Unnaturally Long Attention Span

Article Archive for 2004
27 December 2004

27-Dec-2004

racing in the motorized carts at Walmart never gets old…

8 December 2004

8-Dec-2004

I heard about this small startup in the news http://www.visitorville.com/ . Check it out, its like SimCity meets web traffic analyzer. Anyway, I did some undercover work to see how they run their operation there by chatting up the online Live Help representative. It’s amazing how much they will tell you if you ask the right way (i.e. by pretending you are a high-roller considering their services). I was able to find out that they have only one server dedicated to all the hosting. (estimated cost $5k-$10k, machine utilization probably around 20%). I was always able to get from her that they have around a few thousand customers, but they are mostly small clients. (So, lets say they have ~1,000 customers, each with the standard small pricing package. =1000*($20/month)*(12 months)=$240,000/year). So they are operating at about a quarter million a year coming in. She also told me that they have 6 full-time software developers. (So, lets be generous to account for auxilliary staff and say thats about $50k*6=300,000 /year). So they are operating at a loss of -60,000/year which is pretty typical for an early startup, which needs a few years to get in the black and pay back the VCs.
 
I think their key flaw is that they hired too many developers. A geeky high school student could have put this service together for much less. Of course you would still need fully trained support staff, but it seems like their support staff isn’t exactly the best as she leaked all this vital info to just a random person. My prediction: this company will be gone by this time next year.

7 December 2004

7-Dec-2004

For all your protein sequence analysis needs, my multiple alignment and phylogenetic tree software is available online now. Check it out here: http://phylo.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/satchmo/input_satchmo.py

6 December 2004

6-Dec-2004

WILL
< < < I went on a date last week.

SEAN
How’d it go?

WILL
It was good.

SEAN
Goin’ out again?

WILL
I dunno.

SEAN
Why not?

WILL
Haven’t called her.

SEAN
Christ, you’re an amateur.

WILL
I know what I’m doin’.

SEAN
Yeah.

WILL
< Yeah. Don’t worry about me, I know what I’m doin’.
Yeah, but this girl is like, you know, beautiful. She’s
smart. She’s funny. She’s different from most of the
girls I’ve been with.

SEAN
So, call her up, Romeo.

WILL
Why? So I can realize she’s not that smart, that she’s
fuckin’ boring? Y’know–I mean…this girl is like
fuckin’ perfect right now, I don’t wanna r–ruin that.

SEAN
Maybe you’re perfect right now. Maybe you don’t
wanna ruin that. I think that’s a super philosophy, Will,
that way you can go through your entire life without
ever having to really know anybody….My wife used to
fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of
wonderful idiosyncrasies. You know what? She used to
fart in her sleep. Sorry I shared that with you. One
night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up
and gone like “oh was that you?” ‘d say yeah…I didn’t
have the heart to tell her…Oh God…

WILL
She woke herself up?

SEAN
Ye e e e sss…. > Oh Christ….aahhh, but, Will, she’s been
dead two years and that’s the shit I remember.
Wonderful stuff, you know, little things like that. Ah,
but, those are the things I miss the most. The little
idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. That’s what made
her my wife. Oh and she had the goods on me, too, she
knew all my little peccadillos. < People call these things
imperfections, but they’re not, aw that’s the good stuff. >
And then we get to choose who we let in to our weird
little worlds. < You’re not perfect, sport. And let me
save you the suspense. This girl you met, she isn’t
perfect either. But the question is: whether or not you’re
perfect for each other. > That’s the whole deal. That’s
what intimacy is all about. Now you can know
everything in the world, sport, but the only way you’re
findin’ out that one is by givin’ it a shot. You certainly
won’t learn from an old fucker like me. < Even if I did
know, I wouldn’t tell a piss ant like you. >
— from original script, “Good Will Hunting”, submitted by Matthew Damon and Ben Affleck

1 December 2004

1-Dec-2004

Hi friends, welcome to my modest webpage. Hope December finds you well in health and spirit.

Let me tell you about my girlfriend. You know, she’s a Molecular Cell Biology major at Berkeley. If you have no clue, that’s like the hardest major at that school. She’s studying to become a doctor one day to make lots of money and help disadvantaged peope across the world. Besides MCB, she is planning to double-major in Art as well. Talk about intense! I can barely find time in her schedule to see her between all her classes, o-chem labs, tutoring job, research work, and volunteering at the hospital. She’s not just a smart cookie, she’s so talented in other areas as well. She’s an accomplished painter and pianist. I think her artistic talent shows in her dancing as well, you should see her move on the dance floor.

She can cook and clean! That’s something you don’t find too often in women these days. Quite the homemaker. Oh, and she has other hidden talents as well that I won’t talk about here : >. Besides that, she’s a great friend as well. She’s so considerate and friendly to everyone. I can just talk to her for hours on end about any topic and her quirky o-chem jokes never fail to crack me up, haha.

If you ever are lucky enough to meet her you’ll notice she has the cutest Chinese accent. It’s quite exotic compared to my East-coast good ole’ boy accent. Her use of vocabulary is also quite interesting, lol.

Did I mention, she’s DROP DEAD GORGEOUS? Yeah, people stop her in the streets just to tell her that all the time. Sounds too good to be true, huh? But, it is and I’m one lucky bastard. Well fellas, move along, because this one’s taken!

30 November 2004

30-Nov-2004

I think dating this girl has changed me in a few significant ways. Here are just two examples:

1. While i was walking to class this morning, I noticed how cold it was outside. Having been raised in the North, before I would have probably just been oblivious to the temperature outside.

2. I was having lunch /w my buddy Will on Sunday in Palo Alto, since he came back for the break. As we walked towards my car, I automatically went to the passenger side and unlocked the door for him. He was probably thinking either, “Why, that’s nice of him.” or “wtf?”

Kind of scary.

17 November 2004

17-Nov-2004

This is what two hundred billion pennies (the number currently in circulation) looks like. Notice the size of the person standing next to the football field. As you can see with the color scheme, the football field is definitely Cal stadium with Oski standing on the sidelines.. Stanfurd is soo gonna get pwned at Big Game this week!! Go Bears!!!

Background music: Yellowcard – Only One. This one is dedicated to my lovely gf Dana, who’s always there for me. You’re my only one, babe.

16 November 2004

16-Nov-2004

Clarification: Everybody has been asking me this. You don’t need to enter your login information nor do you need a xanga account at all to use this. You simply enter a username and it visualizes the xanga graph. The program works by just downloading the public xanga page, searching your front page and entry pages (side pages) for friends, then visits those friends pages, then visits those friends’ friends’ pages… etc..

16 November 2004

16-Nov-2004

I uploaded my Xanga graph software . To run it, just unzip the folder and double-click on Run.bat. I’m assuming you have java installed. To use, just type in a xanga username, select if you want “friends” to be either subscribers, commentors, or both. Commentor means anyone who as recently commented on your xanga. The program fetches all recent entries and checks the pages for commentors. Yeah, I know there are still lots of bugs, but if you run into troubles just restart the program… The speed of the program depends on how fast your internet connection is, its downloading tons of xanga pages. Oh, and if you get wierd behavior, make sure xanga.com is actually up = )

-mike

11 November 2004

11-Nov-2004

one of my heroes just died.. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/10152938.htm?1c

Iris Chang is the chinese american author of the book “Rape of Nanking” that sits on my bookshelf at home. She was a vehement activist bent on exposing the Japanese govt for their atrocities during WWII. Atrocities that although remain less well known in pop culture, paralleled the Jewish holocaust. I had the chance to meet her once and hear her give a talk when I lived in Pittsburgh. She seemed to be so full of passion for her work and life. She just shot herself one night in her car, leaving behind a husband and 2 year old daughter. Makes one stop and think..