We live in a culture that is one-up all the time. One-upmanship leads to corporations like Enron, Worldcom and ImClone. On a smaller scale one-upmanship leads to unhealthy interest in material goods (keeping up with the Joneses), backstabbing at the office, and the level of competitiveness in sports.

Take our GrX Hoops league. We Christians can be "oh so civilized" off the court, but get us on the court and it's a different story. Basic Christians concept such as mercy doesn't really apply when the final score tallied 85 to 28. On our team, one of the most competitive guy is our home church's Pastor Andy.

SELECT * FROM backstage ORDER BY randomness

» Some guy was wearing an iPod while playing in our weekly pickup game of basketball during lunch time today. He says,

Oh you don't have one of these? It's what everyone's wearing on the court these days.

» I have decided to take a hold of rock climbing and joined Planet Granite in Santa Clara. I have yet to take my "belay test" but I'm confident I will do okay. (Double back, double figure eight knot, double fisherman's knot, "on belay-belay on", climber's on-climbing", etc.) I'm having tons of fun with it, climbing a 5.8 yesterday. Thanks Allan for introducing me to this.

I wonder what is the honeymoon period for beginning employees? I'm currently finding it very difficult to be motivated at work. When I first started here there seemed to be so many things to learn and the application looks pretty deep. However now it seems hard to be motivated to focus on releasing our next upgraded version.

Part of it too is that my role here isn't too clearly defined. I designed icons and graphical user interface (GUI) related artwork. I work on creating product brochures, Powerpoint presentations, and the corporate website.

I was just reading WSJ under the technology section. A great feature about them is that they do regular online surveys on topical questions, usually dealing with the news, business, technology, politics, etc...

Well they are polling a survey on technology and business that I thought was very interesting, considering how Google has been in the news lately: Which tech company will have the biggest market capitalization in 5 years? (And no you don't get a FREE Mini iPod™ (4GB) by taking this survey. ) Learn more

I don't know if the result is a reflection of Microsoft's recent media blitz: the launching of XBox 360, a map-searching product called MSN Virtual Earth, which gives a 3D 45° angle view of the searched area, and an Adsense™-like technology for their MSN Portal.

** NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD. PLEASE DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS FILM.

Ah...yes the many discontinuity problems that arises when you analyze this film. I saw it Sat. morning with some friends who works at Adobe and got a private screening. The opening scene was amazing, visually stunning but leaves you feeling cold and empty--all eye candy. Personally I find it overwhelming.

Ever since Pastor Dave talked about GrX and its place in the community, I have been thinking about what it means to be in a community. I have also been praying to God about what I can do to serve the GrX community. About a month ago I signed up to play "Prison Ball." However I wasn't very convicted having learned later on that we were to play at San Quentin maximum security prison.

I woke up at 7am this morning and met up with some friends from Adobe who had special screening tickets to Revenge of the Sith. We (3 of us) made our way to a local coffee shop Java N Juice, grabbed some expresso and headed over to meet the rest of my friends (7 or them).

We got there (Westfield Oakridge Mall) an hour in advance for the 10am screening and got pretty good seats, right in the middle. The people there were all Adobe employees and friends of Adobe, which ranged from kids to older viewers. Then the lights dimmed and the opening credit scrolls up "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

I was just thinking about George Lucas and browsed over to the USC page to check out if they made a big deal of him being an alumni of USC Film School.

When we were at 'SC, George donated a huge amount of money and so they named our editing building after him and his then wife Marcia (Marcia and George Lucas Editing Building). The editing building was in the main Production quad and consisted of rooms with old splicing tables for film and Media 100 editing consoles.

Yo fellow bloggers...

Last time I blogged it was mostly me talking about how I seemed somewhat drifted — alright completely drifted from my walk with the Lord.

Fast forward to today and well I can say I'm opening myself up now and revealing my thoughts and praying more to God. What allowed this is just self discipline...which I have to confess I'm not very good at. Sometimes, as a young Christian I feel that God isn't around like my parents (or in this case my dad) to discipline me if I misbehaved.

Have you ever noticed that your walk with God suffers when you're busy and your schedules take up ALL your time.

I missed having quiet time with the Lord where I can just have peace and quiet and concentrate on discerning His will for me. I noticed that lately I have been slipping spiritually, not reading Scripture and praying as often.

Last night was my first fun night with my s.g. We gathered and hand made our dinner (which in most cases is provided by one person). Dinner in this case is a concoction of sushi and "spam musubi".

Afterward for entertainment we watched "National Treasure" and made cards for Mothers Day.

Sending someone off is never easy and you hope the person will do well wherever it is they're heading off to. The wisdom is that with proper logistical planning the person will at least get there with enough to survive.

Having say that last night a bunch of us got together to said "fare thee well" to a friend who is heading off to Boston or Chicago, depending on his interview with a certain economic research company at Boston. When asked why having grown up in the West Coast he would move to the East coast or Midwest, AT's respond was, "a change of scenery. There comes a time when a man needs to be on his own." Much respect for AT. Good luck AT.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

#1 Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
#2 The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
#3 Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
#4 The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
#5 The Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
#6 Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
#7 L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
#8 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
#9 Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
#10 Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)