Three ways to measure the posts I did not make

For a while I had a regular feature where I posted every time I made a platelet donation. As my last post on the donation topic was over three months ago, a lot of appointments have passed without comment.

I could measure this time by how big my cup pyramid has grown. Every time I make a donation I save my cup from the canteen.



I could talk about all the movies I have seen when I donated for the last few months:

Gran Torino Clint Eastwood yelling at people

Munich Track down and kill people who killed people

Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist Everyone wants to find Where's Fluffy? They should look on MacGuffin Street

Star Trek The fourth of the eleven Star Trek movies where a time distortion is a big deal

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen The explosions are gratuitous, but here is a good exchange:
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to get you a tighter shirt"
"They don't have one, we've looked"

Monsters vs. Aliens The monsters are coming to Modesto!

There is one other way I could measure how often I have made apheresis donations. Last week they gave me this.

Course Evaluations

Since it is the season of the ending of classes and finals for many people, I have a few comments to share. Specifically, comments I have written on course evaluations for classes I have taken. Some of these are born of bad professors, while others represent my failures as a student.

Antebellum America 1815-1860: The Emergence of Mass Society
I really enjoyed the assigned reading, especially the Crockett, Barnum, and Otter.
This refers to the autobiographies of Davey Crockett, P.T. Barnum, and William Otter. My comment is half true, as I had read Crockett's book and half of Barnum's book. I had not even opened the Otter book, but from the way the professor described it in class it sounded like reading I would like. Several months after I finished the class, I got around to finishing the three books and enjoyed them.

Sexuality, Gender, and Culture in the Ancient World
This class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Etcheverry. I only took it because Classics 130 (a degree requirement) was not offered for an entire year and it was the only class recognized as a replacement. If I did not take it, I would have had to take two classes to replace it in one semester.
On Thursday I did the Daily Cal Sudoku during class and on Friday I saved the Sudoku to do in class on Tuesday, since Tuesday's Sudoku would not last for the entire hour and a half.
The class was crosslisted with Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and had a large number of people who had no exposure to Classics. This meant the professor spent a lot of time covering introductory material. This was very boring to someone who majored in Classics and had taken nine classes on the subject. It was also the same professor that taught me Introduction to Greek Civilization, so I had heard his commentary and read his favorite plays and ancient works before. I did clarify this in my evaluation.

Linear Algebra
My friend is not in class today, but he asked me to write a bad evaluation for the professor for him.
This professor was terrible and deserved the negative comments I wrote. I took this class in the Fall of my sophomore year. It was a great semester, I spent more time on Sproul tabling then I did in class. It was also the semester with my best grades.

Integral Calculus
The professor made a big deal how she never got a review sheet for a midterm in her entire life and explained how reviewing our notes on our own would be better then any review sheet we were ever given. Then she gave us a midterm where the last problem was directly from the review sheet, completely discrediting everything she said about review sheets.
I remember working through most of the problems on the review sheet the night before and deciding to go to sleep instead of doing the last couple of problems, specifically remembering the professor's comments both in class and on the front of the review packet. Unfortunetly for me, the last problem about series on the review sheet appeared on the midterm. So much for listening to the professor.

Multivariable Calculus
I learned more about the shortcomings of Stuart [the class textbook] then I did about calculus in the lectures.
The professor was a real Count in his native Eastern European county. He also thought the multivariable textbook he wrote was better, but was not allowed to use it as there were contracts to use the other textbook by Stuart.

The Right Questions

Sometimes there are failures in communication.

I was recently talking to my Associate, and he told me some big news about one of our friends. This was surprising to me, as I had chatted with this friend online a few times recently and emailed him, but he never alluded to anything. When I finally asked him why he did not tell me this big news of his, he told me it was because I never asked.

I wonder, what things are going on with the people I know that I am unaware of? What is happening that I do not know because I did not ask the right question?

In an ideal world, people would tell me new and noteworthy things before I run through a battery of twenty questions. Then I started to think, how many times has something new happened to me and I never said anything? I have waited many times for questions that never came. I write short speeches in my mind explaining what I think about, stuff that happens to me, and my feelings on situations. Most of these speeches remain on a shelf in my thoughts and never find voice aloud.

As an example, neither of the groups I am involved with at church know I spent five semesters leading a Bible study group in college. Even though one group is reading Peter's First Letter and I have a quasi-teaching role in the other, they don't know this useful experience of mine.

As a step in learning to ask the right questions, I will volunteer information about myself. Last week I started reading some Shakespeare. What started as reading Richard II took me to the library for more plays and to websites covering the Hundred Years War, the real figures behind Shakespeare's history plays, and questions about the "Pseudo-Shakespearian" play Edward III.

Thanksgiving and the Bears

It is the beginning of a new month. This means partial drafts and post ideas must go.

Thanksgiving

At the church group/fellowship I attend I have acquired a reputation for coming up with good ice breaker questions. Before Thanksgiving I suggested, "What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory?" My answer:

When I was in college, our Bible study group Seekers would celebrate Thanksgiving on the Tuesday before the holiday. One year I signed up to bring mashed potatoes. Since many people (30+) were expected and mashed potatoes are a classic dish for the day, I mashed 15 lb. of potatoes for the feast. I had to go out and buy a pot that was big enough to cook all of them. I also dumped sour cream and cream cheese into the potatoes for extra flavor (after putting a bowl aside for Fr. Charlie).

This past Thanksgiving, I offered my Grandma my pot to cook a large amount of potatoes, but she said that was unnecessary.

The Bears

In the 112th Big Game, the Cardinals (not the birds, but the color) took a 14-0 lead in the first quater. The Bears came back scoring 24 points, to take the led at 24-14. It ended with an interception by Cal at their own 3 yard line to end the game at 34-28. You can read the recap from the Cal Football site or any number of links on Google.

This means we keep the Axe!

There is one more game in the regular season at Washington. Then it is all about a bowl game. The predictions have Cal playing Oklahoma in the Burt Sun Bowl, which is played in El Paso. According to Google Maps, this is only 799 miles from my house. The stadium is easy to get to, there is less than a mile of driving after exiting the 10. This is 600 miles closer than the Armed Forces Bowl where the Bears played two years ago.

It would be fun to go to Texas for the bowl. My concerns are: I would want to travel with fun people and a trip would have to deal with the New Year's Eve crowd as the game is the morning of the 31st.

Are you ok?, I’m sorry I have to rephrase my phrases

As I was composing some of my posts, I realized I repeatedly use certain grammar constructions. (For example, I use However to show contrasting points.) The usages are correct, but I want to break out of my habits and expand my language.

In analyzing these writing habits, a larger issue came up. There are words and phrases I think and say often. There is nothing inherently bad about these words, but I use them more frequently than I would like to. An example of this is the question “Are you OK?” For some reason, I have asked Derek if he was OK an inordinate number of times (and he was always OK). If I did ask anyone else, I was never told I asked that question too often. After concluding there was nothing characteristic of Derek that made him look not OK, I started to break that habit.

A few weeks ago I started actively listening to words that popped into my head and what I spoke. I noticed I was saying “I’m sorry” a ridiculous number of times a day. After this realization, action was the next step. Every time I thought “I’m sorry,” I told myself, “No, I am not” and went back and put in different words to express what I was thinking. After a week, I had greatly reduced the phrase’s usage in my mind and almost expunged it from my speech.

After the effect was resolved, I wanted to know the cause. Where do these phrases come from? How do they become so pervasive in my internal monologue and external expression? I talked to my Mom and she figured it out. They come from my Dad. Everything from "The mail came late" to "It is raining today" is answered by "I'm sorry." I even had a flashback to when I was four or five years old. I was hurt somehow and I remember my Dad holding me and rocking back and forth while sitting and saying "I'm sorry" over and over.

If there are any phrases, words, or questions I have ever used too much around you, please let me know. I will not say I’m sorry, but I do extend my apologies for being repetitive and pledge to remove those words from my vocabulary.

While I was writing this post, one of the songs I listened to repeats "I'm sorry."

Cocktails and Casseroles

When I was in Northern California at the end of September, Derek gave me a few ideas.

It started Saturday morning in the hotel room. I mentioned how I remember Derek watching cooking shows on Saturday mornings senior year. There were a few things that stayed with me from the shows, like the line "If Yan can cook, so can you!" After finding and watching these shows on TV, Derek suggested I start a career as a cooking show host. In the episodes I could explain how to make one of my casseroles. Unlike other shows that gloss over the baking time, I could use it to demonstrate how to make a different alcoholic drink. It would be Chris's Cocktails & Casseroles.

I liked the idea. A good first step would be a series of online videos. However, since I do not have access to a second camera and competent cameraman (or camera person to be politically correct), there are technical issues. Until they are resolved, I will post here.

Yorkshire Chicken

A couple of weekends ago I made Yorkshire Chicken. I have made it several times before and following this easy plan you too can enjoy it.

4-5 chicken breast with ribs
(boneless will work as well, but the cooking time will need to be cut)
1/4 cup oil at most, just enough to coat the bottom of the 9x13 pan
1/3 cup flour
2 tsp salt
1/4 pepper
1.5 tsp sage

Yorkshire Pudding Ingredients:
1 cup flour (the original recipe says sifted flour, but I don't sift)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tsp parsley flakes
1.5 cup milk
3 eggs

Remove the skin and excess fat from the chicken. Coat the outside with the flour, salt, pepper, and sage. The amounts are not vitally important, just sprinkle some of the salt, pepper, and sage on it and coat with flour. After using the oil to coat the bottom of the casserole pan, place the chicken in and bake at 400 for 40 minutes.

Mix up the Yorkshire Pudding by combining the flour, baking powder, salt, and parsley. Add in the eggs and milk, removing all the lumps by mixing.

After the chicken has been in the oven for 40 minutes, pour the Yorkshire Pudding mix into the oil at the bottom of the pan.

Return the chicken and Yorkshire to the oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the Yorkshire Pudding is puffed up and a desired tint of brown.

I always remove the skin before baking so there will not be too much oil in the bottom of the pan. Too much liquid will make for a soggy Yorkshire Pudding, which I can attest is no fun.

Now onto the drink to make and enjoy.

Japanese

2 oz Brandy
0.5 oz Orgeat syrup
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Combine ingredients with ice, stir, strain, and serve with a lemon twist.

A couple of months ago I bought a book, The Pocket Recipe Guide: Museum of the American Cocktail which has 100 drink recipes. The cocktails use a wide range of items. I had the proper ingredients at home to make 10 or 15 of the 100 drinks in the book. This is one of them.

If any of these directions are unclear, questions and comments are welcome and encouraged. For an immediate response, you can call me during the preparation if something does not look correct.

Unappreciated Virtures

Just when I tell a few people about this blog, I go on hiatius for a month. I will make some posts and get back in business.

I can often tell when someone else has been driving my car. There are a lot of clues. For example, if one of the cup holders is left open, someone else has been using my car. I always put the windshield sun shade up a specific way with one side in front of the other and each of the pieces having a unique orientation.

Also, if the air conditioning is left on or at a different combination of hot/cold and vents, the radio is left on, the radio is on a different station, or the CD is on a different track, someone has been driving my car. If all of the above are out of place, my Dad was the one driving.

Whenever I use someone else's car, I minimize the signs of my presence. If I turn the radio on I will put it back to the station I found it on. I have a habit of leaving things the way I found them.

This habit of mine extends beyond cars. By looking in the liquor cabinet at home I can often tell what drink my Dad made the night before. Whenever I mix a drink, I put the bottles back in the same places as before and tighten the tops; my Dad does neither of these things.

This has led me to wonder, where did I pick up this habit of leaving things the way I found them? It certainty was not from my Dad or brother. The best I can think of is at some point I wanted to leave no trace of what I did. I liked what I was doing so I kept it up. I think returning things to the way they were found is an unappreciated virtue.

One exception to this is leaving a place better than I found it. For example, if I am using a restroom and there is a used paper towel next to the sink, I will throw it away.

My weekend, and the people I did not see

This last weekend of September, I was in the Bay Area. Before I get to the best part of the weekend and the main reason I was up north in the next post, there are a few side comments.

I have a habit of showing up in Berkeley without telling people until immediately before I leave or calling them up when I am already in the city. Even more fun I sneak up on people and make casual comments standing right next to them. For example I asked Kim about the English muffin she was toasting at the Residence Inn on Sunday morning.

Below are the responses of people when I told them I was coming to the Bay Area and wanted to see them. The names have been removed.

Google chat conservation one:
My Friend: Howdy Christopher!
Surprise:
I will be in the Southern California area this weekend.
However, I do not know what I will be doing, but my parents will both be off work.
me: Surprise:
I will be in Northern California this weekend. :(

Google chat conservation two:
me: If you have time on Friday or Saturday, running into you would be nice :)
My other Friend: i work all day friday and i'm babysitting on saturday :(

Phone call person one:
I am in Big Sur this weekend with my girlfriend celebrating our anniversary. (Congratulations on five years!)

Phone call person two:
I just got off a plane in Orange County where I will be spending the weekend.

Phone call person three:
I am at home taking care of my Mom and Sister who have the swine flu. I think I am coming down with a flu as well.

Sean, my friend from high school who attends Boalt:
I left a voicemail message, several calls placed, and spend time outside the apartment where he lives.

That is half a dozen people.

On a more positive note, I saw a few people on Saturday. Being at Kim's (not to be confused with the aforementioned Kim) watching the football game with spirited people was fun, even if the game was sad and disappointing. I bought a couple of books at Moe's. I went to the 9:30 on Sunday morning and Fr. Al recognized me. Then I went to Cafe Durant with Josh and Derek.

Going back to Berkeley always drudges up feelings. I go to places I spent countless hours at and traverse the streets I crossed hundreds of times. It seems I used to know someone who lived in an apartment on every block. Everywhere are memories of events, people, and a life that is far removed from me. There are the windows of Unit Two, the entrance to Crossroads and The Den, and the benches of Unit Three. The water balloon fight in the courtyard, walking around during long phone calls, and the joyous times visiting Spens-Black freshman and sophomore years.

To get from home to Berkeley via San Ramon involved the 405 to the 101 to the 680 to the 24 to the 13. The complete trip took 1050.5 miles with the drive back taking 8.5 hours including a stop at Taco Bell in San Luis Obispo. I collected Derek from Carpinteria.

Since there were two phone calls today

It is time for some practical advice on what to do when your internet connection is not working. Today two of my Mom's friends called to ask questions about how to fix a broken connection. The steps are straight forward and worked for both people, even if one of them did not call back to say it was working and be thankful for the solution.

Step One: Unplug the power to your modem (the box where the TV or phone line goes in and the cat5 computer cable goes out).
Step Two: If you have a router (the box where all the cables for different computers go), unplug it.
Step Three: Wait thirty seconds and reconnect the power to the modem.
Step Four: Wait for the lights on the modem to return to normal (usually all the lights are solid green) and then reconnect the power to the router.
Step Five: Wait for the lights on the router to return to normal, then retry the internet connection.

It is important for the router and modem to be off before reconnecting either of them. I have learned about this from personal experience on the telephone talking to Comcast service personal while dealing with irate roommates. Why someone was angry at me when it was not my responsibility to manage the internet is another story.

Also in the practical knowledge category, I have another drink recipe.

English Highball

1 oz brandy
1 oz gin
1 oz sweet vermouth

Fill with club soda

My response to the swine flu

There has been a lot of talk about the H1N1 virus, also known as the swine flu, in the last few months.

My first response to this sensationalism is the same response I have when I hear about a new computer virus. I do nothing.

H1N1 is similar to other flu viruses. It is transmitted in the same way. If you want to avoid getting H1N1, do the same things you should do to avoid getting a flu virus.

These include:

• Sneezing into your shirt sleeve instead of your hand.
• Sanitizing commonly touched surfaces, including door knobs and avoiding touching your face if you do touch these surfaces.
• Washing your hands with soap and water anytime you get close to a sink and before eating.
• Avoiding close contact with people who exhibit flu symptoms.

I refer to these measures, perhaps pejoratively, as common sense.

Since some people insist on being in a state of frenzy and repeating the dangers over and over, I have had to implement a second level response to the swine flu.

Eat Pork!

I found a great recipe for Western South Carolina style BBQ sauce. This recipe is in a few different places online, I do not remember on which site I found it.



Western South Carolina Style Barbecue Sauce

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 medium onion, minced
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup ketchup

Heat oil in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; sauté‚ until softened, 4-5 minutes. Stir in all the remaining ingredients except ketchup; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, then add ketchup. Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 15 minutes.

I put this sauce on pulled pork I purchased at Costco and made sandwiches. They were delicious!

This is one of many different barbecue sauces. I will follow with more recipes as I try them.

The invention I am waiting for

There are many possible inventions. One I want is a neural computer interface.

This invention I have imagined looks like a thin helmet or a hood. The Nucompi, the best name I could think of in a couple of minutes, will sense electrical impulses and changes in the brain of the user. This will be connected to a normal desktop computer with interface software. The software will detect changes in the working of the brain and interpret them as commands to type words and execute basic commands on the computer.

With this setup, the user will be able to type sentences and control the computer with their mind. Since people can think much faster than they can type or use a mouse, this will be much faster than current methods.

After these functions are perfected, the Nucompi can be expanded to handle more things. With miniaturization, it can take on many attributes of an MRI. If impulses can be associated with words, figuring out the changes that make up basic emotions is the next step. The Nucompi will scan the user's feelings and give a complete readout of what is being felt, even if it is at such low levels the user is unaware of it.

Once the Nucompi has been engineered to do all this, the next logical step is for it to input signals into the brain and not just output them. Instead of the user writing in a letter "I feel sad," the feelings can be scanned and the pattern transmitted online. The recipient of the letter can put on their Nucompi and open up the letter and feel the same emotions the sender felt.

The technology is out there
There is technology which allows people who have lost their hands in accidents to manipulate a mechanical hand. Studies have been done which show the brain is very adaptable and can learn to manipulate things as well as interpret signals. There are possibilities, people need to realize them.

If this became reality, I could make posts faster and better.

Two weeks later

On Tuesday I had another appointment with the Red Cross to donate platelets.

The movie and numbers are:

Catch me if you Can
BP: 130/70
Machine time: 91 minutes

One of the great moments in the movie is when the no nonsense by the book Agent Handratty (played by Tom Hanks) tells a joke. I will not repeat it here, but if you want to watch the YouTube clip, do so at your own risk.

Afterward I picked up some things at Costco and then stopped at 7eleven. I was going to get a Slurpee, but the cherry flavor had the do not use light lit up. As I know from personal experience, this light should be heeded. Instead I had a mocha iced coffee, which I recommend.

If you want to donate blood with the Red Cross, go to www.givelife.org and make an appointment.

When you give blood, you are told to refrain from consuming alcohol for 24 hours afterward. Do not try the drink below on the same day as a donation.

Penguino

This is the recipe I had written down in my log:

1.5 oz gin
1.5 oz triple sec
fill with tonic water
cherry

However, the first half dozen recipes I found on Google had run instead of gin. I must have written it down incorrectly or found a little known variant. My suggestion is to try it both ways and decide which one you like better.

Seaon opener, which reminds me

Today is the start of college football season and the home opener of the Bears. This reminds me of several things I want to do but have not yet done.

Launching the Newman Alumni group
I have all the official paperwork and the website in place. I have planned 75% of a contact plan for which facebook groups will be messaged by who for the initial outreach.

Pictures on facebook
I have a couple albums worth of pictures to put online. I would like to get them up before I forget the names of the people in the pictures and before all of them graduate. One advantage of my laziness is I can organize the pictures thematically from the entire year. I am planning a retrospective on the Yee Tenement House, a CCR and Disneyland album, and a last days in Berkeley album.

Writing people emails and paper letters
I have four letters I want to write and get in the mail by Tuesday. I also want to email a few people, check on them, and obtain their physical addresses.

I am pleased to mention California beat Maryland 52-13 today.

As part of my effort to post drinks recipes, today I enjoyed a Leap Frog Highball.

2 oz gin
juice of half a lemon
ginger ale

I just used lemon juice since lemons were not sitting around in my house. The ratio of gin to ginger ale can be changed to taste. I often use one shot for half a can of the mixer. In this case 1.5 oz gin to 6 oz ginger ale.

Finding things

Last week I was looking for my camera charger. After an exhaustive search I could not find it.

This is distressing to me. It is not in my nature to lose things. In fact, I think finding lost things is one of my strengths.

I started to think, how did I become so good at finding things?

This could have developed from looking for lost things for my Brother and Dad when I was growing up. I could have this skill from my Mom and her way of finding things. Alternatively, my skill could stem from my logical thinking. As my Associate once told me, most people do not think with the same logic you use to run your life.

If I ever do find the charger, I think there is a 75% chance it is in my room right now within ten feet of me.

Summer "Reading" Program

This past summer I took part in the adult Summer Reading Program at the Huntington Beach Public Library.

The last time I participated in a summer reading program I was eight years old. I also lived in a city of approximately 38,000 people, as opposed to the 192,000 residents here.

Before I go into specifics about the program, take a moment and think; what is the most important aspect of a summer reading program?

According to this program, it is not reading.

Participants are given a reading log to record every book read that is over 250 pages or every audio book listened to that is 4 hours or longer. For every entry a person receives a ticket for a drawing for one of six prize baskets at the end of the summer.

I might be old-fashioned, but I think a reading program should involve reading words.

Perhaps if I counted the hours I spend watching Stargate SG-1 over the summer I could have won a basket. If listening to an audio book is close to reading than watching a television show should be close enough for the purpose of the program.

If reading is not required in a reading program, where has it gone?

Different Clothing Sizes

It has been over a week since I last posted, so I will post on a few of the ideas I mentioned before.

A few years ago I was at Sam's Club. I saw some solid colored t-shirts and liked how they looked. I picked up a few different colors in my size XL. When I got home I tried on the new shirts. All of them were larger than I expected, but they were still wearable. A few days later I was at another store and saw a few solid colored shirts again and picked up a few in XL. When I tried them on at home there was a similar result, the shirts where huge.

I wondered why these shirts from two different stores were so big. Then I had a realization. Some clothing manufactures have implemented Fat Ass sizing. In this new system clothing is labeled as a smaller size than it is. For example, a shirt that would be 4XL in a normal size scale is now labeled as an XL. This prevents people from realizing how big their clothing actually is.

Now when I look at the labeled size of clothing I ask myself "Is this a normal size or a Fat Ass size?"

Finding Count Dracula

Another book I recently read was Dracula by Bram Stoker.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. It is the vampire book par excellence for good reason. The book is a collage of diary entries, telegrams, newspaper articles, letters, and other fragments of text.

I read the Barnes & Noble edition. My only complaint about these editions are the endnotes for the book can give away part of the story earlier than the actual text. The good part is they provide a lot of context for the terms and explain things about the era.

As I read the novel I tried to imagine Victorian England. It is a place I have visited before by similar means. One aspect I found interesting was how people communicated by letters. People (at least in the novel) would write letters and regularly communicate on a deep level. Also in the social interaction realm, how marriage proposals happened was odd. One of the characters received three proposals, at least one of them from a man she did not know very well.

Sometimes when I am reading I will come across a name that I know from general knowledge will become important. When Professor Van Helsing is first mentioned I knew immediately he would be drawn into the action and led the fight against Dracula. This same feeling occurred in a previous book when I read about a Mr. Hyde. In one way it is bad because this gives me a skewed perspective when reading. In another way it adds excitement because I am watching every move a character makes from their first appearance.

One day I might develop a rating system for books. Until then I will say you should read about the Count.

Dracula
Bram Stoker
400 pages
Barnes & Noble
7/25 - 8/1

Acknowledging what is done right

I will start with stories from the offices of people who wear white coats, my doctor and dentist.

When I saw my doctor a year ago, she was concerned. She said my weight had gone up from my previous appointment and that I needed to get it under control or else I would have health problems later on. This was the strongest lecture I had received from my doctor in over six years of being her patient. From this and my own concern about my weight I took action. I evaluated my eating habits, cut out a lot of junk food and empty calories, and started biking and jogging in earnest. The next time I saw my doctor a year later I had lost 20 lb.

In January my dentist told me I needed to have oral surgery. The exact procedure ordered was a frenectomy, which would cut a tissue connecting my gum to the top of my lip. The connective tissue was pulling my gum and exposing more of my teeth than was normal. I was also told to change my brushing pattern to stop the retreat of the gums. Being a good patient I went to the oral surgeon and had the frenectomy. I also changed my brushing style, which took a lot of mental focus.

As an aside, the frenectomy was my third oral surgery. Earlier in my life my wisdom teeth were removed and my jaw was sawed in half and then repositioned. Compared to those the frenectomy was a breeze, an out-patient procedure.

What did my doctor do after I lost 20 lb after her lecture? She said nothing. No acknowledgment of my efforts or results.

What did my dentist do after I had surgery and changed my brushing patter? Nothing. I had to ask her as I was leaving if my gum looked any better.

Things that are done correctly should be acknowledged, especially if future instructions will be given.

The last thing I want to promote is constant positive feedback for every little thing done right. I am not asking my doctor to give me a high five for not smoking a pack of cigarettes every day or expecting a cookie every time I brush correctly and have no cavities. However, losing 20 lb and having surgery are hardly common things that happen between checkups.

I do not want to be angry or resentful about this. Instead I will focus on acknowledging what people do for me. I will not take for granted the favors people do for me, but realize the effort and thank the correct people.

The best thing to say now is thank you for reading my blog.
Thank you for all the things you have done for me I never acknowledged.

Apheresis again

On Monday I donated platelets.

Some statistics include:
Blood pressure: 110/60
Machine time: 79 minutes (or maybe 85)
Movie: Live Free or Die Hard

The notable thing is the Oreo cookies available afterward were in packs with 6 cookies. In the past the packages only had 2 each.

I have been keeping my cup from the last few times I donated. My collection is slowly growing.

A graduate program I will not graduate from

Last month I applied to a Masters in Engineering program at UCLA. It is designed for the working professional, but I contacted the director and he said I should apply and they would consider my application.

To cut to the salient part of this story, I was rejected.

The email had the line "Unfortunately, we can not admit you based on your major field GPA in Physics."

Considering I had a Physics GPA of 2.4, this makes sense.

Now I am going to ramble on to make myself feel better and remind myself I am smart and intelligent, even if my GPA implies otherwise.

When I was choosing a college, I picked the best school I could get into. UC Berkeley's Physics graduate program is rated No. 3 in the country (actually a four way tie for third by US News). I also double majored in Classical Civilizations. Rankings for Classics departments are hard to figure out, but the first sources on Google put Berkeley at No. 2.

I could have simply majored in Physics or gone to a second tier school and earned a much higher GPA, but I did not. I went to the best school I could, majored in two divergent fields, and graduated in four years. I also wrote for one of the best conservative student political magazines in the country.

If that is not good enough for UCLA's engineering program, I don't know what is.

On a happier topic I have some educational commentary from our heroes Rocky and Bullwinkle:

In Pottsylvania all schoolchildren learned the A, B, Cs, Assassination, Bomb making, and Conspiracy, with the occasional advanced course in Sneaking and Prowling.

This is available on hulu in episode 15 "The Fright-Seeing Trip."

If you hitchhike across the galaxy, you must be out of your mind

Today I finished reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I received the book in a secret Santa exchange a few years ago, but only opened it up recently. My feelings about the book can be easily summarized:

I didn't like it.

The earth is destroyed, things don't make sense, the book is not consistent, there is no appreciable ending, and the nuggets of humor are not worth wading through the rest of the filler in the book.

In the novel, the Hitchhiker's Guide is an electronic book that is filled with information about the galaxy. It is first described on page 26:

"This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million 'pages' could be summoned at a moment's notice."

Then on page 52:

"A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface."

Is the screen four inches square or three by four? This item is so important the novel is named after it and it can't be consistently described 26 pages apart. Did anyone even try to proofread this book?

As if that is not enough, there is no resolution to the plot line at the end of the book. If you really want a conclusion, you could search out the four sequel books and throw more of your life away. I do not plan on reading any of the other books in this series and I recommend not reading this book.

The edition I read also included 93 pages of material talking about the making of the movie and interviews with the cast. The worst book I have read in the last few years and they include that many pages talking about making the dribble I just read into a movie.

Did I say I did not like this book? Of the last 30+ books I have read, this is easily the worst, and I like science fiction.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
216 pages
8/20 - 8/23

A trip beyond the stars, through the Stargate

A few weeks ago I started watching Stargate SG-1 on hulu. I have been interested in seeing the show for a while, but I wanted to start from the beginning to get a full understanding of the action and development.

If you are not familiar with hulu, it is a website hulu.com that has TV shows and a few movies on it to watch for free. It is fully legal and has a few commercials during the content. Some networks will agree to have the last 5 episodes that aired on TV of their popular shows available for viewing. It also has some older shows, like Stargate SG-1 and even Rocky and Bullwinkle (which I recommend).

I am almost finished with the third season of Stargate SG-1 and enjoying it a lot. Here is the basic premise of the show:

People dug up a big circle in Egypt that is a piece of alien technology (the stargate) that allows nearly instantaneous travel from one gate to another. These gates are located on planets across the galaxy. The mythology of ancient Egypt and other societies developed around travelers from an alien race that used the gate. While the original purpose of the gate system and the race who built them are a mystery, it seems one of their purposes was to transport different human cultures to different planets. The show takes place in the present day, or at least the present day starting in 1997 when it was made. One of the four person teams that goes through the gate to explore other planets and make contact with people is codenamed SG-1 as in Stargate team 1. The show develops from the people and situations SG-1 encounters.

I would recommend watching the movie Stargate beforehand. The show picks up where the movie left off and references the events of the movie. Also, the first episode of SG-1 is not currently available online. I saw the movie with my Associate a few years ago and from that I had enough of a basis to understand things immediately. While watching all the episodes in order is not absolutely necessary to follow the storyline, the show is more linear in its development than Star Trek, where all the episodes of a series could be seen in a random order and still make sense.

Watching has inspired me to pick up my books on ancient Egypt and start reading them again. Ancient Egyptian gods like Apophis and places like Abydos are incorporated into the story. They even have a burial in season 3 episode 10 that is complete with the weighing of the heart against a feather and negative confession of the deceased.

We are open

After some practice getting into the habit of posting and being pleased with what I will be talking about, I have decided the blog is ready for publicizing. A couple of people have already seen the blog and the feedback so far is positive.

Before I forget some of my ideas for future posts, I will list them. I hope by reading this list I will be inspired to give these ideas form on the computer.

Sending mail with stamps and writing letters on paper
Dracula wrap up
Summer "Reading" Program
Why I am the coolest person some ten year olds have ever met
Wedding next month
Flowers in the garage, from six years ago
Morning offerings
My special use of words, including dictionary entries
Its summer and time for a block party
Items in my room
Omnibus book post
Grammar I learned later than normal
The best posts I never made for the Patriot blog
Recipes: Air fried chicken & Tennessee Peach
The first time we met
Me: The facebook snob
People from the university asking me for money
Clothing sizes
Why I should make videos to put online instead of writing posts

As I said, the theory is by writing all this out I will post more frequently based on these ideas. The action could be different. This brings me to a story.

During Welcome Week of my freshman year, I went to the Chancellor's reception on Memorial Glade. This involves the Chancellor and some other people making speeches, free t-shirts, and a free lunch. I went with my Associate, primarily for the free lunch. As it was a sunny day, we sought out the shade of a small tree far away from the speaker's platform. Under this tree we met two other fellow shade seekers. We came to know one of them was named Yinbo. Discovering he was interested in math, physics, and the like there was much to talk about. At one point we kept coming up with different ideas to get a meal before the speeches were finished. We could make distractions, impersonate someone else, or simply walk up and take the boxed meals. Observing the myriad of ideas presented, Yinbo explained the problem is we are all theorists, none of us are willing to put any of our theories into action.

Only time will determine if my theory of naming my posts beforehand will be realized by me taking action and writing them.

Help sick children...or let them die

I should have posted this a day or two earlier to have a better effect.

Today is Miracle Treat Day at participating Dairy Queen locations. The proceeds of Blizzards purchased today go to the Children's Miracle Network. The Network helps children's hospitals around the country raise money that is used for research, medical care, and education.

I think this is a good cause and purchased two Blizzards today (I had a midnight truffle and my Mom had a Thin Mint). My question is why are some Dairy Queen locations not participating? None of the three DQs near my house are participating. I looked online and 4 of the 5 closest stores to me are not participating. While there are reasons and factors I do not know about, it is disappointing I have to go a couple of cities away to find a participating location. Do some of the stores hate children?

I do not run off to Dairy Queen on a regular basis, but the next time I do I will remember which locations did not participate.

When the Sleeper Wakes

I have a couple of book wrap ups to do. I finished When the Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Well several days ago. I have read a lot of Wells lately, including The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and The First Men in the Moon. When I read the introduction of the last of these, it mentioned the book so I decided to look into it.

The library had the novel in an edition called The Collector's Book of Science Fiction H.G. Wells. The Collector had three complete novels and many additional short stories by Wells. This book had illustrations that appeared in magazines when the stories were published around the turn of the century. I enjoyed looking at the art and reading the captions for the novels I had already read. It was great to see the world of the Moon illustrated.

Before I go any further, I must say I will not nor do I ever plan to spoil major plot lines or the ending of any book I talk about. I will not let my desire to talk about a book destroy the experience of reading it for another person.

My first impression is When the Sleeper Wakes is not as good as Well's better known novels. The first half of the book is the title character running around trying to figure out what is going on. It got repetitive and almost boring. When I thought about it, running around trying to figure out what is going on happens in Well's other books too.

I liked Well's world of an anti-utopia (or dystopia might be the better term). It is set 203 years in the future from around 1900. It is a time before flight and the aeropiles descried are wondrous devices that seem ridiculous by today's standards. The babble machines, moving walkways, and huge dinning halls of the future would make a great cinema experience. Then there were the couple of lines in the middle of the novel where the narration style suddenly acknowledges the reader before returning to following the Sleeper.

I would recommend the book most for its interpretation of the future. As for storyline, any of the more classic books of Wells are better. On my list of books to still read include Shape of Things to Come to finish my Wells reading as well as Brave New World to look into the future again.

When the Sleeper Wakes
H.G. Wells
8/2 - 8/4

Apheresis, also known as platelets

I have close to a dozen different ideas for posts. They have been planned out to varying degrees in my mind. I will start with one from today.

For the last five months, I have been donating platelets through the Red Cross. My blood type of A is the universal platelet donor so the people at the donation center talked me into trying platelets, also called an apheresis donation.

Today was one of my biweekly appointments. Donating platelets is similar to donating blood. Both start out with the same set of questions asked and blood pressure, pulse, and iron levels checked. For the actual procedure two needles are used, one in each arm. Through one side blood is taken out and sent to a machine. This separates the platelets which are collected from the plasma and other blood components which are then returned to the donor through the other arm. The processing can take between 70 - 100 minutes of being hooked up to the machine. Since it takes a while, you can select a movie to watch while it is happening.

The numbers for today are:
Blood pressure: 120/70
Movie: Fast & Furious
Time: 99 minutes

Update: I almost forgot, while I was in the cantata after the donation I looked at a couple of old National Geographics. The pictures, advertisements, and so many things were straight out of the 80s. The cover story of the October 1982 issue was about "The Chip." It talked about transistors on a chip that were becoming part of people's lives in many ways. The story even had a glossary to explain terms like bytes and RAM. There was even an ad for a Ford car (Escort I think) that had an EPG estimated 33 MPG.

Twenty-seven years from now someone will pick up a magazine from 2009. I want to tell that person I helped realize the exciting possibilities that were only imagined on those pages.

What can you learn from Doyle Brunson?

One of the things I want to cover is the books I read. I will eventually make a big post with the complete list for the past year.

Today I finished Poker Wisdom of a Champion by Doyle Brunson.

First, I will detail how I came into possession of the book. When I went to Las Vegas in June, I went to a free poker seminar. It was at the Rio where the World Series of Poker was being held. The seminar was a presentation by Mike Caro with a question and answer session by Doyle Brunson. I filled out my name and address on a card for a raffle, so I am guessing they took my address and sent me the free book.

The book was originally published nearly 30 years ago. It is filled with stories from Brunson's life and poker experiences. In all of them he pulls out advice on poker. Come to think of it, the book is similar to one line of writing I described in my previous post that I want to follow for this blog.

I enjoyed the book. It is very easy to read and the stories are short, maybe five pages on average. Some of the comments are applicable to all gambling or even life in general. Things like don't play when you are upset or in emotional disarray. I will summarize one of the stories:

There was a player who came into a game and had two books he put down on the table next to him. The top one was something by Steinbeck and the title of the other book below it was blocked. After some playing, the player was in a big hand. When he was betting, he nudged the book with his elbow, almost accidentally. The title of the second book was revealed to be How to Bluff Constantly and Win!. Seeing this, the other player in the hand dumped his money into the pot. The book guy called and it ended up he was not bluffing, but had a great hand and raked in the pot. For the rest of the night, some of the players felt compelled to call all of his bets, thinking he was bluffing. The player had a killer night. When he left, he said he did not need the book, so he tossed it into the center of the table as he walked out the door. The players eagerly grabbed the How to Bluff Constantly and Win! book and inside it was all blank pages, except the first page on which was written "Don't."

I also saw the movie Rounders when my Associate was in town. It is about poker and I recommend it.

Wisdom of a Poker Champion
Doyle Brunson
208 pages
7/20 - 8/1

What I am writing about

I am trying to craft the voice I want to use for this blog. I will break up my different impulses and explain them.

Politics
This is what I have the most (actually the only) experience blogging about. I wrote over 100 posts for the Patriot blog and connected almost all of them to politics. I do not want to get obsessed with politics. Also, if I do start advertising the blog to my friends, some of them will get into arguments with me that I want to avoid.

Activities
I want to incorporate a lot of what I do on a daily basis. The places I go and the books I read are filled with fun and a great source of material. However, I do not want this to become a boring recount of what I do. There are already enough of those blogs online.

Feelings
There are a lot of things I would like to say about how I feel about people and things. Two dangers present themselves. First, a lot of them would be negatives directed to people around me. These include things like "my brother did X and it is so stupid, I have to fix it every time" or "my dad does Y and I can't believe he has managed to live his entire life without learning the correct way to do Y, how many of my things have to be ruined before he learns to do Y, I learned how to do Y correctly by the time I was 10 years old, it is not that difficult." This is bad because if someone I direct a diatribe at reads it s/he will be angry and mad at me. Second, I do not want to spend my time chronicling everything I am annoyed by. I want to focus on the good things and forget about the unpleasant ones.

God
There are two extremes. Either God is a real all powerful, knowing, and benevolent being or God is all made up. If the later is true, there is no place to talk about God here or anywhere in my life. If God is as described before, then I should talk about Him all the time and place His words and will at the center of everything I do. Since the blog is an extension of my life, God should be similarly present.

Useful Commentary/Funny Stories
There are a few useful things I know or learn that I would like to share. There are also some great stories that happen to me. The current title of the blog is "Stories from my life." People tell me I have good stories and I enjoy dramatically telling them. I will try to incorporate them whenever possible and include a moral or piece of knowledge if possible. I suppose I should mention, in feelings above Y = laundry.

Relationships
To paraphrase Fr. Charlie from an SMT meeting, people do not share anything about their romantic relationships here, if you would like to you can. I would like to write some things about girls I like. It might help if I did not think the friends of the girl I currently like the most will be among the most active readers of this blog.

Formatting and Presentation
I want to make full use of pictures, html tags, Photoshop skills, and maybe even audio editing. I am capable of making a unique theme and format for the blog, I just have to decide what to do with it.

Connection to other things
Do I want this blog to be easily accessible to anyone who wants to find me online? I can avoid the use of proper nouns that would bring this up in a Google search. I have not decided if I am going to put a link here in my facebook profile. When I am happy with how I am writing and how often I am posting, I will probably connect it to everything.

The blog is still in a testing mode. I am trying to figure out how I want to write and get in the habit of posting before I tell anyone about this blog.

The best thing for me to do now is sit down and type. Whatever ends up on the screen is what I want to talk about. I will see where this goes.

My big problem with blogger, or at least one of them

When I started blogging, it was on a Wordpress blog.

For the Patriot blog I reported news and made commentary on campus and local events. There were a few other blogs that focused on campus happenings and reported on them as news. In this environment who reports on something first and breaks new information on a story is important. If something crazy was happening with the AUSC or there was an event on Sproul, the first blog to report on it set the story. Other blogs could still talk about something, but it was after the story had been broken and unless they had something exciting and unique it was simply a rehash of old news, often with a hyperlink to the original post.

This is where timestamps are important. In Wordpress, the default timestamp is when the post is published. In Blogger it is when the post is first started, even if it is a draft for hours or days before being published. There were times when I would write a post full of news, commentary, and pictures about something. Before I published it, I would look around to see if any other place had reported on the story. I then published the post knowing I was the first to tell the world about it.

A few minutes later, I would see a post on Beetlebeat. It would report the exact same story as I did, but the timestamp would be 10 or 15 minutes before mine, even though it was published after my post.

I know timestamps can be easily changed to anything. However, the default method on Blogger is misleading.

This time difference might seem petty, but it is important to people who make a point of writing news posts. It is also fun to see how an individual can post a story before an entire news organization with dozens of people can put something together.

As an example of how the timestamp can be off, after I publish this post I will publish a post about my trip to Berkeley (using the default timestamp both times). The Berkeley post is being published around 3:35 AM on the 29th, but the post will indicate it was published a week ago.

Trip to Berkeley

This past weekend I went up to Berkeley to see Fr. Charlie before he leaves for his new assignment as pastor in Tennessee. It was fun to see people and catch up with how many everyone is doing. On the trip up I took the 152 to the 101 and saw Rohit and Shauna before taking the San Mateo/Dunbarton bridge east over the bay. There was a campus hike to welcome Fr. Bill where he met many great student leaders who just graduated and were alumni, but few who would be around in the fall. I was excited my Cal1 card still had money on it and I got a Coke from a machine in Evans. I used a coupon for a free slice of extreme pizza I received at Caltopia either Junior or Senior year.

I do not want to recount the complete list of a couple of dozen people I saw, but seeing the people was great and wonderful. My Associate just happened to be at Moe's when I called him on Saturday so I saw him and Linda easily.

On Sunday I made a wacky cake for the student dinner, because it is lactose free. Fr. Charlie and everyone liked it, even if I almost put it in the oven minus the flour.

I am looking at the post so far and I am unsatisfied. I have given an outline of what I have done but I feel I am missing something. Maybe it is distilling an entire weekend, 860 miles of driving, and all the people I saw into a few words.

A day at the Orange County Fair

Before I get to the fair from yesterday, a comment on Tuesday. I saw the movie Drag Me To Hell with Larry, Peter, and Eric. It was at the dollar (actually $3 per ticket) theater. I do not watch too many horror movies, but I liked the atmosphere and things jumping out of nowhere aspect of the movie. Some of the parts were overdone and ended up being funny instead of scary.

Now the main topic. Through the MS Society my Mom obtained tickets and parking for the OC Fair for yesterday. We got stickers that identified us as Friends of the Fair. We were able to enter the fair a few hours before the general public and could ride the kid rides for free until noon. If I had paid for some of those rides, I would have felt robbed. For example, there was a pirates themed ride. People sat in small roller coaster cars and slowly drove through a winding track in the dark. There were three displays that were visible, all of them skeletons or parts of them with pirate accessories like hats. This costs 4-5 or more tickets.

I should get into the traveling ride business. All I have to do is charge a couple of dollars so people can ride a car in the dark with a few scattered decorations bought on clearance from a Halloween store on November 1st. I went on the ride Re-Mix II which was directly across from the Ferris wheel. For a mobile ride at a fair, it was pretty good.

One of the great attractions from the fair is the food. They have deep fried foods that cannot be found elsewhere. The deep fried Twinkie was unexciting. There was very little effect from the oil on the Twinkie. I also had a zucchini winnie, which is a corn dog where the hot dog is inside a zucchini.

My favorite was the deep fired smoore. The chocolate covered bacon was great as well. It was served straight out of the freezer. I have material to make funnel cake at home, so I did not try any of them.

Return from New York

I got back from New York today. I can't say it was a vacation, I did more work there then I do at home. Dealing with my grandparents can be difficult, but I do not want to dwell on the negatives. Working with my Dad, I fixed an outside flood light, painted an enclosed porch, and did several little things around the house for Grandma.

I disconnected my Grandma's old rotary phone on Sunday the 5th. My earliest memories of going to visit Grandma C in Buffalo are like taking a trip back in time. The refrigerator, freezer, oven, appliances, decorations, even the glass bottles of pop in the fridge are straight out of the 50s or 60s. Going back to even another memory, the first time I went to Disneyland (summer of 95 I believe) I went on the Wheel of Progress in Tomorrowland. It was a circular building with seats facing the center stage. After the automated show giving a glimpse of what life was like in a certain time for a family in America was finished, the seating area would turn maybe a fifth of a turn and see a different setup at the center that showed an era more advanced. When I went to my Grandma's house, it was as if I had stepped onto one of those stages.

On a more immediate to the present topic, I finished my personal statement for UCLA on Thursday and mailed it in Buffalo. I waited until the last minute to finish it and had to print it out at Aunt Addy's house.

During the trip to New York (4 - 13) I read H.G. Well's The First Men in the Moon. I liked it, as I have enjoyed all of H.G. Well's books I have read so far. The introduction gave me a few ideas on other books of his to check out, including When the Sleeper Wakes.

While I was gone, I received a letter from Derek. We are practicing the art of letter writing and keeping old fashioned things in style. I was very excited when I had the chance to line dry some clothes at my Grandma's house. I should mention, Derek is by no means the only person who I am corresponding with via the post.

Email list issues

The biggest impediment to me starting this blog earlier was finding a name I was happy with. I will see how this works.

I am trying to set up a mass email list. I want to send a few hundred people emails and make sure they do not land in their spam folders. Sending personalized emails is an option I want to keep open. I am working with phplist, which is a free program I found online. I installed it a few months ago, but when I tried to use it there was a problem. The browser was not rendering it correctly, and the pages had huge chunks of code displayed. Earlier today I deleted everything I had and downloaded the latest version. Now the problem has gone away.

There is one new problem. I cannot add text to a message I want to send. I can change the subject, reply to, header, footer, time to send, who to send to, almost everything except the content of the message. When I tab down the page to where the text field should be for the content, it selects a huge box or frame of some kind, but I cannot write in it. Since the program will not let me send an email without a message, I cannot even test this.

I did some looking for other mass email programs online but made no progress. I found a few I could buy, a site that claimed the only way to do it was with AOL (just say NO to AOL), and even a library of php scripts (PHPMailer) which is used by the aforementioned phplists.

That is the major issue at this point.

I will wait to publicize this blog for a little bit. I want to wait until I get in the habit of posting and get a better idea of what I want to write about. Until then I will try to relay the interesting incidents of my life here.