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November 30, 2001: DISCLAIMER: Today's rant is totally light hearted... I'm just kidding, so don't get offended and stuff. Although I suppose its still up to the reader to sift out where I'm kidding and where I'm not... So today I went to see For Christ's Sake (Christian acappella group) open for Testimony (another xtian acapella group). It was really good. Testimony sang a Holy Night arrangement thats from the NSYNC Holy Night ( i think ). FCS had a pretty nice arrangement of some song that Cheryl solo-ed for... I forget the name of the song... But anyways, met some people and talked with some people today. And guess what I found out? Evidently, hardcore cross country runners don't take pee breaks! They actually pee WHILE running! RIGHT INTO THEIR PANTS. I kinda think thats disgusting. In fact... I think its REALLY disgusting. Like.. seriously... thats not healthy. You're letting bodily waste soak into your clothing and basicaly get spread all over that area on your skin! I mean.. supposedly .. urine isn't dirty.. but c'mon! ITS URINE! How clean could it be!? Bah... it must be just from SoCal runners... the person I found this out from is from down south. I'm telling you.. all that smog must do something to their thinking. Heck... I don't think I could relax myself to actually pee while running! Like... its just impossible! Oh... man.. also.. you know how girls always prommise "Don't worry! I wont get mad!"? Man.. thats so evil. Like.. I just don't believe it anymore. Case in point. I say something guy-ish to Brian Chew. Several females in the area ask what I said or what Brian said. Me and brian both say, "you'll probably get mad at us so we shouldn't tell you." We carry on for a bit more about this and they promise us something along the lines of ... we really wont get mad! Hahaha.. RIGHT! So anyways... we tell 'em and BOOM! They walk out on us. JACKED! Its jacked I say. You know... this AGAIN proves to me that girls are evil, but guys are stupid. I mean.. we KNOW we shouldn't believe 'em when they say... "we wont get mad." Psh.. right... wont get mad... girls are in a perpetual state of waiting: Waiting for you to screw up so they can be mad at YOU! Oh oh oh ! And so like...hrm.. actually.. nvmd.. I don't think I should talk about this... Someone today (Wendy) brought up a good point about my rants. I'm always saying girls are evil and stuff right? and guys are stupid right? So I know i'm making a GROSS generalization. But I'm just generalizing. Thats the point of my rants.. to point out trends and stuff that I've noticed. So anyways.. the deal is that not ALL women fall under the categories I've laid out.. just as not ALL guys are idiots. I admit that there exists somewhere in this world the ideal women who is rational, says what she really means and doesn't try to manipulate guys. They exist. So I'm told. For any girls who are jumping up raising their hands and saying "OOooo! Oooo! Thats ME!", first remember the rational part and saying what you mean. Example: Guy: What do you wanna do?(for example eat) Girl: I dunno.. watever Guy: How about _BLANK_ Girl: Mmmmmm..... ... ... Ooohh.. kaaayy.... Translation to all those guys reading this. That girl response at the end? That was a NO. Girls evidently understand this already. So if you think yer rational and say what you mean and you do that above? I'd have some serious doubts. Wow.. I think I just outlined the "perfect" female: rational, says what she means, non-manipulative, and I suppose cute/hot falls into there somewhere... Boy.. I can FEEL the flames on this one... BRING IT ON! In fact... BRING IT ON RIGHT HERE in the forums! November 29, 2001: Its currently 5 am and I just got back from lab. Its gonna be a REALLY rough day tomorrow. Guys.. if you didn't know already, CS might just be the worst major right now. Not only do you work your butt off and still get jacked in the grade deparment, but there are NO jobs available for you! With the economy like it is right now, I don't know what I'm gonna do. The driving factor for doing CS was always either 1) I liked it, or 2) it pays well. Right now.. I hate it and the pay is non-existent. (self paced center doesn't count) Anyways. I'm just a little wired right now... a little stressed so I'm venting here. I'm sure there's a bright side somewhere, I just haven't found it. Well, I guess these nasty times make me REALLY value vacation. Like... you cannot believe HOW MUCH I want vacation to come. For those of you in a hurry to get to college and are in the middle of gruelling applications and what not, let me tell you, its a mixed blessing. Sure, you get freedom from your parents and all that, but the amount of time you're gonna study ... ugh.. forget it.. its like having your parents staring you down for every assignment. Remember the good ol days in High School where diligence pretty much got you a decent grade? Like, if you went to class, worked hard, and did stuff on time, You'd probably get AT LEAST a B and usually an A. But in college, dilligence doesn't cut it. You just hafta be smart. Its really irritating cuz I try hard on something and just totally fail whereas some people breeze through it. Its really discouraging. Anyways... Its getting into finals season so good luck to everyone. These next couple weeks will HURT. Btw.. a little article here is a little fun reading. Its about how non-engineering majors are in trouble. November 26, 2001: I guess its getting into that Christmas season again. And boy, X-mas is really great. I've really grown out of the "I want gifts phase" and surprisingly.. its really is more fun to give than to receive(sp?). I'm totally looking forward to spending time with my friends and family over break. Its relaxing.. and its just a good time. Speaking of friends, this last break was really great. I got to chill with my old High School crew. I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about. Your old school friends. Its really different from a college friend... and I don't know why. Like.. some of these guys have known me since I was in 3rd grade. They probably know me better than I know myself. But whats really great is how there's nothing to prove with your old buddies. The ones that you've known so long ... they KNOW your idiosyncracies and your personality short comings but they don't care. They like you anyways! You know what I mean? I think a loyal friend is a much underated asset. A good friend is worth more to me than ... I don't know.. any material thing I can think of off the top of my head. So what brought this about was just this last weekend. I got to spend time with some of my closest friends and it was great! I'm not sure if its unusual for guys to be like.. "open" about stuff.. but you know... I love my friends. They're just like... the best people. Don't get me wrong, I value all my friends a lot... but there's just something special about the ones that have known you for so long. They've been with you through all the crud in your life, the awkward moments... your happy times and all that. Like... there's always those select few that you can always confide in. Well... I guess I'm just feeling sappy after thxgiving.. so pardon my sappiness... but really, your friends are more valuable than the things in this world. Here's a little something by Michael W. Smith: Packing up the dreams God planted In the fertile soil of you Can't believe the hopes he's granted Means a chapter in your life is through But we'll keep you close as always It won't even seem you've gone 'Cause our hearts in big and small ways Will keep the love that keeps us strong CHORUS: And friends are friends forever If the Lord's the Lord of them And a friend will not say "Never" 'Cause the welcome will not end Though it's hard to let you go In the Father's hands we know That a lifetime's not too long To live as friends With the faith and love God's given Springing from the hope we know We will pray the joy you'll live in Is the strength that now you show But we'll keep you close as always It won't even seem you've gone 'Cause our hearts in big and small ways Will keep the love that keeps us strong November 23, 2001: Happy Thanksgiving guys. Its been a pretty hectic year so far and I'm sure as heck thankful that I made it this far at all. But yeah, I'm back in Cupertino right now and its currnetly Thursday evening/Friday morning. And I can't sleep. I took a nap from 10 to 1:30 AM and now I'm sitting in front of my comptuter and I can't sleep. The bad part is that I'm typingt his away and my keyboard is REALLY loud. I'm wondering if the rest of my family can hear this as I type. Anyways.. dinner tonite was alright. Went to a place at McCarthy ranch. The weird part is, you know how at big family banquets, they have the adult table and the "kids" table. I'm still a kid! HAHAH! I'm glad to hear it. I don't really wanna be bunched together with the adults .. not yet anyways. Well, anyways, I really wanna relax tomorrow (friday) and I'm not really sure if I'm all that cool with shopping... so if you guys wanna chill, gimme a call, I'm down for almost anything. I think some of my high school buds wanna go clubbing.. but I don't know if thats a good idea for me. I was born with 2 left feet... I'd probably kill myself trying to "dance." And you know what? What is it with girls and clubbing!? Its just not that fun. You go into this hot, stuffy room thats all dark and you can't really see anything and you kinda yell at each other over the music while "dancing" even tho you only have 1 square foot of space to move in.. so its more like bouncing. You're just paying money to go into some place to bounce. A waste isn't it? Now what would guys do with that money? Probably save it. And buy a computer item. Hahaha... well, if you're a less nerdy guy, maybe some clothes or a car upgrade or something... but for fun, I can't really see a guy choosing to go clubbing over... I dunno... something else. Like.. I don't understand why "clubbing" is more fun than getting your friends together and just turning up your music and dancing at your own place. Of course, I can TOTALLY picture my female friends going , "*sigh* kelly.. kelly kelly... ." Yeah.. I know I don't understand.. I DON'T UNDERSTAND GIRLS! Of course, I think most people knew that already. You know... I think I still hafta stick with the girl problems at Berkeley every now and then. So really, a couple people have said that there are a LOT of cute girls at Berkeley. Now, when I really think about it.. there really are. There are quite a few. However, there's just not enuff for all the guys here. I mean, really, its not about the sheer volume of females, its more like the ratio. The amount of men there that want a decent looking female is SO FAR higher than the amount of eligible women that its really kinda painful. Although I'm not really complaining. When I want eye candy, I'll just go to the Haas campus and sit on the patio for a while. I usuaslly satisfy my lack of female viewing pretty quickly that way. November 18, 2001: Well guys... the forum is up and things are going pretty well. I guess these rants are gonna be fewer since I'm spending more time on there sifting through the posts. Anyways... Today I'm at lab. And ugh... I'm getting pretty scared. The proj is due on wednesdasy and we're not even done coding it. Anyways... this weekend was pretty cool. Ben brought me to this apartment where we sang together with some other people. It was pretty fun. The funny part was I was expecting it to be a really small group. And infact, it did start as a grou pof 5 total (including me and ben) but then somehow, they added like.. 5 people or so? I don't remember the numbers. Anyways.. it was interesting. But you know whats irritating? When its the middle of the night and you're in soda and you wanna get a drink. (Soda is a computer lab) So you go up to the vending machine and stick in your dollar. THEN! EVERYTHING is sold out... except some retarded drink. Today... the only thing in stock was Grapefruit Juice. I'm not really fond of grapefruits.. but really.. it just doens't taste very good. Ugh.. that was a little irritating. Oh well. Anyways... hopefully, someone will cheer me up right now. Cuz I'm actually writing this from the lab. I'm sshing from memlinc.CS.berkeley.edu. Great eh? Yeah... 2nd floor soda rox0rs. Oh... I have some further evidence that women are evil. Dennis Chan recently posted on the forums that once he got a gf, a lot of other girls start flirting with him and stuff. He brings up a good question: Why didn't they flirt with him when he was alone and single?! Its very interesting. I think its because girls are intrinsically drawn to things they can't have. So they try and steal this taken guy and its more fun cuz its a GAME. Isn't that evil? Why would they flirt with you if you're taken? See.. the best I can figure, is maybe they're less intimidated by a "taken" guy cuz he's neutral. He poses no threat, so they're more willing to talk to you. Now, if this is the case, then these girls must be pretty confident. I mean... its like saying.. "I can't talk to that single guy cuz I think he might like me." Isn't that just like... kinda... overconfident? So you have two choices here. 1) Girls are evil, or 2) Girls are arrogant. Doesn't that just suck? November 15, 2001: We have forums! You can see the new link on the left sidebar that says "Forums!" Here you'll be able to talk to other people regarding just about anything. So go for it! November 15, 2001: THIS rant is REAL. For the last six or so hours, I have been trying to get a bulletin board running. Evidently, I'm a moron, because I've tried THREE different forums and they all failed. Heck, I can't get the install.cgi scripts to run! I've messed with file permissions, directory file permissions, directory stuctures. I've read a tutorial on CGI and I STILL CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT. Its really REALLY irritating. As it happens, one of the forums almost worked. ALMOST is the key. It works great IF you modify it all the php3 files to php, BUT, for some reason, there are still references to php3 files that DONT EXIST. I did a "grep -r 'php3' *" and it came up blank. I don't know where the heck these php3 references are coming from but they're doing a great job of pissing me off. Shoot.. I can't even log into my own board. There is just no way this should happen. The other retarded thing is, the server doesn't recognize php3 file types. Anytime it tries to load up a php3 file, I get a load of text. This is a SERVER side issue. There's nothing I can do about it. ARGH. How irritating. Man... Jason Ko has helped me out a lot tonight but its still not working. He's sending an an email to root and hopefully we'll get php3 up. If its up, we'll soon have ourselfs a message board guys. And then you guys can talk to each other about how retarded these stupid php3 designers were. Actually... its probably not their fault. I just wanna be angry at someone. November 14, 2001: This one is a real rant. So I've gotten a lot of different opinions on how to approach a girl. Here's one idea I've gotten from a male friend: You gotta put yourself out on the market. You see, girls really don't have that much of a selection. Thats why you see so many girls end up with cruddy guys that you think are jerks! Its cuz they don't have a choice! So what you ahfta do is make yourself available. Let people know that you're on the shelves you know? Some marketing. That way, girls will know that you're dateable and don't hafta settle for guys that aren't as good. So that seems to be one method, but I seem to have this problem. See, the way I figure it, almost everyone I know has seen my webpage at one point or another, and the one thing that comes GLARING out of my webpage is: I AM SINGLE. I WANT A GIRLFRIEND. So, I'm thinking I can't really make myself MORE available than that! What the heck do I do? The girl perspective is a little different. Here's what I'm told: You hafta start making yourself more attractive to them. Start to get some nicer clothes. Take care of yourself better. It wouldn't hurt to do your hair and dress up every once in a while. Stuff like that makes you standout a bit more from the usual engineering guy. And you know, a lot of girls want engineernig guys. We DO go for nice guys. So seriously, you gotta make the effort. Its not too much to ask for a guy to dress up to impress a girl, because frankly, girls are expected to dress up nicely to impress guys even if they're not courting him. See, so basically, that last paragraph was, "You need to spend more money before you can get a girl to look at you." Buy more clothes. Be more attractive. BAH! The girl method states that you must LOOK nicer. YET, the girl still states that women go for the "nice" guy. Thats somewhat true and somewhat false. As near as I can figure it, this is how a girls brain works. while (true) { if (appearance of Guy is cute) { Place Guy in dateable bucket; } else { Place Guy in undateable bucket; } while (dateablebucket.size > n) { guy potetialbf = dateablebucket.pop(); if (potentialbf is a nice guy) { place potentialbf at the bottom of the bucket; } else { remove potentialbf from bucket; } } } Translation? Girls look for the cute guy first. Then after they've looked at the cute guys, they go through this bucket of cute guys and immediately weed out the non-nice ones. I've left out the issue of gold digging for now to keep things simple. But here's what it comes down to. Girls like nice guys. Sure... who doesn't right? BUT, they key is, they only care about nice guys, who happen to be good looking. Man.. I just can't stand it when some girl is really adamant and says, "Girls really DO go for nice guys!" Its not true... lets face it. Its not. You can be self-righteous if you please, or you can be mad at me... but c'mon dude... you want nice guys? I can point to 50 + nice guys that are single right now and have a hard time getting a girl. So you can see I'm a bit angry about this whole situation. I mean, guys tell you one thing, girls tell you another, AND THEY BOTH DONT WORK! I mean, how sucky is that? All the people you know who's had good luck or bad luck in dating... all their advice essentially amounts to "Go and do it. I don't have advice for you. Look better and be nicer." Basically.. thats useless to me. Try harder how? I've got a limited income man. 9 bucks an hour isn't exactly the lap of luxury. Argh! So you know what I'm thinking? Well, I look at the people who've actually had some success with dating. In general, this is what I see. The two people meet and their friends for a good while. Then, they start liking each other. Both don't know that the other party likes them. It slips around and they start just talking more and talking more and eventually, one of them can't take the pressure and DTRs (determines the relationship). So really, how does that work? You can't give someone advice on how to make that happen. Stuff like.. "kelly, you should ask her to go get some coffee with you." Does that really work? I have a feeling that all it would do is scare the girl. Its like you're trying to do too much too soon. The one I REALLY love is, "Just get to know her better." RIGHT. WATEVER. Someone PLEASE decipher THAT one for me... I mean.. what the heck does that mean? They say stuff like "Go talk to her." I talk to her all the time. Anyways. If you got more dating advice... I'd be glad to hear it, but for some reason *ahem see above ahem*, I'm just a little cynical about all of that. November 14, 2001: Alright guys. Its time to pool our collective knowledge together. I have a favor to ask. A friend of mine has found this picture:  And I really need to find out who it is. In particular, the cute girl on the RIGHT of the page. And shoot, if you're that girl on the left, we don't mean any disrespect, your friend is just hot. If you happen to know, PLEASE, IM or email me. IM: ChrisKC01. email: ckcheng@uclink4.berkeley.edu November 13, 2001: So I was talking to a female friend the other day and she said something along the lines of "What will you do if your future girlfriend or wife reads your page? She's gonna think she got involved with this REALLY desperate guy!" And so I think to myself, "Oh crap. OH CRAP! WHat am I gonna do? So I start thinking, well, most likesly, girls don't even read my page right?" Turns out that isn't true. Cuz man, I've gotten some IM's and I'm like.. oh crap. You're a girl. You've read my page... And then I'm all embarrassed. Oh well. This next rant is about a comment made regarding the previous rant. So someone says, "Dude, Kelly, its OBVIOUS that you're wrong because its easier to find a guy with a gf that looks better than him, but how often to you see a guy with a girl thats uglier than he is??" So i'm thinking to myself. Hey. He's got a point. And then I go.. wait.. wait. wait.. Lets analyze this a bit more. So lets say I took all the eligible single people in the world and categorized them by age. So then, lets say I arranged them in order from prettiest to er... not as pretty. Then based on this lineup, I pair up all the guys and all the girls. Best looking guy gets Best looking girl. Now, I bet if you look a all those couples, you'll probably say, "Hmm... I think the girl is better looking than the guy." Why is that? Well, for the most part, guys don't care about appearances that much. Some do, and have desires to move to different apartments because they have so many clothes that they run out of closet space, but others are just kinda watever. We don't throw clothes all over our bed figuring out what to wear today and stuff. Still, you may not believe me when I say that this pairing of guys to girls will create couples with more attractive females than males. Well, look around. You figure, girls always go the extra mile. Seriously. They buy their super expensive clothes with their super expensive dress and super expensive shoes (which i never understood... NO pair of shoes is worth 300 dollars). So whats my point in all this? It is NOT unfair for me to ask for a girl who is "prettier" than I am. In the attractiveness scale, girls just rank higher! I know, this is HELLA chauveanistic(sp?) but c'mon... girls admit that they do spend a lot more time on makeup and all that stuff. Heck... I've had makeup on before. It sucks. Really.. it does suck a bit to be a girl for stuff like this. And makeup is ridiculously expensive. Case in point: There's this stuff that I was supposed to use for my nails when taking classical guitar lessons. The stuff is basically this cream you apply to the hooves of horses to make the hooves stronger. Well, turns out some makeup guy figured, this was good for older women who want nice and strong pretty nails. The hoof cream? that stuff is like.. 20 bucks for a gallon. The makeup version? 20 bucks for 6 ounces. But anyways. Again, I'm not asking for much, just a wife who is prettier than I am. Oh, something else came up today. So I walk into to tutoring today (yes! another tutoring story!) and I sit down. Next to me, another tutor is helping a girl with some C or C++. I can't remember, something about a tree structure. So anyways, the tutor turns to me and says, "You know, this girl went to your high school." And like.. I'm stuffing my face with my breakfast and I look at her and I just blank. I have no idea who this person is. So I'm like.. oh.. You went to Monta Vista? She says yeah and all the usual, and I'm thinking to myself, she musta been a first year. Thats why I don't recognize her. So I ask, "so what year are you?" Response: "Class of 2000" I'm class of 98 for reference... I shoulda recognized her. Oh well... I really hate it when i can't recognize people from my school. Like.. I should atleast be able to tell if they went to MV or not right? Anyways... I just think I should know these things. On a separate note.. she was pretty cute. She looked sorta japanese but wasn't. Big eyes. Straight azn hair (you know.. the dark brown with some highlights). I kinda like that look. Hmm.. maybe she'll come in again. Talking with girls at the tutoring center is a good reason to brush up your CS skills. Cuz then you can "tutor" them. Man.. I hope no one from the self-paced center reads this. I think I'd get busted. Darnit, this is turning into a monster rant again. And its really unfocused. I'm not too happy with my work today. I think it hasta do with using emacs on this funky server instead of my good ol trust windows notepad. For some reason, this emacs is configured so that "backspace" doesn't work. You hafta hit delete instead. I tried changing the stty but it didn't work. Oh well. Anyways, a friend of mine game up with this REALLY AWESOME way to motivate himself to study. What you do is 1) find a REALLY REALLY hot girl. 2) get to sit right infront of you whenever you do your work. 3) make sure she wont talk to you until you finish your work. Sweet eh? That would TOTALLY work. Man... I'd be like.. dangit... I GOTTA FINISH TODAY. It'd be really sucky if she wouldn't talk to you if you didn't get good grades but I think we can make compromises. OOoo.. maybe a rewards system? If you get an A+, you get a kiss or something? I dunno... I'm sure I could figure out a system. Either way, the KEY is a HOT GIRL. That said, if you're interested in helping myself or another one of my friends to study, my IM screen name is ChrisKC01. Go ahead an IM me. I'm online all the time. I have no life. Oh well. November 12, 2001: So I'm thinking to myself today, "Why is it that I suck SO BAD at meeting girls?" Well, I think I've found yet ANOTHER reason why. So, a lot of people say that the way you feel about yourself reflects a lot in the way you present yourself. If you have a lot of self esteem and confidence in your abilities, then you present yourself as a competent intelligent man. If you're painfully shy and believe the worst in yourself, you'll come off as a snivelling little kid with no useful abilities whatsoever. So here's the thing. I've heard that your self-confidence has a LOT to do with your appearance, and since atleast half of your appearance is how attractive you are, it makes me think that I'm just not confident enough in the way I look. So follow me here: I'm thinking, "I am not an attractive guy. I am average but not ugly." So I'm meeting a girl and I'm painfully aware of the fact that I'm not the next Tom Cruise. When I meet her, I hafta depend on wit, and humor. Some guys can walk into a room and have girls faint and stuff like that, but I just don't got that. So what do I do? This is just another roadblock to meeting girls. I mean, I just don't have the confidence in myself to go out and talk to people. There's too much fear of rejection. Now consider the flip side. This is the WAY opposite extreme. Pretend you are the next Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt/Fabio/Josh Hartnett etc... You walk up to a girl, you KNOW you're at least pretty good looking. So immediately you come of as better than average. I mean, its like meeting a cute girl. For some reason, the things that come out of a cute girls mouth are more interesting you know? And if you're a guy, DO NOT DENY THIS. I KNOW how guys think. I could sit for hours listening to a bunch of mindless rabble if its a cute girl talking to me. So I'm imagining girl feel the same way. That means I'm starting from a disadvantage. If I want to keep the attention of this lovely lady, I gotta be either 1) SO FUNNY that she wants to listen more to laugh, or 2) SO INTELLIGENT that it makes her think and wants to delve into the deeper workings of my brain. There's a third option, but I don't really like it. Its what I call the "sensitive guy" approach. You just "listen" a lot. Basically, nod your head, say stuff like.. "oh.. thats so sad.." and ask all the questions that they want you to ask so that the girl can talk more. The reason I don't like this? Well, it doesn't take a lot and the girl's interest in talking to you is to USE you. She's not interested in you as a person. I dunno where this is headed, but I've been thinking that I really gotta beef up my stats. Like, I gotta be MORE talented and MORE this and MORE that to attract a girl. Cuz my looks just don't cut it. And of course, we've all heard, "guys are so superficial blah blah blah." OH PLEASE. _OH_PLEASE_ I say! Girls are AT LEAST as superficial if not more. If a guy is as superficial as possible, this is what you might here. "Her face is not attractive. No body." Thats about it. If a girl is superficial? check this: "He's not rich enough. He doesn't wear nice enough clothing. His car sucks. I don't like his butt/legs/calves/ears/arms/chest." If you think I'm kidding about some of those body parts, I'm sure I can find out which girl it was that told me they pay attention to those parts. Guys? Lets face it. We look at face, legs and chest. I'm sorry, I'm a guy... I know I shouldn't be peeping, but thats what guys do. And as embarrassing as that is, girls do the same. They do the top-down scan as much as any guy. They're just better at keeping it covert. It was called to my attention, however, that my desire for a cute girl is probably reciprocated by girls! Girls want a cute guy right? A really cute girl should demand a really cute guy! To want a cute girl and not expect the girl to want a cute guy is a double standard right? Right? YES. Thats RIGHT. But you kno what? Sometimes, I just don't really care about the double standard. Here.. lemme show you an example. So, its kinda tactless for a girl to say I wanna marry that guy for his money. But lets face it.. it happens a lot, and at some point, we don't really even care that much that it happens. Lets flip the coin tho: Lets say I met a girl who I really really liked but I said, "She's just not rich enough for me." I put this to you: How many female friends do you think I would have after saying something like that? FEW. VERY VERY FEW. Now then.. is this a double standard? I'd argue that yes, it is. And people sometimes say, "no real girls actually think that way," but I'd hafta say I've met some that do. I used to think that child birth pains were the ULTIMATE equalizer. No matter how much crap girls give us, we hafta take it cuz you know what? Child birth sucks. It sucks a lot. So I'll be happy to have all sorts of double standards because child birth sucks. But these days, they just plan C-sections. I'm starting to get a lot less lenient with stuff. But here's the key, girls CANNOT deny that the double standard works in their favor AT LEAST as often as it hurts them. Opening doors, paying bills, asking for favors. OH DANG thats a big one. Girls can get help from Profs SO much eaiser. Girls just come off as nicer people. They're "delicate" and all that. Heck.. here's a great one. I know a person who says she'll put in JUST AS MUCH WORK into the house work as her spouse after she gets married. So I'm like.. oh.. so you'll do the dishes? "No.. i hate dishes." How about the cooking? "I can't stand to touch raw meat, he can do that, but I'll do anything else." How about vaccume and clean up the house? "Ugh.. I hate that stuff, I'll do anything but that." So I finally ask her, what WILL you do??? "I'll decorate." WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? I'll DECORATE?! Unbelievable. Let me give you the guy equivalent. Girl asks a guy "Can you wash the windows, walk the dog, or take the kids to practaice?" Guy: "Naw, I really hate that stuff but I'll go ahead and upgrade my computer." Doesn't that seem ludicrous? So this girl is basically saying, I don't wanna do any house chores that require work. I just wanna do the fun stuff. But I'm not angry about this. I'm more angry that people DENY THAT THIS EXISTS. Guys, gals... lets face it. Girls get a lot of our this girl guy relationship thingy. I don't deny that girls get a lot too, but really, who typically becomes whipped? THE GUY. Don't let that delicate asian shell fool you. Under that pretty soft skin is a whip wielding power hungry I-AM-WOMAN-SCREAMING creature that will devour your soul. I might be exaggerating a little but seriously, you guys hafta see that the double standards are all there, and a lot of times, they favor the girl. So anyways, the point was to say that yes, I AM holding a double standard that I want a pretty girl, and since that girl would hafta want me, she can't want a really attractive guy, and THIS is a double standard. And I'm saying YES, it is. But double standards are old news. And really, even from a Christian perspective, the roles of man and women are different. This idea of haveing equal everything? Thats not really all that Christian. Man and woman have different roles. (tangent: man's role - make money , woman's role - spend it) And to say that the double standards to not exist is .. well.. its just kinda ridiculous. I'm not justifying the fact that I'm asking a lot out of a girl. In fact.. I'm probably being ridiculously unfair by asking for a pretty girl that doesn't want a handsome guy, but I'm a guy. I can dream. And one day, my future wife may read this and I might get into a lot of trouble, but to be honest, I've got nothing really to be ashamed of. Every guy, EVERY GUY wants a pretty wife. I haven't heard of a guy who says.. "yeah... I want my wife to be plain looking." It just doesn't happen. And do girls every say "I don't want my guy to be good looking." Sure sure, some say "He can't be really good looking cuz I'll be paranoid of him cheating on me" but really, I don't buy into it. They still want an attractive mate. So what am I saying really? I'm saying: I WANT A PRETTY GIRL! I know its a lot to ask, so I'm guessing it probably wont happen. Oh well. This rant is getting long and its nearing 5:00 AM. So here's what I gotta leave with you guys. The double standard exists. It helps as much as it hurts girl. But girls only point out how it hurts them. Gotta take the good with the bad. The one that used to irke me a lot? If I wanna vote? I gotta sign up for the draft. If a girl wants to vote? There is no draft. But its alright, cuz I don't hafta give birth, but AGAIN, the double standard hurts as much as it helps. Thats all I gotta say. November 11, 2001: I've really been running out of things to rant about. I need topics guys. C'mon, I know some of you read this. None of you are curious about what my busy mind has to say about some topic or something? I've got an opinion on just about anything and everything. And the times I don't have an opinion, I've got opinions on why I don't I have an opinion. Its really great. So c'mon! Bring it on! I can handle the questions! With that out of the way, rant time. So I brought my camera to the Self Paced Center a while back. You can find the pictures of all the tutors there here. If you happen to see mine, you'll notice I look like a GIMP. Man... its really depressing seeing pictures of yourself. When I look at pictures of myself, I always wonder if I'm one of those people you see and think to yourself "ooh... shoooot dude... he's UGLY." Like... I might be the Mike Ricci of my friends! For those of you who don't know who Mike Ricci is, he's a guy on the San Jose Sharks. He's missing his two front teeth and his nose is totally deformed from getting broken multiple times I think. Anyways... its really deperessing. Some of my friends have told me "Kelly, you're not ugly." (If you check the quotes page, I think you'll see that somewhere) But anyways, all right, so maybe I'm not butt ugly, but like.. where does that put me? I would like to able to attract a beautiful wife! See.. its pretty common that your wife is typically about as attractive as you are. The EXCEPTION is that if someone has a redeeming factor other than appearance that greatly outweights the difference in beauty. This is all from psych 1 by the way. So be that as it may, I hafta start cultivating other skills that will make up for my lack of hottness. Suggestions guys. What do girls want besides being unbelievably hot with a muscles bulging out of places you didn't know existed? I NEED to know, lest I stay single for the rest of my life! November 10, 2001: New recording by Ben Poon and I. You can download it here. The song is pretty cheesy but I love it all the more for it. Its a guy singing to a girl and the lyrics are basically, though all these trials and problems, just know that I'll be here for you, and that I will be the one for you. Its really sweet and its pretty popular to sing at weddings and such because its so perfect for that occasion. Its about total committment. Its really sappy so I wanted to try it and asked Ben for help on the harmonies. Ben, btw, knows the harmony to just about every single song out there. So go ahead and take a listen. Its only done on one take and we didn't really practice before hand, so certain parts sound funny. I might redo it if i have more time. November 9, 2001: Oh.. by the way, I never proof read my rants. I just type as if i were talking and it all comes out. Thats why its kinda incoherent at times. No proof reading means I don't really know what the structure of my rant is gonna be or what point I'm trying to make. I just talk. So anyways, I just "finished" the project. My partner and I got 40 out of 50 test cases working and you know what? Thats good enough for me. The effort to get those last 10 cases working is exponentially difficult. Basically, we're giving up. Cuz we suck so bad. He's also got other things on his mind, like a cs184 project and a 122 midterm and what not. So now that I'm done with projects for a while, I got myself some more time to think. And so far I've been coming up blank. I think the whack on the noggin I got yesteday probalby isn't helping things. I've noticed I'm not quite as smart today as I was a couple days ago. Its probably from all those brain cells I lost from not eating right and passing out. Well, anyways... I think I hafta celebrate the completion of another evil FATEMAN project. Time to play starcraft. See ya. November 8, 2001: Well guys, today's rant will be either really really funny, or really really pathetic. You decide. So, if you've been reading up here, you probably know there's a project due tomorrow in cs164. Well, my partner and I decided to go all out last night and try to do as much as possible. So we met at around 6:00 and started working. We merged our code and found LOTS AND LOTS of bugs. So then you know... we just hack at it for a while and before you know it, its 3 AM. Around 3:15 ish, I start not feeling so good. I like I feel kinda light headed. My fingers are also feeling kinda tingly. The next thing I remember, is a dull pressure on my head and I hear the voice of my partner saying "Hey Chris, are you okay?" I come to my senses and I'm lying on the floor of 330 soda. In other words, I passed out. I actually fell off my chair and landed on the floor of the CS lab. Sick isn't it? Well, suffice it to say, I don't think we'll be finishing this project. Not by friday, and I'm sure not gonna sacrifice my health AGAIN for a stupid program. Seriously, its just not worth it. I guess yesterday just kinda plain sucks. See, the thing is, I doni't feel so bad about not finishing, its more like I feel bad because I'm screwing over my partner. I mean, whats he gonna do with a useless partner? He's basically gotta finish the project on his own. I'm gonna go in to help him today, but I know I'm not gonna be pushing it. If i feel nasty, I'm gonna leave. Thats for SURE. You know what the irritating part is? This class really isn't that hard. It was just planned very very poorly. So the way this project was assigned, we originally had 2 weeks to do it. So here's how it panned out. Lets say it was assigned friday. Well, in a week and a half, there's a midterm scheduled on wednesday for the same class. So, that means you can work on the project for... oh.. maybe 3 days, and then you hafta start studying for the midterm. So the midterm is on Wednesday, and the project is due the Friday immediately following. The midterm is 10% of your grade, The project is AT MOST 5%. How many people do you think started on the project before the midterm? FEW. VERY VERY FEW. Especially not the ones in cs186. A friend of mine named Lisa is taking both cs164 and cs186 (like me) and we are both in a dung heap. She's smarter than me so I'm sure she can pull it off. Me? I'm an idiot this semester. All I know how to do is play starcraft and ... erm.... I'll let you know when i find something else I can do. Ah.. well, all I wanna do is pass. See, the really funny part is that my parents really did warn me about this. They said, its not worth sacrificing your healthy for a grade. The things that are importantt in life are that you try hard. If you do your best and you just don't succeed, there's nothing you could have done anyways. Based on my previous rant, you probably know I'm Christian, and in light of that, I really think God has taugght me some humility last night. I'm a weak man. There's nothing I can do to change that. I'm not good at CS and there's nothing I can do about that either. For some reason, the last couple years have been pushing me away from doing anything CS related. First, I talk to Ben Tao for a copule years and I start thinking about law school. Then I start talking to Jason Kuo about getting a teaching credential. I was also taking cs150 which took its toll on my health and now, I've REALLY made myself wonder if I wanna do this frot eh rest of my life. Its not everyday you faint dead out of your chair in the CS lab. I tink this stuff just isn't for me. I guess yesterday had a brighter side. In the self paced center, there's a course called CS 3S. Its the introductory CS class that they have everyone start out in. The way it works is, you can take it for 2, 3, or 4 units. So basically, the first three units, you learn syntax. The last unit is a project. Each student who does a project needs a tutor to sponsor them. As it turns out, three people have already asked me to sponsor them! Its really flattering I think. Either 1) they think I'm a nice guy, or 2) they think I'm easy. TANGENT: You know how people say that GSI's and TA's give breaks to girls? Its true. ITS VERY VERY TRUE. Its really had to say "Sorry, but thats not correct and I hafta take off some points" to a beautiful lady. END TANGENT. So anyways, one of the girls who asked me to sponsor her is really really attractive. Its a lot more than just being pretty though. Like, she has this combnation of beauty and competence in her that is really really attracticve. I dunno what it is, but like, she's really sophisticated and seems like she's got a great personality that I haven't even touched on yet. And that brings me to the next topic. The things that I feel most guys like in a woman. There's a couple things: 1) beauty. Lets face it, everyone is a little superficial. You want a pretty wife right? I think its pretty vital in a marriage that you be at least a little bit attracted to your wife. Physically attracted. And ahen you meet someone for the first time, you always remember the cute ones. If you're a guy, I KNOW THIS IS TRUE FOR YOU. 2) Sense of humour. This is pretty high up there. If a girl can't laught and hasta take everything the wrong way, then I'd say its really not gonna be a fun relationship. Infact, it'll just be a lot of misunderstandings and stuff. Having a sense of humour is a superset of being able to laugh at yourself. This is one of those things that is pretty vital. If you always get angry at your own mistakes, you'll be a very miserable person to be around. 3) Intelligence. Most guys aren't looking for Einstein reincarnated, but they are looking for competence. Common sense. The ability to absorb information and to draw conclusions from the things around them. Its really really UNattractive when a girl has absolutely no idea of things around her. Oblivious girls (aka airheads) just grate against my nerves. Who wants a girl with whom you can't hold a conversation with? Its just not worth the effort. 4) Ability to communicate effectively. I used to not have this requirement but the last couple years have shown that its pretty important. If you can't express yourself accurately, then the relationship is on its way to a bumpy bumpy road. I've seen this with quite a few relationships. I think every single relationship has problems with communicating, but if a girl is really really bad at it, then I'm thinking its probably not a good idea to go for her. Why? Well, you guys may be a great couple, but you'll just be angry at each other a lot because you wont be able to understand what she means. Anyways, I think I've ranted long enough for one day. I'm sure there will be MUCH more this weekend after the project is due. Thanks for listening guys. November 6, 2001: Got a project due this friday. Its really frustrating because its so darn abstract. I don't understand whats going on at all. Anyways, I could complain about compilers forever, so I'll just move on. So this has been a somewhat interesting yet painful couple days. The interesting: So a girl ICQ'ed me the other day. We've never met; evidently she just looked me up in the ICQ database and messaged me. So we chat for a bit. No big deal. So the phone rings and I go to pick it up. I hear something like.. "I can't believe... oh wow... sorry.. bye." I'm quite puzzled. Who wouldn't be? I'm like, what? hello? heeeellooo?? Anyways... I hang up and go back to sit on my trust chair in front of my trust computer. I notice that the girl I was talking to on ICQ had sent me a message. So I open it up and it says something like, "I just called you." Crazy eh?! So basically, a random person found me on ICQ, noticed that my phone was listed on my info (and its not anymore) and she called me wondering if I would actually post my own REAL phone number up there. Yeah... well, for those of you who are wondering, my REAL phone number is listed on my Resume's, so if you REALLY wanna get it, you know where it is. So anyways, thats pretty much all. The girl and I, we chat for a while. She's a student, I think she said something about being a 2nd year. Seems nice enough. Pleasant voice. Haven't heard from her since, but still, weird having random people ICQ me and call me. Some of my friends have been egging me on to go find her. *ahem SRI* *ahem ALLEN* I really don't know how good of an idea that is. Personally, I think people who ICQ random people are looking just to chat. I can't imagine them actually wanting to meet the people they talk to unless they're surpassingly interesting. And to be blunt, I'm just not that interesting. Well, we'll see what happens, and as usual, I'll keep you posted. Oh, btw, I just watched Cowboy Bebop the Movie - "Knockin on Heaven's Door." I don't wanna say too much but suffice it to say that if you haven't watched the entire series, it doesn't spoil anything for you really. So go ahead and watch it. If you wanna borrow it, I have it on CD. There are some glitches in it, so you'll hafta seek past a couple bad sectors, but otherwise, its quite watchable. Anyways, its around 3 AM right now, and I really should be going to bed, but I just can't. I wanna talk about more stuff So I recently had a pretty engaging conversation with a friend of mine that really puts into question why people believe what they believe. Are people only the results of their genetic disposition combined with the environment they grow up in? Will a man with the exact same genetic pattern growing up in the exact same environment eventually grow up to have the same preferences in everything? I don't know. This whole idea stemmed from why people look to religions. A little background: I'm a Christian. I was born into a family that attended church every sunday and had prayer meetings and all that. So pretty much since the day I've been able to mutter and cry, I've gone to church. So, for me, I guess it was pretty expected for me to turn into a Christian in the end from a third person perspective right? Well, what about people who aren't exposed to any religion at all? Is there any motivation to look and see whats out there? Well, according to my friend, there really isn't a "lack of exposure." See, without being exposed to a predefined religion, people find their own decisions and determine the world as they see it and based on their logic. I don't wanna mention any of the person's particular beliefs, but it seems that no-religion is just like having a different one. There are different tenants, and different implications based on those tenants. For those of you familiar with set theory or parsing grammars, or even Database functional dependencies, consider the basic tenants to be a "minimal cover." Then all the implications of these tenants are essentially the "closure" of the tenants. This closure of tenants is shapes the way a person acts and reacts to things around him. For example, one basic tenant of Christian thought is each person is made in the image of God. Thats kinda abstract, but if you really take that to heart, it means each person, whether they are pretty or not, poor or rich, healthy or sick, is unique and important. Why? Because he/she was made in the image of God. GOD! Anyways, the conclusion from the conversation (which lasted into the wee hours of the morning) was that there really was no reason for him to look and explore religions because basically he's got one. And to look through all the other religions in the world would be a waste of time because he is content with the beliefs he has. The really interesting thing he pointed out was that I was in the same position. I've got a set of beliefs, and I know I wont sway from them. I don't do a lot of research on other religions and ask if that religion is right for me. I guess the major difference is this, some people view religion as something abstract. A set of rules to live by, some morale standard. But thats not really what Christianity (and most other religions I know of) are about. In actually, Christianity is what we believe to be the ABSOLUTE truth. In this era, its really hard to believe that. How many times have you heard something like, "that maybe true for you, but its not right for me," or "relative to you, that maybe okay," or "its all relative to each person?" The last decade or so has shown a remarkable trend to relativism. There is no absolute truth. Instead, each person is correct in his or own her way. But logically, speaking, that just isn't true. Is there a God? You can't answer "Yeah, there is a God for you, but not for me." Why? Well, consider this. There are two answers 1) YES, there is a God, and 2) NO, there is NOT a God. If there IS a God, then the person saying "Yeah, there is a God for you, but not for me," is saying, essentially, yes, there is a God but I refuse to acknoledge it. On the other hand, if there is NOT a God, then what he's saying is "Well, I'm gonna let you live in your deluded world while I secretly believe what I believe." So many people would say that the second interpretation is just fine. I would say that it hasta be one of the most cruel things you can do. If you had a friend, who you felt was wasting his time away on earth by doing all these "pointless" things, and you didn't tell him, wouldn't that be tragic? So whats this boil down to? I've stated previously that it would be really really cruel to not warn your friend if you felt he was doing something you think is a waste of his life right? But the flip side is, a lot of Christians feel the same way. I've got some friends who are not Christian. And they're really good friends, but quite a few of them have told me basically to not ever try to introduce the notion of religion to them because they really aren't interested. Now look at it from my perspetive. I'm Christian, and I believe that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you're going to Hell (sorry for being blunt). Well, given this, it makes sense that I would want to WARN my friends! The ones I care about should be first on my list! I should be saying, hey! You're my friend! I don't wanna see you suffer later because of what I failed to do now. I dunno what my friends who are reading this will take away. Maybe they'll be more tolerant when I bring up religion and Christianity, or maybe they'll just reaffirm to me that they don't want to hear it, but in all honesty, I'm torn. What do I do? Wait and hope that something works in their lives to turn them around? Or try to encourage them myself? If I don't take action, it feels like I'm letting them waste their lives. Of course, this is all from my perspective. I guess there's a lot of emotion mixed with logic in this rant, which means it probably wasn't as entertaining and good deal more confusing. If you're interested at all in what I'm ranting about, you know my IM. November 4, 2001: Well, this weekend was kinda fun. I did no work. Well.. actually, thats not true. My partner in cs186 is cool and he finished a lot of the cs186 project and I ended up working on tha some this weekend. We got it done and its all working now. I also went to a party on saturday evening. It was really interesting... until the male stripper showed up. Then it was just gross. GROSS. Yeah.. I just don't wanna see that kinda stuff. But anyways, the party was fun.. but I'm really socially incompetent. I don't like interacting in large groups or meeting random people with no common ground. I don't really know what to talk about. Just stuff like, "how are you doing?" "What major are you?" "How do you like it?" "Classes going okay?" I mean.. what else can you say? I realize I really like smaller groups a lot more. And parties aren't my thing. I re-iterate. I can't dance. I don't drink. There's nothing for me at a party. So I basically left early against the wishes of two of my friends. Oh well, anyways.. .so I left early. And guess what? It was a good thing that I left! Turns out my friends were on the BArT and they got stuck in Oakland and the last train just left so they called me and I gave them a ride back. So it all worked out. So anyways, I've still got a busy week ahead of me. Proj due friday in cs164 (compilers). Its the type-checker. Hopefully we'll finish. If not... I'll be working really hard this coming weekend. REALLY REALLY hard... cuz you lose 50% of the points per 24 hours late. Man.. CS is really irritating because its all or nothing. You really don't get any points for getting something sort of done. Oh well. Rants from October 1, 2001 - October 31, 2001 |
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