Pixel Pushing Monkey

For most of my childhood, I was a scrawny little boy that didn't eat very much. I developed a habit of eating junk food before dinner, eating while watching TV, and leaving half bowl full of food sitting around while doing homework. Even when Mom forced me to sit at the dinner table, eventually I'll find a way to migrate over to the TV and my desk. Neither Mom or I could've predicted how much I would grow to love food. Oh, the miracles of puberty.

As irony would have it, my puberty wouldn't arrive until I moved to America to live with Dad. It's almost as if all those years of begging to finish my dinner was completely pointless, as Dad took all the credit for my healthy development into a young adult with little and no effort. Not that my Dad was a terrible cook, in fact he was a terrific cook when he had the time; but it was also a fact that Dad could've fed me anything remotely resembling human food, and I would've gladly shoveled them with complete disregard to the actual content.

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There are many places that I would never volunteer as my destination, any countries with political instability, any countries without consistent supply hot water on demand, and any countries without reliable internet connections. On the other hand, there are places that are unavoidable, despite the harsh conditions. For example, the public bathroom.

The perils of the public bathroom is often absent in the recess of our minds, which I suspect is a form of primitive self preservation technique. Denial is obviously the most effective tool for curbing one's natural instinct to avoid dangerous situations. Despite my brain's better effort to mask the dangers, thus disallowing any confrontations of the public bathroom, I will put my own life on risk to address this series of life-threatening issues today.

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Writing about passing of someone who's close to you is never easy, especially when it's your parent. I was looking for the perfect thing to say, to create the perfect moment akin to some Hollywood cliché. After spending months writing and deleting several drafts, I've finally accepted that there is no perfect way to say goodbye, and there is no way to encompass everything my dad meant to me with words. Structure, flow, logic, presentation, none of that is important anymore, at least not here.

Our lives as a family, has been a series of comedic, if not tragic timing. My father had, at several different points in his life, prominent career that seemed to point towards the ideal of success. He was once a manager of human resources at RCA of Taiwan, subsequently owned a very successful company with a few partners. I don't think my father was ever a business genius of any sort, rather his rapid ascension at almost any given opportunity had more to do with his genial personality. Family might be his priority, but friends were a close second to the extent of seemingly eclipsing the first. However, that forgiving personality would prove to be his flaw as well.

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My father passed away on August 12th, 2008.

I just got back from Taiwan from all of the funeral proceedings. There are way too many thoughts and memories to process at the moment.

Within any office environment, there are always some very interesting social dynamics. Every department has corresponding personalities that one would expect knowing the stereotype. The people working in accounting department tend to be cautious and conservative, straight to the point with numbers and figures; but often seem to have a hidden wild streak to offset the hassles of rather restrained daily personality (These are most likely, the craziest and drunkest people at company parties). Engineers are often filled with plethora of trivial knowledge from all walks of life, and have a tendency to always drive meetings into levels of detail that it was not intended for. Designers are always somewhat aloof and odd in their ways, seemingly to harmonize on a different frequency than everyone else. In a politcally correct climate, we regard stereotypes as taboo, when in reality stereotypes are often established from years of factual observations.

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Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've just moved to a new place, thus has been very busy trying to rearrange my life as a result.

Should I post pictures of the new place?.. Hrm...

In my younger days, I used to mock my father about how far he is behind the time, the fact that he can't touch-type (he's a classic two-finger, and on occassions where he's striving for productivity, three-finger, typist) or really grasp any idea of what this whole internet deal really is. Occassionally, he still asked me whether sending me email across the ocean, from Taiwan, would cost me any extra fees (naturally, he's more worried about me having to pay for receiving the email, than the fact that he might have to pay to send email... I love my dad).

It's an old, used, beat-up cliché, but I never thought I would one day consider myself closer to my dad's category rather than being one of the hip kids that's ingrained with all of the happenings in the tech world. The fact remains that I'm moving towards being one of the old geezer of the internet. Even though I'm still a notch below thirty, I have been in this tech bubble for nearly a decade.

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In regards to my low energy & lack of sleep:

(10:31:49 AM) nano: you need more sleep
(10:31:51 AM) nano: lunesta maybe
(10:34:39 AM) Steve: or maybe just watch the commercial for it like, 1,000 times
(10:34:40 AM) Steve: that'll put me to bed
(10:36:10 AM) nano: its so peaceful
(10:37:14 AM) Steve: so very peaceful
(10:37:17 AM) Steve: or viagra commercials
(10:37:42 AM) Steve: ironically, for a commercial about a product that cures erectile dysfunction
(10:37:46 AM) Steve: it's also very good at inducing it
(10:37:57 AM) Steve: watching a middle age guy tossing a football through tires repeatedly...
(10:38:02 AM) Steve: is just... too.. depressing
(10:40:08 AM) nano: hahha
(10:40:12 AM) nano: so true.

Oh, the magic & wonder that is the blogosphere-rama. The last post on my evolving view on love & relationship, seemed to have caught a few unusual eyes. One of which is Jenny Block, an author who lives in an open-marriage lifestyle and is writing a new book.

I found her article on the beginning of her open marriage fascinating:

Portrait of an Open Marriage

You can also find her blog here at My Open Book, she has posted the first chapter of her upcoming book on the website. I'll find sometime to read it in the next few days, maybe.

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Contrary to population belief, I've always felt that the internet didn't spark a revolution as much as an evolution of existing ideas. Most certaily, "web 1.0" was about bringing traditional commerce to a new avenue; but in its nature, the idea behind most of these businesses didn't differ much from their traditional counterpart. In fact, most web 1.0 companies had close ties to mail catalogue & phone order business, just with a different interface & avenue that took less resource to manage, and gave you more information than what could be expressed in more traditional mediums. Even the advent of search engine giants at the time (oh Yahoo, how far have you fallen?) was a direct cousin of our traditional 20,000 page yellow pages that the phone company so happily left on our front porch (and I bet, the cause of many back-injury related work-comp claims for postal workers).

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