dennis yang dot com

Happy summer solstice! It’s soooo nice here today in SF, so go outside and play.

But, if you can’t, enjoy this SWEET display of turntablism by these 4 french DJs, winners of the DMC World Team Championships..

kick ass. If you like that one, check this out too… spin dj is a god. Hooray for YouTube.

Woo.. just got back from a action-packed Vegas weekend with the Jerks… I’m exhausted and broke now, but it was an awesome time. 15 of us made the trip up this time, and once again, we drove. I’m not sure why we always seem to forget what an ordeal the 10 to 12 hour drive is, but every time we go to Vegas it seems like someone suggests we drive, and we all are like.. hmm.. really? we did that last time and it didn’t suck (that bad). But ask us somewhere around the 7th hour, especially on the way back, and I’m sure we’d tell you that flying is a much nicer way to go. And i LOVE roadtripping.

Anyway… it was a great weekend.. I played poker at the Aladdin and Mirage and made some money, but I promptly lost it all (and then some) playing craps and blackjack. Grr.

I didn’t take many pics while in Vegas, but I think other people did, so I’ll post pics when available. Hersh has already posted a video of the trip that he made.. Apparently, Hersh and I didn’t hang out at enough, cuz if you watch the video to the end, Hersh says that I’m not in the video, and I have my own little bit (thanks Hersh). But… If you look closely, I actually made it into the video for about .5 seconds… Maybe I’m camera shy now that I’ve gained several pounds of broken ankle fat. Hmm.. which reminds me.. soon to come.. project “dennis is too fat and can run around on his new ankle, so let’s fix that.” Oh boy.

pic by pius.

I’ve been using the Y! Mail beta since like last September now.. it’s super ajax-y, and they’ve done a lot of great stuff with it.. It’s got a 3-pane (msft outlook-ish) reading UI, and sometimes you forget that you’re in a web application. They’ve even put in a right-click menu! The only thing that I really disconcerting is that the “undo” function with ctrl-z doesn’t work, and since I’ve forgotten that I’m in a web application, I try and “undo” things with the ctrl-z.. Not a huge, huge deal, but still something..

Anyway, Yahoo! has done a fine job with the application, although admittedly, I still somehow prefer the bare-bones utilitarian UI of gmail… and feature-wise, I find the threading view *very* useful (especially since my friends are prone to replying-all). Finally, I find that emails are easier to organize via tags rather than folders.. Ie, many times, an email doesn’t just fit into one folder, and with gmail that’s not a problem.. with Yahoo! (and Outlook, actually), that’s an issue.. you have to pigeonhole.

But, I really like the little bouncy dude that appears when Yahoo! mail is loading slowly.. Granted, performance hasn’t been too much of an issue for me with Yahoo! so it’s been kind of hard to trap Liam, but.. finally I managed to catch him today… And there he is bouncing away on the right.

I got the big screw removed from my ankle this morning (the remaining 5 screws and plate stay in there, unless they bother me).. Wahoo! It was a fairly simple procedure with just local anesthetic (which was the most unpleasant part, actually).. The doctor made a small cut in my ankle, and then using a screwdriver, unscrewed the big screw from my ankle.. Eeek! Well.. at least I got to keep the screw…

Doctor Mike used a Fluoroscope during the procedure so that he could see exactly what he was doing, and then afterwards, he showed me my ankle on the screen.. LIVE! Man, it’s sooo cool to see your ankle moving around all x-ray-like on the live screen…

So.. it’s almost 2 months since I broke my ankle, and I’m progressing really well… I can’t get wait to start working out again and getting everything back up to strength. My left leg is noticeably smaller than the right now, but, with each day, it definitely feels stronger…

I saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth tonight at a movie night that Willo organized… I knew really very little about the movie going into it, except that Al Gore was in it and that it was a documentary…

Here’s the trailer:

Word of warning though.. the trailer makes the movie seem like it’s gonna be SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY exciting (your ticket buys the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge).. but, watching Al Gore talk about global warming is kind of like a very well done college lecture. His presentation was so slick, and Apple must be ecstatic over the amount of product placement they got in the flick (which fits perfectly with their iconoclastic, leftist, I’m cooler than you image). I do think it was a slightly alarmist, but, as he said in the movie, people need a jolt in order to actually do anything about stuff. I mean, ice caps melting, hurricanes, floods, disease, drought and war… Kind of fitting that I saw this movie on 6/6/06… Repent! The end is nigh! But yah, I do recommend that you see the movie since it definitely has encouraged me to do some more reading on the whole issue, and that’s good… As far as alarmist documentaries go, I much prefer Michael Moore’s work, cuz at least we’d be laughing through most of the movie.

Anyway, this movie reminded me that once, in a previous life, I had made hybrid cars and really wanted to make the world a better place.. Hmm. I mean, once in awhile, little glints of my lefty self surface, like when I bought a tree in England a few years ago. But.. I’ve been really feeling myself growing quite libertarian (I think I’ve been reading too many economics books) the past few years.

So, I’ll have to do some more research on this whole thing… I’m not convinced that legislation is necessary to combat this problem — I think that if enough people are made aware of the issue, they’ll start to choose carbon friendly choices… Or, maybe economic pressure (like from rising gas prices) will be enough to make an impact.. Anyway, I’m rambling, but I do feel a little good about the whole thing cuz at least my commute to work doesn’t contribute to global warming..

Oh yah.. in the trailers, there was this movie about this girls’ high school basketball team that looked really good, The Heart of the Game that looked really good.. opens next Friday!

This weekend was chock full o’weddings… First, I flew down to Burbank for Nancy & Mike’s wedding.. and then back up here to SF to drive up to Sonoma for Dan & Anne’s wedding.. fun fun fun..

Nancy & Mike’s wedding was at the Universal City Hilton — they served a traditional Chinese 10 course wedding meal.. so much tasty food!!! Nancy and I started at Anderson Consulting in the same start group waaaay back in 1997.. There were 20 of us in that start group, and none of us still work at AC (now Accenture). But, many of us still remain in touch, so it was great to see many of them at the wedding.. For one part of the wedding, Nancy and Mike asked their wedding party to perform skits about how Nancy & Mike were before they met, how they met, and how they are now… The wedding party worked really hard on their skits, and did a fantastic job…

Dan & Anne’s wedding was at the St. Francis winery up in Sonoma… Set at the base of a huge mountain and surrounded by a huge vineyard, it was a gorgeous setting for a wedding. Dan’s rabbi from Ohio came in for the wedding and gave a fantastic service, which was followed by a super tasty dinner and then dancing. Woo dancing! I was informed that I won the award for ‘best dancer’ despite my broken ankle. Woo! Who likes dancing? Me!

I had my new camera for both of the weddings, and had an awesome time documenting everything… So, make sure to check out the pictures here and here.

Congrats and best wishes to Nancy, Mike, Dan and Anne!

Well, I’m back in SF now from my brief East coast tour… I was out there for AJ’s 30th birthday party in Philly, so Happy Birthday AJ!! 1976 rocks!

A bunch of us descended upon Philadelphia for the AJ-fest, and we went out in Philly’s old city to celebrate the 30 years of AJ that have transpired so far.. Well, we didn’t really make it that far in old city cuz we really just stayed in at AJ’s friend Dave’s house and drank there… I’ve never really been out in Philadelphia before, it’s pretty nice… kinda feels small towny hiphoppy, but the whole Old City part seems really rejuvenated… Then, Sunday AJ’s parents had a lovely BBQ at their house in New Jersey… The whole weekend was documented very, very, very, very well…

What was also exciting about this trip was that this was the first time I got to travel with the whole new broken (now mended) ankle.. I still have this huge walking boot on there, which has a ton of metal in it, so when I walk through the metal detector, the thing goes crazy. On my way out east, the SFO folks were very thorough in asking me to sit down, remove the boot (which they then sent through the x-ray machine, along with my fancy new cane)… And then they ran the metal detector wand thing over my leg, and when it got to my ankle.. yup.. BEEEP. Oh boy. Everyone always jokes about the whole screws in the ankle setting off metal detectors and all — I guess it’s true. I just wonder if I’m gonna set off the metal detector every time now (after I get the boot off)…

Now, contrast my SFO experience with the friendly folks at JFK… I walk through the metal detector, which beeps like crazy — I now know to walk over to the “wait here cuz the thing beeped” line.. I wait there patiently for a little bit, and then am motioned to sit in the “sit here cuz the thing beeped” chair. I sit patiently for about 5 minutes, and then one of the security people is like.. “What are you doing there? You can go now.” Oh. Um, I don’t argue or anything, but… yah, I suppose there’s a few holes here and there in the whole security process, which is slightly disconcerting. Yah. Hmm.

So, I’m off to the airport again tomorrow.. flying down to LA for Nancy & Mike’s wedding on Saturday.. Then, back here Sunday morning so that I can head up to Sonoma for Dan & Anne’s wedding. Yup, it’s a crazy wedding weekend… woo.