this post, courtesy of lunestra which is coursing its way through my whole blood system.

this weekend, i realized a few loves: lunestra, IRON MAN, and the clash (thanks to rock band).

speaking of which, i finally played rock band for the first time (i've never played guitar hero before), and it's pretty fun. i personally don't think it's all that great, but i can see why people get obsessed over it.

speaking of a second which, (man, i wish i had something relevant to say about the salem witch trials, cause that would have been a killer pun) ... oh crap i forgot it.

think

think

think

OH! i remember. i can't wait for starcraft2. i've been telling people around the office i've been saving my vacation days - whether they want to believe it or not, i will take at least 2 vacation days for starcraft (assuming it's not around a major scheduling date).

i love san diego! i love life! i love mindtouch!

but you know what people hate? grammar nazis. and unfortunately, i am one of them. and i spent a big portion of today reading about the subjunctive mood.

let me explain why it's good grammar is so important to me: (oddly enough, this is going to come from a post that is filled with sub-par style and probably more than one grammar error) we are human. we distinguished ourselves from animals with our opposable thumbs and our creation of culture. unfortunately, due to the lack of literary in early generations (and the transience of the written mediums (parchment), we lost them. There are so many things .. had they been written down ... would never be lost from the sum of all human knowledge: languages, cultures, people ...

we're at a pinnacle where long-term digital storage is becoming possible. everybody has a voice now. the least we can do, for the generations which follow us, is to write clearly and effectively ... let's communicate our hopes and dreams, so they can understand what life was like now. the more information they have, the better they'll know how to not repeat our mistakes.

. . .

why is calculus being taught in school? how many people end up engineers? how many people, who took calculas (outside of engineers), ever uses it in a casual format? This has largely to do with America's persistence that producting more engineers is a great thing (mentality popular in WW2, no doubt). The more we can do math, the better we'll be engineers, to defeat the evil Russian empire.

But nowadays? We need to teach the real English grammar. And also everybody should take a basic statistics class and a basic economics (I'd prefer macro, since it's pretty much a fake science anyways). Standardized tests are fine (in fact, my AP chem teacher from ECHHS, Ms. Kuhl (are you still out there?) was one of the best teachers I had - it was a combinatinon of her structured teaching and Dr. Mullis' unstructured style which really taught me a lot. In retrprospect, I think I learned more those two teachers than I did my whole freshman year in college (apparently, even though I had taken Mullis' version of orgo chemistry, they wanted me to take it again). I went in the first day of class, saw it was pointless, and showed up for the mid-term and the final. My final grade? B. Colleges are so pointess. But I'm glad I received the degree.

. . .

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE WEST WING. I love all of Aaron Sorkin's stuff, so this should be no surprise .. but man. This show's been great (only in Season 2). I love how these shows build such a close rapport amongst the staff. And you know what? The harder I work, and the more stress I guess, the more understanding I can towards some of the stupid arguments they also always have.

I wish my life were more like a sitcom. I'd take a show like Friends, but I'll also settle for Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, or West Wing.

Ok, I definitely need to this more often. Lunestra is helping my mind wander (and it's making the screen in front of me seem like a mountain top... the words starting running into resistance .... but when the sentence completes, they're at the valley.

. . .

Whatever happened to Coolio?

. . .

I will get reamed on the Yahoo! stock tomorrow. Here's my plan: I took out my stop losses. I want to gauge what happens tmorrow and plan accordingly. If you remember the $19/share was the low point, but that was also factoring in the credit crisis. Since then, other news has been factored in. Eyeballing the numbers, I'd say that a fair price would be in the low twenties (~$20.50). If Yahoo is serious about doing something with Google, I welcome it. Yahoo!'s expertise is all in the human networks. Human networks. Isn't Cisco doing something with human networks? Maybe Fox'll throw up their Fox Media group (MySpace) with AOL that'll merge into Yahoo. Holy crap, my sentences are sitting in rows. Google's sitting back at from the third row and he's giving me the evil eyes.

Either way, I don't think this is death knells for Yahoo. They still have excellent engineers, and a (descent?) track record of shipping. What I'd really like to do is visit these companies and see what executives do in big company. WIth so many engineerings, why aren't they shipping out something new every 3 months? MindTouch is only like 6 core engineers and we're shipping cool shit every month.

I really want to know what that's like. I wonder if I can ghost a couple of people at Yahoo for a day or two. Be incredibly enlightening, I'm sure

. . .

So while I'm mentioning hopes and dreams (i really hope i get a cool lunestra dream tonight), here is what I'd eventually like to do in my life:

• Open a CHEAP sushi place with lots of eating areas and lots of green teas and stuff ... just like a coffee shop, but with asian-themed foods. it'll be really chill. free wireless. woot.
• Start a school for children in Peru (I saw the idea here) ... if blessed with financial freedom, I'd probably do more of these schools
• Start a school for disadvantage inner-city kids ... I know I've written a post on this before, too lazy to bring it up now
• Start a technical start-up company ... an incubator. Kind of like the Y Combinator stuff, but more personal (and pursuing my ideas). Give kids straight out of college (with a few mentors) the ability to make some impact *now*.
  

Such is my life.