I saw someone asking what’s the difference between them. Thought I’d share a few words on this as I’ve tried them all.

These use a board, obviously, but how they maneuver is different. Skateboarding uses wheels, snowboarding - no wheels but on snow, and ofc, surfing on water. They have two things in common - they require you to have a strong sense of balance and spatial direction - forward, back, left, right, and rotate. Without those, you can’t go anywhere.

For starters, skateboarding is ideal to start learning how to board because it’s most accessible - a board with wheels is all you need while you need a far more equipment for snowboarding and surfing. Snowboarding is the most expensive because you need to buy a ski lift plus insulation for cold weather. If you’re scared of water, forget about surfing! If you dig water and big waves don’t scare you (not scared of getting drown), surfing is fun but is the trickiest largely because it is unpredictable, you have to read/measure the waves right to make a good catch. To me, surfing is the most exhilarating because you get 100% immersed into nature by its body of water and if you get to carve the wave, nothing is greater than that and you can feel nature carrying/pushing you.

From the technical aspects, I’ve found skateboarding to be the hardest. You need to learn how to do an ollie, which in my opinion, is the hardest trick to learn but once you master it, tricks become much easier and you can go over any kind of step like stairs and how high you can jump depends on how fearless you are. Tricks add up there - kick flip, kiss on the rail, so on.

They’re all fun to try and involve different kinds of nature but one thing is that you gotta have a solid foundation - sense of balance and spatial direction, which is knowing where you go and to anticipate the next step/move.

Happy boarding. :-)

Ryan Commerson and Wayne Betts Jr made a short movie - link here.

It’s a cool movie. Basically, they’re trying to change the misconception about deaf people being dumb because in the past, the word, deaf, was always associated with dumb and that hearing loss had to be fixed. They were tired of seeing how Hollywood movies would cast a deaf person to play a role of self-pity or some dumb person, so they used a good-looking deaf lady and made a sexy scene out of it in order to change the world’s perspective on deaf people.

I want to share something funny that’s happened at my work. Not a long ago, we hired a new co-worker and he sent out an intro email and I replied back to his email. Turned out that we have some similar interests and we chatted a bit. Then I went out on a vacation. When I got back, he IMed me that he had learned that I’m Deaf and he didn’t know that I was. So, we as deaf people have come a long way since then.

Happened to see this excerpt, liked it a lot.

The five spiritual faculties - faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom - are our greatest friends and allies on this journey of understanding. These qualities are most powerful when they are in balance. Faith needs to be balanced with wisdom, so that faith is not blind and wisdom is not shallow or hypocritical. When wisdom outstrips faith, we can develop a pattern where we know something, and even know it deeply from our experience, yet do not live it. Faith brings the quality of commitment to our understanding. Energy needs to be balanced with concentration; effort will bring lucidity, clarity, and energy to the mind, which concentration balances with calmness and depth. An unbalanced effort makes us restless and scattered, and too much concentration that is not energized comes close to torpor and sleep. Mindfulness is the factor that balances all these and is therefore always beneficial.
~ Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

link

Great pic.

from Flickr

This visualization chart sums it up, what I’ve been thinking and talking about.

Blank state
We need to output more

from Flowingdata

link

[[string:by2:DSC_0088

I liked how this pic turns out.

Good article. On super-noticing.

Mr Soltzberg:

It is ironic: people don’t notice that noticing is important! Or that they’re already doing it. It’s kind of like breathing—we’re not usually that aware of it. It’s much easier to recognize more “outbound” activities like brainstorming, testing, designing, refining. But noticing is just as important—it’s really where everything begins. There’s a funny Zen saying about that: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” It’s a reminder to let yourself take things in as well as output them.

I do believe that anyone who acquires sign language has this ability—to super notice, because we can communicate exclusively with our facial expressions and hands, with no sound.

Found a cool interview link.

I’ve found that once you learn a second language, learning a third comes much easier, as you become familiar with the intricacies of language patterns and sentence structure. But you’re still challenged to understand the how to turn all that into meaningful communication.

Awesome. I know two languages—sign language and English. I’m learning third language — hangul. :-)

Saw this from kottke.org

The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

That’s pretty much how I live, me and my curiosity.

I’ll have to accept this fact of knowledge. I have death anxiety. Not that it’s a bad thing but the thought of that enables me to do things and do my best. Time is all what we have.

Death anxiety.

The fear of death has been rated as the most common and the second worst fear that troubles us… …The fear of death is largely due to four reasons. Firstly, the fear of the unknown, secondly, the fear of losing our loved ones, thirdly, fear of pain and suffering and/or being alone at the time of death and finally, the fear of ceasing to exist or the finality of death.

Some quotes:

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” - Pubilius Syrus (100 B.C.)

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. Death is more universal than life, everyone dies but not everyone lives.” - Leondard da Vinci (1452-1519)

Steve Jobs had some words to say on the topics too. Read his commencement speech.

Often, how I make decisions is based on whether if I’ll have regrets. So, I ask myself, would I regret if I didn’t do this? if not, then I just do it. If yes, then I won’t. That’s the way I think.

Tabula rasa

With a limited auditory input (I can only hear low sounds with a db of about 70 in my left ear but profound in my right ear), I believe in this and thanks to technology we have like computers and the Web, we’re able to input a lot of information through our eyes into our brains. Thank god.

Tabula rasa (Latin: blank slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, in a word, “blank”, and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

Who knew that my tip about how to format your hard drive in FAT32 with two simple steps would rise to the top of searches in Google?

This just inspired me to become a better blogger. Action coming soon.

Hi again, (to whatever ghost I may be talking to but it might as well as have been you.)

Your keyboard is sadly imbalanced. Imagine that your chair’s legs are badly misaligned, that one side is higher than the other side. Your keyboard is like that. Other than the alphabets keys you’ve been pouncing on to do things on your keyboard like emails, browser URLs, coding, etc, the most frequent keys are your backspace key and enter key. Much to this misfortune, both of them are on the right side of your keyboard, giving imbalance on your hands just like that misaligned chair.

I’ve remapped my mac keyboard to use caps-lock as a delete key, giving me a balance on both sides of this keyboard and making a good use of both my pinkies. They equally need much love.

I just downloaded this keyremap4macbook. For Mac users on Leopard, you’ll need to set the caps-lock key to do nothing from the modifier keys in your control panel first. Then you can download the package, and after it’s installed, put a check on ‘change caps lock’ to delete. Your keyboard will be now balanced and you will get much joy in both your hands.

Happy typing.

Hi blackberry users,

Despite the iPhone’s latest popularity (over one million sold), I still find blackberry pagers superior in emails because at the end of day, reliable speedy communication is all what it matters and not to mention, blackberry does have a solid form factor that is tough, compact and uses hard keys, which is much friendlier for your thumbs.

If you’ve been using blackberry email address like johndoe@att.blackberry.net for your pager, you might want to consider setting up with gmail. Why is that? the backup. After you set your blackberry up with gmail, everything is copied to and you won’t lose your data, should your blackberry become missing.

Let’s get to it.

For AT&T users

Go to http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=mycingular

Create an account if you haven’t. It is separate from your billing account.

Click on ‘Set up Account’ under Add An Existing Email Account.

Fill in your gmail account and your password. There is no need to set up POP, IMAP or anything like that.

Your account is set up! but there is one more thing you might want to make. Sent messages will be forwarded to your blackberry every time you send a message. It’ll get annoying, so you will need to set up a filter.

So, after you set up an email account, click on ‘Filters’, then create a filter and name it ’sent’.

Change the dropdown to ‘From’ field. Put down your gmail address in the field after ‘contains’. Then click on ‘Do not forward messages to device.”

Click on ‘Save’.

Now you’re really all done! happy thumbing. :-)

via vladstudio

learns a new word, wanderlust. I tend to have that often.

Wanderlust is a loanword from German to English that designates a strong desire for or impulse to wander[1], or, in modern usage, to travel and to explore the world[2].

Marco Polo who traveled the “golden road” all the way down to Hong Kong and back. His map route can be found here. Wow.

While waiting for our food to be served, I had my camera with me and being a bit bored, I started to play with my camera. That was then I saw the brilliant light coming through the glass doors. It was quite captivating, so I started to snap pics of the light.

Those converse shoes are quite popular in Korea.

I’m trying to blog a little more after a while. Much to my amazement, a person named Ehren Cheung made a mention of my blog.

I’ve always enjoyed aspects of writing but I know I don’t claim same level of penmanship like Shakespeare or Faulkner, more like Ernest Hemingway, so I guess it’s fortunate that we have blogs where simple, clear and concise writing is only needed.

I’ll end this post with a link to what makes for a good blog.

1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?

Gives me something to think what I want to make of my blog.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Philosophy a lot so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language.

It’s nice to know that those philosophers have had similar thoughts that I’ve been having. Everyone should read philosophy and ponders why we’re all here.

That’s all we have in a day. 1440 minutes. Use them wisely.

The main themes:

You have only 1440 minutes per day. Use them wisely, and respect other’s 1440.
Cut out everything that wastes your (or other’s) time.
“Do Less” by focusing only on what matters.
Identify the real problems (ie., what keeps your boss up at night) and solve them. That’s your best path to career advancement, approved budgets, etc.
Don’t tolerate a work environment that wastes your time.

Link

Ooo, I so want this…

$150

Cool, learned something new. Kaizen.

Kaizen (改善, Japanese for “improvement”) is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life.

When I was in Japan, they really value efficiency and try not to waste time and space.

More pics here.

link

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.

My dream was to play in the National Football League. And most of you don’t know that I actually – no. [laughter] No, I did not make it to the National Football League,but I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the onesthat I did accomplish. I had a coach, I signed up when I was nine years old. I was the smallest kid inthe league, by far. And I had a coach, Jim Graham, who was six-foot-four, he had played linebackerat Penn State. He was just this hulk of a guy and he was old school. And I mean really old school.Like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. [laughter] And he showed up for practice the firstday, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’tbrought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of theother kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how manymen are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right, and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right, so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really goodstory because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about human consciousness and our existence, as well as spirituality and religions. I finally understood why people have religions, to explain our existence, our purpose and eventually, our death. That is the fact of life. Doesn’t get any simpler than that.

I believe that we come out of nothingness, which is actually some kind of magic like the birth of universe, by the infusion of one sperm and one egg. A man and woman. As we grow to become adults and getting to our prime, we procreate. Babies are born and the cycle goes on. Till we grow old and can no longer function and then drifts back into nothingness, become unconscious but with our spirit, we’ll be somewhere, wherever we want to be, with our families or loved ones. I support the first amendment, by the freedom of religion that anyone can believe in whatever they like to, just as long as it doesn’t result into violence and compromise one’s life. If they want to believe they were a cockroach or something, there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Because in the end, we all drift into nothingness but worry not, we all mean somebody to someone.

Couldn’t sleep. Looked up in old Men’s Health magazines.

Read this article titled “There’s a first time for everything.” Not sure if the website has a copy of that and I’m in the mood to type it out.

1. The first time you see your father as a man, complete with flaws, unfulfilled dreams, and unchained lust. Your mission: Learn from him, but don’t repeat after him.

I have.

3. Your first paycheck. It gave you a one-two combination punch from the invisible hand of capitalism, the first being that yes, taxes suck. The second: This is not nearly enough dough. Both fueled your ambition to earn more zeros. And still should.

Yup, it still does.

5. Your first wedding as a groomsman. You looked your best, the free booze flowed and you had that genuine pang of hope that someonday you’d find the woman of your dreams–and that she might ust be that hot bridesmaid dancing to “Baby Got Back.”

I have. One of the best experiences. And still yet to find that person. Someday I shall.

6. The first time you dump a girl. It took balls to walk away from free nooky. Maybe you’re stronger than you think.

I have and it was hard. Hope I don’t have to do it again.

7. The first time you’re picked last. First thought: I suck. Second: I’ll show them. That mojo can last a lifetime.

Yes, that’s the most important.

8. The first time you encounter mechanical failure in bed. Laugh it off, reboot, and spend the next hour pleasing her. She’ll remember it as your best performance ever.

Hasn’t happened but that seems possible. I’m already well-read.

9. Your first medical scare. Next time you’re in the drive-thru or at the gym, remember that panic.

I didn’t get the scare but regardlessly, I’m working out.

11. The first time you stay out all night and see the sunrise. Freedom. Hope. Endless possibilities. Attack every dawn with that mix of surprise, awe, and optimism.

That’s why I camp out in my Element. :-)

12. The first time your 401(k) nmber surpasses your annual earnings. It means you’ll be buying and not serving the lattte at Starbucks in 2048.

About halfway there already.

13. The first time you walk away from an animal pleasure–the fourth pitcher, the availabe wench. It’s an indication that your cerebral cortex has finally taken over from your lizard brain. Now you can pursue a life, rather than merely live it.

Yup, have been drinking quality beers like new belgium beers and start to experiment with mixed drinks. I’ll wait till when I’m over 30 years to start appreciating the fine taste of wine. Ha.

link

Gotta buy the book. Pretty much sums up what I was trying to figure. Just bring simplicity to life and work.

6,366 people want to learn sign language.

link

Cool. :-)

Cool.

link

Making up about 65% of the population, visual learners absorb and recall information best by seeing. Some of their primary characteristics include:

-Love books, magazines, and other reading materials
-Relate best to written information, notes, diagrams, maps, graphs, flashcards, highlighters, charts, pictures computers.
-Like to have pen and paper handy
-Enjoy learning through visually appealing materials
-Feel frustrated and restless when unable to take notes.
-May have exceptional “photographic memories”
-Can remember where information was located on a page
-Need a quiet place to study
-Benefit from recopying or making their own notes, even from printed information
-Have trouble following long lectures
-Tend to be good at spelling
-Benefit from field trips where observation skills can be used
-Tend to be detail oriented
-Are usually organized and tidy
-Often ask for verbal instructions to be repeated
-Benefit from previewing reading material.
-Skilled at making graphs, charts or other visual displays
-Write down directions or draw a map
-Need to see the instructor’s facial expressions and body language
-Concentrate better with clear line of sight to blackboard or visual aids
-Remember how people looked and dressed in the past
-Prefer written instructions to oral ones.
-Don’t remember names easily.

Wow, describes me 100%! Cool.

Hmm, I had a strange dream. There will be another Tower of Babel event and this time, everyone will become deaf, thus need to rely on one language to communicate. That would be sign language. Another way to communicate is to use computers or anything that uses texts.

Results are in.

http://deafnation.com/wp-content/sports/finalresultsdngolf08.html

Tied for 23rd place in my first golf tournament. Not too bad!

Will write more later. Gotta do some work here.

Big thanks to DeafNation for their awesome work in planning the event!

Next year in Moline, IL where John Deere PGA is hosted at.

This is cool, blogging with Textmate editor, using xmlrpc protocol.

One of my friends is studying medicine and I asked why did she decide to study in that field.

her: well, I have a theory. I think it’s because I have a short attention span. I tend to change subjects every two years as I get bored of them easily. Medicine is one subject I think I wouldn’t get bored too easily and it should have enough things to keep myself and my so-called attention span busy. And I like to prescribe medicine for people. What about you? why computer science?

me: because it talks back to me.

her: Oh! you are weird! I just know a medicine I ought prescribe for you!

STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs

Whoa, I didn’t know that his birthday is on Feb. 24th, two days apart from my birthday. Awesome.

This man is something. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Men are born to write… Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen, and he will write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported.

I’m trying to write more, on my work blog and this one.

Link

“Do profoundly deaf people who learn to talk have a voice in their head?”
– Heather & Allen Exby

“My best answer to this,” Hauser wrote, “is that the brain has a special capacity to develop phonological representations, even when it does not have auditory input. The representations might be dramatically different from what hearing individuals hear. Nevertheless, they function in the mind as ’sounds.’” Deaf schizophrenics, he continued, have auditory hallucinations, and blind schizophrenics have visual ones.

This is a good link. I think thoughts are just what they are, thoughts. They don’t really exist physically but from our minds and apparently, 99% of them express theirs phonologically while we express with our hands visually in Sign.

Link

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Cool, nice to know that I’m not the only one having those thoughts. Thoughts are powerful. Oh yeah, he was adopted too. Cool.

Taken from here

Everyone should discover their personal legend. :-)

Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher, Harper Collins, which said that: “reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.” I went outside, looked up at the sky and thought to myself: “So, the book is going to be translated!” At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path despite all the voices telling me it was impossible.
(more…)

“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.”

-Wikipedia

Coding has a steep learning curve but once you get it working, the rest is gravy. That’s why I’m learning Django. :-)

Think I’ll go buy these. Much better than rubber ones!

It’s been a month since I switched to Dvorak keyboard layout for once and good. Dvorak is the name of a simplified keyboard that’s been remapped efficiently to ease stress on your hands in typing. It was created by this guy named Dr. August Dvorak, hence the name, who spent countless days researching keyboard layouts. God bless him.

I first heard about this layout back when I was in college. Boy, you get to learn a lot of stuffs in college. Three of my friends were Dvorak typists and they told me it’s better than Qwerty. So I tried to learn but it was too hard and I had to stay catch up with school and homework. I gave up shortly after attempting to switch.

On my first internship off college, I got bored so I thought again about learning how to type in Dvorak and this time, I lasted longer for about two weeks. I still struggled and was typing pretty slow. I gave up again.

Now, I’m in my full-time position as a webmaster for Google, I spend a lot of time typing and my fingers were starting to burden the stress. When I got a Kinesis keyboard, I thought it was a good time to learn Dvorak again and so I did and stuck with it. I’m happy I did and it’s so easy to type urls like google.com, evenly alternating fingers.

With this Dvorak layout, I learned two things about this keyboard. It focuses on alternating both hands wheras with Qwerty, there is a number of words that can be typed with only one hand. When I started to type in Dvorak, that was a bad habit to break as I wasn’t very used to alternate hands on almost every letter. Secondly, it actually uses all of your fingers, from your left pinkie to your right pinkie. I wasn’t used to engaging my pinkies as I used index, middle fingers and thumbs often on Qwerty and I wasn’t really touch-typing, although I could type pretty fast.

One other thing it taught me. My dad isn’t very computer literate and he couldn’t even touch type and would have to hunt and peck at every letter. I used to make fun of him about that as I couldn’t imagine how hard that would be. Touch-typing, that is, feels pretty easy to me, almost like writing. You probably feel the same way. Till you try to teach yourself how to type on Dvorak. And that is exactly the same kind of frustration that my dad feels when it comes down to typing. Computers weren’t around when he was born so I understood that now and I don’t make fun of him anymore.

One of my favorite parts about this keyboard is probably the period that’s above D letter on E letter. It’s so easy to hit that letter instead of awkwardly lifting your hand to reach period on the lower right bottom.

Since 70% of English words can be typed on home row, sometimes, Dvorak layout makes me feel like I’m typing on a piano, using all of my fingers almost equally, hitting most common letters on the home row with occasional reaches to other less frequent letters. Oh yeah, the record for the fastest typist in the world was accomplished with a Dvorak layout. :-) ‘enuff said.

For more reading on this keyboard layout,

Ma.tt » On the Dvorak Keyboard Layout
Kertong.com - The Dvorak layout
The Dvorak Keyboard and You
Dvzine.org/

Good luck!

Awesome video!

What’s so great about this video is it doesn’t use any voice so it’s a great presentation for people who are deaf like me.

And since I can hear a bit, great music as well. :-)

“You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.”

via Wired

Over the past couple of weeks, I got in a funk, uncertain of what I want to do with my life. I was still figuring who I am such as what is my purpose here on this Earth. It appears that I seem to have everything going on but something was still missing. So I spent some time reading and surfing the web especially Wikipedia. I can’t imagine not having Google or Wikipedia. I also go to Amazon.com often to read customers reviews. I realize that by doing a lot of reading does help with the sense of who I am. After a while of doing that, it dawns on me that I need a role model and as you know, imitation is one of things of how we learn. I’ve found a person who I’d like to model after. That person is Tiger Woods. The more I read about him, the more I feel in common with him. He is a shy person but when he’s focused on something like golf, nothing can stop him. That is true about me. Once I get started, I don’t stop till I achieve that I was aiming for. I could spend hours at a driving range tuning my swing or in front of computer coding for hours. Lately, what I lack is the focus and that I easily get frustrated or have a lack of patience. Tiger Woods had the same problem that he tends to get impatient sometimes. So, he and I share similar personality and ofc, I love to play golf. :)

Excerpts on him:

If one word could describe Tiger Woods’ personality, it’s “conscientious.” His attention to detail and tireless determination to reach his goals is what separates him from the competition. For Woods, his drive to achieve wasn’t born over

People say Tiger has a real presence and that his ability to help others extends beyond the U.S. He is truly a multi-racial person, not just a black athlete. People feel that he will be a big influence on people across the world - and not just in a golf sense. He can hold everything together. He is a universal child - truly multi-cultural.

That’s what I want to be, a person who can keep it real and together. I remember in my youth that I received the most conscientious award from my former dorm supervisor.

I’ve started writing in my journal book to write down my thoughts and things that I want to do. I realize that every night, I need to think about my day, whether I was productive, and write to plan my day ahead so that I’ll be ready to get out of bed and start the day. If I feel my focus begins to waver, I’ll look in my book and get my thoughts organized. If I start to feel frustrated or down, simply, I’ll google the man, Tiger Woods, and read more about him.

Woot, this looks good! I shall make some soon.

KOREAN BARBECUE BURGERS

Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
3 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 pounds ground sirloin
Cooking spray
6 (1 1/2-ounce) whole wheat hamburger buns, split
6 red leaf lettuce leaves
6 tablespoons thinly sliced radishes

Preparation
Prepare grill.

Combine first 8 ingredients. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions, shaping each into a 1/2-inch-thick patty.

Place patties on a grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 6 minutes on each side or until a thermometer registers 160°. Remove from grill; let patties stand 5 minutes.

Place buns, cut sides down, on grill rack; grill 1 minute or until toasted. Place 1 patty on bottom half of each bun; top each serving with 1 lettuce leaf, 1 tablespoon radishes, and top half of bun.

Yield

6 servings (serving size: 1 burger)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 343(38% from fat); FAT 14.4g (sat 4.7g,mono 5.7g,poly 2.3g); PROTEIN 26.7g; CHOLESTEROL 72mg; CALCIUM 72mg; SODIUM 534mg; FIBER 3.7g; IRON 3.8mg; CARBOHYDRATE 27.4g

Bruce Weinstein , Cooking Light, AUGUST 2007

I knew it. It was a matter of time before someone would create a Google Doodle logo in ASL. That has happened. Here’s the image below.

Click on ‘Grades 7-9′, and Region 2 to see it.

Kudos to Molly Kestenbaum for creating the art and getting nominated! Vote for her!

A milestone happened today. I’ve hit six figures, 100,000 hits, on my website.

I remember when I first started this blog, the only statistics was coming from me. Two sure facts about blogging. People use the Internet to find information, so make it useful and easy to read. Then, keep it updated—just about anything and make it interesting and original—in other words, just be you.

Thank you all for stopping by!

Ben Bahan. One of the greatest ASL storytellers.

Out of all things what I can get for my dad’s birthday and his retirement, I think the best gift I can get for him is this, other than a plane ticket to surprise him at home.

My dad turns 57 years old today; we’re 30 years apart so that makes it easy to remember. This one is probably his best one ’cause he gets to retire! he worked for 31 years at the United States Postal Service. He was a mail handler and for the last five or six years, he worked the forklift. To be frank, I was a little depressed to hear what did he get out of this. All he got was a plaque that’s made of paper and a cake to go with it. That’s it. Not even an ounce of cheese, summer sausage, celery, carrot or a single cracker. Zilch. Just a cake for my dad. He had a clean record—no suspensions or late warnings—and had more than 500 sick hours to spare.

It was only two weeks ago that my team and I had a nice team outing. We went to this cool indoor go-kart racing where we put on racing uniforms and helmets, then had some pizza and soda for lunch. What a contrast. The speaker box blasted on after a half hour of celebration, telling everyone to go back to work. So, after working for more than thirty years for P.O, ensuring that every box goes to your door on time, my dad’s retirement party was over in less than an hour.

I’d like to share a story about how my dad wound up at P.O. He used to work as a printer, along with his good friend who was also deaf. They were good workers who do their jobs well and would know exactly if something went wrong. It could be as obvious as ink running out or as small as a nut getting loose. My dad would see that easily and go to fix it. keeping the whole facility equipment running, which kept the business going and ultimately, for managers to be happy.

For some time, I wonder why did my dad decide to make a jump to work at the P.O. I found out it was because of me. When it came to time for my parents to have a child, they already knew they couldn’t have a child so they wanted to adopt. After they’ve found a child to adopt and that, of course, came with a cost. My dad knew they couldn’t afford the adoption, had he stayed at the printing so he applied and got the job. His math skill helped him out. He had to work on weekends, had Wed, and Thurs off and worked overnight because it paid more than the day. He thought he would eventually work in the day but he never did, though he did have better days off - on Fri and Sat.

For the first year or two, my parents didn’t see each other much but that didn’t bother them, they had the same goal, which was to save up money to afford the adoption. At that time in 1984, the cost was eight grand (16k in today’s value). They were able to save 7 grand, one thousand short but when the agency found out that I was deaf, they slashed it by half, to four thousand. Ha I’m a bargain child, so to speak.

With those said, I’m ecstatic to see my dad retired and I hope he’ll enjoy his retirement and do whatever he wants. Happy birthday and retirement, Dad. This is yours.

This is a cool commenecement speech by Dennis Prager.

Counterculture
by Dennis Prager

Following is the commencement address Dennis Prager gave to the 1997 graduating class of Pepperdine University.
would like to offer you seven ideas. That’s all I want to do. If you fall asleep during one of them, there are six remaining. If you fall asleep during five, maybe you’ll get two ideas.

But I want to just give you seven ideas culled from one human’s life that I think can be very powerful in the way you live your lives when you leave this institution.

In no order of importance:

One: The Greatest Struggle Is with Yourself
The greatest struggle in your life is not with society; it is with yourself. This idea is not taught in America today. We are taught that we are victims of a society that is sexist, racist, ageist, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman, anti-old, anti-young — anti just about everyone. The temptation is therefore overwhelming to see your problems and challenges in life as being with America and not with yourself.

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It’s been a big dream of mine to play on some kind of golf tour - Nike, Hooters, Nationwide or even PGA if I can ever become that good.

Anthony Kim, a 22 years old Korean American golfer, just picked up his first PGA tour win at Wachovia Championship, winning by five strokes.

It was about a year ago that I first heard about him. Since I’m a Korean-American myself, I’ve been following those who are of same descent like Michelle Wie and Kevin Na. All I know is that Koreans love to play golf and there are a few driving ranges that are operated solely by Koreans in Los Angeles. When I saw how Anthony Kim played on TV, I knew he has some talent and would win a PGA event one day but not this soon, tho!

I check out his bios and wow, we’ve got almost the same build - 5′10” and 160 lbs. I’m 5′9” and 155 lbs. He’s 9th on the driving distance, with the average of 301 yards.

so I gotta go to driving range and practice everyday. :)

[[string:by2:Element and surf

T-Mobile

Beautiful day at the Santa Cruz beach. :D

In a few hours, I’ll be running in the relay race with 11 other runners and each of us will run three times during the span of approx. 24 hrs so yes, that means we’ll be running into the night and arrive in Santa Cruz. :)

I’ve been training consistently in runs of about 10k and to date, I think I’m in one of my best shapes so I hope I will run good in the relay. :)

Course info:

The course is divided into 36 segments called “Legs” with 85 turns (44 left, 41 right). Legs vary in length (3-8.9 miles) and difficulty (”Easy” to “Very Hard”). Runners travel 190 miles on shoulders of roads or sidewalks, 4 miles on five bicycle paths (Legs 6, 17, 21, 26), 3 miles through two vineyards (Leg 8), 1 mile across a ranch (Leg 10) and 1 mile through a quarry (Leg 35). Nine legs have ocean views (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 31, 35, 36) and five legs border reservoirs (13, 22, 23, 24, 28). The date of The Relay varies each year to provide moonlight for course lighting.

TRIMBLE NAVIGATION PROVIDED GPS SATELLITE MAPPING
accurate to within a meter to generate maps for 36 legs. From 24 satellites, 32,000 positions were recorded. Progress of the race is monitored using GPS and Amateur Radio APRS.

Map:

I’m debating if I should turn on the live moblogging from my Flickr setting. Hmm.

Bill Creswell provided the captioning. Damn, this promo made me want to buy the DVD!

Thought I’d share this story that my former manager asked me to write for the program.

—————————————–

WRP Success Story
There are many paths to the top of mountain but the view is always the same. - Chinese proverb
by Nathan W. Kester
4.5.06

Hi, my name is Nathan W. Kester and I’m going to write how Workforce Recruitment Program, WRP for short, has helped me find a job. Some of you may have heard or used the program but for those of you who never heard of it before, WRP is a program coordinated by the Office of Disability Employment Policy and the U.S. Department of Defense to enable college students to find summer internships not only within the government agencies but also in the private sectors. It aims to set up a path to obtain a permanent position following an internship and to develop career networking too.

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Easily the god of surfing.

from Brian Alvey

Cool ode.

In the end, that’s what this internet is about. Do we participate in a project of cynicism or a project of code? Project managers call on us to code. Investors call on us to code.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here — the almost willful ignorance that thinks bugs will go away if we just don’t talk about them, or the cross browser crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I’m talking about something more substantial.
It’s the code of developers sitting around a codejam singing Sublime songs; the code of sites serving APIs to distant shores; the code of a young junior programmer bravely patrolling subversion; the code of a lawyer’s son who dares to defy the odds; the code of a skinny kid with a funny domain name who believes that the internet has a place for him, too.
Code in the face of difficulty. Code in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of code!