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November 30, 2004
The New School Prayer
On the drive home I heard this story about a principal who was forced to apologize for reading this poem over the PA system before the Thanksgiving break. He admitted that he wanted to do this not to promote any one religion, but to cause people to think.
Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.
If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.
Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That's no offense; it's a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.
For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.
We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.
We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.
We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.
It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!
Amen
Posted by patrick at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2004
Edamame mishap
On our way home from church, decided to grab some lunch at the new Yan Can restaurant in Rivermark. We've been on an Asian food crave the past two weeks so we decided to give Martin Yan our business.
We ordered edamame for the girls along with wonton soup and we had sweet and sour chicken with beef chowfun. Food was very good and very cheap. Total for all four of us was $27.
As we finished our meals, my wife decides to join the girls in peeling the remaining edamame and snacking on them. A moment or two later, I saw my wife gag as she opened one up and to her surprise found a dead worm caught half-way out of the soybean. She quickly handed it to me gagging and looking more and more nauseated. I kinda just stared at it and chuckled. At this point we had the attention of atleast one nearby couple, waiting for their food. As I headed to talk with the manager, I noticed all eyes on me. I calmly mentioned to her, "we found this in the edamame," the manager almost spewed herself. At this point the original couple who watched me carry the worm-infested soybean, decided to leave Yan Can -- while the rest kept right on eating.
The manager was kind enough to refund me the $2.95 cost of the edamame. One of the waiters, in their shock, pointed me to a picture of Martin Yan and said, "if you're looking for someone to sue, sue this guy."
We quitely left and laughed about it in the car. I told my wife that she should be thankful that she found a full worm instead of half.
Posted by patrick at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2004
Out of my blogging closet
Just had dinner with some good friends and somehow the topic of blogging came out. To my surprise all of them have not heard of it. Interestingly enough, my wife has not either!! Well my wife actually does, sort of.. when she asks me what I'm typing on the computer, I just tell her that i'm journaling. Today was the first time she saw my site and she said, "ok you're right, blogging is journaling."
After I made an attempt to explain to my friends that blogging is basically like journaling about anything and everything, one of them said to me, "Hey man, you need someone to talk to? You feeling lonely?" I just started laughing, because that is probably a very common view of blogging.
Why do I blog? Well for me its more of a therapeutic session, to just put my thoughts down on paper. My wife always tells me that my mind is always active and thinking about everything and anything. Before you think I have ADD or something weird like that, I don't. Sometimes when issues arise, writing them out cements those thoughts or arguments.
So I'm out of my blogging closet. You may be wondering isn't the purpose of blogging so that others can view your blog? Well for me, I'm not really too interested if anybody reads it. As much as I would hope that my blog becomes a two-way conversation, I'm perfectly happy downloading all my thoughts down just to sort of empty (clear) my head.
So Euge, Lei, Robynne, Drew -- if you happen to browse my little corner of cyberspace, try not to laugh too hard! If anything post your 2 cents on the comments!
Posted by patrick at 12:33 AM | Comments (5)
November 26, 2004
Digital Picture Organization
Last night, everyone that took a picture at my family's Thanksgiving dinner party used a digital camera. This was quite a first, since normally there would be atleast one person with a "legacy" 35mm camera or even disposable. If your family is anything like mine than it would be safe to expect this week's internet connection to be slightly slower due to all the emails that are chock full of high resolution digital picture attachments!
Now you may have noticed in the gallery that I take a lot of digital pictures. I admit that as a digital shutterbug, I tend ot fire away and just tell my wife and kids, "keep smiling.. one of these will turn out ok." Sound familiar? As of today I count over 20 CDs full of digital pictures. Each CD holds about 650Mb of data so we're looking at roughtly 13 Gigs of pictures!
Two questions come to mind with all those pictures. How do I organize all those pictures and how do I view them?
My attempt at solving the first problem came in the form of a little Ruby script. This little script that I wrote basically groups all the pictures that you took for a given day and creates a folder for that group's date. For example, if I took pictures that were on 11/25/2004 then all my pictures would be in a folder called 11_25_2004.
A typical tree would look like:
11_25_2004
- IMG0003.JPG
- IMG0004.JPG
...
11_26_2004
- IMG005.JPG
-IMG006.JPG
....
I've placed the code in the bottom right hand of this main page for you to look at and use. This script needs an interpreter to run, so you'll have to download the Ruby interpreter at http://ruby-lang.org/en.
This little script has been very helpful this past year for emptying my memory sticks onto my computer for organization.
Now about the second problem. If you have Windows XP, you have the helpful Picture Viewer for folders marked as "Picture Folders" But if you're on windows9x, windows2000 what are the alternatives? Well 3 months ago I came across this very cool tool called Picasa I discovered it from looking inside the google more pages. If you've been a pure PC user all your life you'll be absolutely amazed by this piece of software. It will allow you to view hundreds of your pictures and edit them w/o modifying the original. Also its very small and very fast. You can select pictures and hold them on your dashboard and export them in varying format resolutions. The goal of Picasa is to preserve your originals and allow you to distribute your cropped/edited pictures for friends or your online gallery.
As I said earlier, if you've been a pure PC user all your life you'll be amazed by Picasa. But if you're a Mac OSX user -- after the first glance at the user interface you'll say to your self, "THIEVES!" The inteface is amazingly like iPhoto for the Mac OS iLife suite. If anything, Apple should be flattered, if not piping mad ;)
Anyway hopefully this holiday season these two tools may help you with all your digital picture taking.
Posted by patrick at 04:54 PM | Comments (1)
November 24, 2004
Thanksgiving and Humility
Can you belive it's thanksgiving already! My how the year has gone by. As I write this to you, I've just mulled over thanksgiving and the idea of giving thanks over and over this entire week.
At church we talked about it, at our bible study we discussed it -- every year there's an attempt for a profound or richer meaning of thanksgiving. Here's one. What about, "giving thanks is an act of humilty."
Humility is a word that we rarely hear or see in our news and radio. I would expect that now more than ever this word would be associated with this upcoming day of Thanksgiving, yet it remains to be seen.
If you stop and think about giving thanks, you are in essence admitting to a giver. You're admitting that someone has given you something and in return you give gratitude. To admit that you've received something and to be thankful about it requires humility!
I don't think you can be genuinely thankful without being genuinely humble. Sure its easy to say thanks but to be sincere about it requires humility.
So what about Thanksgiving Day? When we give thanks tomorrow, is it possible that we would be humble enough to admit that we've received something that we ourselves could not provide? We are in a very proud provide-for-yourself culture where humility is rarely taught and if humility is absent, our thanksgiving will be absent also.
Posted by patrick at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)
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Posted by patrick at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
Kinesis Keyboard
When I worked at my previous company, Boldfish, I noticed that three engineers there had this awkward looking keyboard. It was called a Kinesis keyboard. It's a pretty fancy keyboard that is "ergonomical." Well as one of my coworkers was unfortunately laid off, I was willing to buy his Kinesis keyboard from him, but instead he gave it to me! What a guy! Thanks Jason!
I'm not sure how long my coworker owned it, but when I got it it was pretty dirty -- I should have cleaned it then. Lately its just become so grimy and a lot of dead skin, hair, and some lunch leftovers have found their way inbetween the keys. It's been three years since I've gotten this used keyboard and I finally decided to clean it.
First I tried to take it apart, but found out it was totally unecessary. What I had to do was pop out each key. I rigged a paper-clip to have two little claws that would allow me to pull each key out.
After pulling out all the keys, I used some acetone soaked napkins to scrub the grime off many of the keys. Interestingly enough I found the dirtiest keys to be the escape, shift, and enter keys.
As I type, I'm typing on my newly cleaned Kinesis Professional Keyboard and man does it look sweet again!
New rule: wash your hands before typing on the keyboard!
Now I can see why their later models have black keys!
Posted by patrick at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
Moving.. lacson.info
Just a quick update.. my isp, icdsoft account is expiring and I'll be moving the lacson.info contents over to my lacson.name account.
I think for what I'm doing with my blog and stuff, the .name domain makes more sense.
Posted by patrick at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2004
Magianno's Little Italy
Before you think that the last time I took my wife out on a date, was when I wrote that entry on vietnamese food, you're mistaken! I'm just now finding the time to spew my laymen critique on some of the local restaurants in the south bay.
Magianno's Little Italy is a restaurant in the newly established South Bay hotspot, known as Santana Row. It's amazingly popular. Every time we try to do a walk-in for that restaurant the average wait has been consistenly 2hours+.
I've even attempted to make reservations, but 48-hours before you date doesn't seem to be enough time. I had to make our reservation 1 week in advance!
So was it worth all that effort? Well the verdict is not completely out yet.
The ambiance of the place is very upbeat with live music and piano singers. Its also very crowded as you would imagine yet not to the point of being uncomfortable.
They seated us by the window which I thought was great. I ordered the fried calamari for appetizers, seafood linguini, and my wife had the lasagna.
Side note: I'd just like to note that my wife has been on a tear when it comes to picking food.. Normally I would end up with the tastier dish, but the past 12 or so times we've gone out, she's always managed to pick the better entree.
tonight was no different. What looked like a delicious seafood combination ended up being a very sub-par meal. For one the mussels were tiny!! Another ding would be the noodles were not fully cooked, very ver hot, but not quite cooked giving them the tough linguini taste that every customer looks forward too.. NOT!
My wife's lasagna was a house speciality and deservedly so. i ended up eating half of her huge portion and took my meal home,.. hopefully microwaving it would soften up the noodles :)
The key to the lasagna seemed to be the cheese and sauce. it was well balanced with the parmesan cheese not being too gooey nor the sauce being too much like spaghetti sauce.it was tarty enough to taste the tomatoes but sweet enough to add flavor to the meat.
I would recommend this restaurant, despite my underperforming dish! I am grateful that I am able to not only go out with my lovely wife but also able to enjoy such fine dining. My criticisms are an attempt to sound sophisticated, even though I'll pretty much eat anything :)
The following morning I had my meal for breakfast and was it yummy!
Posted by patrick at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2004
A lasting legacy
I am somewhat of a "playoff" spectator when it comes to politics. I normally engage during the high-points such as an election year or when there are explosive outbursts such as the attack on Sept. 11, the constitutional ammendment on gay-marriage, etc. I am definitely not one who has the pulse of American politics. 2004 being an election year, caused me once again to engage in our nation's politics, primarily the seat of the highest office.
Compared to 2000 the smoke has settled much sooner and we have George W. Bush for another term as our president. If I could summarize his campaigns themes, they would be:
* Trustworthy leadership
* War on terror
* Sanctity of Marriage
* Ban on partial birth abortion
* Stem-cell research
The president's past record speaks for itself however, his future record these next term is what concerns me. The first four years seems to be when president's want to make their greatest impact and change. The second four is when they have the oppurtunity to leave a lasting legacy. Fox news just wrote an article about how presidents tend to be a "lame duck" in their second term and open themselves up to little accomplishment and/or failure.
My concern is that the Bush administration may be too concerned about the legacy they leave behind and go against the President's statement, "I don't do what's popular, I aim to do what's right." I love that statement, because its one of conviction and resolve.. some may call it stubborn-ness or arrogance, but those against such statements often find themselves at a loss for defining what is right. In our post-modern world, absolutes cease to exist and morality and values have fallen under the mercy of individual interpretation.
This second term may truly challenge Bush's resolve and commitment by those words in his administration's attempt to leave that legacy. Many would agree that that our nation is in a very real sense politically polarized. As much as people are glad their man won the election, I'm sure many would hate to be in his shoes knowing the work he has in front of him. But in the end, there will certainly be compromize. I just hope that it won't be due to what's popular instead of what's right.
Posted by patrick at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2004
Chicago trip
Its been a while since I added an entry on my "blog".. haven't been feeling too bloggy, but alas I have something to share.
My wife and I just came back from one of the most enjoyable vacations that we've taken together in your 6 years of marriage. This past year, we've made it our goal to visit major cities of our great country and for the year of '04, we chose the river-city of Chicago.
Why a big city? Normally we've gone to tropical places like the Bahamas, Cancun/Cozumel, Miami, Hawaii, etc. Well maybe it was time for a change.. and boy, was Chicago a change!
In our past travels we've been fortunate to have dad's travel discount via American Airlines. This time however we decided to go through expedia.com for our complete vacation. Going through AA is definitely cheaper but we wanted to not have to worry about getting bumped-off as standby passengers. This gave my wife peace of mind .. happy wife, happy life as my good friend reminds me!
We stayed at the Sofitel Hotel in the North Loop of downtown Chicago. Softiel offered simple amentities but the room and view was fantastic. Next to our honeymoon inn, The Inn at Southbridge located in St. Helena, was definitely on the top of our list of *nice* hotels.
the pics of our room:
We wanted to "go easy" and flew ATA airlines :) This was my first time with this Airline having traveled primarily with AA and I must say it was very cheap and as one of the newer baby airlines - quite comfortable.
Top 5 favorite things about the city
For more pictures, check out my site: http://lacson.info/gallery
Overall it was a much needed vacation for Lisa and I. Leaving the kids behinds w/ grandparents was definitely icing on the cake! It was a wonderful date with the wife of my youth!
Posted by patrick at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)