Life Stories: September 2003 Archives
Let's say you buy a new car, and that one week later a truck kicks up a rock that cracks your windshield. That would suck, but no big deal -- it's only a little crack.
Three years later, the crack as extended across the whole length of your windshield. "Time to get that fixed," you say to yourself. You spend $200 to have the windshield replaced, and the car looks great. You can even see pedestrians and stoplights!
But then, two weeks after getting your windshield fixed, you're parked at work and a golf ball from the neighboring driving range smashes into your new window, shattering it. Are you happy? Probably not. You talk to the manager of the driving range, and he offers to have the windshield repaired, at his expense.
That's good, but you're still miffed. If the ball had hit your windshield two weeks earlier, you could have saved $200! Or... if you had procrastinated just a little longer. But you couldn't do it. Your friends pressured you into getting it fixed now. Everyone was doing it, after all.
When the repairman comes to replace the windshield, he can see how recently it was installed and asks how much you paid. "$200." He laughs. Don't worry, this time you're getting the good stuff, he assures you.
What's the lesson here? Procrastination pays off, just stick with it.
A post by the self-proclaimed King of Fools titled "Caucasian Club" reminds me of my own frolic into racism when I was in high school. I went to a 90% black high school that had clubs for every race under the sun, except white people.
The "Young Black Scholars" club was one of the largest. So I went to our vice principal and told him that I wanted to start a "Young White Scholars" club, and that I wanted him to sponsor it (he was white also). He was almost apoplectic at the prospect. Although he found the idea amusing, he wouldn't sponsor it or allow it; among the reasons he gave: he was afraid we'd get beaten up or harrassed. I pointed out that his fears were fundamentally racist (didn't he think black students could tolerate a white club?), but to no avail.
Ultimately, a friend and I founded the "Junior Entrepreneur Club of America" instead. We were the only two members, and our only activity was to sell Domino's pizza by-the-slice during lunch. We made about $200 per day in profit (for 45 minutes of work) for about two weeks, and then the school shut us down because the cafeteria complained that we were hurting their sales, and they didn't want to compete with us.
Those two anecdotes (along with my post on secular humanism in schools) might help explain why I think the public school system is a miserable failure -- it's awash with racism, socialism, and ignorance.
What do "msblast", "Mars", "Bertrand Cantat", "Marie Trintignant", "Christopher Walken", "Adolph Christ", and "Los Angeles" have in common? They're all, apparently, on Friendster.
I initially resisted, but peer pressure and curiousity overcame my trademarked apathy -- I've joined Friendster. I'm still not exactly sure what the point of it is; in my mind the system presents a fascinating social experiment, and I'd love to get my hands on their database of interconnections.
I only have 4 direct-link "friends" right now, but I've got 83,031 people in my "personal network". If you aren't familiar with the system, Friendster lets you search through your friends' friends' friends, through at least 4 levels (from what I've been able to determine). I've already discovered one person in my network whom I am linked to through two entirely different chains of friends. Both chains are rather long (4 links), and having a common meta-friend isn't really surprising, statistically. I'm confident that I'm linked to the girl in question even more closely than Friendster knows.
Friendster allows you to search through your personal network by the interests that people put into their profile, and a search for "Christianity, capitalism" gave me quite a significant number of hits (many for "anti-capitalism"). I've messaged a few random people, and asked for a few introductions, and have explored most of functionality of the system. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it, if anything.
As I mentioned above, despite Friendster's attempt to keep everything on-the-level, there is still quite a bit of tom-foolery going on. Which is to be expected, considering that we are still talking about the internet here. As much as I love Los Angeles, I don't think the city really qualifies as friendship matieral. Even still, Friendster is likely accumulating an extensive set of associations between people, and it would be fascinating to get my hands on the raw data and perform some analysis.
Aside from the marketing potential, the sociological data alone would be invaluable. Unlike the networks formed by instant messaging software users (who do not normally fill out their profiles, since they spend most of their time talking to established acquaintances), the people on Friendster are almost all looking to meet new people in real life, and their demographic information is thoroughly fleshed-out and readily available.
If anyone reading this is on Friendster and wants to add me, just look me up by the email address given on my about page.
So I went to Toys 'R' Us this afternoon to find a rad gift for this girl from church who invited me to her birthday party tomorrow. Hmmm, Legos... everyone loves Legos. Wait! What's this? Mini Star Wars Legos? Collect them all?! Well ok, if you insist.
Guess what I did this afternoon. Go ahead.
Never one to pass up the opportunity to do some actual reporting, I'll give you the obligatory-blogger-impression of airport security from my recent trip to Missouri. The security was mostly brisk and professional, and there were officers everywhere... ah heck, let's just cut to the chase.
Want to know what I found in the stall of the men's restroom at LAX?
Update & Correction:
Some commenters have written that "MICROS" is the name of a food-service computer system that helps waiters keep their orders straight, and that this badge isn't likely to give access to anything other than the computer system at some nearby airport eatery.
Oh well! On one hand, my find is less impressive... but on the other hand there wasn't a terrorist plot taking place in the mens room. Too bad my first Instalanche was built on a non-story.
I'm back from Missouri. My grandfather's funeral was somber and beautiful, and I had an excellent time getting together with some family members I hadn't seen in 15 years.
I have to say, my cousins are extremely awesome. Some of my older cousins have kids, and their kids are awesome too. In many cases, I had no real relationship with some of them before this trip, and it was amazing to discover all sorts of little things about them (such as the fact that we all like Simpsons and Law & Order).
We played cards late into the night after the funeral, and talked about random stuff. I know it shouldn't surprise me, but it turns out that most of them are online pretty regularly; I'm really looking forward to chatting with them in the future, and hopefully staying in contact with them much more than I have in the past.
We met together at our grandparents' house just outside of Springfield, Missouri. It's amusing to me -- I flew from Los Angeles to Kansas City, and then drove to Springfield, and the total travel time was over 13 hours. (You can fly into Springfield, for triple the price.) Although it's barely over 1000 miles, my grandparents live as far away as Tokyo, time-wise.
I took almost 300 pictures, and I'll probably post some of them soon. Meanwhile, here's a family portrait that includes everyone who was there for the funeral. Most of you won't recognize it, but we're re-enacting the last family portrait that was taken there on Grandpa's staircase in Christmas, 1987.
2003
1987
