Pedram's stream of consciousness

OMG Blogger

2008-01-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

It has been several months since I last blogged (on blogger) and I first felt guilty that I wasn't blogging and then I felt guilty that I thought so much of myself that I had to share my thoughts with the world and now I feel angry (angry face) that Blogger has caused these emotions inside me....

Actually just kidding. Most of my blogging and self expression has been moved into facebook because... well because it is awesome and is my one stop shopping place for all my online social activity. That being said, I just bought a nice digital SLR and am going to learn the finer points of photography so once I start producing nice pictures look for them here (and on facebook).

More news

2007-09-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

So what's new with Pedram?

1 - I'm now at facebook and love it! Well I've been here for 2 months now. I have the same kind of excitement about work that I had early on at Google. I can get lots and lots done and the only thing slowing me down is how quickly I can go. What we will do in the coming years is really exciting!

2 - I got my first patent approved. I filed for the patent in 2004 while at Microsoft Research and recently received the notice that it was approved (crossing fingers for my other filed patents).

3 - I was blogged about by Googlified.

new job, 30, and construction

2007-09-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a while because a lot of stuff has been going on lately. Get ready for a blast of words with little structure...... 8 weeks I quit my job at Google, 2 weeks later I started my new job at Facebook, and then 4 weeks later I turned 30, 3 weeks before that we started major construction on our backyard, frontyard and sewer system, 3 months before that our sewer backed up and let nasty stuff wash up and flood our downstairs, 6 months before that I started getting really fed up with not being about to launch anything at work, 4 month after that I attended my brother in law's graduation ceremony where Omid Kordestani's speech convinced me that you don't get ahead unless you take risks, a month after that I realized that a year ago a good friend of mine left Google to take a big risk on himself and it clicked for me, 3 months later I realized I made the right decision because every day of work has gotten better than the last day, 1 week later our new patio and front walkway was done, 1 day later we threw a big party for my 30th birthday (pics on facebook), 7 hours later Don Julio and Jack Daniels battled it out in my stomach, 1 hour later they declared truce after the 2nd battle of porcelain valley, 8 hours later I was cleaning up my house, 6 days earlier Rah got me Bose noise cancelling headphones, 9 days lateer I was sitting at work listening to them while writing this blog.

I'm 30 now but time means nothing :-)

A historic weekend

2007-07-15T14:38:00.001-07:00

This weekend marks two important milestones in my life.

On Friday July 13th, 2007 I resigned from Google in search of new challenges and risks. This was a hard decision to come to and I have been seriously thinking about it for the last few months. In the end I decided (with support from my wife) that I am at the point in my career where I can make risky decisions. I am young enough that I can jump off the ledge and not worry about landing on my feet or my head because either way I have time to pick myself up and try again. So Friday I leaped off that ledge, look for an update on where I land.

Today Sunday July 15th, 2007 I weighted myself after working out and after over 10 years I finally weight under 200lbs...... ok so my weight is 199.9 and a fart could bump me back over to 200 but the last time I was under 200 lbs I was 17 years old. I have lost over 15lbs in the last 12 weeks and I know with continued dedication I will be able to get to 190.

I'm famous

2007-07-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

Those that know me know that I work for Google and that I work on www.orkut.com. What they may not know is that orkut.com is the 7th most visited site in the world and that in the last few months my face was added to the logo on the welcome page. Booya!

I wish I could end it at that..... As a result of this picture I have gotten a 10X increase in spam on orkut and now many people are creating fake Pedram accounts. At first I thought it was funny but now I think it is very annoying!

Again with the health

2007-07-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I finished the 12 week health 4 life program at Google 2 weeks ago..... My goals were to get under 200lbs (down from 214) and lower my cholesterol and fasting blood sugar. Well it turns out I didn't mean my goal of getting below 200 but I am at 201 which is pretty darn good. I also lowered my cholesterol by over 60 points and my fasting blood sugar by 10 points. So booya! I am a healthy mofo now!

What did it take? I logged my food for the first 2 weeks and Valerie (my nutritionist) showed me the distribution of food types I was eating and then showed me where I should be. This made it very clear to me that I was eating too much meat and starch and not enough leafy greens. The amazing thing is that this simple step made it very easy for me to add more veggies to my diet. The next step was to study the basic nutritional facts for many different food types and the one thing that stuck out in my mind is that red meat has more cholesterol and less protein that chicken. Now there are people who say eating beef is bad for the world but my main concern was my body so I gave up red meat and haven't had it for over 3 months now (hence the reduction in my cholesterol).

Now for the real trick to this whole thing... portion control. While what you eat matters, the portions that you are very very important (Obviously!) but it isn't just how much you eat but the combinations of food that you take in together. A big bowl of ice cream is not that good for you but if you have it after a meal that has protein, fat, and fiber your body actually absorbs the ice cream differently (in a good way).

Oh and don't forget exercise. I was already working out 2-3 times a week so I tried to increase that to 4-5 times a week. For a while I was good about the exercise but then I hurt my knee and took a little break from the gym. This slowed down my weight loss and if it wasn't for that I am sure I would be under 200lbs today.

The reason I am writing this post is because last night I was at my friend Eiman's place when I saw that he had a pullup bar. For whatever reason I started doing pullups and was able to do 10 full pullups. I have never in my entire life been able to do 10 pullups! I was pretty proud :-)

Diets don't work, it is only through small conscious decisions that health goals can be achieved.

Crazy cop

2007-06-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

As I was rolling out of the toll light in the highway on ramp a cop car races in front of my path and totally cut me off. I saw the lights flashing and figured he was after someone but then he did the oddest thing.... He slowed down and started swerving from left to right. He eventually settled into a lane and I tried to pass him at under the speed limit of 65 mph (in the future when the speed limit is 1000 mph and people come back to this blog they will be amazed at how slow we were) the cop cut into my lane and blocked my access. At this point I started piecing it together and realized he wanted to slow down traffic so that there was a dead zone in the traffic ahead. Anyways, it was an odd sight and my first instinct was that some loony stole a cop car and took it for a joy ride. As I described the situation to my wife, coworkers, friends etc. they all seemed to have had an experience with that before.

How is it that after 11 years of being able to drive I had never encountered such a cool thing before?

Living on the edge

2007-05-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended a Google off site workshop on leadership training in Santa Cruz. The workshop is called "Edge" and it was awesome. A group of 25 Googlers from around the company got a 2.5 day intensive course on personality types, leadership styles, group dynamics, etc. We formed teams and had to do a lot of exercises where we had limited time and/or information and we had to be able to work as a team communicate, coordinate, and execute a plan of action. All of the activities had very short time limits and most of them involved us being blind folded during the execution stage. It is funny to think they trained us for leadership by blind folding us... I guess they took to heart the saying "the blind leading the blind".

Recently I have been working on my ability to remember names and so I actively memorize the names of everyone I meet. I was pretty proud of myself because in the first 2 hours of the workshop I was able to memorize the names of all 24 other people in the workshop as well as the names of the 3 people who organized it. I also impressed a few people when I named everyone in the room :-)

The second to last day of the program we had an outdoor challenge that involved a bunch of obstacle courses which all involved heights. One of the obstacles was to climb up a 50 foot tall pole and balance on a bar stool on the top and then jump 10 feet out and hit a tether ball that is suspended in the air....I might have forgotten to mention to you that I hate heights. About a year ago I started rock climbing just to get over my fear but thinking about jumping off a 50 foot pole (even with a harness) scared me silly. But surprise surprise, I climbed the pole and once I got to the top I focused on standing up (which I did pretty well) and then as I looked out among the tree tops and realized that there was nothing but me, the ball, and a lot of air the entire world around me became still. Nothing else mattered, I wasn't thinking about yesterday, or tomorrow, or even 5 minutes ago, all I could think about was "There is a ball, there is you, and there is space in between you, remove the space". So in a leap of faith (no pun intended) I jumped up and out towards the ball and as I flew through the air I wasn't worried that my cable could snap ending my short but sweet life, all I was worried about was that I might not have jumped hard enough and all that effort would go to waste and as my anxiety continued to grow my hands made contact with the ball and just like that it was all worth it. When my team lowered me to the ground I was shaking because of all the adrenaline and I was so happy and proud :-)

When living on the edge sometimes the best thing to do is jump (up and out)!

Ads or action

2007-05-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

With all the awareness and concern for the environment more and more companies are spending their ad dollars to convince the world that they are "green". Sun, Intel, BP, GM, IBM, you name the company and they have an ad claiming that their company and technology/product is helping make the world a greener place. How much of this is the result of companies really making an effort to clean up and how much of it has to do with jumping on the "eco-friendly" band wagon? I could buy a hummer and then tell you that it is 93% more efficient than a tractor. I could pour bleach into the bay and tell you it is safer than plutonium. The list of examples is endless but the trillion dollar question is this, will all of this advertising make people complacent and in the next year or two will people forget about the limited time we have to reverse the damage we have done?

Shaving those pounds

2007-04-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I got up at 6:00AM to exercise with my brother-in-law. We lifted some weights and played a little basketball (which he schooled me at) and then he left and I did 40 minutes of cardio (while I usually do 60 minutes but I wanted to beat the traffic this morning). Now here comes the cool part...... When I got back into the locker room I weighed myself and I came in at 204.7 lbs!!!!! Ok so if you don't know the back story then my weight isn't that impressive to you but less than 8 weeks ago I was over 212 lbs. Thanks to the Google nutrition plan I have learned so much about how the body works and all kinds of food facts that have empowered me to fundamentally change my life. I have learned the ins and outs of good and bad cholesterol and how to better regulate my blood sugar. Each week I meet with a nutritionist and learn a new tid-bit and work on strategies to make little tweaks to that really add up. Here is the best part, I am not on a diet and I am not depriving myself. I pretty much eat all that I want :-)

So I set a goal of getting under 200 lbs and now am planning to reset my goal to be under 190 which is a weight I haven't been at since junior year of high school.

Vive la France

2007-03-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Paris France last night, here is the 2-word executive summary.

Eiffel tower: great view
Notre Dame: no hunchback
The Louvre: didn't go
Palace of Versailles: big house
Moulin Rouge: bouncing boobs
Paris metro: freaking crowded
Parisian drivers: fast lunatics
French food: very rich
French clothing: second mortgage
Paris: awesome city!
The French: not rude

Now for some details. We stayed with Rah's friends from college who live in Paris and they showed us a great time. It was my first visit to France and I was really impressed by the amazing architectural detail in nearly all of the buildings. While walking down the streets of Paris I would have felt like I was transported back in time if it wasn't for all the dam cars everywhere. The streets of Paris are very narrow which gives the cars very little room to do the 100kmh stunts that we got to witness. Along with all the cars are scores of motor scooters driven by people who I am convinced have a death wish. But the city is so much fun to navigate and you can't travel more than 20 feet before you run into a cool neighborhood bar or coffee shop or craft store. While we saw a lot of the city we also spent a lot of great time chatting in bars while we drank wine and ate cheese while watching people walk by.

I have heard over and over again that the French are rude but this is 100% not true. Not a single person in France was rude to me except for a few American tourists in the airport who cut in line. If you recognize that you are a visitor in their country and make an attempt to learn enough French then people are more than willing go out of their way to help you out.

We had an interesting experience at the Eiffel tower that is worth sharing. The Eiffel tower has three levels or platforms where visitors can stand and take in the view. There are stairs and elevators to the first two levels so we decided that it would be fun exercise to take the stairs. This proved to be a little to much for some in our party but we all made it to the second level in one piece. Then we took the elevator to the top level because they have closed off the stairs to the top. This isn't the most interesting part, neither was the amazing view from the top, the most amazing part of this journey was how we got down from the tower. We took the elevator from the top to the second level and then the stairs from the second level to the first level but here is where our problems started :-) While we were walking down to the first level they closed off the stairs from the first level to the ground floor because it was closing time. So now we are stuck on the first floor but figure we can just take the elevator.. right? wrong! The way the elevators work for the first two levels is that there is a single track that takes people from the ground and the first and second level. First the elevator loads up with people on the ground floor and then deposits them on the second floor, at which point it loads up with people on the second floor and then goes the the first floor but almost no one gets off on the first floor so the doors open for 5 seconds, there is no room, they close, and the elevator goes to the ground for another batch of people. The worst part of this is that the elevator operator is facing the crowd of people who want to get on but he doesn't even think to himself that "hmmmm.... This seems unfair that I never pick people up from the first floor, maybe I should only take a half load on the second floor so everyone can get off.." He just looks at you with a blank expression as he closes the door. After 30 minutes half of the people waiting with us revolted and we went to the stair well that was closed off and jumped over the gate only to find that 20 feet down another gate was closed and the only way to get around that one would mean to climb around the outside of the hand rails. While we were doing that another woman went to a manager and told him/her the situation and got things taken care of so that when we went back to the elevator they brought down a half load and we all happily got on.

All in all our first visit to France was full of new experiences, cheese, and wine. I think our next trip will be either Turkey or Greece.

300 omissions, errors, and lies

2007-03-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

The movie 300 depicts an epic battle where 300 Spartans battle and defeat a million Persian soldiers (from what I hear since I didn't see the movie, nor do I plan to). The movie is based on a comic book which is a major modification of the writing of Herodotus. Herodotus has been called by many the father of history but he is also known by many as the father of lies because his accounts of Greek history contradicts other non-biased historians of the time. So the movie is a box office hit but most Persians are really upset about the movie. There are online petitions and discussion groups, and blah blah blah of people getting really bent out of shape.

Here is my thinking (for what it's worth). Movies like this are only going to influence individuals with a pre-existing bias. In my mind the point isn't to sway these people in a different direction because it is going to require so much work and energy to guide the misguided our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be working on it. I just don't want my $8 going to support this movie making machine that rapes and pillages everyone. When I say everyone I mean EVERYONE! Cowboys, Indians (with feathers), Indians (with dots), Mexicans, Africans, Asians, lawyers, doctors, left handed people, cab drivers, midgets, giants, the blind, the deaf, the blind and the deaf, etc. You name it, the movie industry has found a way to twist the facts and make bite sized chunks of digestible crap for the masses to consume.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword but in the fist fight of bombs vs. bits the movie camera will always come out on top. The only way to not get the mental s**t kicked out of yourself is to question what you see but also see what you question. If you don't question your own assumptions and consider that maybe, just maybe, you could be wrong about something that you believe so strongy then you leave no room for growth. So my original statement that I am not going to see the movie wasn't actually correct. I am going to see the movie but not in theatres, I am going to wait until someone I know buys the DVD and then I will watch it and revisit this debate with myself.

Midnight creepers.... again

2007-03-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Most of my friends know that my house was badly TPed the weekend before Halloween. I have a previous blog post and picasa album about it. But what they and I didn't understand until last night was the deep post-war like symptoms now embedded in my brain. It turns out that 3+ hours of cleaning TP left a real lasting chemical change in me.

Last night around 2:22 AM I woke up to the sound of running and kids laughing/talking. I immediately jumped out of bed to look out the window but didn't see anyone. In an adrenaline filled flurry I put on some pants, grabbed my keys and cell phone and rushed out the house to get in the car and find the culprits. I might add that in the process I woke up Rah and scared the bejebers out of her. With heart pounding and nerves jumping I cranked open the front door and ran towards my car when I noticed something very odd..... no TP, not a single square. I stood in my front yard for 30 seconds in a confused state, the events of the last 45 seconds being a total blur as if a dream. Back in the house I had to explain to Rah what happened and apologized. I got back in bed but could still hear my heart pumping adrenaline filled blood throughout my body. I struggle to go back to sleep for 20-30 minutes but just couldn't.

I think the solution to this is to get a big scary dog :-)

Time: Creation of Man

2007-03-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

Years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds...... They are a big fat lie. Each and every single one of these is a construct of man. We have a law that prohibits anyone from drinking until they are 21 but all that means is that your atoms have been roughly intact for 21 rotations of the earth around the sun since you exited the womb. This isn't actually true either because approximately every 3 years almost every atom in your body is replaced. The speed limit is another one, basically your velocity can't exceed a value such that you would travel 65 miles during 1/24th the rotation of the earth on its axis. And what is a mile but 5,280 feet and what the heck is a foot but 12 inches and an inch? Oh yeah here is the cute part, inch comes from the root uncia which means 1/12th. Now I know I skipped some of the important details on the origins of feet and inches but then the last sentence wouldn't sound as witty (that's assuming you found the last sentence even mildly amusing, which after reading it twice I am not sure I do anymore).

Back to time. Now that we know time is a big lie, let's examine why we need it. Well we need it because humans are bad at estimating progression of extended natural cycles like the earth's path around the sun (technical term: drift error). So we invented months that break up the cycle into units of twelve and we have days to break up the months. It seems reasonable, it is far easier to organize a BBQ by sending an invite for people to come to your house on Feb 1st as apposed to telling everyone to come to your house when the earth has completed 8.487% of the path around the sun because they would all come at different times based on when they start measuring the progression.

When someone is bored they have time to kill, when they have a hobby that is a pass time, when they are stalling they are buying time, when they are free they have time on their hands, and so on and so forth. Next time someone tells you they are running late think of this common saying "he was at the right place at the right time" and simply respond "no you're not late, you are just at the wrong place".

Now don't forget to set your clocks ahead for daylight savings.

The Googies

2007-03-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

While most people in the US were watching the Oscars last week there was another awards ceremony going on. While this awards ceremony was watched by far fewer people the magnitude of trophy is much more important. It was the first annual Google tech talk awards. Here is the background: Google has a wide program of tech talks for sharing information. Most tech talks are from Googlers on their projects and some from well known industry figures on what they are working on. In 2006 There were a few thousand such talks and out of this massive list my tech talk won! Woohoo! The trophy is a golden microphone (spray painted) and when I get a chance I will take a picture of it and post it.

Pesky Green Car

2007-02-22T05:14:00.000-08:00

The other day I had a flashback to Christmas shopping with my mom when I was 13. I had been asking my mom to get me a new toy racing car. At the time there was this new line of racing cars that would go amazingly fast if you wind them up and they where nice detailed replicas of real cars. While my mom is very generous she wouldn't buy them for me but one day we were at Toys'R'Us and as we passed by the cars that I wanted she told me to pick one out for her co-workers son. This made me very upset and frustrated that she was going to get the exact toy I wanted for someone else but not for me so I picked the ugliest car in the display which was a lime green replica of a Formula 1 racer. I was thinking to myself that this dumb kid is going to be so disappointed to open up this present and get this ugly green car. A few weeks later I was opening my Christmas gives and as I opened one of my gifts I realized that the dumb kid was me. My mom had created this story so that she could buy me the gift that I "wanted". This taught me a few lessons

1 - Don't be so focused on objects
2 - Wish others well regardless of your current state
3 - Don't trust mom when she says she is shopping for someone else

As a side note I no longer celebrate Christmas for a number of reasons which will probably be the subject of another blog post closer to December.

God and football

2007-02-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

I just saw a very exciting Superbowl 41 with my wife, parents, parents-in-law, and dad's cousin's family. The Bears who were the underdogs coming in started off hot and heavy by returning the first kickoff with a touchdown. As the weather pounded down on them the Colts followed suite and ended up winning the game. When the head coach and owner both accepted the Lombardi trophy they started talking about how it was because of God that they had such fortune and blah blah blah and it made me so mad. They made it sound like God was the reason for their fortune, by that logic should the other team be sitting in their locker room cursing God? What about the people in Florida who lost everything they had, including their lives, from the recent tornadoes? Should those people, excluding those that died, look up at the sky and give God the finger?

Too often people attribute their good fortune to a divine force that guided them through their struggles and tribulations. No, God did not cause the Bears to fumble the ball over and over again and for their quarterback to throw interceptions. It was the rain and an inexperienced quarterback......

Can someone please help us? No, not you God!

The beard.....

2007-01-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

As of Nov 7th 2006 I stopped shaving. At first I had no choice in the matter as I had shoulder surgery and couldn't shave with my left hand. As time went on and my arm started to recover I got back into my daily routine with the exception of the daily shave. At first I liked the idea of saving time each day and while that 10 minutes a day freed up an hour a week it turned into something more. Growing my beard became a sort of experiment as to how puffy it could get before everyone in my life revolted against me :-) Well it is now 1-15-2007 and I fear that before this MLK celebration is over my beard will be no more. I have mentally prepared myself for this for the last few days but now that my beard is so close to the chopping block I am feeling a little sad....... update to come soon.

Alpha males

2006-11-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

Last night Rah and I got woken up to what sounded like sumo wrestlers fighting with sticks. From the very start I had a suspicion that the noise was coming from deers but I had to satisfy my curiosity so I went outside and saw an amazing display as two bucks (male deer) locked antlers and pushed each other around my front yard. It was an awesome display of testosterone as these two bucks faced off to see who could mate with the lady deer that lived in our backyard. I got a little nervous when they got close to my car but that soon passed as one buck caused the other buck to lose his footing. The competition ended there as the loser took off with a little less pride in his hop.

Interestingly enough last week we got woken up to two raccoons fighting in the tree outside our bathroom window. At first I though it was cats but then the screaming got so loud I had to check it out. Outside the window I found two raccoons really going at it. The sad part was that the bigger raccoon had pushed the smaller raccoon to the edge of the branch and it was fighting for its life from the other raccoon and trying to hold on so it didn't fall 10 feet to the ground. Now in all honesty I doubt he was thinking "Damn, I am 10 feet above the ground" but I am sure he was pretty panicked.

That is the joy of living in the hills... that and the amazing view of the bay from our living room.

Going under the knife

2006-11-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

I just found this blog entry that I wrote the on Nov 6th (the night before my shoulder surgery). I was a little bit worried about having surgery on my shoulder because I thought I would be a gimp for a long time but here we are only 7 weeks after the surgery and I am at 80% with my arm. My awesome coworker Patrick was cool enough to make a care package for me with lots of chocolates, wine, and cool DVDs to watch (it made the first week of my recovery in bed go by much quicker).
...
Tomorrow morning I am going to have arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder... woohooo! The surgery should take about an hour with a 6 month recovery time. I don't have much to say about this other than I don't look forward to typing, eating, and wiping left handed.

Attack of the midnight creepers

2006-10-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday night Rah and I had a surprise visit from a group of teenagers (I think) who wanted to help us decorate our yard in toilet paper. Since they wanted it to be a surprise to us they did it sometime between 3 and 5 in the morning so that when Rah woke up at 7 am and looked out the window her startled reaction woke me up into a frenzied state of activity. Upon seeing the toilet paper wonderland that was my front yard my first reaction was "those &$%#*&#@ kids" then I thought that this was a pretty good TP job. I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures and then set about the task of cleaning up after this late night prank. Since our house is on a corner lot we have a large front yard and because of the 8 or more trees in our front yard this ended up being a difficult cleanup job. It essentially took me from 7am to 10am when I had to stop and take Rah to the airport. All in all I think they used 20-30 rolls of TP which ended up overflowing two large garbage bags and gave me a major knot in my back as I picked it all off the ground and reached up to get it from trees and then extended even further to get it out of the highest points with a long stick.

During that 3 hours of cleaning I got to meet a lot of neighbors who all had very interesting things to say. One man who was driving by when I first started cleaning stopped and said "that is the best TP job I have ever seen", I simply smiled and returned to cleaning. Later an older man who was walking his dog said with a mild Chinese accent "Was there a party here last night?" and my response was "If there was, we weren't invited" which caused us to laugh. I liked my interaction with him and was in a relatively good mood for about 15 minutes or so. Then there were the countless people passing by who said the painfully obvious "wow, looks like you got TPed" or "Why would anyone do that?". Cleaning up after a prank is bad enough but because of the spectacle it draws the stupidest comments from people. Either that or it just draws stupid people who choose to comment.

Between the visits from people walking by I had a long time to think about the act of TPing. A number of times I imagine myself waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking out the front door and grabbing one of the kids and kicking the living daylights out of him. Each time this thought entered my mind I would remind myself that this is a pretty harmless prank and they were thoughtful enough to use heavy duty toilet paper that stays in once piece when you pull it from trees. At one point I came up with this grand socio-political stance that TPing is a way for teenagers, who are constantly told what to do by older people, to reverse the power structure and force adults into action. This suddenly turned into half baked dream of writing a book on this subject and touring the country giving paid speeches at major universities as my book climbed the best seller list. Once that thought evaporated I again turned my attention to the fact that I was picking up TP from my front yard while the punk kids who did this were probably comfortably sleeping and would have a proud day of recounting how they punked the people who live at the top of the hill on Beverly drive.

My best friend who is a cop tells me that even if the police catch kids TPing a house they don't arrest them. All that happens is the kids parents get called and they can't be forced to clean up the mess they made. Can you believe it?

Here is a link to the pictures in case you want to see the carnage http://picasaweb.google.com/pedram/HouseGetsAVisitFromTPers

Buyer beware!

2006-10-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Imagine you just bought a new sports car (lets say BMW M3 as an example) and you climb in and go on your first drive. Upon starting the car up the first thing you hear isn't the engine roar but a man's voice "Buy an M5, you'll love it". You find it odd but then you engine starts roaring and you hit the gas and hit the road. You are feeling really happy about your purchase as you zip through traffic and take corners at 60mph then someone cuts you off and you hit the brakes but realize something is blocking the pedal from going all the way down so you swerve out of the way and barely avoid an accident. When you feel it is safe you look down and see a stack of BMW brochures under the brake pedal so you kick them out from under the pedal and continue to drive. Again later another car almost cuts you off so you hit the brake and slam on the horn but instead of a loud beep you get "You have been honked at by a BMW M3 which has an m.s.r.p. of $39,000. Get yours today". At this point you are baffled and about ready to drive the damn car off a cliff.

This is exactly how I feel about every magazine subscription I have. These magazines are all crammed with offers to buy subscriptions. There are no less than 10 offers in each of my Newsweek, scientific american, popular science, and wired. They are filled with a collection of loose offers that fall all over the floor when I try to read the magazine and stapled offers which due to their thickness make flipping through the magazine nearly impossible. Whenever I get a new scientific american (which is the worst offender in terms of the quantity) I spend a few minutes and go through the magazine and careful remove all the ads so that I can easily read the magazine that I already paid for and have no desire to order a second parallel subscription. But the worst of all is Wired not just because of their self ads but because they allow a variety of different paper types for paid ads. They allow advertisers to use plastic pages or cardboard ads and the end result is that if you even dare to think about flipping through the magazine these ads pop right up. They even put web popup ads to shame in terms of how annoying they are.

It is like having a clingy lover who is desperately worried that you are going to forget them so they write their number all over your bedroom with offers of a good time.

All I want from Santa (even though I haven't believed in him since he didn't grant my wish and lower the drinking age to 19) is for all magazine publishers to stop putting ads for themselves in the dang magazines they send in the mail.

P.S. Quick note about the picture. I typed "clingy" into Google image search and this was one of the first images and I thought it was so cute/funny/random that I used it as the image for this post even though it really doesn't have much to do with what I was talking about :-)

I'm almost a ninja

2006-10-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

I recently got a set of throwing knives and have been having a blast with them. My best friend Matt came over this weekend and in 3 hours I went from 1 in 20 throws sticking to 3 in 4 throws sticking. It sounds odd but it is a very good feeling when the knife makes a solid "thump" into the wood. It is very similar to the feeling of a good golf swing when the club hits the ball perfectly so it lifts the ball up and away almost effortlessly.

Now that I have honed the skill of the flying dagger I am almost a fully qualified ninja. All that is left is for me to learn invisibility and the triple dragon paper clip of death maneuver and I am all set.

My confession

2006-09-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

In 2003-2004 I interned at Microsoft Research for 16 months and during that time I had the pleasure of being at Bill Gates' house twice. On each occasion I got to shake his hand (along with other interns in research) and asked him a number of questions. While most people asked him questions about writing code or being rich or trivial stuff like that, I was more interested in his work with his philanthropy and what motivated him. I asked him the following questions: (1) What are you most grateful for in your life beyond your possession? (2) You are working with the U.N. in many third world countries to provide basic vaccines, as a technologist what types of gains do you think technology could bring to these places? (3)What do you think will be the long term impact of software on society?. His answers to these questions really impressed me. My manager in the Social Computing Group is well known inside of Microsoft so on my second trip to his house she introduced me to him and as all of us left his house he actually remembered my name as he said goodbye. How cool is that?!?!

The story doesn't end there. A month before my internship ended I sent Bill a personal email thanking him and asking for an autographed picture and wallah... he inter-office mailed it to me that week.

So here is my confession. I am a huge fan of Bill Gates!

Early bird

2006-08-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

While I usually joke around that the early bird is the first one to get shot, this morning I saw an amazing sight. As I was walking between meetings I saw a cute little bird with a dead worm in it's mouth and it struck me that this might be the first time I have seen such a thing. As I walked closer I spooked the bird but then a half block later I caught up with it and actually saw it pull a worm out of the ground (amazing!) and throw it on the sidewalk where it started to peck at it. I really feel like I got to witness something special today.

March of the penguins

2006-07-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

We recently saw March of the Penguins and I couldn't get over the fact that these cute little creatures endured such extreme conditions just to mate and create a baby. If humans had to walk 70 miles in the cold to find mates I doubt we would survived past the first generation. I think we could solve their problem by creating little penguin night clubs and little penguin sized beer bottles. After a few drinks the lady penguins will be much less demanding.

While I don't think of them as smart (considering they live in the coldest place on earth), I have a lot of respect for the emperor penguins.

MRI

2006-07-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday I had an MRI and I now know what it feels like to be a quarter that gets shoved into a video game machine. First they cram you down this narrow tube that you barely fit in and then the machine starts shacking and you hear all these loud noises (eeeeh-eeeeh-eey-ey-ey-ey) for about 20 minutes. At the end of the whole thing the machine spit me out and my ass felt like it got kicked by a big burly magnet.

Actually I was kinda nervous about getting in the machine and as I laid down on the conveyer belt bed thing I had a mini panic attack. As the bed started to move into place I felt suffocated, this was especially bad since both of my shoulders got scrunched into the tight space. Finally I was inside the machine (did I mention that the technician gave me two sets of ear plugs because as he put it "it gets kinda loud in there"?) and then I hear this voice from a speaker saying "try to relax, I am going to start the first scan." And then it starts... WUM WUM WUM WUM-EHEHEHEH-BROOM-BROOM-BROOM-BROOM for 5 minutes straight. Once I started getting used to it the sound stopped and then the technican told me he was going to start the second scan which lasted for 10 minutes and was twice as loud and annoying. Then this stopped and I got another 10 minutes of ear-shattering sound that was so loud that it made the entire machine vibrate (or maybe the machine was vibrating so much that it made the noise but either way you get the picture). Finally the sounds end and I am expecting him to cart me out and instead I hear “Um something with this scan was odd and I am going to do it again”… “do it again????” At this point I am cramping up, gotta pee, and worried that the machine is malfunctioning and magnetizing me. Finally it was over and he carted me out but every time I walk by a TV the image turns green.

Back to backgammon

2006-07-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

As a kid my dad taught me to play backgammon and I thought it was a fun game but I never really got into it. I remember when I grandfather came from Iran to stay with us I would play backgammon with him quite a bit but parts of my personality would sneak its way into my strategy and make it impossible for me to win. For example, I would never kill one of his pieces because... well because he is my grandfather and it isn't nice. He would of course correct my mistake of a move and play my hand for me in instances like that.

Recently I got back into backgammon and have gotten interested in learning actual strategy for winning. Since it is a two person game there are times when I want to play but can't find an opponent but thankfully I found a cool website for playing online http://www.gammonempire.com/.

We are flying

2006-05-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

My family and Rah's family got together on Sunday for a mothers day at the park. It was an awesome day with perfect weather and we had a great time. At one point I was lying under the shade of a tree thinking to myself "This is such a peaceful day"....... As if he was reading my mind, my dad said "Do you know what the biggest miracle is?..... We are right now traveling at 67 thousand miles an hour around the sun!" Bang! and just like that I started dwelling on this idea until I became very nervous that the earth might go flying off into space and hit another planet. Thankfully the moment passed and we started playing tossing the frisbee around.

"Lost" in the GOP

2006-05-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

Rah and I recently watched the entire first season of Lost. We started watching it at 4 in the afternoon on a Saturday and finished the 4th dvd at 5 in the morning on Sunday, I then went on a trip and when I came back 2 days later we finished it. Now for the good part, I am very convinced that "Lost" is an elaborate propaganda piece for the GOP and the current administration. Here is my proof.

1 - The crazy lady on the island is French and the only survivor who can speak French is the dysfunctional and shallow rich girl. French people = bad and

2 - The Iraqi survivor (who is actually an Indian actor :-) ) is the model of what an Iraqi citizen can be when not under the control of Saddam. (OK, I know this may be a weak point but I am sure there is something here :-) )

3 - In one episode Sawyer was trying to open a case for hours and in the middle of it Michael walks by and with a shocked expression says "man that's a Halliburton, there is no way in the world that you can break into a Halliburton", so Sawyer tries using massive rocks to break into it and throws it off a tall tree but to no avail. It was like a 2 minute commercial for Halliburton.

I am sure there is more to it but I haven't seen season 2 or 3 so stay tuned….

armless

2006-05-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream where I didn't have any arms. The odd thing is that in the dream I wasn't shocked at not having arms but more annoyed that it was difficult to accomplish tasks. Somehow in my dream I ended up learning how to garden with my feet. I'm not sure what this means but it has given me something to think about all day.

Back in WA

2006-04-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

I am back in Washington state after nearly 2 years and experiencing a mixed bag of emotions. The Google office in Kirkland is 2 blocks from my friend Eiman's old house where I spent a lot of my time and today I took a little walk around that neighborhood, I guess you could call it a walk down memory lane. As I walked around I was struck by memories of a "simpler" time of cooking kabob, parties, and just hanging out.... I say "simpler" because when I really think about it, every day is simpler than the day that follows it because we forget the hard parts. While walking, I tried to recall the fun times we had there but when I looked around it all felt so empty because the people who made it special where not around. Maybe it was a combination of the Spring air infused with the sweet smell of roses and pollen but it was very surreal.

The days pass by, one by one, and yesterday becomes yesteryear becomes a distant memory becomes a shadow of a memory becomes....

1941

2006-04-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

Rah and I are watching this funny movie called 1941 which is an early work by Steven Spielberg. Although we both feel asleep during the movies, I give the part I was awake for 2 thumps up. Now I will let my subconscious take over and rate the part of the movie that I heard while asleep, I don't do this often so there might be some static during the transition. Ok, 1, 2, 3..erlkdkdxcjonekj Hello, I am Pedram's subconscious and the movie was great!

Oh yeah, I found this hilarious site that I recommend everyone check out. It is called www.askaninja.com and the guy who set it up gives some great performances!

Material obsession?

2006-04-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

We just got a brand new couch, custom made to our living room and color/material preference. While I was happy that we got a new couch, I started to feel a pang of guilt while I was driving to work (I first wrote school but then corrected myself :-) ). I starting worrying that I am turning into one of those shallow people whose mood can be determined by material goods. After 5 minutes of convincing myself that I wasn't a bad person I went on with my day. As luck would have it, during the day I was offered a free color laser printer and I went absolutely bonkers with excitement. After I put the printer in my cube to take home I calmed down and realized that this was the second strike.

Have I become a material girl.... living in a material world?

Practical Philosophy

2006-03-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

So I recently went to a class on practical philosophy with some friends. "What is practical philosophy?" you ask. In essence it is the application of philosophy to living a happy life. The class was a cross between self help and group discussion, and I was very interested in the lessons that they discussed because much of what they cover is similar to ways that I try to think about problems/situations/etc. that I face in my life. Some basic ideas are that detatchment allows you to act in the world without the ego, anxiety, and pain associated with taking full ownership. This is a little condensed but you get probably get the point.

Another issue they discuss is how people lament over the past and worry about the future at the expense of the present moment. I have a saying that the worrying about the past is like a ball and chain that slows us down from moving forward. Many of their lessons seem like teachings of the Jedi knights. If I go back (90%) I will bring a light saber.

Gangsta Programma

2006-02-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

I just got my new Google business card. What do you think?

Babies are the best

2006-02-17T02:12:00.000-08:00

So recently Rah's good friend Wendy and her husband Dave had a baby. She can make the cutest faces ever. Now some might think that babies at the age of 8 days old can't make conscious decisions but I know that Chloe knew exactly was thinking when she made that face.... "I'm a gangsta babbyy!!!"

Scientology

2006-02-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

I was checking out the website for scientology because I have very little understanding of this wacky cult thing. All I know about it is that lots of absolutely insane actors like Tom Cruise are scientologists. The website is pretty wacky as well, it sounds like some kind of pyramid scheme mixed in with motivational speaking and star trek. From my standpoint it can't be a real religion because there has never been a Scientologist suicide bomber.

Check it out the official site http://www.scientology.org/ and a more informative site here.

Sleepless in San Carlos

2006-01-27T10:10:00.000-08:00

Again!

Last night was the worst ever. After 2 consecutive nights of light sleep, I was determined to get in 8 hours of Zzzzzzs. Last night I made myself a bloody Mary to help with the effort which only succeeded at inebriating me for a few hours. Around 11 I started to sleep just to wake up at 2am with a sore back because I fell asleep on the couch, thankfully Rah put a warm blanket on me so I wouldn't freeze. So it is 2am and am wide awake with no clue how to fall asleep. First I grab the new issue of Wired magazine and read it on my thrown until both my feet fall asleep. Now I am faced with the dilemma of where to read. I can't read downstairs because it is freezing cold and I can't read in the bedroom because Rah is alseep so what do I do?.... What do I do is right, I just sat on the edge of the sink for an half an hour and read about new gizmos, how some VCs are looking for gold in the dot.com bust, and how Lego was collaborating with some of it's most creative customers to revamp mindstorm. Then I read this cool article about the Dali Lama, meditation, and the brain; It was great and inspired me to go down stairs and meditate. That lasted for 5 minutes until my neck and back started to hurt and goosebumps started to grow on my chest like a field of mushrooms. Here I am at work feeling like crizzap and trying to get my head on straight so I can tackle the massive list of things I need to get done today.

Dancing like a spazz

2006-01-25T18:01:00.000-08:00

My gangsta friend Ping just sent me this funny video that is a fake commercial for "how to dance like a white guy". While a bit racist, it is very funny :-)
http://gprime.net/video.php/howtodancelikeawhiteguy

Rock climbing

2006-01-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

Last night I took a class on belaying. Belaying is the process where you maintain a support rope for a climber so that if the climber falls they don't die. At some point in the class the instructor told me to climb up this wall that is about 25-30 feet high and once I was at the top he said to "let go of the rocks and just lean back" at this point I remembered that I am afraid of heights and had the hardest time letting go. But once I did, they got me to the ground and I got over that fear.

After the hour long class I went climbing with my friend Chris and it was so much fun! At first I was a bit hesitant to go rock climbing because I didn't think I would be able to do it because of my weight. Indoor climbing gyms have a rating system for how difficult a climb is 5 being easy and 13 being the most difficult. At first I did a few 5 courses but they were too easy so I tried more difficult climbs and climbed an 8+ in difficulty. Afterwards, I did pullups until my arms felt like jelly.

If you can't tell, I really had a fun time and got some good exercise. I'm thinking of joining this gym and climbing a few times a week.

Everybody eats bread

2006-01-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting conversation with Rah's dad about how bread in Iran is subsidized . The reasoning behind it is that, rich or poor, everyone eats bread and you don't want to upset people by raising the price of their daily staple.

Don't mess with my bread!

SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-01-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

It seems like I get two good nights of sleep every week. I don't know what the heck is wrong with me but almost every night I wake up between 3 and 6 am and can't go back to sleep. Actually I do start to feel sleepy again around 9am when it is time to get up and start the day. Let me play a couple of common scenarios for you so you can understand the insanity that is my sleeping patterns.

Scenario A - I wake up around 3 am (no matter what time I go to bed) and am half awake and half asleep so I can't actually get up to make use of being awake. Instead I toss and turn for 4-5 hours while I try to convince myself that I need to sleep. (This happens 30% of the time)

Scenario B - I partially wake up and have anxiety dreams about what I need to do to avoid some catastrophe in my life that seems amazingly trivial the next day. There is almost nothing I can do to get out of this F-d up dream state. (This happens 30% of the time)

Scenario C - I am almost fully asleep with the exception that my eyes are open and I keep having the same 30 second anxiety dream over and over and over again. This is by far the worst damn thing that can happen to anyone. Imagine your own personal hell that replays itself over and over hundreds of times and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. The other night I dreamt that I was in some kind of national crossword puzzle (which I never play) competition and my prize was that the African village I am from gets a full harvest for the year. Apparently in my dream I am some kind of crossword prodigy and from the stage I can see the people of my village huddled together and praying that I win. Here comes the stress, I am in the last phase of my crossword puzzle and have to solve one last row and the fricking answer has to be written in Korean of Klingon or some ish like that. Anyways I start panicking and don't know what to do so I sit there and panic until the time runs out and the man comes by and rips up my puzzle. Totally shattered, I look at my tribe and they all die. Isn't that a horrible, now imagine it over and over again until the sun comes up... The worst part is that every time in the dream I know what is going but I have to sit through it. Arrghghghg..... (This happens about 40% of the time)

I am not sure what to do about my sleeping problems. Rah tells me I need to work out more in the mornings so my body is more tired at night. That might be it and it might not; I think that after so many years of school my body is used to a certain amount of stress and since I don't allow work to stress me out, my body is compensating and adding stress to my life.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about Scenario D - In this scenario I wake up and write a blog entry about how messed up my sleep has been lately and hope someone takes pity on me :-) (This has only happened once) The flip side to this is that I read through a ton of my work emails this morning and feel 100% up to speed :-)

Great joke that I came up with in 5 seconds

2006-01-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

Why did the cup of milk turn himself into yogurt?.....
Because he wanted to be more cultured.

This is not a resolution!

2006-01-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

I want to start off by saying this is not a new year's resolution but I want to lose weight! I currently weight between 218 and 222 lbs and I need to get below 200, preferably 190.

So here we are in January and I weight 220; if I want to be 190 by, say, June I need to lose about 5 lbs a month.

Making a million bucks

2005-12-29T14:27:00.000-08:00

Rah just showed me this funny website called the million dollar homepage. Basically, this British guy is selling 1 pixel of advertising space for $1 and he has sold over $900,000 worth of pixels so it can't be that bad of an idea. I honestly hope this isn't a joke or I will feel like a grade-A sucker.

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Another corny joke

2005-12-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

Why did the aquarium animal handler become so depressed?.... He lost his porpoise.

Haha... Jokes

2005-12-10T10:29:00.000-08:00

Here are some jokes I created, let me know how (un)funny/corny you think they are.

Joke 1.
Why are mailmen so extreme?......
Because they are always pushing the envelope.

Joke 2.
Why are Catholic roof cleaners so steadfast?....
Because they are always on a mission.

Joke 3 (Requires knowledge of physics).
A cop pulls over an electron and asks "Do you know how fast you were going?" and the electron responds "No, but I know exactly where I was".

Insult generator

2005-11-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

I found this very funny insult generator that works great in a flame war. Given the vast amount of flame wars that occur in online communities, a tool like this is great for making the posts at least interesting to read :-)

http://www.insultmonger.com/generators/index.htm

Vocabulary lesson

2005-11-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

This weekend Rah, Emily, Christa, and I went to Sonoma for some wine tasting. At the last winery we went to our server was talking about how he is part city and part country and he finished off the conversation with "I'm a walking paradigm". Now what he meant to say is that he was a walking paradox (which still doesn't work perfectly for what he was trying to express, but oh well). It reminded me of Rah's experience in her golf class at Stanford where the teacher wanted the class to gather around him so he said "Everyone conjugate around me" (while he meant congregate). Both situations crack me up because these people weren’t stupid but they used a word that they didn't understand in an attempt to sound more intelligent.

I find this funny because often times as I read, I find a word that I don't understand so I have to either ask Rah for the definition or look it up online. While I like learning new words, I usually refrain from using complex words in conversations because (a) I find it annoying when people use big words all the time and (b) the bigger the word, the more likely that the other person will not know what it means.

Lesson: Learn big words, use little words.

New ipod video

2005-11-18T18:45:00.000-08:00

How sweet is this, I was sitting at my desk working when a package shows up. I was pretty excited because it was a good sized package so I open it up and sitting in my hands is a brand new 30GB ipod video with an engraving on the back that says "Thanks from Google". I was completely amazed and then thought "wtf, maybe they sent it to the wrong person" but nope, it was for me! Woohooo, now I need to find a good use for it, maybe I will start watching more videos as I walk around or something to that effect.

Creativity

2005-11-17T22:04:00.000-08:00

Some days I wake up and I have a million ideas flowing out of my head. I get really worried that I will forget them so I write them down for times when things get boring. Most of my ideas revolve around different research projects and cool ideas for social games. Lately I have had a few ideas that would make great startings (or endings) to jokes.

I wish I knew what made for creative days, actually I wish I knew how ideas get created. You know that feeling when the light bulb just goes off and you think to yourself "I am the smartest chipmunk in the universe".

Hiho hiho... it's off to work I go

2005-11-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

I've been a busy worker bee for the last 6 months and I can happily say that I haven't gone insane like I thought I would. This is my first full-time job that I have had where I wasn't doing research. So far I've worked at Sun Microsystems, Stanford University, Agilent Technologies, Microsoft Research, Carnegie Mellon University, and now Google. The only other job I have had that I didn't list there was a paper route I had for exactly 2 days in junior high. The first day, a guy took me on the route and showed me the houses to deliver to but for whatever reason I didn't take notes so on the second day I went out with my bike and since I couldn't remember where to deliver to, I just threw the papers at random houses in my street until I ran out. At the end of it I realized I was going to get fired and I didn't like waking up that early anyways so I called the dude and quit.

Software testing

2005-10-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

I was walking through the parking lot and noticed this well cover that was obviously designed by the city workers to motivate software engineers at Google to create high quality software. These subliminal messages might be the real reason that the company is doing so well. If any city workers are reading this right now, thank you, thank you very much and I promise to do my parting in testing my code well.

The evil robot clone known as Patreg

2005-10-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

An evil scientist took two great minds of systems design and HCI and stole some of their dna. He took this dna back to his lab in an effort to create an evil robot clone version of the men. Instead he ended up with a rusty tin can that preys on donuts and carries a banana phone.

To find out more, join the community on orkut.com http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5874739

So So Sick

2005-10-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

I have been a sick little bunny for the last few days.... I missed a few days of work, sat around with a throbbing head, and look like a fleece bunny but... My savior, Raheleh, has been taking care of me and making me get all better :-) Thanks Rah.

Thoughts on Violence

2005-10-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

Rah and I recently watched "Do the Right Thing" which is a good/fun movie by Spike Lee. While I don't have much to say about the movie, other than it is pretty entertaining, in the end of the movie was a speech (below) by Martin Luther King which I think is very powerful. When I went online to read it again, I found that it was part of his 1964 Nobel prize speech. I think it is worth taking the time to read it and let it thinking about how it relates to life today.

Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Martin Luther King 1964

Serenity review

2005-10-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Following up on Tim's review of Serenity; Rah, Kaveh, and I went to see it. But first we went to this little sushi place in San Carlos which we found to be lackluster given it was run my real Japanese people. But on to the movie, while I liked the movie and found it entertaining I don't think it lived up to the hype. While it started off strong, it gradually lost it's momentum halfway through, it almost feels like the second half of the movie was written by someone else. Anyways, my take on the movie is that it is a cross between an old western, star wars, minority report, dawn of the dead, and spaceballs. I give this movie a 7 out of 10 with a 6 being a "alright" movie. When the sequel or prequel (and you know there is going to be one) comes out, I will probably go see it but..... with no expectations.

Wedding this weekend

2005-10-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Rah and I went to San Diego to attend the wedding of my friend Joe to his (then) fiance Felicia. We got in Friday afternoon, went straight to the church, did a dry-run of the wedding, had mexican food, hung out with Wendy and Dave and their 2 cats (skinny cat and gimpy cat), went to sleep, walked, ate bagels, got ready, drove, escorted people to their chairs, stood in a line, walked down the aisle, help back some tears, watched Joe and Felicia get married, walked down the aisle again, took some pictures, looked at Rah lovingly, had some bloody marys and beers, got introduced, sat down, got up, sat down again, listened to the best man speech, ate dinner, slow danced, fasted danced, got off the floor when the YMCA song came on, fast danced again, said goodbye to everyone, wished Joe and Felicia a happy honey moon, changed out of my tux, drove back to Wendy and Dave's place, dropped Rah off at the door, parked in the wrong spot, walked around a little bit, found out where to park, walked to their place, got inside, talked to Dave and Wendy while Rah passed out, said goodnight to them, fell asleep, woke up in the middle of the night with the urge to pee, decided it wasn't worth the effort, woke up a little later and let out some loud gas, realized I probably woke up our hosts, woke up, watched the "dog whisperer", watched the end of "steel magnolias", had breakfast, finished Rah's breakfast, walked back to car, said our goodbyes, drove to airport, filled up car with 3 gallons for .99cents, dropped off car, got to airport, got on plane, got off plane, got in car, drove to Homa's house, got out of car, got in house, ate, drank, was merry, got out of house, got in car, drove home, got out of car, got in house, got garbage, took garbage out of house, took garbage can to curb, went back to house, set up internet access, went to bathroom, went to bed, woke up, got ready, got out of house, got into car, drove to work, got out of car, got into company, worked, ate lunch, wrote this blog, wrote blog entry about writing blog entry, wrote blog entry about writing blog entry about writing blog entry.... etc.

The wedding was great, they looked so happy, I'm sure they will have a great life together. It was awesome hanging with Wendy and Dave, I wish we had had more time to hang. Wendy now looks like a pregnant woman. They have a new cat with a gimpy paw but lots of personality so I like it/him/her.

Here is a picture of Joe doing his patented chug the beans move.

So you want to survive a freestyle rap battle

2005-09-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

I have always wanted to be able to spit out raps on demand but always end up rambling about something lame. I finally found a solution to my problem and it is in the following wiki.

http://wiki.ehow.com/Survive-a-Freestyle-Rap-Battle

My cool friend

2005-09-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

How many of you have a friend so cool that people confuse him with William Hung? His name is Patrick "Ping-Chi" Lu AKA MC Hardware. Not only is he a great dancer, but he is also a fellow gangsta programma! Keep it real Ping, actually keep it unsigned long int!

Another crazy dream

2005-09-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

So last night I dreamt that I was the head of a massive international alcohol smuggling cartel (must have been during prohibition). Anyways, I can't remember all of the dream but at some point I was in a dark meeting room with bug thuggish looking guys smoking cigars and wearing expensive silk suites. Then the next thing that flashed through my head was me in white stretched limo being chased by the police in Hollywood. I had two of my henchmen in the car, Carlos and Chen; Carlos looked like a mini version of me in a white suite with a pink shirt underneath, and Chen looked like the Oddjob from 007 GoldFinger. While the cops chased after us I keep thinking that I don't want my loyal henchmen to get caught so I yelled "Chen jump out of the car and escape" but he wouldn't budge, saying something about honor and staying with his leader. Finally I was able to get him to escape saying "You must live to continue my fight another day" so he left and jumped into some bushes. Then I turned to Carlos to tell him to escape, but all I caught was his backside as he jumped out the car, so much for honor! Finally my car came to a stop and instead of cops pulling me out of my car, Canadian mounted police pulled told me to step out and face the charges against me. "You are an illegal smuggler of Canadian syrup" is what she kept saying, but I kept arguing with her that I don't even like syrup and I smuggle alcohol but she wouldn't listen to it. As the mountie lead me away, I kept thinking that her uniform looks a little off and that her name "Candy" sounded too much like a stripper's name. But my almost fantasy dream turned out to be a nightmare because the next thing I could remember, I was sulking in a dirty damp jail cell that looked like something from a Knight movie. At this point I woke up to realize that I had thrown my blanket off my body and was really cold.

My crazy dream

2005-09-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt that I was invited to this dinner party at the home of a rich and powerful Iranian guy. When we got to his mansion I remember being startled by how old and bald he was because I was expecting a younger sharp looking guy. Then at some point in the evening I was alone with him in the kitchen and he kept babbling and talking in gibberish and I kept thinking to myself "How did this old, bald, wacko get to this point in his life?!?!". But that isn't the weirdest part of the dream, in my dream it was really stormy outside and tree branches were hitting against windows and making for an unpleasant night. At some point I had to use the bathroom but I ended up in an indoor pool/garden area that was very dark, gloomy, and grimy. When I entered the room I felt a chill because one of the windows on the ceiling was opened and then I noticed a big scary snake slithering down a ladder. In shock, I looked around the room to discover more snakes coming towards me and hissing. I ran out of the there and ended up in a hallway to see the dinner party but everyone looked like half-human half-skeletons, as if they were soul-less. I went to find another bathroom but again the same thing, there was a window open with a half snake half gecko thing crawling into the room. He looks at me with human looking face and right then when I thought that either he would say something to me or pounce on me to attack, I woke up.

This dream really disturbed me a lot because I am having a hard time interpreting it. Snakes are a symbol of deceit and treachery, maybe they represent people I should be careful of. And the half dead people probably represent soul-less people that I should avoid. The only thing I can't figure out is why I would have this dream since I have a strict policy of cutting out from my life people who aren't positive.

Looking for an Indian bride?

2005-09-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

Rah sent me a link to this funny music video by these funny Indian guys.

Check it out http://www.viknluda.com/foe/video/

Finished my book

2005-09-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I have been reading Taiko, a book on Feudal Japan. It was a great book that painted very vivid pictures to help the reader really get into it..... sometimes those pictures were too vivid and when I read it late at night I would have these terrible dreams of being chased by crazy Japanese dudes with swords. At the end I was conflicted because on the one hand I wanted to find out what happened but then I would be done with the book.

Does anyone have a good book recommendation for me? I have enough non-fiction books to read to kill a horse so I am looking for some fiction to read.

Insane in the membrane!

2005-09-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Don't talk to me about sanity! Don't talk to me about being proper! Don't you dare talk to me about the right etiquette for what fork to use for my salad! I am just a bad-ass programma who don't take no shiznit from nobody. Let me tell you a story to demonstrate.

Yesterday I was at Starbucks(c) ordering a low-fat decaf vanilla and hazelnut latte' but when I got my order I could tell that they used 2% milk. My blood started boiling and before I knew it, I jumped on top of the counter and yelled at the barista (19 year old twerp kid who read the Starbucks manual) "This aint no low-fat decaf vanilla and hazelnut latte' biatch" then I threw the coffee in his face. As his co-workers were applying ice to his face, I grabbed the 2% milk and told him that that s**t goes straight to my hips and then I forced him to drink the whole carton. When the cops showed up they could tell that I am one insane dude and they just run out of there!

Amazing picture problem

2005-09-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

If you look at my previous post titled "Happily Engaged" you will see a picture of a man and woman who are not Raheleh and myself. At first I thought that someone might have hacked my account and messed it up, but then I realized that some image links are linked to external sites that contain pictures. So Shutterfly just happened to change the url to our engagement picture but by some lucky coincidence, in our place is a another couple (not as good looking). To make up for the mishap, I put up a picture of our engagement party :-)

Yellow Chair Stories

2005-09-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

My adviser just sent me a link to an interesting project run by this student in London who is trying to explore the ways that individuals experience the socia-technical landscape that they live in. She is an interaction designer who set up this cute little space in front of a stoop where people can sit on a yellow chair and browse the web for free. During this time, she offers them tea or coffee and converses with them. While there isn't much meat to her work yet (I hope she continues this but doubt she will), I think it is a great way to set up a friendly environment where to get people thinking in a more civic minded way and learn from their daily experiences.

You can find out more about her project here http://www.anab.in/yeartwo/yellowchair/yellow.htm

and more about her as a person/student/professional here
http://www.anab.in/

Amazing Comic

2005-09-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

I ran across this guy a year ago and think he is amazingly funny. He is the first Indian comic I have ever heard and he does great Indian and Asian impersonations. Some people might call him racist but that's what makes him so funny :-)

Here is a link to a 30+ minute comedy skit.
http://www.digitalcubed.com/ajay/russellpeter.wmv

btw, his namd is Russell Peters (doesn't sound Indian, does it)

Coke or cock

2005-09-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

Check out this story of a coke ad that went horribly wrong because the graphic designer who created it, put a hidden picture of a woman doing something.....

http://snopes.com/cokelore/poster.asp

Uranus

2005-09-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Everyone comes to my blog to see Uranus, little do they know that William Herschel saw Uranus first! Damn, Uranus is famous now; you should feel proud.

Natural cycles

2005-09-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

Once young, now old; once shiny, now dull; once strong, now weak.... I keep thinking more and more about how nothing is constant. In fact, the only thing that stays constant is the fact that only one thing stays constant. Our sun will one day burn out, expand to consume our solar system (btw, at that point it wont be called a solar system), and then collapse on itself to create a super dense near-black hole.

The reason I started thinking about this recently was because I saw an HP(Hewlett Packard) building recently and started to think about the day when the two founders started this new innovative company that pushed technology into our daily lives. Now it is an old slow company that is about as innovative as a rock.

But there is another side of things, our sun which will eventually expand and collapse will eventually compress itself into a brand new sun one day. Even humans; we are born, we live life, and one day we eventually die. Is that sad, well not really since your body eventually gets recycled into the world and becomes parts of plants, animals, and other people.

Culture and media sees this same cycle where a concept is at first new, then old, then obsolete, and then a bunch of dumb kids in 2056 will start wearing nylon shirts and disco dancing to gangsta rap.

Rafting

2005-09-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went on a group offsite to the south fork of the American River for a white water rafting trip. I have to say it was totally AWESOME!!! Hopefully I can get some pics up soon.

The trip was set up by this group called Friends of the River(FOR) http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/ who offer guided runs through class 3 rapids in order to educate people about California's rivers. They are trying to save CA rivers from new dams, dumping, and other developments that harm our river system Even though I love the wilderness and fishing, I honestly haven't given much thought to the impact that we have on the rivers. As our population grows, we have to increase our consumption of resources like water, lumber, farm land, and kit-kat bars. . Their efforts range from environmental education to political advocacy and it is worth taking 10 minutes to check out their website and see if there are any ways that you can contribute to their cause.

Viva Las Vegas

2005-09-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

I was in Las Vegas this last weekend with my buddy Joe and some of his friends. It was a fun time, we had drinks by the pool, gambled, had all-you-can-eat Brazilian food, and went to the Pimp N Ho Ball. It was sweet! I came up with a little saying after my trip "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas until its old enough to buy a plane ticket and come looking for you".

Bad boys bad boys....

2005-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

As I was driving down my street in San Carlos I saw a cop car. My spidey senses kicked in and I began to suspect that my best Friend Matt was in the nearby vicinity. He is a new police officer in the city of San Carlos. So I turned my car around and drove by again and actually saw him with his TO (Training Officer), thankfully I had my camera so on my final pass I snapped a picture of him and here it is. I almost forgot to mention that he is the guy on the right securing the perimeter.

Hi Rah

2005-08-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

I don't feel like saying anything today since my mind is on vacation but I wanted to say hi to you Raheleh :-) I hope you are having a great day and that you aren't taking s**t from anyone! Raheleh, I had a dream that in a past life you were the leader of a fierce group of warriors that took control of central Asia by slaughtering your enemies. Actually I didn't have that dream but it would be cool to see you in a lion skin battle armor with a big spear in your hands. Kinda like the dude in the picture but with something covering your chest and more hair on your head :-)

Happy Birthday Peddy

2005-08-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yay, Yesterday was my 28th birthday and boy was it fun :-) I spent part of the day at Home Depot buying cool stuff for the house, then I picked apples from our apple tree for a while, then Rah and I went to my parent's house where my mom made an excellent dinner with all my favorite Persian dishes.

Ok, now the to the deep thought..... Every year during my birthday I think about how my body has changed and it hits me the hardest when I look at pictures of myself when I was 7 years old. I think that in many ways my body is getting older as a result of time and that I am becoming wiser as a result of life experiences but inside I am still that little kid that wants to run around and play. I really feel like a 7 year old kid trapped in a 28 year old body, and what a beautiful body it is :-)

I laugh about this most when I get into situations with friends where we sit around drinking wine and talking about grown-up things...... I think it is so funny how some people take themselves to seriously and never give in to the side of them that says "This is a great time to make a weird sound"

Following my path....

2005-08-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

We each have our own path in life; you have a path, I have a path, everyone has a path.... Whenever I come to a new fork in the road I look back at all the past twists and turns in my life and think about how they made me the person I am now. There is an old saying "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." that I think is so important to live by. Try to find the good in every situation, try to find the silver lining in every situation, because if you look hard enough you can find good in any situation.

Here is a new saying that I have just come up with "When life gives you limes, make mojitos and get drunk!"

Self, Salvation, and Suffering

2005-08-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Is being selfless actually selfish? Think about the philosophy of Buddhism to reject the earthly world and all its temptations in order to cleanse the soul in order to reach enlightenment. This strikes me as odd because while it is not focused on the physical self it does preach a life that is totally devoted to the self (defined as the soul). Ok fine, now I'm not focused on what I eat or the clothes I wear so you can't really call me selfish (in the traditional sense that most people understand) but all I care about is my salvation, "f**k the rainforest, f**k global warming, can't you see I'm getting jiggy with my soul"

Instead of engaging the world, they totally reject it and focus on nothing (in an attempt to cleanse their souls). It seems like the true path to salvation/enlightenment/etc would be to realize that they want to cleanse their soul and instead they go to Las Vegas to gamble, eat at all-you-can-eat buffets, and date showgirls until they have no money, cholesterol problems, and enough STDs to kill a horse.

I realize that this line of argument isn't flawless but it is kinda fun to think about (given I have been coding all day and all I can think about is exceptions being thrown while my MD5 hash implementation keeps loading a deprecated library). So the true path to salvation is to realize the path but to totally reject it.... but if you realize that the path to salvation is to realize the path and reject it, then that is selfish so maybe you should take the path... no, you shouldn't take it.... wait, I think I had it right the first time... nope, that was wrong... shoot it was.. AHA I GOT IT. So what you have to do is see the path and then if you want to take the path, actually go the opposite way but if your heart leans away from taking the path, then you gotta take it. WOW, I understand now; the path to salvation is suffering... DAMN IT, the Buddhist were right in the first place "Life is Suffering" as said by the Bodhisattva.

Argghg... Ok, so here we go: In order to get from A to B, you must take the most painful route. Is there a connection between this and bottled water? I don't know but for what it's worth, when I was young and I would watch the Pee Wee Herman show, the talking couch always freaked me out.

Multiple paths

2005-08-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

I think it is really interesting that when a baby is born, it has an unlimited number of different paths it can take. Right now, while you are reading this blog, there is a set of actions and words that could make you a billionaire, janitor, pope, or even Elvis impersonator. That is pretty cool! Think about what would have happened if the Dali Lama had decided, at the age of 5, that he didn't like Tibet and he wanted to move to LA. He could have come to LA and become one of the biggest porn stars on earth.

On that same thread, there are probably a dozen Einsteins mopping floors or chasing zebras but because of the circumstances they find themselves in, they can't harvest this ability and share it with the world. If Bill Gates hadn't made Microsoft what it is today, maybe Kenny Melvison from Oklahoma would have made the equivalent.

If JFK wasn't assassinated, maybe your parents wouldn't have spent that extra 5 minutes reading the paper and their paths would have never crossed. Or maybe they would have met but conceived their child a month earlier or later. His death meant that the particular egg and sperm that you came from could one day collide.

Think about that the next time you decide to cancel a trip, or hit the snooze bar, or get drunk in Mexico and let a guy named Jose tattoo his name on your butt.

Making decisions

2005-08-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Greedy algorithms are simple approaches to solving problems in computer science. The basic principle is that you have an agent who makes decisions to maximize utility/reward based on the current state. The principle seems logical but when you apply the approach to hill climbing, for example, the basic flaws are exposed. The basic problem is that the algorithm can get stuck in local maxima or minima depending on what you want to optimize for.

This is not meant to be a lecture on computer science and in fact my point in writing this blog is to see how this approach applies to life. It seems that the basic approach of always maximizing for the short-term can lead to situations where you get stuck because you aren't willing to make short term sacrifices for long term rewards.

Basic lesson: This myopic way of thinking has been proven sub-optimal in computer science, so there is no reason to believe that it will work in life.

Keepin it real

2005-08-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

I heard this funny radio advertisement this morning where one of the guys said "I'm keeping it real, so real I only read non-fiction". While the rest of the ad was lame, this line had me laughing for a good 1/4 mile. So keep it real people, don't read fiction, don't use artificial sweeteners, and don't study AI!

A mirror for your soul

2005-08-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Most everyone looks in a mirror every day, usually when you wake up, you go to the bathroom to brush your teeth or to clear out your eye buggers. We look in the mirror and think that the person we see on the other side is us.... but that's only a small part of the truth. You are not your eyes, or the color of your hair, or the smile that you exchange with others. If only there were a mirror for the soul that could help people see who they are in terms of their values, beliefs, and the daily actions that really define them.

Physical flaws are easy to detect and fix but how often is it that people really reflect on their actions and correct them?!

Judge me by my deeds and not by my dress!

Object or Action?

2005-08-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

Should we assign value to the object or the action that created it. Objects eventually deteriorate and vanish while actions are at best fleeting and attached to the individual (an object) that performs them.

David, the object of Michelangelo's actions is a statue that will one day be no more. Michelangelo, a man, is dead. I appreciate the statue as art, I am amazed at the skill required to create it, but where is the value?

Pesky Aliens

2005-08-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

It seems like every time I am starting to relax and fall asleep aliens come and probe me. Last night the little green men came down from their disk-shaped ship to find out if I could float after eating 20lbs (9.0718474 kilograms for you metric fans) of brownies. So they kept making me eat more and more brownies, at around 3 lbs (again 1.36077711 kilograms) I just couldn't eat anymore. They started to get very frustrated with me and kept pushing me to eat more. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get any more down... the more I ate, the more I started to sweat. Soon I found myself feeling dizzy and becoming short of breath and the last thing I saw before I hit the floor was two little kids in green costumes stealing my stereo.

What the heck does this have to do with anything? I don't know but I decided that I was going to sit down and write something and this is all that came to my mind.

Emotions

2005-08-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

When I see the love of my life, I feel an intense feeling of happiness! When I see a bag of M&Ms I also feel an intense feeling, could it be described as happiness?

Since emotions are just chemical responses to our perceived reality, how do we differentiate the value of each type of emotion? If one is to argue that the value of my love for another person is greater than my love of M&Ms, what would be the basis of their argument? At a chemical level, they probably differ by a few molecules..... In fact, it may turn out that the chemicals involved in my love for M&Ms are more rare than other kinds of love and thus my love of M&Ms should be valued above all other emotions I can feel.

A poem

2005-08-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

Whisper to me and tell me your dreams
Your visions this night are not as them seem

Visions of sadness, anger, and pain
Feeling your chest as your heart starts to strain

Distant shadows and gloom disappear
As I hold your hand and banish your fear

Gentle yet steady I'll show you the way
Open your eyes for the bright sunny day

What are they thinking??

2005-08-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

When they show their teeth, they are mad; when they wag their tails they are happy.... besides that, dogs are a total mystery to me. Why is it that they love fetching the ball so much but when they get back to you, they can't seem to let it go.

Silence

2005-07-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

I logged on to write a post but didn't have anything to say. At first I thought "you always have something to say Pedram" but then kept coming up with nothing. Maybe it is the stress, maybe it is the fact that summer is coming to an end and I wish it would stay forever. I wonder if a glass feels sad when all the water has been poured out of it, as if it has no purpose. Do chairs feel happiness when someone is about to sit on them? Even though these things are objects created by people, I like to think that there is some essence of a soul in them. Humans, by our nature, are tuned to understand and relate to one another but we have to learn how to relate to the seasons, to sound, to objects that we would otherwise ignore in our daily activities. Even though humans feel emotions, I'm not sure we know how to deal with our emotions. For instance, people often handle stress or sadness by eating or sleeping to escape what they are feeling but rarely does that solve the problem. I think I deal with my stress through silence. Sometimes my silence is a result of deep reflection but other times it is my way of shutting down.

Closing my eyes, I see the galaxy
It envelopes, grasps, and takes hold of me

Where I start and where it ends was clearly once defined
No longer reality but just a dream of mine

Alone in thought, I try to find my way
Alone in self, with nothing more to say

Hustle & Flow

2005-07-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Last night we saw a great movie "Hustle & Flow", it had a great story and gripping acting. It's all about the life of a Memphis pimp who has a lot to say about his life and his struggle to contribute his verses.

The movie got me thinking about what kind of movie could be made about my life. I think it would make sense to show me as a gangsta programma trying to survive in this programming game. The gangsta programming life is full of danger from buggy code trying to crash on you, playa hating PMs trying to crack the whip on development cycles. sucka MC users trying to diss my UI.... Sometimes the world feels like it is crashing down around me but I keep trying to stay true to the game, writing my code like a true thug with no design docs, comments, and massively inlined functions.

Even when I spill coke on my keyboard I don't slow down one bit. I just pick myself up and say "Pedram, you have dealt with far tougher things than sticky keys!". I pour some water on that keyboard and continue kicking raw crump lines of code! I'm so hard that I have to wear a bullet-proof vest when I code. No amount of hating is going to keep my code down, I continue to open source my code with no hesitation!

If any Hollywood producers are reading this, please contact me and we can get this amazing story to the people.

Inner voice.....

2005-07-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, Raheleh and I were joking around in the car and she said something that made me laugh. While I was laughing on the outside my inner voice said "ha ha we are having a good time". I usually don't pay much attention to my inner voice but for whatever reason I paid attention to it and decided to tell Rah what it said. Apparently this was the funniest thing she had heard in a long time because she started laughing uncontrollably.

Then my inner voice said "Don't let her mock you, assert your dominance", so I told her to stop laughing and respect me as the alpha male. She stopped the car, kicked me out and drove off.... I'm never listening to my inner voice again!

Picnic with Rah

2005-07-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday(Sunday) Raheleh and I started our day by waking up, watching a movie, and eating leftover pizza. We then packed up some wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit and headed off to a nice little park close to our home (I can't remember the name). When we got there we found a shady spot and put our blanket down. Within a few minutes we were drinking our wine and eating our food. Later that day we went swimming with Jasmine. This was the kind of day that I wished for every day while in Pittsburgh.

God?

2005-07-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

While on a trip to Colorado we overheard some kids (probably 12 years old) talking about God. One of my friends asked one of the kids an interesting question

F : Can God do anything?
K : Yes...
F: Can God create a rock that God can't lift?
K: (Just looked at us with a blank look on her face)

I think this is a pretty funny question because it assumes that God has a physical form. I find it funny when people argue that God is a man or woman..... Does God have a penis or vagina? Lets go further and think about God's bowel movements, does God pooh? If so, then God must also eat and if so what would happen if God stopped eating, would God die? Where would God go to upon dying?

Can God create a rock that God can't lift? If yes, then God is not all powerful because God can't lift everything but if the answer is no, then God is still not all powerful because God can't create anything......

If these questions keeps you awake at night, you should consider taking a bible and.... beating yourself over the head with it until you pass out.

Blizzzogging

2005-07-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Blog this sucka! Oh yeah, buyah! I tried using the Yahoo 360 thing and it is pretty terrible..... it is buggy, slow, and confusing to navigate. Blogger rocks!.... oh yeah, now the cool kids are going to like me.

She said yes!!!

2005-07-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

So I asked Raheleh to marry me and she said... "No punk!" and then she kicked me in the crotch... it was very painful.

Actually she said yes :-) YAY!!! We're getting married.... wooohooo :-)

Google maps

2005-06-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

So I was using Google maps to find places to go fishing around my house when I came across the following image. Can we say "Shweet"?!?