Fall cleaning and FREE computer parts

If anyone wants computer parts, send me an email at mikelang at gmail dot come and I will give it to you. Actually they are two desktop PCs, one is a P4 and the other is a Dell Xeon dual processor with plenty of HD, memory, and other niceties. Both are running WinNT 2K servers but you could use it for Ubuntu and such...

If you know of how I could donate these, to a school perhaps, let me know, too.

Oh hopefully you'll lemme know soon since I'm planning to haul it to the Sunnyvale dumpster this Sat.

Thanks

Good Ole Boring

So I finally took the plunge and purchase a Lenovo laptop. I think I'll enjoy using it. I have been thinking about it for several weeks, but when it comes down to it I just wanted something reliable to replace my Dell. I compared Apple, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Dell and HP are okay. So it actually was a decision between Apple and Lenovo. After talking to several people at church my decision was made. I think I made the right choice. Apple is still such a luxury item I think and the limited softwares totally pushed me towards the Lenovo. My only concern now is Vista but oh well, let's give it a try.

I heard on the drive back from work yesterday of the story of the real Delilah. So apparently the song "Hey There Delilah" is written after the songwriter was introduced to a girl named Delilah. He thought she was really cute and wanted to get to know her. She, however, has a boyfriend. So he went home, threw some chords together, wrote a song for her--"Hey There Delilah."

The story continues. Delilah would go to the gym and the song would play on the loud speakers. Half of her wanted to admit that the song is about her and let the whole world know about it. The other part of her was so sick of hearing the song and regret ever meeting the guy.

Kinda romantic, though if only they actually end up together because he wrote a song for her. I really like the song and the story behind it. Haha.

Heather's Hike for Discovery

My friend Heather is doing a Hike for Discovery. She is normally very reserve and not at all a marketing/promo type but it is pretty obvious she has a lot of passion for this cause. I know from talking to her that she cares a lot about the subject of cancer, and leukemia in particular.

In a nutshell, the Hike for Discovery is to raise research and awareness for the LLS (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society). The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society uses the funds raised to cure Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and Myeloma. The Society also gives help and support to over 712,000 Americans battling these blood cancers.

Part of why she is so compelled to do this is that her grandmother was recently diagnosed with leukemia. I can imagine also how cancer will affect beyond her grandmother as I witnessed first hand those effects on my mom when she fought and loss to brain cancer.

So if you ever wanted to have a positive impact on the fight for cancer, take this time to donate to Heather's Hike for Discovery. Click http://www.active.com/donate/hfdsvmb/hfdHBedy to donate NOW!

There's also the chance that your company will match each contribution. Finding the cure is worth asking your HR department the question! Remember all your donations are tax-deductible :)

For more info please contact Heather at [email protected]. Oh and please help spread the word about Heather's Hike for Discovery.

Thanks!

The Old Stomping Ground

Not much going on here except to say that the Sunday was spent with my brothers and their friends watching Super Bowl (a Lang tradition), in between rounds of poker games. I didn't play but ended up missing much of the football game to watch these "rounders".

This morning I got an email from my friend in SoCal regarding our old stomping ground at UCLA. We both worked at two places there to make ends meet. On his recent trip back for a work-related review, the place he used to work at is gone, replaced by a Taco Bell. I used to go see him at work to get "discount" pizza, with lots of extra toppings. He would visit me at Jimmy's/LuValle Commons where I'd make him omelettes with extras stuff. Sad to see that the Coop Pizza in Ackerman Union exist "NO MORE". Not sure what the reason was to replace that with, of all thing, Taco Bell. Anyway, progress is inevitable, I guess. Good bye Coop Pizza. Thank you for always welcoming us hungry students into your dark and mysterious underground. You will be missed!

Now an email regarding yesterday's Super Bowl, specifically of Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy's character. Imho, these are two fine coaches that really does exemplify humility--witness the playing the 4th down instead of kicking the field goal on Tony Dungy's part.

"I tell you what. I'm proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American to win this. That means an awful lot to our country. But again, more than anything, I’ve said it before, Lovie Smith and I, not only the first two African-Americans, but Christian coaches, showing that you can win doing it the Lord’s way, we’re more proud of that."

It's character, not color, that separates Smith, Dungy
Dungy, Colts, reign supreme
First Black Super Bowl Coaches Say 'The Lord Set this Up'
Super Bowl coaches Dungy, Smith known for Christian testimony
At top of game, Dungy, Smith still feel higher calling
Character, not color, defines Dungy, Smith

Lastly, what was your favorite Super Bowl commercial?
My coworkers at work liked these:
- Oprah/Letterman "dating", watching the game
- Garmin-Monster-"Ultraman"
While I liked the Bud Light "Rock, Paper, Scissor", and the Bud Light classroom..."Me no speak English."

WSJ's poll has the Bud Light's classroom as their top commercial. Worst: Snickers and Garmin. (WSJ, subscription)

Apple's iPhone

This is the best thing...EVER.

It's priced at $499-$599 and is available through Cingular, which means the iPhone may not be for you if you are making indoor calls. But who cares when you can get the NYTimes like this.

Is that Jonathan Ive, famed Apple designer's actual cell/work phone? (I tried calling the work one and got a voicemail of Apple, the second one was a general voicemail. Haha. Umm ahem: Please do not try this at home kids.)

Until my current Verizon phone runs out, I'll continue to pull along this bag of bricks, "my fivers": 20 gig iPod (non video), 5 gig iPod Nano, Palm V, LG vx8300, Dell Inspiron m600 laptop, Canon SD630 camera optional.

Psst...really, these all-in-one devices are highly overrated anyhow.

Show of hands who's buying one?

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

New Year's resolutions list, that is. Mine involves exercising more. I know, boring. But a couple of 4 day weekends—I'm already missing those "it's like Friday, but Wednesday" work mode—revolving around food = surplus weight.

Beyond making this list, I switched my mobile service providers and got a new phone (my Christmas present.) The old provider Cingular didn't make the cut, giving me one bar consistently when I'm at home, as well as many other places (see: driving on the 101). I decided to go with Verizon and the clamshell LG VX8300 phone. So far so good.

My new phone lets me listen to music, takes great photos, is Bluetooth enabled—I got one of those sci-fi looking Bluetooth headsets, too—gets email and ESPN scores. Everything you ever needed to survive in the "real" world. The user interface feels pretty intuitive, although I still need to muck around with it a bit more. Best feature of this new phone? Saving on some serious money—20% off my monthly bill—thanks to a corporate discount.

Back to the list. How's your resolutions list coming? If it has more than just exercising, congratulations you are already more diligent than me. Care to share?

New Year's was watching a Friends marathon, playing True colors, and drinking almond flavored champagne at Sandy's. It was great!

Happy New Year!

Very Good Impression

That's what my dentist Thomas H. said after I bit down on some putty to record my sets of teeth.

Even now, an hour after walking out of his office for a crown on tooth #19, I am still heavily sedated—call it my "novocaine hangover". Really, I can't feel anything on my lower jaw! And I have a dinner date with my gf, but I worry about biting my tongue since I can't feel anything at all.

In any case, the whole procedure, under Thomas's gentle care, took two hours or so. (Thnx Tom! I'm still trying to set you up with my friend Mandy.)

I was pretty stressed out going into the procedure. I kept thinking about dentists having the highest suicide rates, me not knowing the details of crowning and the risk involved, the hi-pitched drilling sound, etc.

So what did I do? I prayed. A lot. I prayed for two hours of the procedure, prayed for Thomas, prayed for myself, all under my numbed mouth. Guess what, it worked! I felt very at ease and calm thereafter. (Great wonderful painkiller and Thomas's professional "chair-side" manners helped, too.)

Now I won't be so fretful going into my follow up in two weeks. I plan on asking Thomas what he thinks of my choice of a hookup for him. Haha.

Sshssh...whatever happens at my dentist's office stays at my dentist's office.

PROFILE: Thomas H. DDS
• 5'7 1/2"—5'10" ???
• cool, laid back, Taiwanese
• churchgoer (on and off)
• can say "autoclaves, endodontics, occlusal matrix" 10x really really fast
• lifetime supply of toothbrushes

As if I didn't have enough problems...

I came home last night to receive a letter from my undergrad alma mater with a couple of paragraphs starting with "I regret..." and ending with "I deeply regret...". (Read it here.)

Wonderful!

Earlier that day, taking a break from work, I clicked over to my beloved site: the WSJ and obviously this breach of security warranted even the prestigious WSJ to make a report of it: Hacker Breaks Into UCLA Database—University Warns That Personal Records For 800,000 Students, Staff Were Exposed. (View article here subscription required)

Great!

The first thing that I thought of was the NOC list, you know, from Mission: Impossible. (Westwood, home of UCLA, is pretty close to Hollywood). This higher ed "NOC list" contains personal info of "current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or..." on and on.

That being said, the list is out there, in the open. Some disreputable guy (assuming it's a guy) is floating around with my name, SSN, DOB, home addresses, and contact info. (Ok, not just me but 800,000 other folks out there.)

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Lunch at Adobe

I met up with Bruce today at the Adobe building in San Jose for lunch. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't offer their employees or visitors FREE lunch. Haha. Well, we talked about what he does at Adobe (some pretty cool stuff—programming and designing—really really cool stuff), some more about business, etc., and got a tour of Adobe. Finally! Danke dabruceski!

Last night I went to a SIG BayCHI event where two speakers talked about "Designing for Ajax". The first guy was Bill Scott (Ajax Evangelist at Yahoo!) and he offered tremendous insights about the 7 principles of designing for Ajax. There are tons of good stuff I took tons of notes and I will definitely try to process that. Good stuff.

Then this young kid named Matt Mullenweg showed up and really impressed me with his 12 rules of launching your start-up. Anyway as far as I can remember (I didn't take any notes you see) here they are:

Matt Mullenweg's 12 Rules: (in no particular order)

1. Be your most passionate user
2. Be anal
3. Support (you are your own...)
4. Get off the computer
5. 1.0
6. Have a tagline
7. Know what to do if you are successful
8. Simplify
9. Don't do as they say do as they do
10. Be a painkiller, not a vitamin
11. Measure your success
12. Start strong end strong

BTW Matt started programming 3 years ago and is one of the founder of the open source WordPress blogging software. The guy's like 22.

In any case let me know if you want to talk about his 12 rules in depth and I'll gladly fill in any gaping holes from my recall of it. Oh also if you haven't written a blog yet it's so easy now to set one up. So yeah I totally encourage you guys who are reading this and have not try blogging yet, to go for it. Let me know if you need help!

Google Lunch

No, it's not a new Google product. Although if the bright folks there could figure out a way to solve world hunger using codes, and make money while "do[ing] no evil", then I wouldn't be suprised if we see a Google Lunch beta™...coming to a Whole Foods near you.

Probably everyone who's cool would have already visited Google by now, but yesterday I got a glimpse of the campus, its cafeteria, as well as some strange corporate culture. (Not necessarily in that order as "I'm feeling lucky" today.)

First off, at the parking lot.

PARKING LOT: Here I was greeted by a security guard who promptly asked me for my host name. As in who's hosting you today, who's responsible for YOUR priviledged visit at Google? Parking was horrible as most people have mentioned here and there. "The parking is horrible there!" I was advised by my host friend to park up on a hill and walk 5 mins to the "quad"—four buildings which are very organically designed (thanks to former SGI).

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Second Quarter Review

Following some highlights of the weekend, I'll blog a bit about the second quarter. (Here's the writeup of the first quarter.)

The highlights of the weekend...

- after driving up and down the 152 East for more than eight years while living in LA, I finally visited Casa de Fruta. It's a conglomerate for Casa de anything. My favorite is sampling the food, although Sands would say it's gross.
- played bocce with Sandy, Jimmy, Lauren. We were ever the gentleman, letting the girls win of course. Altough you wouldn't know that from this version.
- saw fireworks in Cupertino. We brought with us (again with Jimmy and Lauren) blanket and lawn chair. We ended up sitting on the driveway of Citibank, a bright halogen light blasting our face. If I squinted hard enough I could make out the fireworks, which lasted about fifteen minutes.

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Hot

We're having a company picnic at 12:30pm tomorrow at some park nearby. I went over to the nifty weather.com to check out...umm tomorrow's weather. Let's just say I'm not exactly looking forward to it (see pic).

Here's the email I got about the picnic...
(it's not as funny as it sounds)

We'll be playing Kickball and S-P-U-D...in sticky mucky heat. Now that is FUN you can't get anywhere else.

Pop's Day At The Zoo

A week after visiting New York's fabulously priced (ie "suggested donations") American Museum of Natural History and seeing the stuffed animals, my siblings and I decided to make it a Father's Day outing at The Oakland Zoo.

To be sure, the real deal is much better.

Situated above the Oakland Hills, the zoo is a constant reminder that there are animals beyond the usual domesticated fares of—the house canines and the feisty felines. While nothing impressive as compared to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Oakland Zoo is what it is...a small affair that is family friendly.

The Oakland Zoo is the smaller and more awkward sister to the SF Zoo. There are the usual (unstuffed) african elephants, the elands, gazelles, condors, lions (in a place appropriately named Simba), giraffes, tigers, gorillas, chimps, etc...For a full list of animals at the Oakland Zoo, please visit here.

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Rediscovering New York

Wow it's been awhile since I updated. Since time is money, here is my quick update of the 'rediscoverd NYC' trip in digestable bite-sized bullets.

- Manhattan is amazing. Go. Go there now.
- There are plenty of real coffee and bagel shops, not those Starbucks/Noah's Bagel hacks. Even the restaurants are terrific.
- subnote: Soon to come to New York—a first!!!—a Starbucks will be opened within a Starbucks. Haha. Just kidding...
- Smiling at the crowds is futile, even deemed madness.
- Real walking requires a nice pair of running shoe, like Asics. Doesn't matter if they are old or new. Oh and only tourists wait for the "walk" sign.
- Peace can be found nearby, at Central Park.
- A camera phone won't do when your camera dies, especially when you stumble upon a film shoot that involves Jodie Foster.
- Oh if you can make it to Joe's Shanghai, go. We promise it's totally worth it.
- I uploaded the ONE day pics here: the New York Trip, June 7-11, 2006.

An Italian Weekend, Good Times

For some odd reason Ian (that's SIR to you) McKellen is in all summer movies these days.

Last Friday I went to watch the The Da Vinci Code with Sandy and some friends. Did anyone notice all the super villains making their appearances in this movie? There was Magneto, Doctor Octopus, and The Cleaner. And had they hired Liam Neeson as Robert Langdon we would have Ducard of the League of Shadow.

Some people are still trying to process the movie. I recommend reading the book.

Happy Birthday Euge (PongOR). Thanks for a nice and relaxing BBQ last Saturday. It's always nice to see such a close knit group of friend (the TASers) having fun. And I am glad I was able to become an "honorary" TAS member. Good times, good times.

I uploaded Eugene's Birthday BBQ to flickr so enjoy them.

On Sunday I'm reminded why men don't go to the opera. It's long, and slow, and NOT in English. Maybe because Madame Opera is a tragedy, but I would have preferred a comedy, like The Marriage of Figaro. I don't know, opera just feels like a very expensive anime. Thanks to Markus for organizing and Jen as the guest of honor.

I uploaded the opera pics here: Jen's Madame Butterfly Opera Party.

Breakfast, Giants, Geckos Win

I'll start by saying I don't really care much for Barry Bonds. I think his career is dwindling, being overly distracted with all the controversies surrounding him. I'm not even a big Giants fan either. But there is something about being caught up in the wave (bandwagon effect) of a comeback and the excitement of a home crowd that makes last Saturday's game a fun one to watch.

Saturday morning we drove up to Belmont to visit my sister—an aspiring cook—for breakfast. We were the first to arrive. The rest of her guests showed up later and so breakfast was ready. There were the usual french omelettes, bacons, sausages, waffels, fresh strawberry jams, butter-cinamon spread, freshly squeezed OJ, and her much prized Illy café. My favorite dish was the eggs benedict served with hollendaise sauce. Yummy. Phenomenal cooking sis! You have come quite a long ways since going to culinary school.

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2005 Tax Refund And First Three Months: Where I Am Today?

Finally after a little over a month I got my 2005 Federal tax refund in the mail yesterday. In our modern electronic filing day-and-age, to get a refund back after more than 30 days is...well...the whole process just seems so antiquated. I could have use TurboTax to e-file but Sandy will do her's tonight and will probably file it that way. We share the software and only one e-filer at a time.

Oddly enough today I had to go to my nearest BofA to make a deposit. I don't remember the last time I actually had to do that. Incredible!

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Weekend Recap

The hardest part is over. We won our first GRX Hoops game with a new team: Geckos. Much appreciation goes to the SLK girls (Sands Laurine and K-Dog) for coming out so late to cheer us on. You guys gave us that extra energy needed to get over the hump of the second half.

On a related note: Here is a flickr set of this year's draft night that I taken part in (one of the most exciting night) and a link of the Geckos roster. Some past articles of my scouting strategies and last year's draft night.

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Back From Los Angeles

We made it back from LA. While we did visit many places I mentioned, there were many more we didn't get a chance to visit. Here is a quick run down of the places we visited: Koreatown, 3RD Street Promenade, Westwood-UCLA, Hollywood Walk of Fame-Kodak Theater, drove through Sunset Blvd., ate at Roscoe's and La Creperie in Long Beach, Tustin/Irvine. Overall we logged 1,101 miles on our rental Impala in our 2 days/3 nights stay there. Fun but lots of driving.

Yay! UCLA will be going to the NCAA Tourney ranked number 2. If all goes well the Bruins may even go onto the 2nd round and play in Oakland. I might be able to see them locally, although I read that tickets are sold out. A quick search on Craigslist for tickets show tickets as high as $400 for two.

Wuboy, mongolian_deathworm, and jeeyoungi—all you guys excited? Let's hangout and watch Sat's game. (Will end up Tivoing Thurs. game due to smallgroup.) Who is doing the offical pool this year?

[03.23 Update] Uploaded flickr photoset of the trip. You can view them here.

GRX Hoopsters Unite!

Finally the new GRX Hoops site is up. Take a look at it and play around with it, but more importantly sign up today to play in the league. They do get fill up kinda quickly.

Immersion-SNL Kirkwood Ski Trip: 9 guys, 7 girls, 5 cars, 3 days, 2 nights, 1 cabin, 1 bruised hand (Sands). Props to my Sandles for completing the three quarter of "Lift 9" and not doing the "walk of shame." =) Here is the ski trip pictures at flickr.

Another ski trip photo set from 99zeros.

Hi-lights: Pacifica sea food buffet at Harveys, billiards at the cabin, seeing one of our ski instructors telling Sandy, "I'm not abandoning you" as he skis 30 yards away. =)
Lo-lights: Lost one of my brother's Spyder glove. Peeing at the side of the road in a run down Deliverance-like place. Missing GRX's farewell buidling 899 service.

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The One Hundredth Club

I remembered collecting comic books as a kid and the 100th issue is always jammed pack and full of sweet stuff. Well to commemorate this NOT GIANT-SIZED 100 POST you will see to the left The Amazing Spiderman. Haha...rather randomn...

In any case thank you for the surprised bday party last nite. Thanks to Sands for organizing the whole shebang. To MD for being the point man/door-man, jimmyjam206 for being the caterer. I was surrounded by great friends and felt truly blessed. Everyone of you made last night very memorable. Good times! Good times!

I'll sneak in my flickr's WCC2006 Retreat and end this post with a plea...to those with cameras last nite do send me those pix.

Post VDay

Don't really have time to go into the details but yesterday was lets just say fiasco-like. I blew it simple as that. Sands know what a "gosh-idiot" guy I was yesterday.

That bares repeating: Gosh IDIOT!

Actually on another note does any guy feel like a chump during Vday? Like its a big competition for the girls to see whose got the biggest bouquet, gifts, chocolate? For another take on the crazy-stress and the gnawing feeling of inadequacies generated by some unknown little "holiday" that was yesterday go here

As an explanation I told her why can't every day be Valentine's day? Sands has forgiven me. Thank goodness she got an offer letter from Guidant this morning so that's GREAT news. (Whew I'm somewhat off the hook. I'll make it up to you Sands!)

Okay now that I fessed up to you the general audience I feel somewhat better about it. Let's move on.

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Your Couple of Days Are Up

So I decided to change my website's hosting plan a few days ago. As a result you've probably been seeing some strange error messages in the last couple of days. While nothing has change from the design point of view, the backend performance will be better what with Dreamhosts' many features. (Thanks away for the recommendation. If anyone is thinking about making the switch to them let me know and I can show you how.)

Part of the delay was just figuring out the different configuration files, database changes, shell commands, etc. I'm sure away had an easier time migrating to them but I had a frustrating time getting it to work. And now it's finally up and running again. Yay!

Check it out and let me know if there is anything strange on the site. Is it faster or slower? Bleh...

Time To Move

After some email exchanges and reading of various hosting sites, I finally figured out a place to call "home". My new place will be hosted by the "generous" folks at Dreamhost.

After emailing away and getting his "i like" comment as well as a referral link, I went ahead and signed up earlier today. The whole process took about 30 mins or so (since I have some time on my hand at work.) Of course the most time consuming part of it is leaving verio, my old hosting place.

What a funny coincidence that I get a new host and away get this (referral) as a present. =)

Happy Birthday away! (Of course you guys all knew that!)

So if you are experiencing problem accessing this site in the next 2-3 days please be patient while I configure the new server and tying up lose ends at my old host. Thanks for your patient.

Flu Going Around?

I don't know if there is a flu going around but I'm feeling a little under the weather today. I'm taking the rest of the day off and just chill at home. At least the weekend is coming up.

Have a good weekend guys.

Everybody Loves Raymond

My second time volunteering for Kids Club. This time the kids were much less rowdy, specifically two boys Gregor and Mikey (from my groups are ages 9-10 or classes 4/5). You know things go pretty smoothly where we calm the kids down with sweet snack, patiently ask them to be seated, follow the teachers in body worship. Then we have them repeat Genesis 1-22 on the slides. At this point a few of them are just in complete distractions. They are all volunteered by their parents to be here for two hours but to some of them, "it's like prison!"

Mikey and Gregor are best friends. How do I know? Gregor told me after I asked them what were their favorite Christmas gifts were.

Gregor: I got a new Nintendo game from Mikey. It's my favorite cuz his my best friend.

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Post Thanksgiving Updates

Thurs: Dinner with Sandy's Parents and Sis

Had a wonderful four days off from work in which I got to eat dinner with Sandy and her parents, her sis Wendy and Mark. The girlfriend's place was much safer than I expected. haha. jk. It was very Chinese in decor, and came with a mahjong table. Nothing completes a Thanksgiving meal at the Lees without mahjong (and a birthday cake.) I can see now why mj can be addicting. Thanks Mrs. Lee for giving me the quick five-minute mahjong for dummies run-down.

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Who's Generous?

According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Bush has been outperforming President Clinton on donations to help reduce poverty in Africa. Apparently even Bono of U2 and Bob Geldof has been acknowledging that the US "has hardly been stingy".

Also in the same article the US contributes to a Global Fund that fights AIDS and other diseases in the developing world. With the fund capped at 33% for the US, $88 million was retained. The article didn't mention what it was being retained for. Since I'm currently reading God's Politics, I'm wondering if George Bush is doing anything for poor people here in America.

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Raise The Roof

I have been quite busy lately both at work and at thinking about redesigning the backstage blogging site (see below). After several attempts at originality both in design and CSS code I have decided to put the re-design idea on the backburner. Work, church, and community service as well as interest in doing all things outdoor has taken up most of my time.

A (Very) Brief History of (My) Time

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Survey: Biggest Tech Company

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.

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