Categories
personal

How I got through High School as an “Honors Student”

In the United States today, we do a lot of finger-pointing when it comes to education. We argue about what the best solutions are to the problems we see, and we’re also arguing about what the problems are. I try to pay attention to these issues, but frankly, I have very poor perspective on it. […]

Categories
board games

Shifting Towards “The Resistance”

After AP tests at the end of senior year in high school, there wasn’t much to do in class. Our teachers didn’t have anything to teach, and we weren’t particularly motivated to learn, so we were stuck in a room full of peers for 51 minutes until the bell rang and couldn’t get too loud. […]

Categories
baseball

GIFs of Baseball Pitches (or Why I Love Baseball)

I love baseball. You would have to ask my mom why I love baseball so much, but it started when I was 6-ish and hasn’t really let up. Some baseball fans love it for the statistics, and you might think that the geeky numbers part is what attracted me. Well, I honestly don’t watch as […]

Categories
travel

Better than Begging?

A few weeks ago, I went down to Santa Barbara for the weekend with 3 friends. Santa Barbara is the stereotypical California city: the weather was summer-sunny in March, surfers milled around the beach, skateboarders weaved through the laughing tourists, storefronts and restaurants covered all of downtown, and the hills and ocean bracketed the town. […]

Categories
television

Watching TV Alone Together

Julie and I watched 4 episodes on Sunday, 3 on Monday, 2 on Wednesday, and 1 on Thursday to finish the first season of “Game of Thrones“. The last show I watched this quickly was 7 seasons of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in 1 summer during high school, so we’re enjoying “Game of Thrones” […]

Categories
video games

Why I Think StarCraft is Awesome

I play, watch, read, write, and think a lot of StarCraft. Specifically, since StarCraft 2 came out in July 2010, I have played at least 653 games of StarCraft (source: battle.net); watch on average a half hour to an hour of StarCraft a day via online streams like Twitch; read /r/starcraft first thing in the morning, last thing at […]

Categories
television

Reflecting on “30 Rock”

In 3rd grade, my dad decided that my sisters and I should no longer be allowed to watch TV. In the coming years, we picked up a few shows (Enterprise and House, to be specific) that we watched for exactly that time slot, but turning on the TV just “to see what’s on” ended. During senior year […]

Categories
food

Why I Ate Cake for Breakfast

Julie’s birthday was last weekend, and I made her a chocolate avocado cake as part of the avocado potluck birthday party. Since Julie had also received a chocolate cake from her mom, I kept the leftovers of my cake at home and ate it over the next weekend, and I finished it for breakfast this […]

Categories
board games

Finally Settling

“Really? How have you never played Settlers of Catan?” Despite playing many board games now, I didn’t play Settlers until just last week, which led to the reaction above from various friends. Many people are first introduced to more serious, strategy board games shortly after college, and Settlers of Catan tends to be where it […]

Categories
software engineering

Treasoning about Code

A few months ago, I switched from emacs to vi. This is a really big deal, so please take a moment to process this fact. If you don’t have a strong opinion on this matter, let me explain what the big deal is in the editor war. People have lots of tiffs in technology choices. […]