| Shall I play for you parum pum pum pum... |
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| Thursday, December 26, 2002 You know, the more I think about the whole Antitrust thing, the more horrendously funny the whole situation gets for me. It's just something I'm completely left speechless about. I mean, this wasn't even brought with the intention of being a horrendous or humorous gift. So I've decided to milk this for all its worth. I've created a list of things I would rather receive at a gift exchange than Antitrust on dvd. 1. A blank(or used) notebook. 2. A rubber band. 3. A water bottle. Doesn't matter if it is empty or full. 4. A cactus. 5. Terminator 2 on VHS. 6. Terminator 2 on casette. I just chose Terminator 2 because it was a random movie that I thought was universally acknowldeged as a pretty good movie. And yes, I would rather receive Terminator 2 on CASSETTE TAPE than Antitrust on dvd. 7. Chopsticks. 8. A bag of Funions. 9. One M&M. 10. Aluminum foil. You get the idea. I thought I've seem some horrendous things this past year, but seems like THE most horrendous thing was waiting till the end of the year haha. Apparently, NBA 2K3 for PS2 was one of the most in-demand games for the holiday season. I went to five different stores looking for it, and good old Gamestop at Del Amo Mall had it. 2K3 is a definite improvement over 2K2 in terms of realistic simulation. In 2K2, even an average player could have 90% shooting games and have average players shooting ridiculous shots and making them. This is not the case in 2K3. So in exchange for realism, you also get your share of frustrations as well, because sometimes, seeminly easy shots will end up rolling out of the rim. And of course, there is the horrendous computer cheating factor during crunch time that exists in all sports video games. Offense is a little bit harder to run, and 3 pointers are a lot hader to make. Steve Nash, who is on my franchise team, has a rating of 90 for 3 pointers, but I'll be damned if he ever shot 50% or better on 3 pointers. But I think once you get used to how the flow of the game goes and stuff, stats will most likely get inflated like they do in 2K2. But just not as bad. Franchise mode is excellent, except that you can't quit your fantasy draft in the middle if you don't like the current team you have or if you don't like your team's position in the draft. So basically you have to just let the auto function take it to the end, then quit, then start franchise mode again. A minor setback, but Sega did a pretty good job of balancing everything out in the Franchise mode, unlike All Star Baseball 2003, where you could manipulate the trading system to create horrendously unbeatable teams. You can manipulate your teams through the trading system in NBA 2K3 somewhat, but the salary cap factor comes into play, so you can't have good players unless you give up something of equal value. My team (the Lakers) has a solid starting lineup of Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Ron Artest, Tyrone Hill, and David Robinson. My main bench player is Lamar Odom, whom I rotate with Ron Artest, depending on whether I need more offense or defense. Otherwise, the rest of the bench is absolutely horrendous hahaha. And most of the teams are pretty evenly matched, which makes it fun. I'd say this was a worthwhile purchase. Tuesday, December 24, 2002 Hmm.. so many things over the past three days. Sunday was the showing of our history-making production of Yah In Shi Deh from our church EM. It was a grand success. It was stressful, but it was more than worth the time and energy that was spent in making the dream into a reality. Monday night was our annual Christmas party with the North High crew. It was a blast, except on the gift exchange, some people ended up bringing some pretty horrendous gifts. I mean, you figure that after doing this gift exchange game for what, like 6 years, people would start getting an idea of what kind of stuff gets cheers and what gets jeers. Apparently, this wasn't the case. I personally think MIke Litvin and Jason got screwed. I mean, I understand that there is no such thing as a gift that every single person will like, (well, maybe except for Simpsons Clue... hahahha jk) but the idea is to get something that you know for sure at least a handful of people will like. I ended up with two dolls that I'm going to give to a kid that I know, but quite frankly, I didn't exactly get into this gift exchange to get something that I'm going to give to someone else. But oh well, I was going to buy dolls for this kid anyways, so it wasn't a waste of my money or anything so it's all good. I mean, one of the gifts was the movie Antitrust on dvd. Let's see here, there are about 20 kazillion dvds to choose from, and someone decided "hmm, Antitrust, that looks like a great movie! Forget Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or anything else. Let's get Antitrust!" ANTITRUST???? WHAT THE HELL IS ANTITRUST?!?!?! We're all old now. It's weird looking at everyone and seeing the youth fade from our faces. Gosh, how sad. But there's no group of people like the old Torrance crew. Once we start talking we cover everything from politics to current events to world issues to the Simpsons to sports to movies to literature to anything and everything. We could take the stupidest topic and turn it into a multi-dimensionally engaging discussion, and we could take the most interesting and mentally stiumlating discussion and turn it into the most horrendous conversation ever. We all know too much for our own good... hahaha. Saturday, December 21, 2002 Woohoo, I got a new keyboard today for my PC at Frys for $7 and it's pretty much THE definition ghettoness hahahaha. It just looks like a piece of plastic with letter buttons hahaha. But it's okay, I don't really use my PC unless my mac is being used for something else. Like if I'm doing video editing on the mac, I'll use the PC to chat and mess around. And to update this blog. Apparently, geocities pagebuilder doesn't work with macs. But it doesn't matter, as long as I could type the letter V!! V V V V V V V V V V V V V V v v v v v v v v v V V V V V V v v v v v V V V V V v v V!!!!!! I think my past two weeks' worth of entries has been extremely boring, unless you are a cast member in our EM production hahaha. So to the rest of the readers, sorry, but that's been the story of my life the past 2-3 weeks. But here's another one of my observational theories that I came up with. There are a lot of people out there who try so hard to prove themselves to the world and demand respect from those around them. Especially in the Korean-American church. And then they get upset when they don't get the respect they think they deserve. I don't know what's with the obsession with respect and recognition these days. Why so much pride? Why do people have to feel like they have to be right every single time? Why do people care so much that certain people get more respect from others? Granted, I used to be like that too, but there should come a time when a person realizes his limitations and make the best out of the situations around him rather than just bickering and griping about how you could do better than everyone else. But in reality, you can't. Because you've never done it or been there before and you don't know what it's like, although you think you do. You can't expect to be respected by others around you just from your words and your actions that you currently show. These things are absolutely meaningless unless your actions and discernment have withstood the test of time. Yes, you may feel good about the way you serve and work hard now, but what will you do when you're faced with the responsibility to sustain the same type of energy and effort for 6-7, 8, 10 years? People aren't stupid. They know who have endured the test of time and they know who have yet to earn their respect. But even so, in my opinion, the people who go around crying out "hey, look at me, I'm doing this and that and giving all this effort for God, so respect me!" are the ones that get the LEAST respect. Especially when they act like that in front of people oler and more mature than they are. And younger kids today seem more hard-headed than ever. They have this tendancy to get caught up in this whole respect business and start thinking they know more than the people who are older and more experienced than they are. Which shows just how immature they are. If you take a closer look at the people who are well-respected and who are truly mature, you will find that they ackowledge their constant need for growth and learning, and carries a servant's mentality. And they never asked anyone to respect them because it's not about respect, but it's about loving God and loving His church. I don't know, I think they fail to see that It's all about the lifestyle. There's something very attractive about a person who doesn't care about all of the kind of stuff I talked about, but simply tries to live his/her daily life to the best of their abilities. And those are the people whom I truly respect. Thursday, December 19, 2002 Gosh, iD_D is turning out to be a pain in the butt too. Apparently, its encoding capabilities are not that great so I only ha_e one hour of _ideo to work with. The mo_ie is about 25 minutes long, so if you break that up into chapters for the chapter selection section, that's another 25 minutes. Then, the NGs take up about 10 minutes. So I couldn't make enough room for the commercials, but I felt bad for the people who were in it, so I had to sacrifice some footage from the chapter selections. Originally, chapter 1 contained the intro, followed by the first commercial, then the first scene with Isaac and Emmanuel, then the narration. But now, if you select chapter 1 from the chapter selections section, it will start with the first scene, followed by the narration. So in order to see the intro scene, you will ha_e to choose "play mo_ie." Oh well, no biggie, I'm just glad I actually worked all that out before it was too late.. Wednesday, December 18, 2002 Just came back from watching Lord of the Rings with my roommates and other UCLA friends. I liked it. And it was nice to see them again. The funny thing is, every time we have a roommates reunion, for some reason everyone becomes a lot more cornier than normal. Not just me, John, and Dan, but like everyone else that's with us. I think we had that effect all along but just didn't realize until now after being away from each other for a long period of time then getting together again haha. These days I think that more and more, nothing works out smoothly at all in my life. I'm sure it's like this for pretty much the whole world, but somehow for me, a wrench always seems to be thrown into the gears of fate. Just now, my PC keyboard was acting funny and the spacebar wasn't working so I opened it up, and had a stinking annoying time unscrewing the 200,000 screws on the keyboard (grr.. screw it! hahaha) and then after opening it up, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing so I put it back together. Then, for some reason the spacebar started to work. Hooray. But then now, another button doesn't work, which is the letter that comes betweeen u and w. Ugh. I'm just going to buy a new keyboard this week. Also, I did all my research and reading on D_D Studio Pro for our Christmas yah In shi deh d_d project, then I disco_ered that my macintosh didn't ha_e a certain plugin that allows me to con_ert all my mo_ie files to a format that is accepted by D_D Studio Pro. And I don't feel like spending more horrendous money for it so I decided to hold back on that for now until I could find someone that could get me the plugin, or downloading a _ersion that actually works. I don't ha_e enough time, so I suppose this time I'll ha_e to go with iD_D. Which means the d_d menu will pause and restart e_ery 30 seconds. But oh well, it's just a minor setback... Tuesday, December 17, 2002 I'm watching a rerun of Conan right now and Sheryl Crow is singing while playing the bass guitar. That's not an easy thing to do. Actually, it is VERY hard to sing and play the bass at the same time. So mad props to Sheryl Crow. Man, it's been a while since I've worked with deadlines this tight. All of the scenes for the DVD are now finished, with commercials, NGs, etc. And now I have to convert all my edits to quicktime format in order to import it to DVD Studio Pro. But the thing is, I have no idea how to use DVD Studio Pro. The Dive DVD was made with iDVD, but I want to try and make it better so I got DVD Studio Pro. So now I have to pretty much read a book I bought that will teach me how to use this program, and hurry up and get rolling with the burning process. I'm estimating (hoping, rather) that this will take about 4 hours. Well, time to do QT and get back to work. Monday, December 16, 2002 My apologies once again for the lack of updates. I've been way too busy with Christmas season stuff. But yes, for the people that don't go to my church, I am indeed alive and well. It's just that during this time of year I'm either at church, or resting at home hahaha. But these are good times. Stressful and tiring, but it's still fun. This is a personality disorder test I got off Ryan's blog. Pretty interesting.. and I completely agree that I should be rated high on obsessive-compulsive disorder haha. Disorder | Rating Paranoid: Low Schizoid: Low Schizotypal: Low Antisocial: Low Borderline: Low Histrionic: Low Narcissistic: Low Avoidant: Low Dependent: Low Obsessive-Compulsive: High URL of the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv URL for info on the disorders: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/disorder_information2.html I don't know about the descriptions they gave, though. Most of what they talk about my disorder is true, but I don't really fit with the part about not being able to make a decision because of the possibility of failure. And about the part about missing the bigger picture. Although I do easily get lost in the details, I always like to focus on the bigger picture in everything I do. It's my motivation. And about the decision thing, I'd much rather make a decision on my own than depend on others if it affects me in any significant way. I like to think that my destiny is in my own hands. Well, unless God leads me to another direction. But otherwise, even if I do make a mistake with a decision I made, I would still be in a better and more relaxed state of mind, knowing that I didn't get to a negative point from a decision that someone else made for me. I hate the blame game. I hate excuses. I hate the act of justifying incompetence or irresponsibility. But regardless of my periodic mental fits of frustration with the world and with people, life is good because God is good, and I find true satisfaction in every new day that comes. Thursday, December 12, 2002 Congratulations to Emmanuel Joe for becoming the honorary third person to be quoted on this blog. He definitely earned this one, hahaha: Sarah: Hey Mike, you highlighted your hair, huh. Mike: Yeah, yesterday. Emmanuel: That must have been the highlight of your day. We were at Ralphs and we saw this bottle of egg nog and this was their slogan: "Milk so fresh, that the cow doesn' even know it's missing it!" Absolutely horrendous. Hahaha. Wednesday, December 11, 2002 Wow, my neck hurts.. just finished a 3 hour non-stop intense video editing session... for the two scenes we filmed last Saturday. It took me 4 hours to put together the rough draft of those two scenes, and 3 hours to revise and finalize everything. I could have finished in about an hour or so, but being the horrendously picky person that I am, I had to consider everything, pretty much frame for frame and make sure everything is done in the best possible quality. But it looks good. I'm proud of the work I finished today. Although I might recieve a lot of compliments from editing the movie, the praise actually deserves to go out to the actors... you can't have a good movie without good actors. So I'd like to thank the cast for making me look good. And on the flip side, I'll try my absolute best to make you guys look good. Lots of things to be excited about these days. The movie, youth winter retreat, EM winter retreat, Christmas parties, yay. I got to talk to Janette today. I wanted to visit her and Ricky but Ricky was out of town, so I'll probably visit next week. I haven't talked to either of them since they got married. I'm excited about seeing their faces again soon too. Tuesday, December 10, 2002 For some reason today I was in an Oasis mood so the majority of the music I listened to were Oasis songs. If I think about it, almost all of the artists I consider myself a fan of, are not from America. U2 is from Ireland, Radiohead, Oasis, and Delirious are from England, and Sarah McLachlan is from Canada. The only artist that is from America in my selective list is Dave Matthews. Well, I don't really know much about Oasis for them to be in the same level as the other bands, but I just put them in there for further emphasis. I wasn't very much into American literature, either. Most of my favorite works of literature are European. Speaking of literature, I need to make a retraction from my previous entry. i referred the Odyssey as your model "book," but the correct terminology would be "epic." It's not a novel. The entire story is a poem, at first orally recited and passed on through the generations. Sheesh, talk about tough work, i sure woudln't have wanted to be a bard or a storyteller in those days if I had to memorize all these horrendously long epics like the Odyssey, the Aneid, Beowulf, etc etc. If there was one thing I wanted to change about myself, what would it be? I wish I wouldn't spit when I talk!!! Okay, like, I'm really anal about having clean breath so I always have mints in my mouth. i'm also very anal about keeping my ears clean, so I clean out my ears with a q-tip everyday after taking a shower. But spitting when I talk, I can't really control it, and I don't know of any way to stop it. Sheesh, is there a medicine or something out there that will prevent this???? I don't want to cover my mouth with my hands every time I talk, either. Sunday, December 8, 2002 Song of the week for this week would most definitely be "Odysseus" by Arielle Dombasle. This is the song that we desperately needed for our "Yah In Shi Deh" production for EM. We needed to insert this song in the background of the climax of the movie. But this song wasn't in the drama's soundtrack! So I was stressing big time because I would have had to pull off some big time editing from the videos I had, and it wasn't going to end up being very good if I did that. But Steve went to the drama's forums and found out the name of the song! "They say you're lost. They say you're gone. I call your name, Odysseus." That's the first three lines of that song... the Odyssey is actually one of my favorite works of literature, and this lady does a pretty darn good job of bringing Penelope's emotions and mindset through this song. For those who haven't read the Odyssey, basically, Penelope is Odysseus's wife, and Odysseus gets imprisoned by the gods after the Trojan War and gets into a bunch of other adventures after he is set free. Meanwhile, during that 20-year span, Penelope remains faithful to Odysseus even though he is pretty much declared dead. So Penelope has to deal with a bunch of suitors that want to take over her castle and all of Odysseus's possessions, so she's going through a lot of pain and suffering because he's taking so dang long to get home while she constantly holds off these men who want to marry her. But it wasn't really his fault entirely either, since his life was basically in the hands of the gods. And with the help of Athena, Odysseus returns home and slaughters Penelope's suitors in your classic barbaric and gruesome fashion, and then goes off adventuring again. Leaving Penelope behind, sitting pretty at home, again. On the surface, the Odyssey is your model epic for discussing the portrayal of gender roles and stuff because Odysseus is the man who has supernatural strength and goes off adventuring, killing monsters and villains while drinking and sleeping with many fine women. Penelope is the one who sits at home and can't do anything except wait for her husband to come home. And she'd be condemned to eternal damnation if she were to ever be caught cheating on her husband. So yeah, there's a lot of female oppression, just like in pretty much all of non-20th century literature, but I personally think Penelope is far superior to Odysseus. There are parts in the story that hints at Odysseus's helpless nature to the females he encounters, and Penelope pulls off some pretty nifty schemes too. Okay, I think that's enough literature talk... I don't want to end up rewriting my 7 page paper on Penelope.. hahaha. Saturday, December 7, 2002 Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a control freak... hahaha. If I'm put in a leadership type position I have a tendancy to get easily frustrated if things don't work out the way I made out the blueprints and when people don't cooperate the way I want them to. Go figure... ambition is a double-edged sword. I think I got a lot better though. But all in all today's filming session went very well although life would have been a LOT easier for myself and everyone else if we finished everything today. Oh well, nothing we could do about it now... Quote of the day: (my apologies to the non-korean readers...) Heabin JDSN: Wow, who brought all this kim bap? Super0406: I think it was Bob Kim. (bap-kim) Wednesday, December 5, 2002 Well I'm back at home now after staying over at Emmanuel's place for the past two days. My house had to get fumigated, so my family went our separate ways for that time period. Gosh, I really have two difficult weekends ahead of me. I guess it's the pre-production jitters or something but I must admit the pressure for our EM project has been pretty heavy. The life of Mike Uh has always been about very high expectations. I've always lived with having higher standards set for me... and the challenge and the drive to become excellent in everything I do keeps me strong. If there's any principle I go by in life, I never talk big unless I could back it up. I would have never said this production would be as huge as the hype that's built up over the past couple weeks if I wasn't confident I was capable of making it just that. And I would have never said those words if I didn't have faith in Dae Myung and Ji and all the people involved in this production. Yes, it's stressful thinking about it, but stress has never helped me, or stopped me from accomplishing my goals. Quotes of the Day: -On essays (Jonsport actually deserves credit for this one, he used this joke on me, but I'm recycling it hehe)- Le0ju79: i have so many essays due... =( Super0406: hmm.. dang, i didn't know u were the gangster type of girl.. Super0406: hanging out with all your "essays"... hehehe -On buddy icons- Le0ju79: which one do u like better? the rose one or this one? Super0406: hmm.. the rose one does go with the whole rose"bud"dy theme... hahaha |