... but then I read this post.
I guess Shweta's latest post kinda makes it safe to talk about phlegm.
You, see I've got my phlegm issues as well, I've had them for a couple of weeks. I've had them since my second day in California. Hayward, California is a beautiful place, but I don't think I could ever live there. There must be something about the vegetation in that area that I'm really allergic to, because I had really bad asthma and allergy symptoms while I was there. While I've had a lot of issues with allergies/asthma in my life ( see the first 2 facts in this post ), I've been lucky in the sense that I've never really suffered from pollen allergies or seasonal allergies in places I've lived ( the northeast USA ). This doesn't appear to be the case on the west coast, or at least in the part of the west coast I stayed in this time ( I didn't have any allergy problems when I visited the Bay Area in the summer of 2001, so I'm guessing that the problems this time must have something to do with the air in Hayward ( In 2001 we stayed at Ruth's Aunt Amy's house, which is in a different part of the Bay Area. ). ).
Anyway, the allergies ( and asthma triggered by the allergies ) hit me hard the week I was in California. It's not like I was bed-ridden or anything. I still had the energy to see all the sights, go all over Yosemite ( Being in the thin air of Yosemite for a few days probably didn't help - our cabin was at 6000 feet, and some of sights we traveled to were at about 8000 feet ), and carry the kids when needed - but I could tell something wasn't right. My lungs were in bad enough shape that I had a hard time sleeping. I've never been able to sleep on my back. I always need to sleep on my chest, but that's really hard to do when you are suffering from asthma. When your lung capacity is diminished, it's hard to breathe with your chest pressed against the mattress. So, while I did have a lot of fun on the trip, I was a physical wreck by the end of the week.
I was hoping this would improve when I got home, but I'm still a long way from being 100%. I can still feel phlegm in my lungs with each breath. I noticed early last week that the phlegm was green, a sure sign that I had gotten some kind of bacterial infection in my lungs ( which can happen when your lungs have been full of fluid for a week ). I took antibiotics for about a week, and now the phlegm is no longer green. However, the plhegm is still there, my lungs only feel like they are at 50% capacity, and I'm worried that another lung infection could be right around the corner if my lungs don't clear up soon. I'd really like to avoid taking antibiotics again, because I actually do sometimes get one of the antibiotic side effects that Shweta mentioned in her post.
There are plenty other types of medication I could be taking ( and it's easy for me to get, because I'm married to a doctor ), but I've never been the type of person who likes to take medicine. I've always had this feeling ( whether this feeling makes any scientific sense is another story ) that taking too much medicine will make me weaker in the long-run, by making my body dependent on the medicine. While a lot of people married to a doctor would abuse that privilege by getting their spouse to prescribe drugs for every little ache and pain, I usually only take drugs when my wife pleads with me to take drugs and tells me that I could do long-term damage if I don't take drugs ( Sometime when I have bad asthma, she tell me that long-term asthma symptoms can "re-model" the lungs. I don't even know what that means, but it doesn't sound good. ).
So anyway, with the exception of the antibiotics ( green phlegm scares me ), I've been trying to solve this problem with my lungs naturally. I've actually hit the treadmill a few times this week in an attempt to shock my lungs back into shape by pushing them to their limit. This hasn't actually worked that well. It's led to quite a bit of coughing, though I have managed to run a little bit further and faster each time I've run. However, I've nowhere near being able to run as far and fast as I could right before the Cali vacation.
I'm going to give the running therapy one more try tomorrow night. If I don't see significant improvement in my speed/endurance/lung-capacity, I think will break down and turn to drugs. Ruth has some steroids ( not *that* kind of steriod - the kind that should reduce the inflammation in my lungs ) that she keeps telling me to take. Every time I've taken them for asthma in the past ( about 5 times over the last 10 years ) they've fixed my asthma problems in just a few days. Considering how well they've worked in the past, it's really kind of silly and stubborn of me not to take them now. However, even though I only take them once every few years, I have this irrational fear that my lungs could become dependent on them. Oh well, I probably will break done and take the ROIDS tomorrow. Flu seasons is coming soon, and I really need to make sure my lungs are at 100% in case I catch the flu. I'd hate to catch something like the swine flu with my lungs in this state. In all seriousness, swine flu probably has the potential to kill me when my lungs are this weak, so I'd guess I'd better go ahead and take the steroids.
Take care folks,
Rich
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
30 questions.
Well, I guess it's better late than never ...
Back on July 5th, Neil entered this post in which he asked his readers to answer 30 question. Well, it took a while, but I finally answered all of the questions. When you read some of the stuff I wrote, you'll see why it took so long. Let me apoligize in advance for the ultra-long uber-nerdy response to the video game question.
1.Favorite Movie?
The Shawshank Redemption
2.Favorite Movie Character?
Yoda, particularly in "The Empire Strikes Back".
3.Favorite Novel, or Short Story?
"1984" by George Orwell
4.Favorite Poem?
There are a lot poems that I love. I remember particularly loving a lot of stuff by William Wordsworth and William Blake. However, it would bit a bit disingenuous of me to pick one of their poems, because I haven't really sat down and read a book of poetry since my college days. However, there are a lot of poetic song lyrics I really love, and I've never really stopped listening to music. Thus, I'm going to say that my favorite poem is the lyrics to the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby". The previous link will bring you to a YouTube video of the song. However, if you've never heard the song, you might want to read the lyrics below first to get an idea of how well the words hold up all by themselves.
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
5.Favorite Play?
King Lear
6.Favorite Actor or Actress at the moment?
I've always been a big fan of Gene Hackman's acting ability, so I'm going to give him the Top Prize here. Of course, Hackman's pretty much at the end of his career, but I can't really think of a relatively young actor/actress who really stands out from the crowd. However, I'll throw few names out there off the top of my head ( with the understanding that these actor/actresses may not be the best of their generation - they just happened to be the ones who popped into my head right now ).
Leonardo Dicaprio has been great in just about everything I've seen him in, and for that matter, so has Kate Winslet ( I actually haven't seen the "The Reader" or "Revolutionary Road", but I thought she was absolutely brilliant in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". ).
After I watched "Heathers", I thought Winona Ryder ( She was just 16 when this movie was made. ) was going to be the greatest actress of her generation. I really thought she deserved an Oscar nomination for that role. I was sure she would pick up a bunch of Oscars someday, but her career went into a downward spiral after Angelina Jolie outshone her in "Girl, Interrupted" ( Which just goes to show you that if you want to win an Oscar, you are always better off playing the bad girl/boy in a movie than the good girl/boy. ). Jolie won the Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted", and went on to make millions and marry Brad Pitt. Ryder wound up getting caught shoplifting.
Speaking of people who got famous from roles in teen movies, I think Reese Witherspoon is a really good actress. If you've never seen the movie "Election", you should rent it ASAP. I think that "Tracy Flick" is one of the more entertaining movie characters of all time, and Witherspoon played that role perfectly.
Let's see, both Ewen McGregor and Ralph Fiennes just popped into my head. McGregor is the only thing that made the new Star Wars movies watchable, and even though "Quiz Show" was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture in 1995 ( Up against "Forrest Gump", "Pulp Fiction", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", and "The Shawshank Redemption", IMHO the greatest group of movies to be nominated for Best Picture in a given year. ), I think it is one of the most underrated movies of all time.
BTW, if you ever need to do a movie is which one of the characters also has to serve as the narrator, Morgan Freeman is the *ONLY* choice.
Oh, and I just happened to catch the last two-thirds of the movie "Children of Men". I've decided to give some props to Clive Owen, because he's been real good in just about everything I've seen him in.
7.Favorite Singer or Band at the moment?
The Beatles ( now and forever ).
8.Favorite Teen movie regardless of decade?
Heathers
9.Favorite Animal?
Dolphins ( Though I really hate the football team the Miami Dolphins ).
10.Favorite meal?
General Tso's Chicken
11.Favorite Fruit?
A Mango, or a pear during the 30 minutes or so when it is at the perfect level of ripeness. Nothing beats a perfectly ripe pear, but the window of pear perfection is so small that I guess mangoes win out overall.
12.Favorite Place that you've traveled to?
Disney World. :)
( It's the Happiest Place on Earth. )
13.Favorite anything with 13 in the title?
The movie "Apollo" 13 was pretty good, and I think the documentary ( "Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back" ) is even better. I love the story of Apollo 13 because it's one few stories where engineers are the real heroes.
14.Favorite Video Game?
This was the question I was most excited about answering. I've played a lot of video games systems over the years, so I'd like to name a favorite for each platform, along with an overall winner.
Before I start, let me note that I do not own any of the newest video game system ( Wii, Xbox 360, or Playstation 3 ). The last video game system I played seriously was the original Xbox. After Michael was born ( in October 2003 ), I stopped playing video games. I'll get back to video games someday, but not until the boys are old enough to play video games with me.
I'll now give a favorite for each system I've played in roughly chronological order ( PC games kinda span the time frame of a lot of the console systems ).
Atari 2600
I started playing the Atari 2600 so long ago ( back in about 1977 ) that back then it was simply called the Atari VCS ( for Video Computer System ). I probably spent more time playing the Atari than any other video game system - it really was the video game system of my childhood. Actually, the Atari VCS was really the first successful multi-cartridge/multi-game video game system. Before the Atari, most systems just played a single game, and they were really simple games like Pong ( The were a few multi-cartridge systems ( like the Fairchild Channel F ) which predated the Atari VCS, but none of them ever caught on ).
I played and loved so many Atari games that it is really hard to pick a favorite. Looking back at my Atari years, it's hard not to think of Pitfall.
Pitfall, which came out in 1982, was really a ground-breaking video game. The game involved running from one side of the screen to the other while avoiding and jumping over ( and jumping on - you had to jump on the crocodiles' heads sometimes ) various obstacles ( and swinging from vines - WEEEEEEEE!!!! ). Sound familiar? In a way, I think this game is really the grandfather of the Super Mario games that followed.
However, it's not my favorite Atari game ( My little brother could always kick my butt in Pitfall, so for that reason alone, it can't be my favorite. ). My favorite Atari game was Adventure.
Considering it was released in 1979, "Adventure" had extremely primitive graphics ( See the screenshot below. The yellow square is your character, and the "<-- " next to the square is your sword. ), but that was part of its charm ( Also, remember that back in 1979, we really didn't consider these graphics to be that primitive ).
Despite the primitive graphics, the game-play in "Adventure" was fantastic. There were keys to find, mazes to navigate, bridges to carry (???), castles to enter, dragons to slay, magnets (???) to use, and an enchanted chalice to find. Perhaps even more significantly, "Adventure" introduced the first widely known Easter egg to the video gaming world. If you did the right things, you could find a special room that had the message "Created by Warren Robinett". Unless you were a nerdy kid back 1979, you won't be able to fully comprehend how exciting it was to find that Easter egg.
Apple II+
The Apple II series was the first widely successful personal computer. The Apple II+ was the machine I learned to program on. It's probably the reason why I have the job I have today. When I wasn't writing games on the Apple II+, I was playing games. My favorite game was a game called Computer Baseball.
As you can see from the screen shot below, Computer Baseball also had really primitive graphics. However, the game was all about strategy, rather than graphics.
You see, I'm pretty much a baseball stats geek. I've probably been studying the science of Sabermetrics before the word Sabermetrics even existed. I won't bore anybody with details here except to say that there is a lot of math involved ( particularly probability and statistics ). Some of the things that Sabermetrics tries to determine are ...
1) Which baseball statistics correlate best with winning?
Baseball has kept many statistics for a long time, but many of the statistics traditionally used to determine "which players are the best" have been proven by emperical research to have a much lower correlation with winning than lesser known statistics. In fact, those who study Sabermetrics are constantly trying to come up with new statistical tools to determine which players actually help their teams win the most. For years, traditional baseball men have considered the Sabermetrics guys to be eggheads who have ( for the most part ) "never played the game", but over time these new statistics have gained acceptance. Baseball is now a billion-dollar business, and when baseball owners spend millions to acquire players, choosing the right players ( the ones that will help a team win ) can be the difference between making millions of dollars and losing millions of dollars.
2) How well can we predict what a player will do next year based on what he has done in the past.?
Once again, accurately predicting how a player is going to perform in the future can be the difference between making and losing millions of dollars. In order to do this, you not only need to take a player's statistics into account, but also factors like the player's age, height, weight, the stadiums the player has played in ( stats can be highly dependent on the environment a player plays in, so Sabermetrics folks figure out "park-factors" for each ballpark ), and the fielding abilities of the teams the player has played for ( if the player is a pitcher ).
3) What managerial strategies make most sense?
For a given set of players, what's the best batting line-up? What is the best pitching rotation, and how should innings be allocated to the relief pitchers? What's the best strategic move for a given game situation? How do various strategic moves affect the probability of winning a given game?
The last item above had the most relevance to Computer Baseball. When you played Computer Baseball ( either against the computer or against a friend ), you acted as a manager of of a team ( The Computer Baseball disk came pre-loaded with 26 famous historical teams, and you could add many more if you were willing to enter the all the statistics for other teams ( Which my brother and I eventually did ( using a huge copy of The Baseball Encyclopedia ) for more than 100 other teams. )). I already had an interest in managerial strategy when I got my copy of Computer Baseball, and the game allowed me to put many of the things I'd read about into practice. Also, as a huge baseball fan, it was fun to see how the simulated Sandy Koufax would do against the simulated Babe Ruth, or who would win a series between the simulated 1927 Yankees and the simulated 1975 Reds.
Because of my interest in how great baseball teams of the past might fare against each other, I set up a tournament between all teams that came with Computer Baseball. I gave 6 of the 26 teams a first-round bye and played 7-game series between all the teams until a champion was determined. Eventually my brother and I added more teams so we could have a 32-team tournament, and we eventually had a 64 team tournament ( We eventually added a bunch of the worst teams of all time and had a tournament between all of those teams. We also created All-Star teams, and even created teams full of superheroes and cartoon character - creating appropriate stats for each character ( Superman's stats: 600 at bats, 600 home runs, 100 walks and 300 stolen bases )). Eventually we got our friends involved and started a Computer Baseball league in which we played games against each other. This is how I spent a good deal of my leisure time in my early teen years. This also led to me playing in Strat-O-Matic baseball leagues ( Kinda like Computer Baseball, but more advanced despite the fact that no computers were involved in the game play. Instead, you rolled dice and then checked various charts/tables for each player and situation to see the results ) for three straight summers between the ages of 17 and 19. This all goes a long way in explaining why I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 21.
Arcade Games
I put a lot of quarters into "Super Punch-Out!!" during my freshman year of college.
Sega Genesis
It's hard not to say John Madden Football, because that's probably the most famous game to hit it big on the Genesis. I certainly played a lot of "Madden" in my day, but I'm going to give the prize here to NHL '94, which just might be the most acclaimed sports video game of all time. This game had such an impact that there are still websites like this dedicated to the game, and people still play in "NHL '94" leagues like this one.
After reading the paragraph above you might think that I'm a big hockey fan, but actually I'm not. I'm really a big basketball fan, and considering that hockey and basketball are played at the same time of the year, I almost never watch hockey. The fact the I love "NHL '94" so much is a testament to what a great game it is. Almost everything I know about hockey I know from playing the Electronic Arts ( EA ) hockey games for the Genesis. I played and loved every EA hockey game in the series, including the '93 version which was featured in the scene below from the movies "Swingers" ( They movies claims they are playing "NHL '94", but a video game geek like me can tell it's actually the '93 version of the game ).
PC Games
I just love adventure games where you walk around and talk to people to try to solve various puzzles and mysteries. My favorite game of this sort was "Grim Fandango". Unfortunately ( as the linked Wikipedia article notes at the end ), nobody really makes adventure games for PCs anymore.
Sega Dreamcast
The Sega Dreamcast system was really ahead of its time, and so was the game "Shenmue". You spend much of the game interacting with characters in an open-ended city environment. I've got to imagine that the makers of the Grand Theft Auto games were influence a little by this game.
Xbox
It hard not to pick Halo, which has always been considered to be the killer-app for the Xbox. There were times when I sat on the floor playing Halo for so long that my legs got numb. However, I've got to go with "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell". In this game, you play a secret agent who must sneak into secure locations to complete missions. You need to scale walls, hide in the shadows, and often need to sneak up behind people and club them in the back of the head ( and then hide the body before anybody notices anything. ). During the month or so that I played this game, I often had dreams about sneaking up on people and clubbing them in the back of the head.
And the winner is ...
When I first started to write this part of the blog post, I intended to name "Adventure" as my favorite video game, because it really did the most with the least. However, after writing that long section on "Computer Baseball", I realize that I've got to give "Computer Baseball" the prize. I mean, for goodness sakes, I loved that game so much that I played it to the detriment of my teenage social life. When I think back to how much I played that game, it's stunning that I had a enough social graces to eventually convince a woman to marry me.
And yet ...
... I don't regret a single minute I spent playing that game.
That, my friends, is one great video game.
15.Favorite Video Game Character?
Leisure Suit Larry
16.Favorite Animated Feature Film, no saying that I no longer watch them because I'm an adult because that reasoning is actually really childish?
Monsters Inc.
17.Favorite Animated Short, featurette, or TV special?
My favorite animated short is the Bugs/Daffy/Elmer cartoon "Rabbit Seasoning". I don't know how long the video below will be available before it is pulled for copyright violations, so enjoy it while you have the chance.
18.What's the craziest thing you've done while drunk?
I've answered this question before. See this blog post and look for the question "Have you ever done something outrageously dumb?".
19.Name a celebrity that you share a general birth date with?
I'm not sure If you mean somebody who was born in the same year at roughly the same time, or if you mean somebody who shares my birthday. I'll go with the later and say Martin Luther King, Jr. We were both born on January 15th. Starting in about 1986, MLK Day became a national holiday in the USA, and it is celebrated the 3rd Monday of each January. However, prior to that, every January 15th was holiday in New York City. Thus, I always got my birthday off from school when I was a kid. :)
20.Where is Waldo?
That's what the Mafia would like to know.
21.I say communitychannel you say that her real name is?
If you've got any doubts about whether I know the answer to this question, you can check out this blog post.
22.What's your favorite play by William Shakespeare?
King Lear.
23.Favorite Batman Villain?
The Joker.
24.Favorite Spider-Man Villain?
Dr. Octopus.
25.This one is just to check if you've been paying attention to some of Neil's relatively recent posts. Who on youtube does Neil claim has a smile that makes his brain melt?
26.What's your favorite game show?
Jeopardy.
27.What's your favorite TV show of all time?
Cheers
28.What do you think of when you think of Canada?
Hockey
29.Have you ever drawn or painted something seriously and if so, do you mind if I have a look just online of course?
Not really, but I once did have some of my artwork displayed in Lever House art gallery in New York City. When I was about in 3rd grade, there was a city-wide art project in which schoolkids were asked to draw a picture representing one of New York City's 5 boroughs ( Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island. ). I was from Queens, but a drew a picture of my Aunt's house in Staten Island. Somehow, mine was selected as the picture to represent Staten Island. So, we got to see the picture displayed at Lever House, and I was awarded a $50 savings bond or something like that. There really wasn't anything special about the picture. It was just your typical-looking kid drawing ( which is perhaps why they choose it ). So while I don't really have any talent for drawing or painting, I guess I can say that I've had my art displayed in a gallery. If I still had the picture I'd scan it, but I have no idea where it is these days.
30. To finish things off. What month of the year were you born?
January
Back on July 5th, Neil entered this post in which he asked his readers to answer 30 question. Well, it took a while, but I finally answered all of the questions. When you read some of the stuff I wrote, you'll see why it took so long. Let me apoligize in advance for the ultra-long uber-nerdy response to the video game question.
1.Favorite Movie?
The Shawshank Redemption
2.Favorite Movie Character?
Yoda, particularly in "The Empire Strikes Back".
3.Favorite Novel, or Short Story?
"1984" by George Orwell
4.Favorite Poem?
There are a lot poems that I love. I remember particularly loving a lot of stuff by William Wordsworth and William Blake. However, it would bit a bit disingenuous of me to pick one of their poems, because I haven't really sat down and read a book of poetry since my college days. However, there are a lot of poetic song lyrics I really love, and I've never really stopped listening to music. Thus, I'm going to say that my favorite poem is the lyrics to the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby". The previous link will bring you to a YouTube video of the song. However, if you've never heard the song, you might want to read the lyrics below first to get an idea of how well the words hold up all by themselves.
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Aah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
5.Favorite Play?
King Lear
6.Favorite Actor or Actress at the moment?
I've always been a big fan of Gene Hackman's acting ability, so I'm going to give him the Top Prize here. Of course, Hackman's pretty much at the end of his career, but I can't really think of a relatively young actor/actress who really stands out from the crowd. However, I'll throw few names out there off the top of my head ( with the understanding that these actor/actresses may not be the best of their generation - they just happened to be the ones who popped into my head right now ).
Leonardo Dicaprio has been great in just about everything I've seen him in, and for that matter, so has Kate Winslet ( I actually haven't seen the "The Reader" or "Revolutionary Road", but I thought she was absolutely brilliant in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". ).
After I watched "Heathers", I thought Winona Ryder ( She was just 16 when this movie was made. ) was going to be the greatest actress of her generation. I really thought she deserved an Oscar nomination for that role. I was sure she would pick up a bunch of Oscars someday, but her career went into a downward spiral after Angelina Jolie outshone her in "Girl, Interrupted" ( Which just goes to show you that if you want to win an Oscar, you are always better off playing the bad girl/boy in a movie than the good girl/boy. ). Jolie won the Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted", and went on to make millions and marry Brad Pitt. Ryder wound up getting caught shoplifting.
Speaking of people who got famous from roles in teen movies, I think Reese Witherspoon is a really good actress. If you've never seen the movie "Election", you should rent it ASAP. I think that "Tracy Flick" is one of the more entertaining movie characters of all time, and Witherspoon played that role perfectly.
Let's see, both Ewen McGregor and Ralph Fiennes just popped into my head. McGregor is the only thing that made the new Star Wars movies watchable, and even though "Quiz Show" was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture in 1995 ( Up against "Forrest Gump", "Pulp Fiction", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", and "The Shawshank Redemption", IMHO the greatest group of movies to be nominated for Best Picture in a given year. ), I think it is one of the most underrated movies of all time.
BTW, if you ever need to do a movie is which one of the characters also has to serve as the narrator, Morgan Freeman is the *ONLY* choice.
Oh, and I just happened to catch the last two-thirds of the movie "Children of Men". I've decided to give some props to Clive Owen, because he's been real good in just about everything I've seen him in.
7.Favorite Singer or Band at the moment?
The Beatles ( now and forever ).
8.Favorite Teen movie regardless of decade?
Heathers
9.Favorite Animal?
Dolphins ( Though I really hate the football team the Miami Dolphins ).
10.Favorite meal?
General Tso's Chicken
11.Favorite Fruit?
A Mango, or a pear during the 30 minutes or so when it is at the perfect level of ripeness. Nothing beats a perfectly ripe pear, but the window of pear perfection is so small that I guess mangoes win out overall.
12.Favorite Place that you've traveled to?
Disney World. :)
( It's the Happiest Place on Earth. )
13.Favorite anything with 13 in the title?
The movie "Apollo" 13 was pretty good, and I think the documentary ( "Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back" ) is even better. I love the story of Apollo 13 because it's one few stories where engineers are the real heroes.
14.Favorite Video Game?
This was the question I was most excited about answering. I've played a lot of video games systems over the years, so I'd like to name a favorite for each platform, along with an overall winner.
Before I start, let me note that I do not own any of the newest video game system ( Wii, Xbox 360, or Playstation 3 ). The last video game system I played seriously was the original Xbox. After Michael was born ( in October 2003 ), I stopped playing video games. I'll get back to video games someday, but not until the boys are old enough to play video games with me.
I'll now give a favorite for each system I've played in roughly chronological order ( PC games kinda span the time frame of a lot of the console systems ).
Atari 2600
I started playing the Atari 2600 so long ago ( back in about 1977 ) that back then it was simply called the Atari VCS ( for Video Computer System ). I probably spent more time playing the Atari than any other video game system - it really was the video game system of my childhood. Actually, the Atari VCS was really the first successful multi-cartridge/multi-game video game system. Before the Atari, most systems just played a single game, and they were really simple games like Pong ( The were a few multi-cartridge systems ( like the Fairchild Channel F ) which predated the Atari VCS, but none of them ever caught on ).
I played and loved so many Atari games that it is really hard to pick a favorite. Looking back at my Atari years, it's hard not to think of Pitfall.
Pitfall, which came out in 1982, was really a ground-breaking video game. The game involved running from one side of the screen to the other while avoiding and jumping over ( and jumping on - you had to jump on the crocodiles' heads sometimes ) various obstacles ( and swinging from vines - WEEEEEEEE!!!! ). Sound familiar? In a way, I think this game is really the grandfather of the Super Mario games that followed.
However, it's not my favorite Atari game ( My little brother could always kick my butt in Pitfall, so for that reason alone, it can't be my favorite. ). My favorite Atari game was Adventure.
Considering it was released in 1979, "Adventure" had extremely primitive graphics ( See the screenshot below. The yellow square is your character, and the "<-- " next to the square is your sword. ), but that was part of its charm ( Also, remember that back in 1979, we really didn't consider these graphics to be that primitive ).
Despite the primitive graphics, the game-play in "Adventure" was fantastic. There were keys to find, mazes to navigate, bridges to carry (???), castles to enter, dragons to slay, magnets (???) to use, and an enchanted chalice to find. Perhaps even more significantly, "Adventure" introduced the first widely known Easter egg to the video gaming world. If you did the right things, you could find a special room that had the message "Created by Warren Robinett". Unless you were a nerdy kid back 1979, you won't be able to fully comprehend how exciting it was to find that Easter egg.
Apple II+
The Apple II series was the first widely successful personal computer. The Apple II+ was the machine I learned to program on. It's probably the reason why I have the job I have today. When I wasn't writing games on the Apple II+, I was playing games. My favorite game was a game called Computer Baseball.
As you can see from the screen shot below, Computer Baseball also had really primitive graphics. However, the game was all about strategy, rather than graphics.
You see, I'm pretty much a baseball stats geek. I've probably been studying the science of Sabermetrics before the word Sabermetrics even existed. I won't bore anybody with details here except to say that there is a lot of math involved ( particularly probability and statistics ). Some of the things that Sabermetrics tries to determine are ...
1) Which baseball statistics correlate best with winning?
Baseball has kept many statistics for a long time, but many of the statistics traditionally used to determine "which players are the best" have been proven by emperical research to have a much lower correlation with winning than lesser known statistics. In fact, those who study Sabermetrics are constantly trying to come up with new statistical tools to determine which players actually help their teams win the most. For years, traditional baseball men have considered the Sabermetrics guys to be eggheads who have ( for the most part ) "never played the game", but over time these new statistics have gained acceptance. Baseball is now a billion-dollar business, and when baseball owners spend millions to acquire players, choosing the right players ( the ones that will help a team win ) can be the difference between making millions of dollars and losing millions of dollars.
2) How well can we predict what a player will do next year based on what he has done in the past.?
Once again, accurately predicting how a player is going to perform in the future can be the difference between making and losing millions of dollars. In order to do this, you not only need to take a player's statistics into account, but also factors like the player's age, height, weight, the stadiums the player has played in ( stats can be highly dependent on the environment a player plays in, so Sabermetrics folks figure out "park-factors" for each ballpark ), and the fielding abilities of the teams the player has played for ( if the player is a pitcher ).
3) What managerial strategies make most sense?
For a given set of players, what's the best batting line-up? What is the best pitching rotation, and how should innings be allocated to the relief pitchers? What's the best strategic move for a given game situation? How do various strategic moves affect the probability of winning a given game?
The last item above had the most relevance to Computer Baseball. When you played Computer Baseball ( either against the computer or against a friend ), you acted as a manager of of a team ( The Computer Baseball disk came pre-loaded with 26 famous historical teams, and you could add many more if you were willing to enter the all the statistics for other teams ( Which my brother and I eventually did ( using a huge copy of The Baseball Encyclopedia ) for more than 100 other teams. )). I already had an interest in managerial strategy when I got my copy of Computer Baseball, and the game allowed me to put many of the things I'd read about into practice. Also, as a huge baseball fan, it was fun to see how the simulated Sandy Koufax would do against the simulated Babe Ruth, or who would win a series between the simulated 1927 Yankees and the simulated 1975 Reds.
Because of my interest in how great baseball teams of the past might fare against each other, I set up a tournament between all teams that came with Computer Baseball. I gave 6 of the 26 teams a first-round bye and played 7-game series between all the teams until a champion was determined. Eventually my brother and I added more teams so we could have a 32-team tournament, and we eventually had a 64 team tournament ( We eventually added a bunch of the worst teams of all time and had a tournament between all of those teams. We also created All-Star teams, and even created teams full of superheroes and cartoon character - creating appropriate stats for each character ( Superman's stats: 600 at bats, 600 home runs, 100 walks and 300 stolen bases )). Eventually we got our friends involved and started a Computer Baseball league in which we played games against each other. This is how I spent a good deal of my leisure time in my early teen years. This also led to me playing in Strat-O-Matic baseball leagues ( Kinda like Computer Baseball, but more advanced despite the fact that no computers were involved in the game play. Instead, you rolled dice and then checked various charts/tables for each player and situation to see the results ) for three straight summers between the ages of 17 and 19. This all goes a long way in explaining why I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 21.
Arcade Games
I put a lot of quarters into "Super Punch-Out!!" during my freshman year of college.
Sega Genesis
It's hard not to say John Madden Football, because that's probably the most famous game to hit it big on the Genesis. I certainly played a lot of "Madden" in my day, but I'm going to give the prize here to NHL '94, which just might be the most acclaimed sports video game of all time. This game had such an impact that there are still websites like this dedicated to the game, and people still play in "NHL '94" leagues like this one.
After reading the paragraph above you might think that I'm a big hockey fan, but actually I'm not. I'm really a big basketball fan, and considering that hockey and basketball are played at the same time of the year, I almost never watch hockey. The fact the I love "NHL '94" so much is a testament to what a great game it is. Almost everything I know about hockey I know from playing the Electronic Arts ( EA ) hockey games for the Genesis. I played and loved every EA hockey game in the series, including the '93 version which was featured in the scene below from the movies "Swingers" ( They movies claims they are playing "NHL '94", but a video game geek like me can tell it's actually the '93 version of the game ).
PC Games
I just love adventure games where you walk around and talk to people to try to solve various puzzles and mysteries. My favorite game of this sort was "Grim Fandango". Unfortunately ( as the linked Wikipedia article notes at the end ), nobody really makes adventure games for PCs anymore.
Sega Dreamcast
The Sega Dreamcast system was really ahead of its time, and so was the game "Shenmue". You spend much of the game interacting with characters in an open-ended city environment. I've got to imagine that the makers of the Grand Theft Auto games were influence a little by this game.
Xbox
It hard not to pick Halo, which has always been considered to be the killer-app for the Xbox. There were times when I sat on the floor playing Halo for so long that my legs got numb. However, I've got to go with "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell". In this game, you play a secret agent who must sneak into secure locations to complete missions. You need to scale walls, hide in the shadows, and often need to sneak up behind people and club them in the back of the head ( and then hide the body before anybody notices anything. ). During the month or so that I played this game, I often had dreams about sneaking up on people and clubbing them in the back of the head.
And the winner is ...
When I first started to write this part of the blog post, I intended to name "Adventure" as my favorite video game, because it really did the most with the least. However, after writing that long section on "Computer Baseball", I realize that I've got to give "Computer Baseball" the prize. I mean, for goodness sakes, I loved that game so much that I played it to the detriment of my teenage social life. When I think back to how much I played that game, it's stunning that I had a enough social graces to eventually convince a woman to marry me.
And yet ...
... I don't regret a single minute I spent playing that game.
That, my friends, is one great video game.
15.Favorite Video Game Character?
Leisure Suit Larry
16.Favorite Animated Feature Film, no saying that I no longer watch them because I'm an adult because that reasoning is actually really childish?
Monsters Inc.
17.Favorite Animated Short, featurette, or TV special?
My favorite animated short is the Bugs/Daffy/Elmer cartoon "Rabbit Seasoning". I don't know how long the video below will be available before it is pulled for copyright violations, so enjoy it while you have the chance.
18.What's the craziest thing you've done while drunk?
I've answered this question before. See this blog post and look for the question "Have you ever done something outrageously dumb?".
19.Name a celebrity that you share a general birth date with?
I'm not sure If you mean somebody who was born in the same year at roughly the same time, or if you mean somebody who shares my birthday. I'll go with the later and say Martin Luther King, Jr. We were both born on January 15th. Starting in about 1986, MLK Day became a national holiday in the USA, and it is celebrated the 3rd Monday of each January. However, prior to that, every January 15th was holiday in New York City. Thus, I always got my birthday off from school when I was a kid. :)
20.Where is Waldo?
That's what the Mafia would like to know.
21.I say communitychannel you say that her real name is?
If you've got any doubts about whether I know the answer to this question, you can check out this blog post.
22.What's your favorite play by William Shakespeare?
King Lear.
23.Favorite Batman Villain?
The Joker.
24.Favorite Spider-Man Villain?
Dr. Octopus.
25.This one is just to check if you've been paying attention to some of Neil's relatively recent posts. Who on youtube does Neil claim has a smile that makes his brain melt?
26.What's your favorite game show?
Jeopardy.
27.What's your favorite TV show of all time?
Cheers
28.What do you think of when you think of Canada?
Hockey
29.Have you ever drawn or painted something seriously and if so, do you mind if I have a look just online of course?
Not really, but I once did have some of my artwork displayed in Lever House art gallery in New York City. When I was about in 3rd grade, there was a city-wide art project in which schoolkids were asked to draw a picture representing one of New York City's 5 boroughs ( Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island. ). I was from Queens, but a drew a picture of my Aunt's house in Staten Island. Somehow, mine was selected as the picture to represent Staten Island. So, we got to see the picture displayed at Lever House, and I was awarded a $50 savings bond or something like that. There really wasn't anything special about the picture. It was just your typical-looking kid drawing ( which is perhaps why they choose it ). So while I don't really have any talent for drawing or painting, I guess I can say that I've had my art displayed in a gallery. If I still had the picture I'd scan it, but I have no idea where it is these days.
30. To finish things off. What month of the year were you born?
January
Thursday, September 3, 2009
why Is A atom Small
Click this link, and check the two short comments made by MoLewis57. Both of these comments were made by Michael. He's been watching math and science videos on YouTube for almost two years, but I didn't realize he was starting to leave comments on the videos. I wouldn't have even known about this if somebody had not responded to Michael's comment. Hmm, maybe I need to get Michael his own YT account.
BTW, Michael starts kindergarten tomorrow morning. My little boy is growing up. :) :( ( Not sure if I should feel happy or sad about this. )
Rich
BTW, Michael starts kindergarten tomorrow morning. My little boy is growing up. :) :( ( Not sure if I should feel happy or sad about this. )
Rich
Hayward Sunset
I'm not quite ready to post the bulk of my California photos yet ( I'll probably load them to facebook eventually. I'm not really in rush because the only person who comments regularly on my facebook photos is on facebook vacation right now. ). However, I felt like posting a few random photos I took. No famous scenery here - just random stuff that I thought might make a good picture.
The photo above was taken from the deck of Uncle Joey's house in Hayward California. Hayward is a Bay Area suburb. If you are curious about exactly where Hayward is, you can click the Google Maps link here.
Hayward is a really pretty neighborhood. The first thing that struck me about Hayward was how much it resembled the neighborhood they shot the movie "E.T." in ( It's not the same neighborhood - I checked on IMDB ). You can see what I mean by taking a look at the photo of Hayward below.
I also felt like including one photo I took in Yosemite. You'll eventually see photos of all the famous sites like El Capitan and Half Dome, but for now just feast you eyes on this photo I took on a rather nondescript path near Yosemite Falls.
Trees are pretty. :)
Rich
The photo above was taken from the deck of Uncle Joey's house in Hayward California. Hayward is a Bay Area suburb. If you are curious about exactly where Hayward is, you can click the Google Maps link here.
Hayward is a really pretty neighborhood. The first thing that struck me about Hayward was how much it resembled the neighborhood they shot the movie "E.T." in ( It's not the same neighborhood - I checked on IMDB ). You can see what I mean by taking a look at the photo of Hayward below.
I also felt like including one photo I took in Yosemite. You'll eventually see photos of all the famous sites like El Capitan and Half Dome, but for now just feast you eyes on this photo I took on a rather nondescript path near Yosemite Falls.
Trees are pretty. :)Rich
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
TGIAPAF ( Thank God It's Another Post About Friday )
OK, you know the drill by now. This post is a continuation of the last three posts.
So, Michael and I left the restaurant and took a little walk. I figured that he was probably getting hungry, so I started looking for a place where he I could get him something to eat. Clearly, all the Chinese restaurants were out of the question, but I figured he might like to have a yummy pastry from a Chinese bakery. Unfortunately, I didn't see a Chinese bakery anywhere nearby. I found this a little bit hard to believe, but after walking around for a few blocks I realized that my eyes were not deceiving me. So, I settled on a rather pretentious-looking tea/coffee shop. It was the kind of the place that seemed to be more about the atmosphere and the fancy decor than the food/drinks, but I didn't really have a lot of options, and I really wanted to get Michael a snack. I was hoping there would at least be some brightly-colored, super-sweet, rice-based Chinese desserts in the place, but all they had were rather drab looking danishes, apple turnovers, bear claws, and scones. They actually did seem rather yummy to me, but none of them really excited Michael. He wound up passing on all the pastries and asked for a bottle of flavored water ( which they charged 3 bucks for ). All the fancy seats in the place were taken, so Michael and I headed outside to walk some more. Just about then my cellphone started to vibrate ( BTW, I'm a really simple fella - my phone is always on vibrate. This may not be too exciting, but I like the fact that I never have to bother to remember to put my phone on vibrate when I go into a place like a movie theater. ). It was Ruth. Apparently, Peter had been asking "Where's Daddy?" ever since I had left ( It was kinda nice to know that he missed me, even though I had just carried him to the restaurant against his will. :) ). Ruth told me she was leaving the restaurant to bring Peter to me. I was only about a block away from the restaurant, so we met on the corner closest to the restaurant. Ruth told me that there was absolutely nothing on the restaurant's menu that Peter would be willing to eat. We both decided it would be best if I took the boys to a kid-friendly place to eat ( I really wanted Ruth to be able to eat with her family ), but there were not any kid-friendly restaurants as far as the eye could see. At this point, I immediately thought of Orion's iPhone. We called Debby and asked her to ask Orion to look for a fast-food place on his iPhone ( He had arrived at the restaurant by then ). He was nice enough to come downstairs to show us the route to the closest fast food place on his iPhone. The closest fast-food was a McDonald's in the business district. It was a bit of a hike, but I was sure the boys would be willing to make the trip if there were french fries at the end of the rainbow.
So, as we are walking there it occurs to me that the McDonald's will probably be rather empty. I guessed that a McDonald's in the business district would probably cater to the breakfast/lunch crowd and would probably be rather empty around dinner time. I turned out to be right about that. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, but that turned out not to be a good thing. There were almost no customers there, but there was also hardly any staff. There were just two people in front of me in line, but it took about 10 minutes for me to get to the register. There was just one guy working the register, and it looked like there was only one one person preparing the food in the back. Each time the guy at the resister took an order, he headed towards the back to help the other person prepare the food. I really had never seen anything like this at a fast food place before. About this time, Michael told me he needed to go to the bathroom. I certainly didn't want him to go to the bathroom alone in a strange place, but I also didn't want to loose my place in the super-slow line. So, I asked Michael to try to hold it until we got our food.
Eventually, we got our food and headed to our seats ( BTW, I got a salad. I had eaten 2 huge burgers at In-N-Out Burger on Thursday night, and I really didn't think I could handle another greasy meal so soon. The trip to In-N-Out was a pre-planned part of the trip, because In-N-Out burger is considered to be a California institution. If you are a fan of vanawesome, Natalie, or Hugh, you might remember that vanawesome took both Natalie and Hugh to an In-N-Out Burger place when they visited Cali ) - or rather Michael and Peter got to their seats, because despite the fact that the place was pretty much empty, there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. You see, being a business-district McDonalds, this place had the least kid-friendly seating of any McDonalds I had ever seen. Almost all the "tables" were counters sticking out of the wall, and almost all the "chairs" were these really tall bar-stool type things that were bolted to the floor. There was no way I was going to let the kids sits on the 4-foot high stools with no backs ( especially considering how often they shove each other ). Thankfully, there was regular table with regular chairs ( The table had a "handicapped" symbol on it ), but the table only had two chairs. So, I got the boys set up and started to eat my salad standing up, occasionally crouching down to help Peter with his drink ( He can still be messy with his drinks if you don't help him. ). After about 10 minutes of eating Michael remembered that he needed to go to the bathroom. By this time he needed to go real bad, and he had to poop. As soon as Michael told me he needed to go "ka ka" ( the family word for "poop" ), Peter chimed in that he also needed to go "ka ka". So, I walked with the boys to the bathroom and discovered .....
... that both bathrooms were temporarily closed for cleaning. There was hand-made sign on each door informing us of this, and apparently, there was a third McDonald's employee busy cleaning the Ladies room. There wasn't anybody in the Men's room, but the Men's room door was locked. So, I'm standing outside the Ladies room hoping the cleaning person finishes the job soon, so she can open the Men's room door for me before one ( or BOTH! ) boys have an accident. It takes the lady a LONG time to finish, but she eventually gets out and opens the Men's room door for me. They boys rush in, takes turns taking their poops ( surprisingly, there was no fighting about this ), and both get the job done with having any accident.
<>
So, we got through that challenge and finished our meal. That was pretty much all the excitement for the day. Ruth eventually met us at the McDonalds, and we walked to our car and headed back to Uncle Joey's house to pack for our trip home on Saturday
You'll learn more ( and see more ) about my trips in future posts, but it's already 11:36, and that means I've got to go to bed again.
Rich
So, Michael and I left the restaurant and took a little walk. I figured that he was probably getting hungry, so I started looking for a place where he I could get him something to eat. Clearly, all the Chinese restaurants were out of the question, but I figured he might like to have a yummy pastry from a Chinese bakery. Unfortunately, I didn't see a Chinese bakery anywhere nearby. I found this a little bit hard to believe, but after walking around for a few blocks I realized that my eyes were not deceiving me. So, I settled on a rather pretentious-looking tea/coffee shop. It was the kind of the place that seemed to be more about the atmosphere and the fancy decor than the food/drinks, but I didn't really have a lot of options, and I really wanted to get Michael a snack. I was hoping there would at least be some brightly-colored, super-sweet, rice-based Chinese desserts in the place, but all they had were rather drab looking danishes, apple turnovers, bear claws, and scones. They actually did seem rather yummy to me, but none of them really excited Michael. He wound up passing on all the pastries and asked for a bottle of flavored water ( which they charged 3 bucks for ). All the fancy seats in the place were taken, so Michael and I headed outside to walk some more. Just about then my cellphone started to vibrate ( BTW, I'm a really simple fella - my phone is always on vibrate. This may not be too exciting, but I like the fact that I never have to bother to remember to put my phone on vibrate when I go into a place like a movie theater. ). It was Ruth. Apparently, Peter had been asking "Where's Daddy?" ever since I had left ( It was kinda nice to know that he missed me, even though I had just carried him to the restaurant against his will. :) ). Ruth told me she was leaving the restaurant to bring Peter to me. I was only about a block away from the restaurant, so we met on the corner closest to the restaurant. Ruth told me that there was absolutely nothing on the restaurant's menu that Peter would be willing to eat. We both decided it would be best if I took the boys to a kid-friendly place to eat ( I really wanted Ruth to be able to eat with her family ), but there were not any kid-friendly restaurants as far as the eye could see. At this point, I immediately thought of Orion's iPhone. We called Debby and asked her to ask Orion to look for a fast-food place on his iPhone ( He had arrived at the restaurant by then ). He was nice enough to come downstairs to show us the route to the closest fast food place on his iPhone. The closest fast-food was a McDonald's in the business district. It was a bit of a hike, but I was sure the boys would be willing to make the trip if there were french fries at the end of the rainbow.
So, as we are walking there it occurs to me that the McDonald's will probably be rather empty. I guessed that a McDonald's in the business district would probably cater to the breakfast/lunch crowd and would probably be rather empty around dinner time. I turned out to be right about that. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, but that turned out not to be a good thing. There were almost no customers there, but there was also hardly any staff. There were just two people in front of me in line, but it took about 10 minutes for me to get to the register. There was just one guy working the register, and it looked like there was only one one person preparing the food in the back. Each time the guy at the resister took an order, he headed towards the back to help the other person prepare the food. I really had never seen anything like this at a fast food place before. About this time, Michael told me he needed to go to the bathroom. I certainly didn't want him to go to the bathroom alone in a strange place, but I also didn't want to loose my place in the super-slow line. So, I asked Michael to try to hold it until we got our food.
Eventually, we got our food and headed to our seats ( BTW, I got a salad. I had eaten 2 huge burgers at In-N-Out Burger on Thursday night, and I really didn't think I could handle another greasy meal so soon. The trip to In-N-Out was a pre-planned part of the trip, because In-N-Out burger is considered to be a California institution. If you are a fan of vanawesome, Natalie, or Hugh, you might remember that vanawesome took both Natalie and Hugh to an In-N-Out Burger place when they visited Cali ) - or rather Michael and Peter got to their seats, because despite the fact that the place was pretty much empty, there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. You see, being a business-district McDonalds, this place had the least kid-friendly seating of any McDonalds I had ever seen. Almost all the "tables" were counters sticking out of the wall, and almost all the "chairs" were these really tall bar-stool type things that were bolted to the floor. There was no way I was going to let the kids sits on the 4-foot high stools with no backs ( especially considering how often they shove each other ). Thankfully, there was regular table with regular chairs ( The table had a "handicapped" symbol on it ), but the table only had two chairs. So, I got the boys set up and started to eat my salad standing up, occasionally crouching down to help Peter with his drink ( He can still be messy with his drinks if you don't help him. ). After about 10 minutes of eating Michael remembered that he needed to go to the bathroom. By this time he needed to go real bad, and he had to poop. As soon as Michael told me he needed to go "ka ka" ( the family word for "poop" ), Peter chimed in that he also needed to go "ka ka". So, I walked with the boys to the bathroom and discovered .....
... that both bathrooms were temporarily closed for cleaning. There was hand-made sign on each door informing us of this, and apparently, there was a third McDonald's employee busy cleaning the Ladies room. There wasn't anybody in the Men's room, but the Men's room door was locked. So, I'm standing outside the Ladies room hoping the cleaning person finishes the job soon, so she can open the Men's room door for me before one ( or BOTH! ) boys have an accident. It takes the lady a LONG time to finish, but she eventually gets out and opens the Men's room door for me. They boys rush in, takes turns taking their poops ( surprisingly, there was no fighting about this ), and both get the job done with having any accident.
<>
So, we got through that challenge and finished our meal. That was pretty much all the excitement for the day. Ruth eventually met us at the McDonalds, and we walked to our car and headed back to Uncle Joey's house to pack for our trip home on Saturday
You'll learn more ( and see more ) about my trips in future posts, but it's already 11:36, and that means I've got to go to bed again.
Rich
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Even More About Friday
As promised, here's the continuation to this post and this post - but first I'd like to answer a question in one of the comments on my posts.
Chowder is a seafood-based soup, and the seafood is almost always clams. There are two types of clam chowder, New England clam chowder ( a cream-based soup ) and Manhattan clam chowder ( a tomato-based soup ). The chowder I had in in San Fran was New England style ( I also had New England style chowder in San Fran when I visited in 2001. ). The "ch" in "chowder" is pronounced like the "ch" in "chair", and "chowder" rhymes with "powder". However, in New England, they actually pronounce "chowder" chow-dah. If somebody in New England drove their automobile a long distance to a pub, they might say, "I drove my cah real fah to the bah.".
OK, back to Friday. Let's skip forward to when we arrived in Chinatown. We met Ruth's family there at about 4 PM, but we had some time to kill, because we had to wait for Orion to get out of work. So, we spent a little time shopping - or rather Ruth spent some time shopping while I spent most of my time watching the boys like a hawk.
Michael was pretty good in the store, but Peter was grabbing a bunch of things he really shouldn't have been grabbing. I decided it would be best if I took a little walk with Peter. So I left Michael with Grandpa and coaxed Peter out of the store by asking him if he wanted to get something to drink. As we were walking down the street I noticed something about San Francisco's Chinatown. San Francisco's Chinatown is a lot more tourist-y than New York's Chinatown. I actually had to walk about a block and a half before we could find a little shop ( It was a fish shop with a little fridge of drinks in the back ) where we could buy a drink. However, I passed plenty of places where you could buy little souvenirs like post-cards and magnets. I've spent a lot a time in New York's Chinatown, and I never got that tourist-y feel there. Maybe it's because I'm not a tourist when I'm in New York and I'm not looking for tourist stuff there, but somehow New York's Chinatown feels a lot more lived-in than San Francisco's Chinatown. New York's Chinatown has plenty of shops that sell food on every block, and it seems like there's at least one Chinese bakery on every block ( I walked a few blocks looking for one later than day ( more on that later ) but I couldn't seem to find one ). I also couldn't help but notice the difference in the smell. For better or worse, New York's Chinatown is really smelly. There's always a lot of garbage out in front of the restaurants and shops, and from the smell of it, it seems like the garbage consists primarily of rotting fish. As a native New Yorker, I kinda missed the New York Chinatown smell when I walked around Chinatown in San Fran. The bottom line is, New York's Chinatown feels like a neighborhood, while San Fran's Chinatown just feels like a place with a bunch of Chinese shops. Of course, I may be passing judgment too quickly on the San Fran Chinatown ( I've only seen it twice - once in 2001 and once on Friday ), but I honestly think it pales in comparison to New York's version ( Of, course we arrogant New Yorkers ( no matter how long I live in New Jersey, I'll always be a New Yorker ) always think we have the best of everything. ( Well not weather - our weather in the winter really blows! )).
So anyway, eventually Peter and I found a place to buy a bottle of orange juice. Peter was chewing some gum so I asked him to take the gum out of his mouth. As I was fishing for a paper to wrap it in, he promptly took the gum out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. I told him to pick it back up ( also reminding him that he should NOT put the gum back into his mouth ) and put it in a garbage can. Unfortunately, the closest garbage can was about a block away. He insisted on holding the gum in his hands until we got to the garbage can, and by the time we got to the garbage can, his hands were really sticky. Of course, I neede to hold his hand as we walked down the crowded streets, so by the time we got back to the store Ruth was shopping in, my hand were also pretty sticky. :P
Eventually, Debby got a call from Orion indicating he was on his way, and we all made our way to the restaurant ( Actually, I forget to mention something when I initially wrote this paragraph, so I'm going to jam it in between these two sentences. The walk to the restaurant was not an easy one. I won't go into details except to say that Peter got a little bratty about a toy he wanted. Ruth had already gotten Peter one toy ( to distract him at the restaurant ), and considering that he had been kinda a bad boy that day, we did NOT want to send the wrong message by caving into his demands for another toy. Thus, I had to carry Peter out of the little toy store against his will. Just like he had earlier in the day, he fought me all the way from the toy store to the restaurant. Not fun. ). It was a little restaurant that Ruth's Dad found in a guide book, a real hole-in-wall type of place that was supposed to have really good food. The front door of the place actually led into the kitchen ( There were actually a few pigeons running around the kitchen - a bit unsanitary perhaps, but as somebody who is used to the filth of New York's Chinatown, it made me fell right at home ), and there was a narrow staircase that led to a small seating area upstairs. I thought I was about to have a really tasty meal, but then I noticed that Michael was holding his nose.
When I saw him holding his nose, I knew exactly what was going on. I'd seen this before. It happens almost every time we go to an authentic Asian restaurant, and I was kicking myself for not realizing that it was going to happen again that night ( It had happened that Monday, when we were waiting for a take-out order a a Vietnamese place ). Michael unfortunately has an olfactory sensitivity that no person with Asian blood should be cursed with. He has an extreme sensitivity to the vinegar smell that emanates from the kitchens of many asian restaurants. Ruth tells me it has something to do with the way the rice is made. Frankly, I never noticed this smell before, but Ruth said that her sister Debby used to be sensitive to that smell when she was a kid ( she eventually outgrew it ). So ironically enough, it seems that Michael has inrehited the I-don't-like-the-smell-of-Asian-kitchens gene from the Asian side of his family. In any case, his sensitivity means he can't stand to spend more than 5 minutes in an authentic Asian restaurant ( He's been fine at bunch of Asian banquets we've taken him to ( usually for one-month and 100-day celebrations for the baby's of friends ), but I guess the dining room is far enough away from the kitchen in those places ).
So, what did this all mean? It meant I was going to have to take a walk again.
Geez - it's already 11:36 PM. I was hoping to finish this "little" story tonight, but I guess that's not going to happen. I'm not even sure what I'm going to name the next part, but I assure you that there will be a next part soon.
Rich
Chowder is a seafood-based soup, and the seafood is almost always clams. There are two types of clam chowder, New England clam chowder ( a cream-based soup ) and Manhattan clam chowder ( a tomato-based soup ). The chowder I had in in San Fran was New England style ( I also had New England style chowder in San Fran when I visited in 2001. ). The "ch" in "chowder" is pronounced like the "ch" in "chair", and "chowder" rhymes with "powder". However, in New England, they actually pronounce "chowder" chow-dah. If somebody in New England drove their automobile a long distance to a pub, they might say, "I drove my cah real fah to the bah.".
OK, back to Friday. Let's skip forward to when we arrived in Chinatown. We met Ruth's family there at about 4 PM, but we had some time to kill, because we had to wait for Orion to get out of work. So, we spent a little time shopping - or rather Ruth spent some time shopping while I spent most of my time watching the boys like a hawk.
Michael was pretty good in the store, but Peter was grabbing a bunch of things he really shouldn't have been grabbing. I decided it would be best if I took a little walk with Peter. So I left Michael with Grandpa and coaxed Peter out of the store by asking him if he wanted to get something to drink. As we were walking down the street I noticed something about San Francisco's Chinatown. San Francisco's Chinatown is a lot more tourist-y than New York's Chinatown. I actually had to walk about a block and a half before we could find a little shop ( It was a fish shop with a little fridge of drinks in the back ) where we could buy a drink. However, I passed plenty of places where you could buy little souvenirs like post-cards and magnets. I've spent a lot a time in New York's Chinatown, and I never got that tourist-y feel there. Maybe it's because I'm not a tourist when I'm in New York and I'm not looking for tourist stuff there, but somehow New York's Chinatown feels a lot more lived-in than San Francisco's Chinatown. New York's Chinatown has plenty of shops that sell food on every block, and it seems like there's at least one Chinese bakery on every block ( I walked a few blocks looking for one later than day ( more on that later ) but I couldn't seem to find one ). I also couldn't help but notice the difference in the smell. For better or worse, New York's Chinatown is really smelly. There's always a lot of garbage out in front of the restaurants and shops, and from the smell of it, it seems like the garbage consists primarily of rotting fish. As a native New Yorker, I kinda missed the New York Chinatown smell when I walked around Chinatown in San Fran. The bottom line is, New York's Chinatown feels like a neighborhood, while San Fran's Chinatown just feels like a place with a bunch of Chinese shops. Of course, I may be passing judgment too quickly on the San Fran Chinatown ( I've only seen it twice - once in 2001 and once on Friday ), but I honestly think it pales in comparison to New York's version ( Of, course we arrogant New Yorkers ( no matter how long I live in New Jersey, I'll always be a New Yorker ) always think we have the best of everything. ( Well not weather - our weather in the winter really blows! )).
So anyway, eventually Peter and I found a place to buy a bottle of orange juice. Peter was chewing some gum so I asked him to take the gum out of his mouth. As I was fishing for a paper to wrap it in, he promptly took the gum out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. I told him to pick it back up ( also reminding him that he should NOT put the gum back into his mouth ) and put it in a garbage can. Unfortunately, the closest garbage can was about a block away. He insisted on holding the gum in his hands until we got to the garbage can, and by the time we got to the garbage can, his hands were really sticky. Of course, I neede to hold his hand as we walked down the crowded streets, so by the time we got back to the store Ruth was shopping in, my hand were also pretty sticky. :P
Eventually, Debby got a call from Orion indicating he was on his way, and we all made our way to the restaurant ( Actually, I forget to mention something when I initially wrote this paragraph, so I'm going to jam it in between these two sentences. The walk to the restaurant was not an easy one. I won't go into details except to say that Peter got a little bratty about a toy he wanted. Ruth had already gotten Peter one toy ( to distract him at the restaurant ), and considering that he had been kinda a bad boy that day, we did NOT want to send the wrong message by caving into his demands for another toy. Thus, I had to carry Peter out of the little toy store against his will. Just like he had earlier in the day, he fought me all the way from the toy store to the restaurant. Not fun. ). It was a little restaurant that Ruth's Dad found in a guide book, a real hole-in-wall type of place that was supposed to have really good food. The front door of the place actually led into the kitchen ( There were actually a few pigeons running around the kitchen - a bit unsanitary perhaps, but as somebody who is used to the filth of New York's Chinatown, it made me fell right at home ), and there was a narrow staircase that led to a small seating area upstairs. I thought I was about to have a really tasty meal, but then I noticed that Michael was holding his nose.
When I saw him holding his nose, I knew exactly what was going on. I'd seen this before. It happens almost every time we go to an authentic Asian restaurant, and I was kicking myself for not realizing that it was going to happen again that night ( It had happened that Monday, when we were waiting for a take-out order a a Vietnamese place ). Michael unfortunately has an olfactory sensitivity that no person with Asian blood should be cursed with. He has an extreme sensitivity to the vinegar smell that emanates from the kitchens of many asian restaurants. Ruth tells me it has something to do with the way the rice is made. Frankly, I never noticed this smell before, but Ruth said that her sister Debby used to be sensitive to that smell when she was a kid ( she eventually outgrew it ). So ironically enough, it seems that Michael has inrehited the I-don't-like-the-smell-of-Asian-kitchens gene from the Asian side of his family. In any case, his sensitivity means he can't stand to spend more than 5 minutes in an authentic Asian restaurant ( He's been fine at bunch of Asian banquets we've taken him to ( usually for one-month and 100-day celebrations for the baby's of friends ), but I guess the dining room is far enough away from the kitchen in those places ).
So, what did this all mean? It meant I was going to have to take a walk again.
Geez - it's already 11:36 PM. I was hoping to finish this "little" story tonight, but I guess that's not going to happen. I'm not even sure what I'm going to name the next part, but I assure you that there will be a next part soon.
Rich
Monday, August 31, 2009
More About Friday
This post is a continuation of my previous post. I probably won't have time to finish my Friday story tonight, but I would like to write a little bit before going to bed.
So, after we got on the boat, Peter calmed down a bit. In fact, he was quite excited to be on a boat, and he dragged me by the hand to the top deck of the boat ( Ruth stayed below deck with Michael - she tends to get sea-sick on boats ). As we sat there on the to deck, we had one of those little moments that makes all the stress of parenthood worth it. We had a great view of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge from the our seats, and we could also see a bunch of sailboats. Peter drank it all in and his little eyes lit up. He kept pointing at stuff and saying things like "I see sailboat Daddy!" and "giant red bridge Daddy!" ( That's what he calls the Golden Gate Bridge - we had seen it up close on Monday ). Now that he's finally started to talk a bit, I just love to hear his cute little voice. I need to cherish every little moment like that. He's still my baby boy, but I know he won't be a baby forever.
So, the boat trip went rather well, but things got a little bit tougher once we got on the island. It soon became clear that our options were going to be a bit limited by the boys. I was really interested in a guided tour about Alcatraz escapes ( given by a former FBI agent who once swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco ), but we had to quit that tour after about 5 minutes because Peter needed to go potty just as the tour group was leaving to head to another location. We finally decided to make our way up to the prison building to do the main tour. The boys were real troopers on that walk. We were told it was a 130 foot climb from the dock to the main prison building, but the boys made it without a problem ( I was VERY thankful I didn't have to carry Peter up the hill ). The tour was a self-guided one. You were given headphones and an audio device when you got in ( a very low-tech iPod-type thingy ). There were about 20 chapters on the audio thingy. The audio device would tell you where to go and tell a story about each each location. You could start and stop the audio recording whenever you wanted, which meant you could do the tour at your own pace. This all seemed kinda promising, because it meant we could take a break from the tour whenever the boys acted up. Unfortunately the boys acted up quite a bit. At times, it seemed like they were re-enacting a prison riot. It's not really a bad thing for boys to fight and wrestle a bit ( As Ruth's Dad told us "Don't worry about the boys fighting. You should only worry if they don't fight each other. If two brothers close in age don't fight each other, then something's wrong.". In other words, "Boys will be boys", and they were certainly being boys that day. ), but it made it tough to concentrate on the tour when the boys were constantly wrestling at my feet, chasing each other, and pulling each other down. They really weren't fighting in a malicious way. I think they were just bored by the whole tour and were looking for something more fun to do. They had spent much of the past week watching a DVD called "Scooby Doo and the Goblin King". We had brought a portable DVD player and about 20 DVDs on the trip ( to keep the boys entertained on the plane and in the evenings ), but it seemed like they only wanted to watch the Goblin King. There's a comical scene in the Goblin King where two guard fight each other, and it seemed like the boys were trying to re-enact that scene. So it was more of a giggling fight than a screaming fight, but it was still rather distracting, and I was still worried that they were going to hurt themselves ( considering that there were steel bars all over the place ). Ruth was also still feeling a bit sea-sick, so after a while she needed to sit down, and I was doing the tour all on my own with the two boys. After doing the tour with the boys for about 20 minutes I realized that I was never going to be able to take many pictures ( because I had to keep my eyes on the boys ). I knew that Ruth would be disappointed if we didn't get a a lot of good pictures, so I dropped he boys off with Ruth, and started to do the tour on my own. After a few minutes a I started to worry that Ruth might be having a hard time with the boys ( and her sea-sickness ), so I made my way quickly around the whole prison and took every picture I could. By that time I was only halfway through the audio tour, but I decided to give up and head back to Ruth and the boys. When I got back to where I had left them, I found they were no longer there. Michael had apparently needed to go potty really bad, so Ruth had left the tour location completely to go to the bathroom just outside the prison building. Eventually, I got in touch with Ruth by phone and we met in the prison gift shop.
And that was about it for our Alcatraz tour. We headed back down to get the boat back to San Fran. By the time we got on the boat it was 2:30, but it really didn't seem like we had done much. Don't get me wrong - we had a lot of fun and saw a lot of cool stuff, but we didn't do quite as much as we thought we would do. Still, all in all, it was a good time.
Well, I see it's bedtime for me again, so I'll have to continue this story later. Stay tuned for the next episode, which I'll probably call "Even More About Friday".
Rich
So, after we got on the boat, Peter calmed down a bit. In fact, he was quite excited to be on a boat, and he dragged me by the hand to the top deck of the boat ( Ruth stayed below deck with Michael - she tends to get sea-sick on boats ). As we sat there on the to deck, we had one of those little moments that makes all the stress of parenthood worth it. We had a great view of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge from the our seats, and we could also see a bunch of sailboats. Peter drank it all in and his little eyes lit up. He kept pointing at stuff and saying things like "I see sailboat Daddy!" and "giant red bridge Daddy!" ( That's what he calls the Golden Gate Bridge - we had seen it up close on Monday ). Now that he's finally started to talk a bit, I just love to hear his cute little voice. I need to cherish every little moment like that. He's still my baby boy, but I know he won't be a baby forever.
So, the boat trip went rather well, but things got a little bit tougher once we got on the island. It soon became clear that our options were going to be a bit limited by the boys. I was really interested in a guided tour about Alcatraz escapes ( given by a former FBI agent who once swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco ), but we had to quit that tour after about 5 minutes because Peter needed to go potty just as the tour group was leaving to head to another location. We finally decided to make our way up to the prison building to do the main tour. The boys were real troopers on that walk. We were told it was a 130 foot climb from the dock to the main prison building, but the boys made it without a problem ( I was VERY thankful I didn't have to carry Peter up the hill ). The tour was a self-guided one. You were given headphones and an audio device when you got in ( a very low-tech iPod-type thingy ). There were about 20 chapters on the audio thingy. The audio device would tell you where to go and tell a story about each each location. You could start and stop the audio recording whenever you wanted, which meant you could do the tour at your own pace. This all seemed kinda promising, because it meant we could take a break from the tour whenever the boys acted up. Unfortunately the boys acted up quite a bit. At times, it seemed like they were re-enacting a prison riot. It's not really a bad thing for boys to fight and wrestle a bit ( As Ruth's Dad told us "Don't worry about the boys fighting. You should only worry if they don't fight each other. If two brothers close in age don't fight each other, then something's wrong.". In other words, "Boys will be boys", and they were certainly being boys that day. ), but it made it tough to concentrate on the tour when the boys were constantly wrestling at my feet, chasing each other, and pulling each other down. They really weren't fighting in a malicious way. I think they were just bored by the whole tour and were looking for something more fun to do. They had spent much of the past week watching a DVD called "Scooby Doo and the Goblin King". We had brought a portable DVD player and about 20 DVDs on the trip ( to keep the boys entertained on the plane and in the evenings ), but it seemed like they only wanted to watch the Goblin King. There's a comical scene in the Goblin King where two guard fight each other, and it seemed like the boys were trying to re-enact that scene. So it was more of a giggling fight than a screaming fight, but it was still rather distracting, and I was still worried that they were going to hurt themselves ( considering that there were steel bars all over the place ). Ruth was also still feeling a bit sea-sick, so after a while she needed to sit down, and I was doing the tour all on my own with the two boys. After doing the tour with the boys for about 20 minutes I realized that I was never going to be able to take many pictures ( because I had to keep my eyes on the boys ). I knew that Ruth would be disappointed if we didn't get a a lot of good pictures, so I dropped he boys off with Ruth, and started to do the tour on my own. After a few minutes a I started to worry that Ruth might be having a hard time with the boys ( and her sea-sickness ), so I made my way quickly around the whole prison and took every picture I could. By that time I was only halfway through the audio tour, but I decided to give up and head back to Ruth and the boys. When I got back to where I had left them, I found they were no longer there. Michael had apparently needed to go potty really bad, so Ruth had left the tour location completely to go to the bathroom just outside the prison building. Eventually, I got in touch with Ruth by phone and we met in the prison gift shop.
And that was about it for our Alcatraz tour. We headed back down to get the boat back to San Fran. By the time we got on the boat it was 2:30, but it really didn't seem like we had done much. Don't get me wrong - we had a lot of fun and saw a lot of cool stuff, but we didn't do quite as much as we thought we would do. Still, all in all, it was a good time.
Well, I see it's bedtime for me again, so I'll have to continue this story later. Stay tuned for the next episode, which I'll probably call "Even More About Friday".
Rich
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