Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon among the contacts on my buddy list. Any time some funny flash animation or strange but true fact comes to my attention, it doesn’t come from just one person.

It comes from almost every single person on my buddy list. Even people whose only connection would be that they share a coveted position on my buddy list.

I’ve also noticed that the amount of time between hearing about these internet oddities from different people is decreasing, almost like a watermark for the increasing connectivity we experience with each passing day as even more and more people create an email address or an instant messaging account for the first time.

It all started with this flash animation. I heard about it from two separate people, Eugene from SMC, and Ryan from Cal Poly, within about 10 minutes of each other. Then I noticed it on Ralph’s (of Cal Poly) profile, and a fourth person’s profile, all on the same day. None of these people are directly connected in any way that I can figure out.

Since then, I’ve started noticing that any time I discover anything interesting on the internet, at _least_ 20% of the people I tell about it have already heard about it, though a lot of times it’s 50% or higher. Some examples include:

1) Go to Google and type in “miserable failure” and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky.” I didn’t post this with my earlier google trick because I’d already heard about it from several people I know. It was interesting that TWO MORE people told me about it since I had it posted last night, including Alex, who’s been in D.C. for the past quarter.

2) “The Star Wars kid,” a poor husky kid who didn’t know the video camera was on while he was doing his best impression of Darth Maul fighting with nobody. Why this one got passed around so much, I have no idea. Maybe a little too close to home for me to find it funny, but a lot of people think it’s hilarious.

3) Kollaboration 2001. This one, unlike the last one, I highly recommend. It has to be seen to believe. There’s a couple of very decent kids dancing at the beginning, whatever, but then this geeky looking kid comes on stage and his bones just disappear. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I found out about this one from Eugene and when I told Lauren about it she’d already seen it.

There’s more examples, and this will be continued and edited later, but alas, work beckons.

“You scored a 66% on the final exam. Your final grade is an A. Congratulations!”
-Professor Bresloff

Talk about something you never EVER thought you’d read. I only needed a 5% to get a B in the class, but I THOUGHT I needed a 75% to get an A.

1) Go to Google
2) Type “french military victories”
3) Hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”

(23:10:22) Eugene: i learned so much today during my c++ final

This last Sunday Lauren and I went to the USC band banquet, which was an interesting experience as always. I got a new suit that I like and actually fits me, $99 at Hollywood Suit outlet. I went for the dark brown because it looks good with my hair. The band banquet is an interesting mix of people, most of them drunk, all of them loud and having a good time. I was surprised to see my favorite sports radio host, Petros Pappadakis, was the guest of honor at the banquet and I got to take a picture with him.

Lauren was sporting a most excellent polka dot dress and we both had some rather cool shoes, mine were my new brown adidas and she had some brown Sauconys that simultaneously matched my suit and shirt. Good stuff. Obligatory picture taken at the banquet:

Ok, so my blog’s basically up to date now, no more until after tomorrow’s final. blech.

My Dad and his three brothers all came down to visit me this past weekend to come watch USC THWOMP the Oregon State Beavers. The football game was excellent and it was a good Saturday in general. It started at Canter’s for breakfast, moved on to the Coliseum for the game, then to Baja Fresh For dinner and then to see the world famous Groundlings at 10pm. If you don’t know, the groundlings is basically a great comedy theatre and is one of the main breeding grounds for SNL peeps. The theatre is on Melrose (Yes, THAT Melrose) and it has some interesting stores across the street:

Good times.

I saw the movie “Love Actually” in the theatres with Lauren and liked it enough to mention to you right here, right now. This film ruled, there’s not a second I would have cut from the whole movie. It’s hilarious, though admittedly a chick flick, but it’s going down as one of those guilty pleasures in the same vein as “When Harry Met Sally”. Right now I’d say it’s one of my top 10 movies of all time and I plan on seeing it again in the theatre before the end of the year.

A friend of mine gave this movie an A-, which after seeing this movie, I consider an insult. Especially since he gave another movie an “A,” a movie in which, I’ve been told (via Eugene), Tom Cruise once again gets good acting mixed up with staring at something really hard.

P.S. The cookies I made are slammin.

Cookies are in the oven. I almost mixed the eggs with the flour instead of the oven, but thanks to Lauren, that disaster was averted.

I know I said I would wait until after finals to update my blog, but I’ve got all day tomorrow to study for my last serious final and I need a break after today, so I’ve decided to update now, studying be damned. I was originally going to have this all be one huge post, but I’ve come to realize it’s better to break it down. So first off, Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was EXCELLENT, I got to see a lot of family and even more fantastic food. The first night in San Jose my grandma arranged a dinner especially for me and it included a Honey Baked Ham, home made rolls, home made raspberry jam, and mashed potatoes with gravy. And thanksgiving was yet to come. Thanksgiving was another meal of epic proportions with tons more family and just as much food. You can see here that they managed to somehow get me with my tongue out by not telling me there was a picture being taken:

Also I got this awesome snapshot of my sister and grandmother both looking cute and very obviously related:

The only weird thing that happened is that I discovered my parents have censored our home television so that my sister doesn’t accidentally stumble across naked people on TV. This wouldn’t bother me if she was SEVEN, but as she’s seventeen and can freely go out and view movies such as American Beauty, American Pie, or any other American film with people completely in the buff without parental permission, it seems kinda silly to have “True Lies” censored because Jamie Lee Curtis shows a little leg. Also movies such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” are censored because they’re so old they’re not rated by the MPAA. I LOVE IT!

I’m gonna make some cookies, then post some more.

Wow, I just took my physics final and, well, wow. I went in with a pretty strong A. Now I don’t know. wow.

1. Yell at, scream at, and/or ignore loved one(s).
2. Consume excessive amounts of caffeine or chocolate.
3. Pull all-nighters.
4. Blast through the last exam with a “who cares” attitude.
5. Work on outlines until the last minute.
6. Panic.
7. Vow never to do this ever again.
8. Wonder aloud “Why? Why? Why did I choose law school?!”
9. Procrastinate by making lists. Some examples include: “movies to rent when finals are over” and “jobs I can find if I drop out of law school now, taking into account my current debt load.”
10. Posting to blog, even when previous post points out I shouldn’t be.

I’m sure many of you have noticed blog content has dropped off dramatically as of recent. As finals are upon as and stress levels increase exponentially this site’s going on a temporary quasi-hiatus while I endure some scholarly growing pains. Expect a HUGE update around late next week as I still want to talk about my great thanksgiving and Lauren’s band banquet I’m attending this sunday.

Also, I’ll probably post a mini-update a little later for something that just can’t wait, whether or not it goes the way I’d like…

“Fashions in men’s suits don’t change because old men don’t change their idea of what looks good, and young men don’t wear suits except to impress a jury.”
– From this article

Heard something interesting on TV today. They were advertising pre-school and said that “Studies have shown that a jump start in pre-school leads to a better likelihood of going to college and getting a better paying job.” Maybe I’m being cynical, but maybe it’s because people who have parents that can afford pre-school are more likely to have enough money to send their kids to college.

Misleading claims are weak.

Normally I go to deepdiscountdvd to get all my dvd’s because they’re the cheapest prices you can find anywhere, plus there’s no tax and free shipping no matter how little you spend.

And then there came the deal that made it ridiculous. As seen here, if you enter the code “USATODAY” on check out, you get 20% off.

I’ve already tested it buying two christmas presents and it DOES work, so if you need to buy any dvd’s for christmas, I suggest you check it out before this Friday, December 5th, which is when this offer runs out.

I know this seems like spam, but really it was just such a good deal I had to share.

bwong: sorry i took a while
bwong: my dad was twisting my nipples and giving me wedgies

So Lauren’s older sister is engaged FINALLY and she has a rock to prove it. No wait, make that a boulder. The thing is huge. If she’s not careful waving her hands she’s going to take out some poor 10 year old boy who’s not paying attention and somehow missed the gigantic sparkly sharp thing swinging from the hand of a woman that weighs about a third of the piece of compressed carbon on her finger.

Anyways. Today I was at a restaurant with Lauren, her engaged sister, and some of her sister’s friends. As we all know, the saying is that “Two Months Salary” is the customary amount that one is supposed to cough up for one of these things. Now, I’ve always had a gut instinct that there’s no way I would ever pay that much for a ring no matter how much it meant to anybody, but at the restaurant today these crazy women were trying to convince me that a wedding ring should be Three months salary. Which is ludicrous. They were absolutely rigid in their belief and wouldn’t budge, implying that I was a horrible cheap thrifty frugal stupid boy for suggesting that there’s no way I would spend three months salary on anything that didn’t have a roof or an engine. Absolutely not gunna doit. So I went online and I found out the real dirt on wedding rings.

First of all it definitely is “Two Months Salary” which was verified by several sources. The interesting little tidbit about this amount is that it came from DeBeers. It was a friggin advertising slogan for the diamond company. It was a subtle slogan, but it went something like “Two months salary never bought so much.” So not only is three months salary completely and utterly bogus, but the two months figure comes from a heinous and manipulative source.

So what the hell do you actually pay? Well, the obvious answer is pay what you can. Figure out what you want and what you can afford. Beyond that I found this site which mentions that three weeks salary or 6% of your annual income is customary. So you gold diggers put your shovels down.

The thing that gets me most riled up about all this diamond business is that diamonds are boring. There are so many other cool gems and stones in the world that would be much more unique than a clear stone. Alexandrite comes to mind, a gem that actually changes color from green in daylight to red in incandescent light.

*It occurred to me in the first third of this post that it’s very possible that I was being messed with and just bought it hook, line, and yes, sinker. While this possibility was very real to me, I decided to go with it as I already had it all outlined in my head.

“How did you grow a beard?”
-Isabella, my four year old cousin

Just finished thanksgiving dinner. SOooooo much of my favorite foods. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, grandma’s hand made rolls, grandma’s hand made jam. There was also a salad on the table, though no one has been able to sufficiently explain exactly why yet.

As for the rest of the day, we shall see. I’m hoping to play basketball against my dad and his brothers, just for SOME physical activity, but we’ll see how that goes. Besides that, just football, tiny asian cousins, rasberry cobbler and ice cream.

This story was told to me second hand, so it might not be an exact quote. The featured players are my Aunt Sherry and my 3 year old cousin Dax.

Aunt Sherry: We’re having chicken for dinner tonight!
Dax: Is it the animal chicken or the food chicken?
Aunt Sherry: It’s the food chicken.