Socialization

Erik Barzeski defends practices that he believes in against the claim of gender inequity:

I believe paying for a date is the responsibility of the guy, and again a show of politeness, and will do so unless the woman suggest she pay for half.

Erik goes on to list half a dozen other things that men should do for women to show "politeness" or "respect". But Erik, who determines what is polite and what is respectful? It is the society which you freely admit suffers from a lack of gender equity. If you want to justify your practices, then you will have to come up with a better method than using the social norms of politeness and respect.

I'm not saying I disagree with everything Erik says (although I do disagree with the above quote), I'm just saying that something more than the self-fulfilling truths of social norms is required to prove your point.

BerkeleyDB

The BerkeleyDB database powering this blog got corrupted. I'm now using MySQL for the database backend. Unfortunately, in the process of moving from the corrupted BerkeleyDB to MySQL, I lost some customizations that I had made to this weblog. Please excuse the dust.

Chinese

I like to eat at Chinese restaurants. Not just because of the tastes and smells, but the gestalt of the experience. In addition to the excellent cuisine, two things in particular stand out at most Chinese restaurants: you get large quantities of food for cheap, and the wait staff is superior. A great example of this is 35 Chinese in Chapel Hill. Their lunch buffet is huge, and includes soups and fresh fruit in addition to typical items. With proper timing, you can make a trip to 35 Chinese your one meal of the day. The wait staff is awesome too. As soon as your drink is half empty, they bring you a refill. How much does it cost for this level of food and service? $5.50 during the week, and $5.95 on the weekend! What an amazing value.

Why the tendency for Chinese restaurants to be superior to most others? Well, I know this is a stereotype, but the Chinese just seem to be more industrious than most people (Americans, anyway). Go to some restaurant where they hire American teenagers to wait tables, and forget about getting good service - you're lucky if the waiter/waitress doesn't cop a 'tude.

Military Demographics

Interesting article in the NY Times about the demographics of the U.S. military. Talk of whether or not there should be a draft made me think of Starship Troopers (the book, I've never seen the movie).

Wishlist

I'm posting a link to my Amazon.com wishlist in the sidebar. Not because I expect anybody to buy something for me from it, but just to give you a small window into my mind.

Shackleton

Just for fun, today I decided to catch an IMAX movie at Exploris in Raleigh. I went in the evening, after the museum was closed, so there weren't too many people in the theater, which is how I like it. The film was "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure," and the tale told was quite amazing. Shakleton planned to cross the whole of Antarctica on foot (in 1914). His boat was trapped in ice and destroyed, his crew camped on an ice flow for a few months, and traveled 7 days by life boat to an uninhabited island. But that was only the beginning. Shakleton, with a few other men, then sailed 800 miles in a life boat to South Georgia island (a remote whaling station) and made the first ever crossing of the island (filled with dangerous caves and crevices). Then he traveled back to the island where most of his men were staying and rescued them. At the end of this 15 month ordeal, the number of expedition members dead was 0. Yes, zero.

A biography of Shakleton has been added to my Amazon.com wishlist.

Cleveland Sucks

Cleveland Cavs player Ricky Davis purposely shot at his team's own basket on Sunday in a vain attempt to pad his statistics. As if Cleveland didn't suck enough this season...

TriJUG Meeting Tonight

There's a Triangle Java User's Group meeting tonight. Stuart Halloway will be talking about Java class loaders. This will be the first meeting I've attended (the February meeting was canceled due to poor weather). Be there or be square!

Rice Cooker Update

I bought the Zojirushi rice cooker at Amazon. I also decided to buy a cookbook with 250 recipes that can be prepared with a rice cooker. Hopefully the cooker will be here within a week. Next task: find an Asian market in the area that sells quality rice.

Tarantino

After I got back from The Quiet American last night, I decided watch Jackie Brown , which I've been meaning to watch for around for a month ( Netflix allows you to keep movies for as long as you want). I've really enjoyed the other Quentin Tarantino films that I've seen (Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs), so I had had high hopes for Jackie Brown. I would rate it below Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. It was a bit too long, and some of the unusual aspects of Tarantino's style were not as novel as when I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time. Still, that's not much of a slight, as it was easily one of the best movies I have seen recently.

Tarantino's next film, Kill Bill , looks very unique in a way that I like. It appears to be stylized violence taken to the extreme. Plus, Uma Thurman is hot. :-)

The Quiet American

I went to see The Quiet American last night at the Madstone in Cary . I thought the film was pretty good, especially Michael Caine 's performance. When I got home, I started looking into the background of the movie and found that it was based on a book (of the same title) by Graham Greene . Given that one of the central characters is a CIA agent working to combat communists in Vietnam, I assumed that the book must have been written during or after the Vietnam War. But the book was published in 1956, during the earliest American involvement in Vietnam. Given that, I would agree with the Amazon.com reviewer who said Greene's work was "prophetic". For those considering seeing the movie, don't let my comments mislead you: the film is much more about interpersonal relationships than historical specifics. If you enjoy intelligent films (i.e. not crap like this ), then I highly recommend The Quiet American.

Rice Cooker

Eating Japanese food today has rekindled my interest in getting a rice cooker. I poked around Amazon a few months ago, and this cooker caught my eye since it had good reviews and was not insanely expensive . Still, there are cheaper cookers out there that might serve my needs.

Anyone out there have advice on buying a rice cooker?

Lunch

I went out to lunch with a couple of co-workers today. We went to Asuka Japanese Restaurant . The food and atmosphere were great, and the price was very reasonable. I had the seafood tempura, but I'll definitely be going back to try out some other dishes.

Apparently if you go to Asuka at dinner with a group of people, you can get a private Tatami room. The funny thing is, in a real Tatami room you would be kneeling while eating, but Asuka actually has an area under the table cut out so that you can sit as you normally would, but still look like you are eating in an authentic setting.

WWDC

Yay! I got a WWDC scholarship from Apple. Now I just have to see if I can get the time off work. Jason got a scholarship too.

If I go, then I'll definitely have to take Alpha TransAirporter from SJC to the hotel. :-)

Wanksta

Are you a wanksta ?

Freelancer

I got my copy of Freelancer today. I played the demo last weekend, and it was so fun that I decided to purchase it. For those who liked TIE Fighter back in the day, you may enjoy this game. The controls are very easy to pick up (keyboard and mouse only, no joystick) and the action is fast paced and fun. That, combined with the RPG elements of the game and the expansive universe, should combine for many hours of enjoyable gameplay.

Java Blogs

Javablogs.com is a nice site that, strangely enough, indexes Java community blogs.

BTW, JDK 1.4.1_02 is now available .