Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Let Me Try This Again, Part 3.2: Entertainment: Video Games

Published
by
Josh Kim
on May 14, 2008
in Personal
. 0 Comments

A Sidenote

If this post makes it up successfully, I will have made three posts in a 24 hour period. If people can define a recession as an economic downturn for two quarters, I can define the “return” to blogging as more than two posts in a 24 hour period.

Or something like that. And now for something not all too completely different.

World of Warcraft

This game has been a… “game changer” in a couple of instances in my life. It has made me a hermit, lost me the A in a very A-able engineering class, and helped me keep friendships across state lines. Needless to say, the online phenomenon that is WoW has changed my life for the better and for the worse.

I recently picked up the game a couple months back with the intention of enjoying the game’s content from 60 to 70. Which I did. A bit too much. I even started the insanity that is the 25-man raids. (I had run a 40-man before, but it was quite a while ago.)

I had quite the fun. But then at one point, it started to become work. I had to get the items. It started to become that addiction that I had once gotten rid of.

And this WoW business… it’s amazingly addictive. Take away everything… the professions, the pvp, the thinly veiled dress-up game… but keep the social always-on aspect of it, and it’ll still be extremely addictive. This is, of course, assuming you have actually passed the tipping point of knowing other people that are willing to play as much or even more than you.

[And here it comes: the obligatory reference to some web application] It’s like Facebook. But prettier. And instead of profiles or other personal information, you have… the Frozen Shadowweave Set.

And there you go. And so I quit. Maybe I’ll return with the next expansion. I don’t doubt that it is a possibility, but I hope to have something even more exciting to look forward to in the coming months.

And no, not Rock Band. Well… maybe.

Rock Band is delicious. The question is about the Wii version of this game.

Ever since I played Guitar Hero 1 on PS, I’ve loved the series. And it didn’t matter that I didn’t know the song: I liked the one-to-one mapping of notes to some strange finger combination on the fret buttons. I actually found more musicians and bands to listen to through the entire process of playing 1, 2, 80’s, and 3.

Disclaimer: The only song that I cannot beat on expert is Through the Fires and Flames. And I feel like if I really really practiced, I could. It’s just I don’t feel like dumping so much resource into it. Some people would say “lamer”, but I’m okay with myself. Maybe not.

Sidenote: Moving along, the whole point of this series is to get all this personal crap out so you guys can actually get some meaningful content. Let me continue for just a bit longer.

Fast forward to recently when the Wii version of Rock Band was announced, as well as the news about the whole gimpedness of it all. No DLC. At all. But then, a glimmer of hope was found in the form of a song pack disc, Track Pack Vol. 1.

So it seems like I’ll be buying this. Another $170 thrown towards “Entertainment”. (I’ll most likely be renting the song pack from Gamefly, though.) I better start saving now because my budget just doesn’t allow $170 for “Real-Time Interactive Music Simulation”.

What else… What other “games”

Scramble? No. I hate that game.

Other Wii games? Boom Blox will be coming very shortly. Zack & Wiki is amazing. WarioWare, as I said before, was an incredible party game.

Yeap, that pretty much sums up Video Games.

One More Thing

Right. Portal.

That was one of the most disgustingly amazing games ever. I still do not understand to this day the infatuation with the Companion Cube, but it was like eating sticks of butter. Hmm… butter…

And that ends. Video Games.

And that ends, the three part series on the three of most pertinent things of my life: Twitter, Health, and Video Games. It’s kinda sad, really, but at least I got the ball rolling.

I think now that the ball has started to roll, I need to make sure there’s enough ground for it to roll. The blog is in disrepair (category structure is screwed up, commenting is also screwy, older/newer links are not working correctly) and I intend to fix it. Maybe this week.

Closing

I like sidenotes, tangents, and disclaimers. But I’m realizing how much they break up the flow of the posts. I have to figure out how to do prettier footnotes with little superscript numbers. Bah, more work to do on the blog itself, I guess.

Let Me Try This Again, Part 2: Health

Published
by
Josh Kim
on May 13, 2008
in Asides and Personal
. 0 Comments

Introduction

Okay so here we go, another rousing rendition of facts about my life. While I try to regularly post these, I’ve begun to make them private (and no, they’re not on this server… hacking won’t really help you here, hehe). You’ll remember back in the day when I’d post these huge lists of things I wanted to get done during that day or week: These days, it’s becoming more of a priority queue.

Health Problems

Yeap, they’re continuing. And I’m glad to hear that at least I finally have a diagnosis to one of my problems: enlarged liver. (Insert your heavy drinking jokes here… although, I can still count the number of times I’ve drank with my fingers… and although I have alcohol in the freezer, fridge, and in the kitchen… moving on) It’s gonna be awesome going in to see a gastrointestinal specialist the day after Alex’s wedding.

Tomorrow I get to see a rheumatologist. And on Friday, I’ll be starting physical therapy for my ankles.

Isn’t insurance great?

Medical Insurance in the US

I’ve gone to the doctor more times in the past couple months than all times I’ve gone before that in my life. Now, this could be because I didn’t have the best of health insurance, or even had health insurance to begin (in certain points of my life), but I just haven’t had a need to go to the doctor. The only real time I had to go to the hospital was for the scar on my right forearm. (A story for later)

Over the past ten or so doctor’s visit I’ve had, from your general doctor to your specialists, I’ve learned a bit more about how this entire system works. And there are a few interesting things I’ve gathered.

Firstly, I wonder why I talk about my pains and ills to a nurse/assistant who in return write them down on a piece of paper that the doctor reads. Why don’t I just tell the doctor directly? Are the nurses/assistants some kind of filter? At least, in my case, I end up saying the same thing to the doctor after he or she enters. Eh.

Lots of old people are at hospitals. Who knew?

Oh, and about hospitals. Being silly and not knowing of the system, I thought you just went into a hospital and they fixed you. I thought the whole process was more or less like going to a computer place to get your computer fixed. I guess there’s this thing called being “in-network” and “out-of-network”. But now, after thinking about the money making part of the field of medicine (the field I like to call the “Bob Kelso” field), I see a clearly picture of it all.

tan(Medial Insurance in the US)

The huge pharmaceutical companies are like proprietary software vendors. You have to keep going back to them for your livelihood. However, there are generic brands that you can buy for, sometimes, half the price. The generic ones aren’t as advertised in the media and the doctors. And so, in this simile, the generic brands become the open source, reverse engineered awesomeness.

I was upset when I was told to take Lyrica for my ankle pains. Instead of actually freaking treating the issue, I’d just be paying some company to keep my ankles “fixed” for the time being. In actuality, it was just prescribed to me to see if the pain was caused by some neuropathic issue.

So was prescribing Lyrica to me like hiring consultants to fix a company’s internal IT? Tee hee. [runs away]

cot(tan(Medial Insurance in the US))

I do like how my health insurance is amazing: I didn’t know all my tests were free. I was curious as to why my doctor wanted me to get a cholesterol test, but after finding out that all lab work is phreeee, I decided to do it. (Hooray for normal levels.) Of course, I had all kinds of tests before a sonogram (yes, make your pregnancy jokes here, go… at least I can say that I know how that gel feels like…)… hooray for the sonogram for detecting the enlargeness.

Overall Realization of the Frailty of Life

In the midst of all this health insanity, I feel so… helpless. I can’t run. Heck, I can’t stand for too long. I can’t really type too effectively without these wrist supports. My entire abdominal section is killing me from time to time.

And all this time, I’ve been wanting to run and play and code. But without health, none of my dreams will ever be achieved. As soon as I’m allowed to go lift and run and whatnot, I’ll keep it going forever.

I’ve been known to be a bit extreme. During my junior year in college, I did go a little bit overboard with the eating of healthy greens, the running of many miles, and the lifting of heavy weights. Then I crashed, and tried as hard as I could to maintain. The entire system failed about a year after I graduated from college, and I haven’t been able to get back to the desired body shape. I’m actually heavier than I started out with. (I really hope my muscles didn’t run away with all this fat that’s covering it.)

So I was ready to go all out again. Then all these insane health issues occurred. I had to scrape my plan of becoming (using Dan Sun’s terminology) an adonis.

Start Your Old People Jokes… Now

To tell you the truth, dear reader, I know more people who are younger than I. I’m kinda getting sick of all the arthritis jokes. Heh.

Returning from the Deep Slumber

Published
by
Josh Kim
on April 16, 2008
in Personal, Site News and Web Applications
. 0 Comments

Staring at a blank TextMate Blogging file, he sits. A man, in his early twenties, wound a bit too tight from only thinking about the things that he should be doing, rather than actually doing it, reaches out for his large Iced Coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts.

Is caffeine his only Muse? Or maybe it’s the desire for that caffeine… that inner desire to use anything that’ll give him the edge in this roller coaster game called life.

And thus. He begins to type.

I don’t want to quote Britney Spears, but you get the point

Yeap. I’m back. Things have settled down to the point where I can sit here for the next 2 hours and not move until something gets typed up.

I have a strange feeling I’m going to have a lot of bumps and bruises at the end of this, you know, from trying to get back on the blogging-cycle.

I don’t even remember the last time I made an actual post that contributed to the blog-o-sphere… because all the while I was using this thing called:

Twitter: The New Frontier

I’m just very sad I didn’t get into the game early enough. As an avid (relatively) user of web applications, I couldn’t believe I’ve been so behind on this new medium.

I’ve been having a hard time explaining to other people (and to my old self) what Twitter is really for. And to tell you the truth, I still don’t know. I feel like this channel is still very new, that rules are still being created.

There are some social norms that have developed with more traditional channels of media. For example, it’s pretty much the norm to call someone back if you missed his call. But in the world of Twitter, I’m still left with how an actual conversation starts and ends. I feel like so many people use Twitter in whatever way they want. A whole other post could be written on the different type of twitterers (Tweeters? Twitterati? See what I mean about how new this thing really is?) exist.

A few random points about Twitter after using for a bit.

  • Following/Followers: I have this thing about keeping this ratio less than one. Does anyone else care at all?
  • The “@” reply: I reply as much as I can. I rarely start them, however, unless I know that person through twitter. Then “@” is used liberally.
    • Of course, the problem with contacting the people directly is that the conversation is no longer handled by Twitter, so the record of said discussion now is at the mercy of the AIM logs/email/phone conversation
  • HUGE usage pattern differences
    • I’ve begun to use my twitter as a place where I keep track of all my past AIM away messages. Morsels of wittiness or some other random links
    • I’ve been using Twitterific. This is basically the core set of functionality I wanted for StatusFix, the project I’ve stopped working on.
    • As long as Twitter continues to be as open with its API, I would have no problem entrusting it with all my status data. The only problem is… stability.
      • Please be rock solid stable, and prove to the Rails hater that it’s very possible…

But yes, Twitter is quite fun. Finding new people I’d like to follow and having people that follow me… it’s like this new frontier.

However, I don’t see this thing becoming mainstream anytime soon. It might happen, but just not soon enough for it to matter to me.

Google Calendar: The Next Web App I Need to Learn

There’s really nothing else to say here. I just begun to realize that I’ve been losing calendar data for some time, and haven’t really cared about it. I guess I’m paying a little bit more attention to it now.

The Reviews Galore: MacBook Air, Nintendo DS, Gamefly, AppleTV, Sumo Lounge Chair…

So many random new toys, just waiting to be reviewed. I wonder if they’ll get the treatment they deserve. Because…

GMATs. June 21st.

Yeah. I’ve got this to worry about. I guess I should start paying a bit more attention to this one. It’ll probably be helpful in trying to going for the MBA.

I’m losing focus

I told you I’m rusty. Heck, there isn’t an image associated with this post. Frick.

Oh, maybe I could end with this

Yeah. So this is what I’ve been doing in my free time. WoW, indeed.

hanvia-burning_blade-frost mage

That’s plenty enough eye candy for now.

And yes, I’ve completely given way to just insanity.

Let’s try again tomorrow.

Angry Letter to Planters

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 2, 2008
in Personal
. 2 Comments

What the heck. I wanted some delicious peanuts, but I got this jar of crap.

So what did I do? I wrote a letter.

Hello,

Yesterday, I picked up a jar of Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts. I was appalled at how it tasted.

I’ve always been a fan of the Planters brand, and have always bought Planters when I had a hankering for some Honey Roasted Peanuts. This was the the first time I’ve tried your Dry Roasted Peanuts. I bought a store brand (Meijer’s) jar of peanuts just last week, and enjoyed them immensely. I had thought that Planters brand of Dry Roasted Peanuts would at least taste on par with the store brand: I was wrong.

What I got was a large jar of bland, tasteless peanuts. Not only bland, but it left me with this really disgusting aftertaste taste that can only be described as a manufacturing defect. Whatever it is, it isn’t a very pleasant taste that gets left in my mouth after I forcefully swallow a handful of it.

And that’s not all. I was over at a friend’s place, and seeing that they had Planters Honey Roasted Peanuts, I knew I had to have some. And even there, I tasted that same blandness in HONEY ROASTED peanuts… the ones that I enjoyed so much from the start.

Maybe it’s just this jar and my friend’s jar, but I’d like to get some kind of compensation for this. It does say “satisfaction guaranteed” on it, and this incident has definitely made me think twice about what brand of peanuts to buy.

We’ll see what happens from here.

Those that know me pretty well will know I love honey roasted peanuts. Heck, peanuts and almonds and cashews and… yeah. I like nuts.

That’s a setup, by the way. Someone bring it home.