White is the new black. PlainTXT is the new Royale. But alas, I didn’t have time to mess with the sidebar width, so I’m now using Stardust. But… grrr… tags aren’t being displayed, only categories…
Category Archives: Life
Off to Copenhagen!
I’m off to Copenhagen today and will be there for a week!
Mainly, I’m going to attend the Association of Internet Researchers conference, as I’m in the pre-conference workshop titled In the Game. I’ll be hanging out with a slew of cool people (Casey, Sean, Roger, Hector, Cassandra, Keith, Keith, etc.) I met last year in Vancouver at the same conference. In fact, it’s mostly the vibe and energy I felt from last time that made me decide I should put this conference on my regular attendance list. I hope others I met last year (Lilly, Alice, Clifford, etc.) will be there too!
I’m also looking forward to my second trip to Europe (first was The Netherlands earlier this year!) and hanging out with Lindsay and Tom and Cavan after the conference is over.
Check out this cool blog my brother found on bicycling in Copenhagen!
Tooth much better now!
So, this past summer I broke my tooth (#31-back right bottom molar) and got an emergency filling. It hurt to chew on though, so I’ve been going through a series of appointments with Dr. Kevin Lashinsky up in Shoreline near Costco.
At first we were just going to put a crown on it and hope that it would solve the problem, but this past week it’s been hurting spontaneously–as in aching rather than sharp pain during chewing, even with the temporary crown. So, after going in again to see what was up, I finally got a root canal yesterday.
Dr. Lashinsky didn’t do the root canal; another dentist named Dr. Fletcher did it. I loved her sense of humor. Actually, I think I pretty much love everyone in that office. The people at the front desk, Chris and Amanda are great. Heather, the person who helped out Dr. Lashinsky is great. Lisa, who helped out Dr. Fletcher is great. Drs. Lashinsky and Fletcher are great. They actually take the time to talk and explain and show you x-rays and draw illustrations as they explain. And, I think they go by their first names, which is a first among the dentists I’ve seen. I kind of want to invite that whole office to the game parties we host once in a while… Thanks, Sarah for the recommendation!
Anyway, today, my tooth doesn’t hurt at all! Which makes sense, of course, since I now have some artificial hardened goo in place of nerves in my tooth. But still… Very nice to finally have to stop worrying about it.
The only problem right now is that the new temporary cover is a little higher than what it should be so I tend to hit it first as I bite down, but I’ll be getting the final crown on the 23rd. Huzzah!
Weird evening
Went to the first Educators for Social Justice meeting this year, and it was cool meeting lots of new people and seeing old friends. The pace was a little slow when I arrived (an hour late due to another meeting), so I tried to bang through the remaining agenda items when I got there. 🙂
After that was the Graduate and Professional Student Senate social, which is basically a big ol party with free beer (3 max) and food for grad students. Went with a couple of other ESJ officers. It was kind of surreal. Me and Kate ended up getting three Guinnesses for later (they only opened the bottled beer and left the cans closed for some reason). After Fuyu and Kate had left, I mingled a little with other people: some students from Public Health and then this one group that was totally smashed and kind of annoying… oh yeah, that’s why I don’t like drunk people and therefore don’t really drink myself! Apparently, this one guy had been an elementary teacher and hated it (but sounded like he might’ve had an attitude problem–he had been asked to leave his program 8 times before he finally graduated in 2004), so now he’s back in school getting an MBA. Ha!
After that I waited in the rain forever for the 44. After I got on, a couple of men who appeared homeless and/or gangsta sat next to me. One of them kept saying how he had heroin and was going to sell it and buy some crack and then sell that real fast, too. He also waved around a needle of some sort and then a napkin with a wad of brown goo in it and was asking people to smell it and buy it for $15.
That was strange. I have no idea what heroin is supposed to smell or look like, but this seemed like a goo of really dehydrated vinegar. It sure smelled like vinegar.
I got off early and caught the next bus which was actually just like 2 minutes later since the first was so late.
I arrived home to a nice surprise. The Acer Aspire One I ordered several weeks ago finally became in-stock and had been shipped to my place today! But, boooo.. I ordered the blue one and got the white.
Ah well… I was going to take it to Denmark with me in a couple of weeks so I don’t think I have time to exchange it. Oh, and btw, that reminds me, I got my new passport today too!
Turn your real life into a MMOG with Google Android!
Scroll down to GeoLife. The first thing I thought was that this was like combining quests in WoW and then using an addon like TourGuide and TomTom to show you waypoints for each of those quests… Hmm… maybe GeoLife can be modded to allow you to gain XP for each errand…
Best Android Apps: Android’s 10 Most Exciting Apps
Oh, and by the way, Android is cool. Can’t wait to see what all is out there by the time my current phone contract ends!
Changed my name!
For years now I’ve been going by Mark, but only last week did I legally change my name to Mark. I did it since I was in an iffy spot in June trying to fly to Amsterdam with my passport showing Guang-min and my ticket showing Mark. Now it’s all cleared up and I just have to hope my new passport gets here by the time I fly to Copenhagen in October. Yay!
For the record, it is now officially Mark Guang-min Chen. While I could’ve taken the opportunity to make it official, I chose not to stick Danger in as my middle name. :p It is still a handy way to remember this url, however. (That damn Mark Chen has markchen.com!)
Assassin’s Creed and Philip K. Dick
PKD included moments of time when people in his books start seeing a reality behind their existence. Namely, that what we see is not reality, that there is something behind the surface. In Valis (I think)… it’s some Roman-era Christian world that exists in a parallel, real dimension. And in Man in the High Castle, there is a brief moment when the protagonist is staring at an object and suddenly can see our reality as opposed to the alternate history portrayed in the book.
Anyway, I got that same feeling after playing Assassin’s Creed for a while and then walking around the UW campus last spring. Like it was totally surreal to be surrounded by a bunch of students and other people I don’t know. Who I will never know. Yet we all share the same space and the same buildings and the same campus. But we’re all walking around in a fake world and not seeing the reality that has escaped us.
I suppose it’s the feeling that whatever we’re doing in our daily routines is meaningless and pointless. That there’s a reality we are ignoring. And I take this to be a metaphor for us not paying attention to the shitty state of affairs that the world is in.
But then at the same time, sometimes I feel the complete opposite. Life is great. The Tick season 2 is out. Ceiling Cat is watching me. Etc.
Maybe I hate mass consumption and prefer edgy, on the fringe consumption. The mass stuff is diluted somehow. The fringe stuff is more subculture, underculture. Is this why I hate it when something I like becomes popular?
Okay, that was steam of consciousness… but really… Assassin’s Creed and Philp K. Dick.
This artist is great!
delicious widget broken
Maybe since delicious got updated recently… I’ll look into it soon. Until then, my blogroll is dead. 🙁
Update
I sent off the revised Witcher review plus a draft of a Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword review off to e-Learning yesterday, and just now I posted the French version of Dangerous Decibels for review… If you want to check it out, go for it, but keep in mind it still needs to be reviewed by the peeps who did the translation. 🙂