work. As soon as the train reaches 53rd and Lex, in midtown east, it sort of empties out. A homeless guy got on and sat in the row of seats opposite me. At this time, there was a guy sitting about one seat apart from the homeless guy (approximately, because it's just one long bench), and another person next to this guy. A few stops later, as the train further emptied, and I was drifting in and out of sleep, I noticed that the non-homeless well-to-do NY banker guy had gotten up and moved down the car to another bench.
Further, as people got on, the entire bench where the homeless guy was sitting remained empty, and no one sat there even though there were no other seats. I was dumbstruck. How could people treat other people this way?
Another homeless person had been sitting quietly in a corner at the end of the same corner, with 3 large plastic garbage bags in front of her (the person was wearing a hood, so I couldn't discern gender). The bags were filled with what I guessed was empty plastic bottles and other recyclable material. The person got off at Penn Station, but before the doors closed, stepped back into the car and handed the other homeless guy a few dollars. I was amazed.
I planned to give the homeless guy some money before I got off, but I thought I had no cash. I later checked my wallet and did have $7, which I wished I had given to the guy on the train. As I write this, I am still feeling sick to my stomach at the way the guy was treated, even though he didn't show that he was affected by the people around him. I hope I never treat anybody like this, ever.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Clusterfuck!
This is an example of what our Friday afternoon clusterfucks devolve to:
Alexander: you fucking piece of shit mother fucking cum guzzling gaping vagina fisting shitbag
I love you guys
-Zhi
Alexander: you fucking piece of shit mother fucking cum guzzling gaping vagina fisting shitbag
I love you guys
-Zhi
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
People I chat with
So I checked my chat history logs for Pidgin (an open source chat client) and made some interesting discoveries.
(Data represents number of bytes logged in chats with respective IM accounts for last 30 days)
- Kanna and Fu, we need to chat more.
- Ajay, we definitely need to chat less.
- Alex, you've got a lot of catching up to do if you want to overtake Ajay (and this is only my @gmail account, doesn't include my @google!)
UPDATE:
I fail at Internet.
I apologize if my exposure of your email in plain text for the previous 12 hours leads to any more spam for you. At least this is a good test for how well GMail's spam filters work.
It wasn't up for too long, so maybe the crawlers missed it.
I'm really sorry. I'm a retard.
$ du -scb .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....gmail.com/* |\
sort -t" " -k1 -n |\
sed -r 's/([a-z\.]{4})[^/@]+@/\1...@/g'
4232 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/kann...@gmail.com
4375 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/mast...@gmail.com
4662 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/kadi...@gmail.com
4825 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/kres...@gmail.com
5458 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/rame...@gmail.com
5466 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/mill...@gmail.com
6367 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/jona...@gmail.com
6737 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/anxm...@gmail.com
7001 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/vash...@gmail.com
7049 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/carm...@gmail.com
7236 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/lanz...@gmail.com
7491 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/nluc...@gmail.com
8020 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/vmho...@gmail.com
8426 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/smus...@gmail.com
8563 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/jenn...@gmail.com
9068 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/jack...@gmail.com
9270 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/marc...@gmail.com
9381 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/ritt...@gmail.com
10690 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/cina...@gmail.com
10890 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/m.az...@gmail.com
11372 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/alex...@gmail.com
16103 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/tomm...@gmail.com
25603 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/jamo...@gmail.com
45047 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/emil...@gmail.com
138056 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/awkn...@gmail.com
263802 .purple/logs/jabber/zhi....@gmail.com/ajay...@gmail.com
(Data represents number of bytes logged in chats with respective IM accounts for last 30 days)
- Kanna and Fu, we need to chat more.
- Ajay, we definitely need to chat less.
- Alex, you've got a lot of catching up to do if you want to overtake Ajay (and this is only my @gmail account, doesn't include my @google!)
UPDATE:
I fail at Internet.
I apologize if my exposure of your email in plain text for the previous 12 hours leads to any more spam for you. At least this is a good test for how well GMail's spam filters work.
It wasn't up for too long, so maybe the crawlers missed it.
I'm really sorry. I'm a retard.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Chrome fades....
Not sure if you guys saw this, but i guess chrome cant ride the Google success train, at least not yet.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Bill O'Reilly May Be Functionally Retarded
No Bill, the law does not have to be "better defined". Usually when the Supreme Court of the United States makes a ruling, this is the law, as well defined it can possibly be.
Good on you Megyn Kelly. You work for Fox, so you're irredeemable in my eyes, but at least you stood up to Papa Bear.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
"Yesterday" by Atmosphere
Atmosphere is a hip-hop duo form Minnesota. They've had some indie appeal up until this year where their hit "You" is getting some serious air play. So on a whim, I bought their CD When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. It's good stuff. But one song in particular motivated me to post for the first time in a month. Please listen to it. There's a twist at the end. I won't give it away so scroll down after the jump for my parting words...
...Go hug your parents today if you can. Call them and tell them you love them. Make sure your family knows you care about them. Let your friends know you appreciate them.
I love you guys. I don't want to have to look back to yesterday and realize I didn't do that.
...Go hug your parents today if you can. Call them and tell them you love them. Make sure your family knows you care about them. Let your friends know you appreciate them.
I love you guys. I don't want to have to look back to yesterday and realize I didn't do that.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Madden Curse
Here is a list of all the Madden covers. We all know the story by now, which is about what happens to these players the year they appear on the cover of that game and subsequently. It's beyond coincidence when every one of these "curses" came to fruition...
...Which leads me to the 2009 edition with Brett Favre. So do you think the curse applies to his whole saga (and now apparently being traded) or to Aaron Rodgers who's obviously going to start mixing cocaine, alcohol, and sleeping pills nightly?
...Which leads me to the 2009 edition with Brett Favre. So do you think the curse applies to his whole saga (and now apparently being traded) or to Aaron Rodgers who's obviously going to start mixing cocaine, alcohol, and sleeping pills nightly?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Zhi's Post
Rather than comment, which is never read, because it doesn't show up on RSS feeds, I thought I would comment in another post. Imagine my narcissism.
This is called getting older. This is why you cannot convince your parents of your "progressive" views. Because other adults have spent hears hearing opinion passed as fact and truths jaded and picked at by sniveling commentators (in the old world "pundits") . They are just as certain of their views and the ascribed validities as you are. No information comes from a primary source anymore, and every contradictory piece of information, further substantiates their opinion that they have made the right decision and that everyone else is wrong and misguided.
Imagine the entire world going around like this... it paints a pretty bleak picture.
You have the following options:
- Be a starving artist - proclaiming your views artistically and politically to the world through the only true form of expression - (note: rock band and guitar hero do not count.)
- Kill yourself (please make sure to get your whole head in front of the shotgun)
- Go into hiding.... forever
- Be jaded about everything and join the ranks of intelligent adults
- Add your voice to the fray, and find constant frustration about not being followed or heard
- and lastly, Understand that this is the way things are, pick your battles, surround yourself with like minds and people that are interested in hearing a well reasoned, articulate and well researched argument, and ignore everyone else. (My personal choice).
Love, Alex
This is called getting older. This is why you cannot convince your parents of your "progressive" views. Because other adults have spent hears hearing opinion passed as fact and truths jaded and picked at by sniveling commentators (in the old world "pundits") . They are just as certain of their views and the ascribed validities as you are. No information comes from a primary source anymore, and every contradictory piece of information, further substantiates their opinion that they have made the right decision and that everyone else is wrong and misguided.
Imagine the entire world going around like this... it paints a pretty bleak picture.
You have the following options:
- Be a starving artist - proclaiming your views artistically and politically to the world through the only true form of expression - (note: rock band and guitar hero do not count.)
- Kill yourself (please make sure to get your whole head in front of the shotgun)
- Go into hiding.... forever
- Be jaded about everything and join the ranks of intelligent adults
- Add your voice to the fray, and find constant frustration about not being followed or heard
- and lastly, Understand that this is the way things are, pick your battles, surround yourself with like minds and people that are interested in hearing a well reasoned, articulate and well researched argument, and ignore everyone else. (My personal choice).
Love, Alex
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Credibility
I am sometimes described as someone who is too trusting, and to some extent, I agree with that assessment. I am easily fooled, readily hoodwinked, effortlessly gypped. However, something has changed my views of the world recently. From "news" channels that blatantly pass off opinions as fact and agenda and objectivity, to politicians who spin and lie to my face, to editorials and blogs who do nothing but point out instances where the other side of the aisle is lying and deceiving. All of this information then filters and trickles down to the average person, and what I am seeing more and more of is public discourse governed by talking-points and misleading "facts".
I'm not going to get on my soap box over talking-point politics, but I want instead to focus on just one aspect of how this is affecting me. This is created for me a 'credibility gap' between my brain and everything I hear. When I see a politician speak (particularly one that doesn't agree with me), the only things I think about are how he/she is wrong and how to pick apart his/her arguments. When I read an article, I question the author's objectivity and instantly distrust any statement that sounds like opinion, even reasoned ones. I know the world isn't black and white, and trying to see everything so defensively is probably more of a personal problem than one that can be fixed by this most awesome of blogs, but how can I rectify this? How can I view any source of knowledge, or piece of information without the prejudice that it might be wrong or misleading? Not everything I hear, see, or read can be a debate-style back and forth, battling for the decision of my logical mind. But how do I cope?
I'm not going to get on my soap box over talking-point politics, but I want instead to focus on just one aspect of how this is affecting me. This is created for me a 'credibility gap' between my brain and everything I hear. When I see a politician speak (particularly one that doesn't agree with me), the only things I think about are how he/she is wrong and how to pick apart his/her arguments. When I read an article, I question the author's objectivity and instantly distrust any statement that sounds like opinion, even reasoned ones. I know the world isn't black and white, and trying to see everything so defensively is probably more of a personal problem than one that can be fixed by this most awesome of blogs, but how can I rectify this? How can I view any source of knowledge, or piece of information without the prejudice that it might be wrong or misleading? Not everything I hear, see, or read can be a debate-style back and forth, battling for the decision of my logical mind. But how do I cope?
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