When Google fails me

My faithful readers and Facebook friends step up to the plate.

Who said this? This is my paraphrase, not the actual quote I read some years ago.

A virtue practiced to the exclusion of all other virtues is evil

Thanks

Must be a slow news day

Picked up a box of popping corn while shopping at Costco tonight. This on the narrow side of the box caught my attention:



Sigh....

Has the cheesy net lingo invaded the real world outside the Internet and cell phones?

"OMG" Cholesterol?

What is there to OMG about when it comes to Cholesterol? My doctor just lectured to me again about watching my life style to lower the Cholesterol levels, and I had to lie to him about my diet. Now a box of popping corn taunts me with a silly Internet acronym?

What's next? Shampoo bottles screaming, "LOL baldness"? Sorry, can't come up with a better analogy. It was a long first day at work.

Upon further review, the box does not read OMG. It actually reads 0mg which stands for zero milligrams. In this country, you won't see metric units used much outside of nutritional data in fine print on food products, so what else was I supposed to think? I am not a nutrition geek.

But then, if they had used the ounce which is abbreviated oz, the box would have read "0oz Cholesterol." That is just gross.

I think I spend too much time hating on the cheesy net lingo.

♥ BFF ♥,
David

I forgot to tell you

Two Fridays ago, I ended up in the emergency room passing kidney stones. No, this is not a joke.

There is no need to go into the gory details, but I have made a few life style changes which include drinking a lot of water and quitting soda.

What else should I do? Do you think I should donate one of my kidneys to reduce my risk by 50%?

Now that my credibility has taken a dive..

This must be how Night Shyamalan feels about his once promising career. In the aftermath of his blockbuster success with the Sixth Sense, movie goers now walk into Night Shyamalan's films bracing for equally suspenseful and shocking endings. None of the movies he has directed since then have reached the level of success and hype enjoyed by the Sixth Sense.

Rest assured that I will not pull a prank like this again. Until your guard is down, that is.

It may shock you to learn that this was not the first time I pulled a similar prank. This is a true story. Trust me.

Back in 1999, when the dotcom boom was in full swing, I made a career switch to the software engineering field. You may remember the skyrocketing job market when lucrative 6 figure jobs with hefty stock options and bonuses were not uncommon. In my case, I took a modest pay cut and landed a mid-level job at age 33 because of my limited experience in the field. Getting my foot in the door at a growing technology company was my priority.

After a few months into my new job, I sent a group of my ex-coworkers an email with details of a lucrative job offer I had landed. Of course, the story had the exact same ending:  The alarm clock rang and I woke up.

Within minutes, this girl I used to work with called. "Congratulations, David. I am so happy for you!"

It was apparent that she had not gotten to the punch line. She was at least 3 paragraphs away from the fateful moment.

"The job is in Seattle? I have really good college friends who moved up there. It rains a lot, but I think you will love it up there."

"Wow, a signing bonus of $150,000? That is awesome!"

Her voice got more and more feverish.

"And stock options. Wow! David, this is great."

"A company car? You should get yourself a Ferrari, David."

Let me tell you what it was like. It was like watching a state of the art locomotive lurching in slow motion headed for a train wreck. I could only brace myself with my teeth clenched knowing what was in store for this poor girl.

Then a deathly silence ensued. You could cut the air with a knife.

After about a good two minutes,

"You [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE]"

Her reaction set off a fit of uncontrollable laughter. After a few minutes of gasping for air, I finally managed to muster a few words:

"Maryanne, I'm dying here. HAHAHA"

"What a great idea, David Cho. Please die."

This should explain the long hiatus from blogging

Shortly after my last birthday, I finally broke down and decided to give "Internet dating" another chance.

Eharmony.com was my logical choice. As you may know, the online service provides a unique system of matching potential partners based on the thorough and comprehensive "compatibility" data its participants provide through the personality test.

I was deeply skeptical and reluctant. The last go-around with Internet dating was an unmitigated disaster:  For the women, that is. Suffice to say it is only by God's grace that I am still alive.

To make the long story short...

On April 23, Camilla from Sacramento, CA showed up as a match. What could I possibly have in common with this Latina bombshell, said to myself during a quick perusal of emails before heading out the door. Not only is her geographic location more than 400 miles away, but her cultural background and mine couldn't be further apart.

To my surprise, she initiated communication with me which I nervously accepted later on that evening. We instantly "clicked" both literally and figuratively. The day marked a magical beginning of 115 consecutive days of exchanging emails and phone calls, which culminated with my long drive to meet her in person back on August 5th.

With a bit of awkwardness in the air, we walked around the city for a couple of hours only to realize later that there was more than just "online romance." Since our distance did not afford us frequent interaction in person, the meeting allowed us to see how truthful we had been with each other.

I was absolutely smitten and captivated by her pervasive beauty. Little did I know that love could be this exhilarating and rewarding after decades in the wilderness of singleness.

After countless rounds of flying and driving back and forth to visit each other, I popped THE QUESTION during her visit down to Orange County last weekend.

To my dismay, she did not say YES right away. Of course, I had been on pins and needles unable to perform even the most basic functions.

Then the phone rang at 8 PM last night. Her first word: "Sí"

A joy incomprehensible. Words fail me.

About an hour later, the phone rang again. Well, this time it wasn't the phone. It was my alarm clock roaring like the Ringwraiths. So I woke up. The lamest dream. EVER.

You have yourselves a nice day now.

"Planned Parenthood never reported this predator"

While pondering upon what I would do with the ballot before me in the voting booth this coming Tuesday, I made a mistake of tuning into KKLA which is one of the most listened to Evangelical radio stations here in Southern California.

A commercial in ominous words began to play. You can watch its Youtube version here.

"A 13 year old girl was raped by a 39 year old man over a 100 times."

"When she got pregnant, he took her to Planned Parenthood. Twice."

"Her mother didn't know."

"He took her from school for surgical abortion. Her mother didn't know."

"Planned Parenthood never reported this predator. He continued sexually abusing the girl for 6 more months."

A 39 year old guy impregnates a 13 year old girl and takes her to an abortion clinic to terminate her pregnancy and cover his tracks. Words fail me. Even the most hardened criminals incarcerated in prison would agree with me on that.

But then the story takes a bizarre twist. Planned Parenthood "never reported this predator," the ad claims.

Let's think through this here.

Are we to believe that the 39 year child rapist walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic, and introduced himself to the receptionist as the father of the 13 year old girl's baby, and the clinic staff just greeted him with a smile and served him coffee while he waited in the lobby?

I fall on the pro-life side of the debate with some major caveats. However horrific and immoral we believe abortion to be does not negate our responsibility to be fair to those whom we vehemently disagree with.

What value do such flagrant and inflammatory accusations of complicity in child rape add to the debate?

I suppose you can make a case that "the other side" plays dirty too by digging up ads put out by the pro-choice side to demonstrate its penchant to distort and lie.

Let's assume that to be true. Even so, are we not admonished not to be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21)? Such thoughtless accusations of aiding child rape (or rape of any kind for that matter) are truly despicable.

Evangelical political activism has landed the church deep in the mud of the political arena. We lie. We distort. We play dirty just like everybody else whose primary objective is winning and little else.

An axiom warns against mud-wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it. After 30 years of political activism with very little to show for, it has become clear to me that we have become the pig who sees nothing wrong with getting dirty.

Perhaps that is a tell tale sign that we should seriously consider getting out of politics and finding new hobbies?

PS: Read my blogging friend Amber's Don't be a monster in order to defeat a monster.

John Steinbeck on the banking crisis

The bank is something more than men, I tell you.
It's the monster.
Men made it, but they can't control it.

From The Grapes of Wrath