216.66.75.129
I've been playing LAN games in San Diego all day today. I like hanging out with gamers. It relieves some of my geeky insecurities.

I just had lunch with the Secretary-General of next year's UC Berkeley Model UN Conference. They're in good hands.

ESPN.com - Page2 - One vote for the amateurs

"College has ultra-clever student sections like the Cameron Crazies; the NBA has corporations buying blocks of good seats to give to rich people who sit on their hands."

Had dinner at Penang last night with my mom, her friends Malee and Frank, my aunt from Hong Kong, her friend who's going to Brooks (?) college in Long Beach, my uncle and his wife who live in Fontana, my uncle who lives in Covina, and my brother. My family is neat. I mean, total deep issues like lots of other familes, but they're still neat. And Frank's a real tough guy. The only caucasian at the table, and he can totally hold his own.

I bought Asian pears and noodles at the market while i was waiting. Asian pears, how i love them.

"i always think clearer when i'm talking to you... except for the times when you completely confuse me."

Greg Lazarro - Common Errors - I
INIT: Cannot create /var/adm/utmp or /var/adm/utmpx

This console message indicates that init(1M) cannot write in the /var directory, which is usually part of the / (root) filesystem. Some other messages follow, andthe system usually comes up single-user. The problem is often that / or /var is mounted read-only. Sometimes a brief power outage leaves the system believing that many filesystems are still mounted.

If /var is a separate filesystem on the machine, andis not yet not mounted, mount it now. If the filesystem containing /var is mounted read-only, remount it read-write with a command similar to this:

# mount -o rw,remount /

Then type Control-d and try to bring up the system multi-user. If that fails, the root filesystem is probably corrupted. Run fsck(1M) on the root filesystem, halt the machine, power cycle the CPU, and wait for the system to reboot. Should this problem still occur, restore the root filesystem from backup tapes, or re-install the system from net or CDROM to replace the root filesystem.

--

Good Sun solutions. Google and generous consultants-- pulling my fat out of the fire since 1999. I can't believe i'm paid to do this.

(context: Yvonne is talking about what a rough-and-tumble kid she was, and how she dumped another girl into a trash can in the 2nd or 3rd grade)

Yvonne: But this girl was my friend!
Eric: Was this the kind of friend who gave you her lunch money every day?

Buffy AC Pre-Release - Los Angeles
Played in a Buffy pre-release this weekend. (yay!) I had a ton of fun. Also got in some Battle of the Bands and Shadowfist.

Shakey's for lunch with Friends Day at church (not many visitors). I did some calculus with Barbara-- man, integration tricks are dirty.

Please pray for the health and well-being of people at my church. I'm not going to name names, but there's a lot of hurting going on, and i'm asking myself a lot of "why?" lately. I'm really scared.

Clara Tam's 25th birthday was celebrated in grand style at Old Spaghetti Factory. Gilbert and Gail drove out from Riverside, and Matt joined us as well.

I bought the Marvel Recharge game at Comic Cult. Totally Failed to Impress.

Oh wow. I got to be one of the first people to get to play Shadowfist with cards from Dark Future. You can read all about it in my little photo set. Scans of the cards to come.

God's been speaking to me a lot about sovereignty lately. I'm not sure why, but it's just so rich. The implications of a completely sovereign being who has a complete understanding of the universe... it's pretty hefty stuff.

The Bible doesn't speak as much on it as i'd like... much more, there are living, breathing, emotional words of being overwhelmed, humbled, moved. This, perhaps, should be my response as well.

No wonder i can't get into politics like i used to. =)

The Empire Strikes Back, another 2nd movie in a trilogy with a pretty wretched name, remains my favorite Star Wars movie to date. I think this gives me high hopes for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Even Jennifer Yoshimura agrees that Attack of the Clones is a stupefyingly horrid title for a movie.

Video Games Are Incredibly Stupid!
Interesting article by Robert Abbott, who developed the Theseus and the Minotaur maze below. No, i still haven't solved it.

I'm not sure i agree with his perspective-- it smacks of elitism and yearning for the good old days-- but i think it's worth a read.

Theseus and Minotaur
Awww, man. You gotta be kidding me!

Back from camp! I had fun (well, as much as fun as i ever have at snow camps). Prayed a lot. Didn't say too many outrageous things, though i think that two of the junior high girls are getting old enough that i should stop with the joking about gossip and shallow behavior and switch to the straight, "Boys are evil. Stay away from them until you're 25, and not my problem anymore."

Hung out with Cory all evening. Good to be home. We're total Alias junkies now. Hooked hooked hooked.

God loves you! This was the amazing truth which i cling to daily as i try to grow (and mostly stumble) in my Christian faith.

I stayed out until 5 AM playtesting for TWGI last night. I just woke up.

Please pray for Winter Camp, which i leave for today and return on Sunday afternoon:
- safety driving up, back, at the camp
- God to move in the hearts of the youth
- God to provide me with compassion and grace in interacting with the youth and especially the other counselors
- good fellowship and bridge-building time between the kids in the fellowship
- leaders to step up, especially among the younger kids

Arnold suits up for Westworld, Conan

One last go-'round for Conan the Barbarian. Aww yeah.

Puzzle snarfed from Land of Gummies...
Yeah. Gummy Child (i still can't write that without a wry expression my face-- you have to understand-- i've met this girl in person-- and i have no idea where this slang-fu comes from) posted a puzzle which was posed to me by smart Jeff and his smart friends from Ivenue eMachines (Jeff doesn't have puzzle-oriented friends at Ivenue. Yet another reason i'm happy i work at BigZoo, since i never got a chance to work at eMachines/FreePC) a while back. I was not in a puzzle mood, but now that it's been re-presented in text format, i was intrigued and set about solving it.

"Okay, you have 12 eggs and a scale to weigh things. The 12 eggs ALL weigh the same, EXCEPT for one. This one egg weighs EITHER higher or lower than the rest...you don't know which. Your goal? To find out which egg is the ONE, and in only three tries on the scale. You can weigh as many eggs as you want on the scale. Can you do it?"

I think so. The trick is to make use of accumulated information, and get better than the usual binary-search solution that solves these puzzles.

Divide the eggs into groups of 4. Weigh 4 against 4. If they're the same weight, consider scenario A. If they're different, scenario B.

Scenario A
Divide the 4 unweighed eggs (one of which must be the odd egg) into groups of 2. Weigh them against each other. Consider the two "heavy" eggs H1 and H2. Consider the two "light" eggs L1 and L2. (not knowing which are "out of the norm", as a condition of the problem) Consider the 4 eggs from the first eight weighed as E (the baseline) Now weigh H1 L1 <> H2 E. If either side is heavy, that side's HX is your culprit, and is heavy. If left hand side (LHS) is light, L1 is your culprit, and it's light. If the scales balance, then L2 is the odd egg out, and it's light. This accounts for all the possible odd eggs in the set of 4.

Scenario B
Consider the 4 eggs from the "heavy" side of the scale as H1, ..., H4. Consider the 4 eggs from the "light" side of the scale as L1, ..., L4. Consider the 4 unweighed eggs as E. Weigh H1 L2 L3 L4<> L1 E E E. If LHS is light, then you're down to L2 L3 L4 as the odd egg, which is light. Weigh L2 <> L3, and if either is light, good. If neither is light, L4 is your culprit. The same can be done if the scales balance, except H2 H3 H4 is heavy.

If LHS is heavy, either H1 is heavy or L1 is light. Weigh H1 <> E, and if H1 is heavy, H1 is it. Otherwise, L1 is light.

There are variations on this solution (mostly in the set you choose to weigh at the critical mixed-weighing step), and there may be a more elegant solution, but i like this one quite a bit.

I admit i cheated a bit and used some set theory as well as some messy branching diagrams which have almost no relationship to the final solution. I don't have a scanner, and my CSS and LaTeX-fu is not strong enough to replicate them in HTML. I apologize.

My mind is now stimulated. Let's spend the day listening to lame sales pitches from software vendors.

Work bought an iBook! I tried to let the agents set it up, but nothing worked. =( I'm hacking it up now-- downloading developer tools and better web browsers and the like.

We're such lucky ducks.

Cory wiped the floor with his Eldar hordes last night.

Cory v. Eric (WH40k CCG)
Eldar v. Ork 3-3

Ugh.

I got my 15k maintenance done today. Oil and filter change, air pressure, blah blah.

Good news: It was free.
Bad news: It was at the dealership, so i got up at 6:30 in the morning so i could get it done before work.
Good news: They found the source of my transmission problems.
Bad news: It required three flushes of my dirty transmission fluid to fix it. I spent four and a half hours in the dealership waiting room.
Good news: My car is all safe, and spec'd out, to drive the kids to winter camp this weekend.

God bless you!

15,000 miles. No lie. Geez. I've only had the car 9 months. I drive entirely too much.

On the upside, my camera is still amazing.

Alias was really cool, too. I really want a TiVo now-- Alias, Buffy, Smallville, sports... that Star Wars trailer. Wow!

Oh. My. Goodness.
Star Wars: Episode II | Teaser Trailer

That was a truly moving experience.

You ever get that vague feeling you've made everyone really annoyed at you, and you don't know why?
That's how i've been living the last three months of my life. It's disheartening, but i guess i've heard it all before-- that i'm not listening or paying attention when people point out why.

Nifty. They're previewing images of the new Buffy CCG expansion on their website, and randomized the images using some sort of numeric hash.

I, of course, immediately set about writing a perl script to wget all those images, but i'm an overnerd.

I totally Unixed out today. Fixed CareerInC.org's website, installed Mandrake on a test box i've got at work, and even compiled apache so i could see some pictures on a Unix box. Everyone's going to the Matt Redman worship thing tonight. I admire Matt Redman; i think his songs reach for a deeper relationship with God. I'm just a little burnt-out on career fellowship in general, and our strong emphasis on contemporary worship music in particular.

Hope everyone had fun!

Had lunch with Jeff Yoak at Wolfe Burger today. Jeffy's a developer i used to work with at Ivenue; now he works across the street (rather literally) from me.

DORK TOWER
A little Lord of the Rings humor.

Buffy was good tonight! Sad, which made it good-- why am i getting sad about fictional characters?

I have really good friends. Y'all are such a blessing to me.

Cory v. Eric (WH40K CCG)
Eldar - Ork 1 - 2
Eldar - Chaos 1-0
Eldar - Space Marine 1-1
We're in a dead heat. But the Ork are pouring it on.

Woo-hoo! One year at BigZoo, just got raise. Sweet. See, ma? I'm not totally incompetent.

So i'm sittin' in church yesterday morning. I'm excited; i'm doing sound, and Jeff even called me the night before to ask. I get there early, and i bring my houseguests.

No one's there are 9:30. This is disappointing, but par for the course. I've learned not to get upset.

Now, understand. We're good-sized for a (Chinese) Alliance Church-- English congregation is about 50... this past weekend, it was around 70; God is blessing us with lots of visitors, and even a few new Christians out of those visitors. But our sanctuary is big. (well, to us, anyway). It comfortably seats 150-200. So even when we have high attendance, the sanctuary is pretty sparse-- lots of space. I think worshiping together is nice, so i try to sit up front, and with other people, even though i'm totally phobic about human contact. (that's another blog)

But one usher is there, and she's putting out ropes across the back six rows. It's to encourage everyone to sit up front, so the speaker doesn't feel like he's talking to an empty room. The thing is, nobody respects it. Our head usher shows up 30-45 minutes late to every service, and he always just moves aside the rope and sits there. Well, maybe he's special. Maybe he has special status.

The college kids just step over the rope. Well, they've grown up in the church. They've been there for more years than i have. They have special status, too.

Junior high girls-- hey, it's easier to flirt with the boys they bring, and answer their cell phone, and dart out the back door four times during the service if they're not in sight of your Sunday school teachers and counselors, who have been trying to get to service on time to "set an example." So they push aside some ropes and create a spot for themselves, too. Nothing awkward about sitting in a row, all by yourself, with nobody within ten feet of ya. "Being alone helps me concentrate on worshiping God." Uh-huh. Is that why you close your eyes and raise your hands during worship until-- whoops!, cell phone's ringing.

Oh. Married couples. Well, they're not really part of the church anyway-- church is for "the kids". They can come in late, and why move all the way up? It's only going to disturb other people, right?

Maybe i got all bent out of shape for nothing. I look back at it now, and i feel silly for shooing those girls out of the back row right in front of the sound nook-- they just went over to the other set of pews, and did it again.

But then again, i think to myself-- This is God's worship. His house, sanctified and worthy of only our best. I feel like every time i do sound, i'm being disrespectful 'cause i'm not taking notes and singing with every worship song. It's such a privilege to be in the congregation, and i envy them. Where's our focus? Who is the object of our worship, and what percentage of our attention does worship consume? I want it to be everything, 100%, all that i am! This is the deep desire of my heart, and as a Christian, i know that it's the deepest desire of everyone's heart! Deep down.

Or am i too hung up on outward appearances? Am i wanting the church to "assert its authority" with these ropes, and relying on the symbolic power of some wrapped-up twine to keep people's emphasis where i think it's right? Maybe these symbols don't have meaning to other worshipers of God? Maybe the trappings of the church as i understand it are fundamentally flawed. (not conservative-politics-and-literal-dogma fundamental-- the social construct kind of fundamental)

I'm tired of being the enforcer. I'm no good at it. I like fiddling with the gain on the microphones, and cleaning up the audio going into the tape.

On upbeat notes, i saw Jennifer at service! Basketball season must be over. Praise God! (not for the end of basketball season, but that she's back in Sunday worship-- she hasn't given up on SGVAC!) I miss Jennifer; she's a clever one. Saw Erica, too. College group might find its legs yet. Mr. and Mrs. Yee came, too. Valerie brought me a photocopy of a book cover featuring smoking animals. It's funnier than it sounds. Rog stuck around for basketball, so Patrick and i played against him and Jenn. I was good for the first 10 possessions-- then i got gassed and Jenn took me to school. Man, i'm awful at basketball.

Anyway. Enough whining. Better to live it out.
"Worship the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." - Mark 12:30 (NIV)

"But windows is for games, not actually doing anything useful."
-Julian Lighton

Wilson from East Bay Alliance is staying with me this weekend-- he's scoping out housing for his move down here, and attending some Microsoft seminar down at UCLA. He brought Ming-Gih with him.

We had dinner at Tokyo Wako, this Japanese steak/sushi place. Very Benihana, except the cooks were mostly Mexicans. Which was cool in and of itself-- i'm not sure if our cook was faking a Japanese accent 'cause they told him to, or that's just how he talks.

Played some Buffy today; LA folks are really nice! We've still got a long way to go before we're "competitive" though.

Matador Records | Pizzicato Five
Helena got me interested in this wacky Japanese pop/lounge music/fusion group last time i was in San Jose. They're different. I like 'em.

titled document
Out of context quote of the day:
"... like Bill Clinton being the greatest leader of the free world."
- Isaac Fong
I couldn't resist.