Personal Dork Assistant

Old Skool

Picked up Ikaruga for the old Gamecube. I'm sick of ridiculously complex games that require an encyclopedia alongside, or on-line games that forces you into clans or guilds in order to survive, when anyone who spends that much time on the game probably wouldn't be someone you'd want to associate with in the first place. Ikaruga is a good-old-fashioned vertical shooter, descended from Galaxian, etc., except with fancy graphics and many, many more bullets on the screen. It's man vs. machine, one (wrong-colored) shot and you're dead, no mercy. Sure, I suck at it just as much as I suck at any other game, but there's no shame in dying in this type of game, especially now that I don't have to feed quarters to a machine, and I don't have to worry about some wanker at the other end calling you names.

My new goal in life is to take the plasma screen and flip it sideways so I can play this game in its full vertical-scrolling glory (it actually allows you to rotate the picture to accomodate).

Although as hard-core as Ikaruga is suppose to be, it's still nothing compared to this monstrosity. Those crazy Japanese dudes.

Bubbl-icious

If you find the stock market isn't nearly as much fun to watch these days, here's a dose of methadone for ticker addiction: Bay Area Housing Sales for the week. It's a nice-and-relaxed weekly update, and it's one investment that's still rising, sort of. Scary to see the long lists of sold houses in the outer Contra Costa and Alameda counties. How long before they have to add Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties to the Bay Area listing?

The Most Important Medical Discovery in the Last 50 Years

"...apoptosis in chronic heart failure is mediated in part by telomere dysfunction and suggest an essential role for TRF2 even in postmitotic cells."

Oh H., et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2003, 10.1073

Okay, maybe not. It's pretty well-known that telomere deterioration plays a role in cell aging and death, so it's not a big stretch to say that telomere repeat-binding factors play a role in protecting cardiomyocytes from various stress factors. On the other hand, there's a whole lot of shit-shoveling involved between a simple theory and a published paper.

You know you're hard-up for content when...

...you're a major network and your Sunday sports package consists of the World Curling Championships and Arena Football. Go SaberCats! Too bad I only caught the end of the curling coverage. Would've Tivo-ed it if I only knew somebody would be crazy enough to show non-Olympic curling on American TV.

Sux 2 B Yuo!

Being the worst baseball team in the Major Leagues is bad enough. Then you look at your upcoming schedule and see:

At Oakland
Date	Projected Starter
Apr. 22	Tim Hudson vs. 0-3 Scrub
Apr. 23	Barry Zito vs. 0-3 20-year old scrub
Apr. 24	Mark Mulder vs. Someone who actually won a game

My One Wish

In this cruel and desperate world, all I want is a package of madeleines that doesn't make any reference to Proust at all. Too much to ask? Maybe I should just settle for world peace, especially if it lowers gas prices.

Giving in to the

Giving in to the supersizing trend, Peets eliminated their 8oz. cups and reshuffled the names such that the former Medium is now Small, the Large is Medium, etc. Frankly, the only difference is some extra steamed milk. At least they're still Small, Medium, and Large, instead of stupid-ass names like Tall, Grande, and Venti. Recently, I'm seeing more people walking around with their Venti cups full of the latest sugary pseudo-coffee concoction, drinking it out of a straw like a freakin' supersized soda. Makes me wonder why Starbucks even bother leaving "Coffee" on their sign.

If America is so much better than France, then how come we can't make a decent viennoiserie? Had the worst pain au chocolat from Peets this morning. The Bay Area does a little better there, but it's still a premium thing rather than a given. Maybe we simply need to outsource breakfast pastry production to Mexico. Although you need a cool room to make flakey croissants. All the butter, you know. That could get expensive south of the border.

I usually hate pretention

I usually hate pretention more than anything else, but one does have to admire the chutzpah (not to mention the credit line) of someone who makes reservation for five three-star Parisian restaurants in five nights.

I'm beginning to think this may be too much haute cuisine in a short time...

Geez, ya think? And then to ask for cheese restaurant recs on top of that? I was just happy with the good croissants.

What This Page Needs

Are some cute lion cubs:

Hey, the cute-fuzzies are what keeps the environmentalists in business.

I'm all for eclecticism,

I'm all for eclecticism, but The Pat Metheny Group on Austin City Limits? They even get the entire hour show to themselves, as opposed to the usual split bill. Smooth jazz with a twang?

The Enlightened Man

Thanks to modern technology, even four-eyed Asian geeks can navigate the aisles of the 99 Ranch Market, tethered to the hand-free headset receiving instructions from home base. Works great if one has a wife or girlfriend delivering the instructions on the other end.

The latest and greatest item in the store was fresh, made-in-San-Diego, unsweetened soy milk. It was actually still warm at the store. Not quite as good as the freshly made soy milk I had in Taiwan, but close enough. No sugar meant that I could add just enough sweetening without obliterating the soy character. Maple syrup actually works surprisingly well for this. I might pick up more soy milk and some gypsum powder and give tofu-making a try. Fresh 豆花 in ginger syrup, yum.

Meanwhile, SARS continues to crush Asian commerce, not to mention tourism. Now even places where Asians congregate, like 99 Ranch, are also looked upon with suspicion. Mom's already postponed her next trip to Taiwan, and she told me to stay away from 99 Ranch for a while. If the virus starts hitting Shezhen factories, it'll really do some serious damage to the global economy. Heck, it's almost inevitable, I'd say.

Wars and SARS

Most antiwar blogs are nothing more than self-righteous masturbation from screechy liberals. As if anyone cares about dead or maimed Iraqis (or journalists, for that matter). On the other hand, the mainstream public is also painfully bad at order of magnitude estimation, so it's good to see someone balance CENTCOM's proclamations with some more sensible numbers. Well, they might not be that sensible, but at least we can split the difference between the extreme scenarios and end up with a reasonable estimate without resorting to tin-foil hat paranoia.

For some legitimate paranoia, how about the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome? The whole Iraq Adventure is just a little right-wing realpolitik that'll soon be forgotten once Americans realize that they still don't have any fucking jobs. A virus is not so easily distracted. It doesn't help that China is stonewalling, as usual, even though southern China has been the breeding ground of funky viruses for ages. Mom actually knows someone whose mother went on a trip to Guangdong and ended up dead from an (then as of yet) unknown pneumonia-type disease in February, and there were cases going back even further. Now we just need a superspreader to hop on a plane, and the super-duper-mutant cold virus will be really on the loose. We are soooooooo fucked.

Out of Context Quote Theater

"You can see the strength in their arms, the way they go get balls, cut balls off."

— Todd Helton

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you.

Free Erubiel Durazo!

Free Erubiel Durazo!
Viva la revolucion!

Good to see that Billy Beane is keeping his genius hat on. I'm not a big fan of The New New Thing, but I'll probably pick up Lewis's Moneyball when it comes out, for more hyperbolic stories of the best looking GM in baseball.

The main reason I

The main reason I subscribe to the newspaper is for the Friday Fry's ad insert (well, that and the Sunday coupons, thanks to Double Coupon at Ralphs). You just can't beat the mix of cheap junk, B-movies, and random electronics parts that makes Fry's the beloved institution that it is. But the Powerdent Battery Operated Disposable Toothbrush ($1.88, limit 2 per customer) has gotta be the most random item I've ever seen. It's a testament to the power of globalized mass-production, a comment on the disposable evanescence of post-postmodern era, and a convenient oral care product!

Hey, now we have

Hey, now we have a reason to go to Celine Dion's new show at Caesar's Palace the next time we're in Vegas.

The high-tech centerpiece of the new Colosseum is the $6 million curved Mitsubishi LED screen, which the show's representatives claim is the largest indoor screen of its kind in North America. Catwalks at 8-foot intervals allow performers to walk through doors in the screen, which measures 40 feet by 120 feet and spans the width of the stage.

Sweet. Wonder if we got a piece of that. Considering tickets go from $87.50 to $200 (unless you're a member of TeamCeline), I sure hope so.