Apr 2010
- Apr 6
- the glue of civilization
It's like some people completely ignore the fact that a civilization cannot survive without people giving a shit about other people who aren't related to them. The higher the proportion of stupid, selfish assholes there are in your civilization, the faster it will collapse. Cooperation with non-relatives is the only reason why we managed to evolve from the savanna and not get completely wiped out by other animals who are bigger and stronger than us. Behavioralists have classically called it altruism but, in reality, it's enlightened self-interest.
· Read more… - Apr 6
- random completely out-of-context thought on a slow tuesday afternoon at work
It's not much of a sacrifice, to hold back so she could be with the better man, if there wasn't any chance she'd be yours anyway.
· Read more… - Apr 6
- a dearth of creativity
For some reason, I started looking back at my blog posts from exactly 3 years ago and I just realized that somehow, despite working 80 hours weeks which included 30-hour calls every four days and some rather intensely harrowing experiences, I somehow managed to write a lot. I honestly don't know how I did it. Now that I have more free time, I can't seem to put two words together into a coherent thought.
· Read more… - Apr 7
- orphan is down SPOILERS
I missed ToC25 again because everything seems to conspire against me making it home before 7 p.m. PDT. Besides, I've been having problems with terrible latency, as bad as 3,000 millisecond pings, which may actually be a problem with the latest patch if the forums are to be believed. So I ended up finally beating Final Fantasy XIII instead.
· Read more… - Apr 9
- picking through the debris
in the shadow of the white mountain gleaming
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still ice-crowned though the cherry trees blossom
the sky pale blue as the warmth of daylight fades
I'm lost in a memory of a dream forsaken - Apr 11
- fantasy genre mashup
Because I read all four existing books of A Song of Ice and Fire right before I started playing Final Fantasy XIII, I keep wanting to call one of the characters in the game "Jon Snow" instead of just "Snow".
· Read more… - Apr 11
- help, i'm trapped in a disney movie, and i'm not the hero, or even the sidekick
The Americana at Brand is one of those hybrid residential/commercial developments that sprung up like weeds during the housing bubble, featuring high-end boutique shops and restaurants with condos on top of them. They're basically the next-generation mall, carrying on the long tradition pioneered by Southern California, of creating quasi-high-density pseudo-urban experiences in the setting of a private development (see also the Paseo Colorado, L.A. Live, The Grove, Universal City Walk, Downtown Disney, etc.)
· Read more… - Apr 12
- the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed
So I finally got a look at an iPad today. Surprisingly, I haven't been to the Apple Store at the Glendale Galleria in a long time.
· Read more… - Apr 14
- life? don't talk to me about life
The other day I was eating by myself at a restaurant and happened to overhear a heart-to-heart conversation between (two people who I assumed to be) a father and his teenage son. The father had (something like) this to say:
· Read more… - Apr 16
- arguments
I think it's naive to believe that for every argument, there is someone who is right, and there is someone who is wrong. The most fractious arguments I've witnessed are between people who were both right in their respective contexts, with no obvious way to harmonize their conflicting mind sets. The question is, in an argument, do you go for the win and try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you're right and the other person is wrong, even if it means destroying a relationship? Do you try to aim for common ground, even if it means compromising on your beliefs? Or do you just keep arguing until the other person gets exasperated and quits entirely? Or is there some other option that I've never managed to consider?
· Read more… - Apr 17
- you seem a decent fellow. i hate to kill you.
So I just finished watching "Kick-Ass" and starting thinking about revenge fantasies.
· Read more… - Apr 18
- little girls who will stab the hell out of you if you cross them
(And of course, this reminds of the time when my sister was six, and she got really mad at our neighbors and chased them down the street wielding an axe. True story.)
· Read more… - Apr 18
- face it, there are a lot of advantages to centralized control
I've been struggling with playing Dragon Age: Origins on my MacBook Pro, mainly from problems that have nothing to do with actual game play. From the system requirements, I would've thought that I have an adequately spec'ed machine to play the game, but I'm plagued by mysterious intermittent slow downs and lock-ups. I'm fairly certain it's the game, since I don't seem to have problems running other apps. But what it reminds me is why I tend to stick to consoles for gaming.
· Read more… - Apr 20
- grammar nazis
You may scoff at this as being mere political correctness, but I say it's about precision.
· Read more… - Apr 20
- post-mortem
So it's been a little more than a month since I stepped away from Friendfeed. To be honest, I didn't expect to be gone this long. I really did need to take a break though. My initial intention was to walk away for a few days and let the threads fall off my front page, and let my temper cool. But work got really busy, and the past month ended up being pretty rough. The whole episode pretty much took a back seat to everything else I had to deal with. But the longer I stayed away, the more I felt that I had to work through why I got so pissed off before I came back.
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