dennis yang dot com

So.. We’re loading up the dishwasher the other day, and I put the silverware into the dishwasher.. I noticed that there were some pieces of silverware in the little basket that were upside-down… or so I thought. They were handles up, so I turned them around, so that the fork tines were sticking up out of the basket.

And immediately a debate flared up in the kitchen.

There were two camps..

The handles down camp (my camp) claims that by having the business end of the silverware sticking out of the basket, they get cleaner. I mean, seriously, if you cram all of them in the basket like that, there’s no way that any self respecting water stream is gonna weasel his way in there and clean everything.

The handles up people claim something about the danger during unloading caused by the business ends bristling everywhere.. Yah, ok. I’ll probably get gored the next time I unload the dishwasher, but at least I’m being gored with a clean fork.

So yah.. anyone? Opinions? Can we all just get along?

ps. Yes, I know the image on this post has nothing really to do with the post, but I thought it was funny.

This comic just about sums it all up. Hooray for dating. It sure is fun. yah.

Anyway.. more good stuff from this dude can be found at ingredient x and his YouTube page. Enjoy.

[Found at sfist]

Whilst having lunch at Golden King (mmm. tasty vietnamese food) today, we noticed that there was a midway setup right across the street right on the edge of Portsmouth Square right in Chinatown. How odd. Why would there be midway games? They had most of the classics — “shoot out the star”, “balloon dart toss”, “football through the toilet seat”, “basketball shoot” and “ping pong ball in the fishbowl”.. I was sad that they didn’t have “shoot the water gun in the clown’s mouth” game though — that was always my favorite, although now that I think of it.. that game isn’t really found in the traveling midway, just the more permanent ones at like Cedar Point and the like..

Anyway, $5 for a whole basket of ping pong balls seemed like a pretty good deal…

And after that whole ordeal, the group only got ONE ping pong ball in a bowl (good work, James). The prize? 2 goldfish, of course. In a plastic ziploc bag.

Meredith has named them Ping and Pong. I believe the over/under on their lifespan is.. um, 2 weeks right now. We’ll see how they do.

Hmm.. So, 20 copies of this book just arrived at my house today..

Carlo astutely pointed out that the book isn’t even out yet… Hmm.. So, a little more detective work leads me to find that the author is having a book signing tomorrow at the bookstore around the corner.

Hmmm.. Interesting…

Update:

Aha.. so it turns out that Amazon thinks I suck. I ordered this radiator last week to deal with the latest cold snap we’ve been having here in San Francisco.. And instead of sending me the radiator, Amazon sends me 20 copies of this “You Suck” book.

And the best part is.. Amazon refused to send it out via a faster shipping method, so I have to wait another week! Thanks Amazon! You must really do think I suck!

Update 2:

Ok, after calling back to complain about what I thought was a poor resolution to their mistake (sending me another radiator via standard shipping — so it would take *another* week *brr* to get here), I got a much more helpful customer service associate.. They still couldn’t ship it via 2-day, but she gave me a refund on the original shipping cost, so I guess that’s something. The first Amazon dude didn’t really appreciate the humor of them sending me 20 copies of a book titled “You Suck”, but Michelle W. was certainly more friendly. Thanks Michelle W!

Whoa.. this is so meta..

Oh, and the iPhone? Enh. I’m gonna wait and see how it turns out in real life first.. I’m skeptical about how the whole no-buttons approach is gonna work out. I didn’t get an iPod until the 3G-no-click-feedback model, and that interface wasn’t exactly the best. True, I love my nano now, so I’m thinking I’ll give Apple a few years to work out the kinks in the phone before I make the leap. That said, I’ve been a Nokia loyalist since 1997 (ok, with one slight motorola lapse, but only for a few months) so hopefully Nokia will get its act together and make a good phone again.

So I’m back from my Christmas in Vail trip, and oh what a blast it was.. In the few days right before I get to Vail, it’s just my luck that a HUGE storm blew through Denver, dropping 3 feet of snow on the mile-high city, closing the airport (which is known for its ability to deal with inclement weather).. But, lucky for me, my flight went without a hitch.. SFO-DEN actually landed early, and I caught my connection to Eagle in plenty of time. The drive from Denver to Eagle is only about 3 hours, but when I was looking for plane tix, it wasn’t that much more to just hop the 26 minute flight. And I was upgraded to first class… So, it sounded like a great plan… except that my bag didn’t arrive. Ugh. I arrived at like 10pm, so they said that my bag should arrive by noon the next day, but for that night, I was SOL. Crap. I joined Kathee and her friends at Garfinkel’s for a drink, where luckily, I saw that they sold t-shirts, so I was able to procure myself a Garf’s t-shirt to at least sleep in for the night.. Thank goodness I had my big winter coat cuz it was 1 degree out when I landed.

The next day I tried contacting United (and got their call-center somewhere in India, which is actually my first time dealing with an Indian call center..) — anyway, United had no idea where my bag was, so I was forced to buy some new gear and rent a snowboard in order to ride that first day, which was AWESOME since they got an additional 8 inches of fresh powder that morning… wahoo.. So, I looked a little goofy riding in my big non-snowboardy city coat and rented board.. as Elena explained it, I was a snowboarding contradiction — I looked like a goofy first-timer tourist, but I was able to snowboard.. My slopestyle didn’t match my riding.. I guess that’s a compliment. In any case, I’m hoping that United will recoup at least a portion of the money for gear and rental that I was forced to shell out because of their pooeyness.

So after that day of epic snowboarding, we drove over to the Super Walmart where I was soo excited to buy myself some new underwear and maybe some sort of cheap Walmart clothing.. but, it was Christmas Eve, and they closed early. Ugh. We ran over to the supermarket, which was still open, where I was faced by a dilemma. Hooray, the supermarket had some clothes. But the only thing they had was a Denver Broncos sweatshirt and sweatpants. Ugh. I can’t do that. The Broncos caused so much pain and anguish to this lil’ Cleveland Browns fan, that I actually decided that I’d rather just go snowboarding another day in my jeans and button down than wear the blue and orange.

Luckily for me, at that moment, I got a phone call telling me that my bag had arrived. Phew. Crisis averted.

Anyway… The next two days of snowboarding were equally epic. Vail is a magnificent mountain. The snow was plush, and the trails through the trees were sooooo awesome.. Vail is huge.. Just one of the peaks would be comparable to one of the mountains in Tahoe, and they have like six or seven of them or something. I guess it IS the biggest ski resort in the nation.

One of Kathee’s friends, Amanda, drives a cat for Vail (she’s the crew lead, actually), and… I got to go along with her for a bit. How awesome is that? I hope she didn’t think I was too goofy for being so giddy whilst I tagged along, but it was really, really cool going along with her as she groomed the mountain.

She leads a team of like 7 cats as they drive in formation, grooming as they go.. Since Vail grooms 24 hours a day, and they don’t close the slopes when they do, they have to constantly sound the siren and shoo skiers and boarders away. Anyway, it’s pretty damn cool sitting in the cat as they drive headfirst down a black diamond. Woo.

So yah, that was pretty damn cool. Oh, and to top it all off, I saw some wicked aspens. Aspens are the coolest trees evar.

That is all. Vail. Cool. Yah.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas or Hanukah or Festivus or whatever..

I thought I’d share a little gem that i came across today…
http://www.cayugaswaiters.com/new/downloads/mp3/harvard.mp3

omg. scary. wow. simply. stunning.

And why, pray tell, was I looking for acapella.. Well, the xmas party I’m going to tomorrow just emailed everyone saying that the evening’s entertainment is going to be provided by this super hot acapella band (yah, I know you’re jealous.) And well, yah, one thing led to another, and I found this track… to think that in almost 10 years, i hadn’t thought about acapella, and in an instant, I was transported back to Cornell Night. Whoosh.

See all you kids at reunion, right? (well, I guess not *all* you kids, but all of you Cornell ’97 kids, I guess.. although I think Kim’s coming and she didn’t even go to Cornell)

Woo.. I voted today. Pretty exciting stuff.. I’m trying to keep my streak alive since I haven’t missed a November election yet. Looks like the dems are taking control of the house, and Arnie is now a two-terminator (as coined by sfgate).. I actually was mulling over prop 87 for a bit — yes, Clinton and Gore both were behind the proposition, but I’m wasn’t sure that it was the best way to go about pushing for alternative fuels… but, in the end, I decided to vote for it. But, it looks like it might not pass. Hmm. Oh well.

Anyway… since I’m on the subject of voting, I might as well share some vote-y linkage..

• Freaknomics on the irrationality of the vote [thanks doug]
• CNN’s roomful of bloggers [thanks penelope, who says that voters make better employees]
• Sonicliving’s I Voted Contest

And look.. Willo, Ali, Brian voted too!

Wow… so tonight the subject of Geocities came up in conversation, so I decided to see if my old Geocities page was still up… Amazingly, it’s still there… but, the coolest thing that I found was this…

Some sites that Dennis found.

Back in 1995, I worked for a summer at a pharmaceutical company, but my job was to investigate new technologies that could be useful to them. So, I basically spent the entire summer surfing around what was a very young web. And, whenever I found a cool site, I would add it to my list here.. My little list of sites actually got a good amount of visitors (for back then), and I was even named the “Beverly Hills Internet Site of the Day”..

But, the summer ended, and I went back to school, and neglected this list, and went on to spend most of my time at school building cars instead of internets. Ooopsie.

It’s quite amusing to look through this list of stuff… A ton of URLs on here are at .edu domains and live in people’s user directories… Neato. Funny to see the original urls for stuff like Lycos (http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/lycos-all.html), SavvySearch (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.html), and IMDB (http://www.msstate.edu/Movies/)..

So yah, this list is a little over 11 years old, so most of the links don’t even work anymore…

Well, that was a fun little trip down memory lane…

So.. I have a cameraphone, and the great thing about having a cameraphone is that I pretty much always have a camera with me, so.. when the inspiration strikes, it’s right at the ready… The not so good thing is that I never really seem to get around to ever downloading and looking at the stuff that I’ve captured with the ol’ cameraphone.. Until tonite… woo.. so here’s a few cameraphone pics. Exciting.

A few weeks back, the SF Opera set up a HUGE tv screen right in front of City Hall… it was pretty rad, and they simulcast the opera that was playing just a half block away on the ginormous tv screen. Opera-riffic.

My friend Vanessa had an extra ticket to see The Killers at the Warfield… so I went. James and Uyen were also there… The Killers played a pretty rad set, although honestly I now know why they’re called “The Killers” — it was soooo incredibly loud that had it not been for the earplugs that I thankfully procured, I would have been deaf for like a week. Eek. I’m complaining about how loud a show was. I MUST be getting old or something. But, actually.. I really have started to get concerned about my hearing. I do go out a lot, so I’ve started wearing ear plugs whenever I think it’s going to be ringingly loud. My friends Shooey and Erica have both actually shelled out some ducats for custom earplugs like these… Hmmm.. supposedly the hi-fi earplugs reduce volume, but they don’t muffle the music. I mean.. I like music. A lot. I suppose that losing ones hearing would really, really suck. Still feels like I’m coming to grips with my non-invincibility though — and I think that *really* means I’m getting old. Sheesh. Just sign me up for some comfy shoes and big sunglasses now.

Ok.. this third picture is from just last weekend… My friend ChrisK had an extra ticket to go see the circus at the Circus Center San Francisco and I lept at the opportunity to join him. (rimshot) ChrisK met this girl at Burningman who does trapeze, so we went to go see her perform. Turns out, it was the farewell performance of the Mystic Pixies — a kid contortionist group who are leaving San Francisco to join Cirque Du Soleil. They actually performed at the Supperclub 1 year anniversary party too… Anyway.. it was a really cool show, and I’ve been meaning to go check out the Circus Center, since I’m kind of toying with the idea of taking some circus classes myself… Looks like a lot of fun.

And finally.. tonight, Stepha and I went to the Say Hi To Your Mom show at the Bottom of the Hill.. It was a great show, but honestly, the picture isn’t that great, so I won’t post it here… SHTYM is kind of a funny “band” cuz it’s just one dude. But he’s good, and it was a fun show… His last album is about vampires, and my favorite song of his is “Blah Blah Blah” — the chorus of which goes “And I… am gonna drink your blood”.. hehe. Here’s a clip. Vampires are cool.

So yah, that’s it. The ol’ cameraphone is downloaded and happy now.