Feb 8 I like to say that I find humor in the everyday issues that arise. It’s there, you just have to know how to handle it. Here are some that I thought especially amusing.
The Library So I’m reading Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (as you can read about here) but I’m only halfway done. Additionally I have already renewed it the maximum number of times. So I go to the library and find the other copy to check out. Just before I get to the line to check it out, this lady comes in with her son and a BOX of books to donate or something. Additionally the other librarian is occupied with someone who has a whole bunch of questions. Thus I ended up waiting along with this other lady. We also happened to be right next to their new self-checkout machine. The lady and I discussed that we should try it. So I did. I put my library card down to scan, and then I tried to scan the book. But I used the wrong bar code. In this time an old asian guy cut in front of us and took the librarian just as she was free from the question lady. I was tempted to say something but I had pity on him because he was old. Plus we were really looking at the machine so I guess it’s slightly valid. But only slightly. Anyways, I forgot that the library has their own bar code inside the front cover rather than the general bar code on the back. When I realized this, I tried again and it worked! Happily I walked out and set off the alarm. As soon as I heard it I burst into laughter. Now anyone who has heard me laugh knows that it is slightly unbecoming a person in a public library. Haha apparently I forgot to push the spine against the edge in my self-checkout process. Suffice to say I thought it was funny, but the people reading quietly might not have.
Lost I’m sure many people watched Lost last night. And there are probably loads of posts about what happened and how exciting or dull or horrible it was. But I would venture to say that none of those blog posts are the same as this one. As I was watching the episode, I saw something that triggered my memory. That beach that Sawyer and Kate were on at the end when leaving the island…I was on that beach! Now you will probably want to know why or how I know this. Well this past summer I went to Hawaii for a couple of weeks with some friends. One of my friends has a place out there because he’s going to school there so he knows of all of these local spots. One day we went to this random beach where nobody was. There might have also been a sign somewhere that said to stay off, but I can’t exactly remember. Haha anyways it was fun and the beach was very picturesque. It was in this little cove/bay with a big house on one side. We snorkeled and looked at coral and stuff. It was quite nice. As we were leaving we also heard some people on horseback walking by and talking about how Lost was filmed there. I thought that was cool but thought nothing more of it until last night. I saw that beach and I am fairly certain that was the beach that we were at. Haha I thought that was awesome and hilarious. Well the hilarious part was telling my sister about it and her being incredulous that I might not have supposed to have even been there. :D
Amusing stuff, my life. Anyone’s can be, you just need to know where to look.
Feb 4 So I’m sure that there are many entries out in the blog world about the exciting moments from the Superbowl, funny commercials, and numerous other topics. This one is more important.
Let me tell you, what stood out to me when I was watching the coverage and heard the stories about everything, was the life of Tony Dungy.
If you are unaware of who this is, he is the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts (the winning team of the Superbowl). As I was hearing his story and reminded of the fact that this was the man who lost his 18-year old soon all too recently, I could not help but feel that this man had to be living differently. His players and peers talked about how much they respected him, how he did not cuss (where the only time that he did was when he said that he was going to be on the “Best Damn Sports Show”), and numerous other character traits. So I looked him up to see if he was a Christian. And here are some of the things that I found: link 1 link 2 and many others.
Here is a man who is unafraid to live differently, who affects the lives of those around him even in a sub-culture of extreme opulence and outrageous antics. He is a man who strives to be the best, is currently there, but does not let that stand in the way of who he really is. Whether on top or on bottom, he is someone who seems to me has got it straight. And I like that.
If I had known about this before, I would have cheered a little harder for the Colts (not that I was cheering for the Bears anyways). Nevertheless my hats off to a man can do what seems to be so difficult in the world today: he brings his Christian beliefs into his life simply be being who he is. He makes people ask why he is the way that he is. He fights the good fight seemingly with his head squarely on his shoulders and his feet squarely on the Rock.
Feb 2 So last night I encountered a fairly common error. For some reason (I still don’t know why) the Internet connection at home was not working. Now this meant that I would have to renew the IP address (and thereafter update the DNS to reflect this change). I had done this at least once before so it was pretty straightforward.
HOWEVER, after changing the host record on namecheap’s site, the DNS would still not redirect me to the correct IP address (my own). Bah, so I figured that there was a refresh problem and just went to sleep. (I also turned off the server as I do every night in case you might be wondering why you can’t get to it at night). I woke up this morning and checked it out to see what was up. Still no change. How could this be?! I tried updating it and checking it over and over. I finally realized something was terribly wrong. I thought that perhaps it had to do with submitting my site to google’s index so I tried removing it. I have since realized that probably has nothing to do with it. Then I came to the conclusion that namecheap might not be as optimal as previously thought. That’s too bad. But no love lost since it’s not a big deal. Thus I transferred the DNS services to zoneedit which has an ugly site but has good reviews. They took a little while (~30 min) to transfer the DNS as well as update the host record. Pretty good. We’ll see how it holds up.
So in sum, we’re back online! :D
Feb 1 You might wonder whether this entry is worth reading, especially if you are like most people who don’t even know what an algorithm really is. Let me tell you, you should still read this because it applies to life. Yes that’s right, life.
I had a professor at UCSD during my 3rd year of school for CSE 101: Design and Analysis of Algorithms. On the first day, the class was packed as usual so everyone could get the syllabus. This red-haired, awkward, sweaty man stood in front of us and mumbled about different things. The biggest lesson that I learned from that class was on that first day. It wasn’t concerning greedy, backtracking, or any other type of algorithm, though. It was about life. Professor Russell Impagliazzo said
If your algorithm is correct, you think that it’s correct. If your algorithm is incorrect, you think that it is correct.
Now you might wonder how in the world this applies to you let alone to life. On that day way back when, I learned of a way to put into words something that I could see was true. First let me define an algorithm.
al·go·rithm [al-guh-rith-uhm] –noun a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor.
Basically that means that an algorithm is a sequence of steps to do something. It’s a method by which you accomplish something. Now there are obviously correct algorithms, incorrect algorithms, efficient algorithms, inefficient ones, etc. The truth in Professor Impagliazzo’s words are that people are going to always think that they’re right, even if they’re wrong.
Think about it. Then think some more about it.
It’s true. People always think that they’re right, even if in light of absolute truth they are wrong. The reason is this: if people knew that they were wrong, then they would change so that they were right. Only a fool of the greatest magnitude would remain wrong if they knew that they were wrong. You’d be hard-pressed to find a fool such as this who knew deep-down in their very being that they were wrong about something and refused to change to what they knew was “right” (whatever that means in each case).
You’d be surprised at how much you can encounter this phenomenon in life. I know that I was. Now go, change the world! Or at least realize that just because you think that you’re right, does not make it so. If everyone approached problems and their own “algorithm” to life with such honesty, I daresay that we would end up striving for not only a better “algorithm”, but we would find that we desire absolute truth. And no, 42 is not the answer that I’m talking about.
Jan 28 I must write a little something about something that I’ve noticed recently. Fanatics. Granted, I’m not talking about the extreme fanatics who come to mind as choosing to give up their life to kill others. I’m talking about the simple everyday fanatics that someone like me might encounter. There are a few examples that I have seen that are fairly interesting.
Windows vs Apple (vs Linux (vs [insert OS])) Everyone is aware of this brand of geek fanaticism. Countless Apple users proclaim the goodness of their own computer. They follow every move that Mr. Jobs makes as if he were some sort of god. They are eager at every opportunity to shoot down the evil Microsoft users as geeky, sheep-following idiots. Add the Linux users who are (generally) also very eager to shoot down the users of other operating systems as lame and uncompromising in their closed-source, proprietary, corporate evil methodology. Microsoft Windows users often don’t really join in the fray because either they are not aware of the fray occurring or they don’t really care. But those who do, stick by their guns and enjoy comparing themselves with overpriced, unimpressive, don’t-live-up-to-our-compatibility products from the competition. This is an interesting battle because people have been known to be for one of the many sides, and the fact of the matter is that they shouldn’t be.
I have been especially interested in this topic because I have been looking at getting myself a Macbook Pro 15” for sometime now. I was following them and the news stories about them since before they came out (which means I’ve been reading about them for over a year now). And I also currently use Ubuntu (a Linux operating system for the uninitiated) on my home computer.
VI vs Emacs (vs Visual Studio (vs TextPad vs Eclipse, et al)) The battle of the editors is a favorite amongst programmers. It’s an interesting one because it’s similar to other battles amongst programmers (i.e. programming language battles of the sort of Java vs C++ or PHP vs Python vs Ruby on Rails) that often occur. I have come to the conclusion that programmers (in comparison to a vast majority of people) use the fact that they can understand things in their reasoning for becoming fanatics for something. Simply because they think they know, they proclaim that they know. The reality is that one must see these editors, IDE’s, programming languages, etc tools. They are things to be used when a certain task arises. Simply because one loves a particular sledgehammer does not mean that ones uses said sledgehammer to do everything. But I digress. VI has some good points (excellent use of the QWERTY layout so minimal finger travel is require) while Emacs has other good points (ability to do pretty much anything that you want). And the list goes on for different editors. But the fact of the whole argument remains that it’s a matter of preference and you can find knowledgeable and intelligent people using either. Don’t close yourself to the idea that it doesn’t really matter what one uses if they are able to get the job done. I recently encountered this a little bit at work because both of my co-workers use TextPad when they are coding. I had never heard of this program before but it’s basically a Windows application that’s has a fairly robust feature set for programming. However, I recently started using Emacs at work in order to see if I was more efficient with it. And I find that it has many features and shortcuts that I am hard pressed to give up. However, I still use TextPad because frankly it’s much more easily integrated into a Windows working environment. In addition to this, I still use VI some of the time because that is all that is on the main server (it runs a fairly old version of Unix). So I deal with it all, and it’s oh so fun. :P
There are other issues I’m sure, and perhaps I’ll add my thoughts on them when I encounter them.
Conclusions:
The truth and lesson that can be derived from this topic is one that can be applied to many unrelated issues in life. Apple has a good product, yes. Proof enough of this is in their recent success. Linux has good points as well as noted by its up and coming status. Microsoft must have something in their Windows operating system else they would not perennially be on top. But what one can learn is this:
There are many choices and we must not go and align ourselves with one or the other as if one were perfect and the others are not. We can think clearly about the matter and see that they are all lacking in certain regards. Take the good, and leave the rest.
I like this idea in other matters of life as well. The only time that I’ve found that this doesn’t fly is in the face of true absolute truth (i.e. the Bible). Suffice to say, not much else in life is absolutely true.