December 2004 Archives

Merry Christmas! Am I the only person who's noticed that "Happy Holidays!" is a phrase that's rapidly supplanting "Merry Christmas" as the customary spoken greeting of the season? While "Happy Holidays!" has certainly been around for a while, I'd always thought it existed almost exclusively in the realm of greeting cards and department store ads. But just this year, I'm hearing it more and more in person, and the political-correctness of it all makes me cringe. Not to mention, it always comes off sounding like a bad Hallmark commercial. Next year, someone's going to smile cheerfully at me and say "Season's Greetings!" and I will go absolutely berserk.

Let's not forget the original reason for the seasonal cheer: rejoicing in the birth of Jesus Christ, sent to fulfill the Father's great plan of salvation. Keeping that in mind helps me see the significance behind the phrase "Merry Christmas!"

While you're probably expecting a Christmas-related entry, this is actually a "food" entry that I've been meaning to post for the past couple weeks. I've got a little down time right now, so here goes.

We went to Seasons for our annual company Christmas lunch, and the meal did little to change my opinion that it's the most overrated restaurant in town. I usually don't mind paying a little extra for a meal, as long as it's made up in either:

1. taste
2. quantity, or
3. atmosphere.

Seasons, I'm assuming, is banking on the first and third, and falls short. Their lunch menu is somewhat uninspired, consisting mostly of pizzas, sandwiches, and pasta dishes. Nonetheless, they charge around $5 more for what you could get somewhere else. The only discernible difference is the nomenclature: the pizzas are actually called "flat breads," for example. And don't you dare get the name wrong. Last year, when my co-worker Will asked for a hamburger, the waitress corrected him and said it was a "chuck burger."

Last year, I ordered fettucine carbonara. While it tasted alright, it didn't leave me satisfied. This year, I wanted to make sure I got my company's money's worth (thankfully, they paid for the meal), so I ordered a "chuck burger." It looked like a slightly-seared hamburger, and it tasted like a slightly-seared hamburger, but there must have been something indiscernible about it that let them charge another $6 and give it a different name. I couldn't help but start thinking about The Emperor's New Clothes: is it possible that people only speak well about the restaurant because they'd be embarassed to admit to spending a lot of money at a not-so-great place?

In their defense, Seasons had great service (maybe it helped that I knew our waiter from high school), and the presentation was very nice. It's worth ordering one of their lemonades just to see one: they became conversation pieces. The dessert menu was pretty good, too, although my chai cheesecake didn't taste too much like chai (though it did taste very good.)

But for what my drink, meal, and dessert cost, I'd be able to feed two people at, say, Ding How, for much better-tasting food. Like their heavenly "chin ju" chicken. I have no idea what they put into that (it can't be much more than salt, pepper, and ginger) but it tastes so good, and unfortunately, I can't find a recipe for it. You'd figure I'd be able to find one through Google—that's how I figured out how to make honey walnut prawns—but so far I've come up short. Any tips in the right direction would be appreciated.

Speaking of chicken, this past week I tried the buffalo wings at Grand Central Station (see picture above), a little restaurant in West Sac named after the NYC depot. The hot sauce is rated on the following scale:

1. medium
2. hot
3. inferno
4. nuclear
5. insane

I tried out the "inferno" wings, and although they were very good, they weren't that hot: probably equivalent to a medium-hot elsewhere. I didn't even break a sweat, and didn't need much water relief. Still, it's kinda nice that I can now impress people by letting them know that I survived "inferno" buffalo wings.

Today (yesterday—it's already past 2am!) was the latest in a string of ‘late-to-bed, early-to-rise’ cycles. Ugh. It seems like I'm always moving, rushing from one deadline to the next with hardly any time to stop and breathe. I think I'm averaging 1.5 meals a day. Nonetheless, God gives grace, and I see His hand at work in my life every day. He answers prayers, effectively and often in ways I'd never expect. Learning to turn things over to him in prayer these past few days has been an exercise in humility and trust. I've been convicted time and again by how I'm not immediately thankful when God answers specific prayers: I often catch myself hours or even days later thinking "Wait, I prayed about that and God delivered." Lord, teach me to be more thankful.

So right now, I'm taking a break from trying to get ddd over at CSIF to run remotely on my Windows box at home. These late nights have led to interesting experiences: taking a walk with Carla Bruni across the darkened Quad on my way back from a coffee break; or the geekiest sign ever on a late-night printer paper run to Longs.

For lack of better content, here's a meme found via (you guessed it) Jonathan!

1. Current time:
   2:40am
2. Current weather:
   Damp.
3. Current books:
   The Sovereignty of God
4. Last movie watched:
   Hoosiers. Great movie. Favorite line: "Gods come pretty cheap these days, don't they? You get to be one by putting a leather ball in an iron hoop."
5. Last meal eaten:
   Late dinner: Half a pear and some cheese.
6. Current benchpress:
   Oh man, I haven't lifted in months. I could probably put up somewhere around 160lbs., if I really try.
7. Latest realizations:
   It was really nice of Professor Matloff to make sure we learned how to use ddd.
8. Current mental state:
   Muddled, as fatigue starts to win out over my late coffee buzz.
9. Current unattainable wish:
   Finals canceled for snow day. It could happen.
10. Current love:
    Music. Can't imagine programming without it.
11. Current happy thought for everyone:
    Not really happy, per se, but…"Be strong and courageous."

10 random things I learned this weekend

1. I can actually get a significant amount of homework done on a Friday night if I really try to.
2. Shaft in Space is not a real movie. But it should be.
3. Big Macs taste horrible. I can't imagine how I ever liked them.
4. Something in McDonald's food just shuts down my brain.
5. Beyoncé sings the song Baby Boy. What a lucky guess.
6. There's a Vitamin H. But it's really a B-complex vitamin.
7. I can fit into size 9 ladies' pants.
8. I don't bowl well when I start thinking about technique.
9. No one cares if you play Thriller at a 70's theme night. Because, frankly, it's a darn good song and you can play it anytime you like.
10. When you look like a three-year old's favorite uncle, you'll have a hard time detaching her from your arm.

Random resumé question

Let's say you live in a small Northern California town. Let's say you build a website for a guy in Australia. Let's say it's for a series of creative projects that are filmed in Australia, but written in Florida (well, one of them anyways). Let's say the website is hosted in Texas.

What exactly do you put down as the location of the job?

Random wishes

Someone asked me this week about what I want for Christmas. I answered with my typical "I dunno." I'm not really huge on receiving gifts for Christmas. I'm not sure why. Still, if you really do want to give me a gift, you can check out my Amazon.com wishlist. I only ask two things:

1. Please don't buy me web design books. It's just a thing. I don't think I can explain it.
2. Please don't spend more than $20 on me. No, seriously, don't. Well, unless you spend $25 to get free shipping from Amazon. But no more, please.

Or…you could help me get a free iPod by using my referral link to sign up for freeipods.com. If you tell me first, I can show you how to do it without needing to pay anything or getting spam-bombed. Plus, you'll score a couple free Blockbuster rentals like the ones I've been trying to give away. :)

This reminds me of a useful article on horrible gift ideas. Have I been guilty of some of those? No comment.

Random chicken.

My mouth started watering after reading Yi's write-up on El Pollo Feliz. Does anyone know of any good Pollo Rostado places in the Sacramento area? Are there any Pollo Rostado places in the Sacramento area? Everyone says NorCal Mexican food isn't good, but I'm willing to take my chances. And it's tough to argue with paying $10 for a meal that feeds four people. And, well, it's roast chicken…mmmmmm.

As the last leaves of autumn make their way to the earth and the days wane ever shorter, I'm inexorably reminded of the fact that the color is being drained out of my life, erm, my undergraduate days at UCD are drawing to a close. With the prospect of The Real World looming ever larger on the horizon, the "J" word keeps growing on the horizon. So, if you or someone you know is looking to hire a web developer in the Sacramento area, let me know.

In talking to others about my immediate future plans, I get the sense that no one really "gets" what I do. "What's a web developer?" "Do jobs like that really exist?" It's something that many people have trouble fully grasping—almost as if what I did bordered on the mystical realm.

You'd think I'm exaggerating, but I've lost count of the number of times people have called me the "tech guru" or the "resident web wizard." I get the sense that people imagine me as some sort of voodoo priest with a keyboard—I wiggle my fingers at the monitor, and stuff happens. Sometimes I laugh when I see this, other times I get annoyed.

The annoyance stems from two misconceptions that come from this image: first, it perpetuates the myth that I'm "good" with anything even remotely related to computers —and anyone who's had me attempt to set up their DSL will attest to the truth that, in fact, I'm not. No, really, I'm not being modest—I'm not.

Second, the "magic" imagery seems to carry with it the implication that what I do "just happens" without any work—when in truth, every site I build takes a tremendous (and often exhausting) effort. I'm the kind of person who'll stay up late at night trying to figure out why a div I was fiddling with at work is a few pixels off. Is that passion, or obsessive-compulsiveness? I don't know.

I came up with an analogy the other day (and felt pretty good about it until Google told me that I wasn't the first person to think of it): I'm a CSS Ninja. I creep up on unsuspecting table-based layouts, disembowel their insides with a few well-practiced slashes, and fade into the shadows. What I leave behind is a site trimmed of excess fat—it loads faster, is easier to maintain, and looks no different (or better) to customers. That's me: stealthy, calculating, and fast. Exclusively for the forces of Good, of course.

Naturally, I like this analogy because ninjas "are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet." But it has its flaws: the extent of what I'm interested in (and capable of) goes beyond just CSS, and it doesn't get me very far with people who don't have a web development background.

So what do I do now? I don't know—or rather, I've all but given up trying to explain it. Not that I think others can't understand me, but I struggle with finding the right words. How can I make sense if I tell people that I like programming problems, but that I don't like programming? "techie" friends of mine often don't understand why I like something as bare-bones as HTML (before I correct them by saying all the cool people now call it XHTML) and "non-techie" friends wonder why I don't salivate at the thought of fast graphics cards and video games. It's frustrating because I believe that my passion for what I do like comes from idiosyncrasies in my personality: so when people have misunderstandings, it's as if they don't understand a part of who I am.

So how do I begin to rectify this? Well, first, here's a secret: I'm not that interested in computers. Really.

I'm way more interested in what people can accomplish with computers through human intellect, reason and creativity—qualities that reflect the great God in whose image we were created.

Second, if you really want to understand what I'm interested in—and, in a sense, understand a part of me—read this great article, which I found through an equally tongue-tied web developer. This quote sums it up nicely: "It's a hybrid position, you are someone that paints with code. Programmers don't accept your work as real code, and designers don't consider it design." Joy, something to look forward to.