What happens when a basketball bounces off a finger...

... it becomes a little more difficult to grip things.

It's been 2 months since I regularly posted in June, will aim to have some updates later this week.

Chrome vs. Firefox

Although I'm generally a Google products enthusiast, I'm wondering if I should be a bit more antsy about monopolizing so much of my cloud information on one company's servers.  Still, in general my experience with their products tends to be better than most of the competitors, so it's hard to stay away.

Maybe a year and a half ago, I switched from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome as my primary web browser, but I still use both on a daily basis.  Just for fun, I figured I'd chronicle my reasons for switching and the pluses and minuses for each.

Why Chrome?
+++ The biggest feature that Chrome has that Firefox hasn't implemented yet is a separate process for each tab, and for various sub-processes/functions.  This was my primary pain point with Firefox that Chrome solved - whenever a page in FF got unwieldy or started running away with memory and CPU, I had to restart the entire browser.  In Chrome, I can pull up the process manager and kill Flash or the offending webpages, then refresh them, without losing all my good tabs.  This feature alone, and the amount of mental well-being it provides, was enough for me to switch.
+ The tabbed interface for Chrome has some nice features - being able to drag a tab into a new window lets me group like tabs together much more easily than in FF.

Why Firefox?
+ A feature of Firefox that I miss in my daily web-browsing now is the "Awesomebar".  In Firefox, the location bar will do on-the-fly pattern matching in your history, bookmarks, etc. and it is incredibly useful to pull up pages that you looked at a few days ago.  Chrome is beginning to implement this and it's gotten better since the first release, but FF is still better.
+ Another FF feature that is easier to use than on Chrome is the keyword bookmarking feature - basically, saving various searches as keywords so that I can go to the location bar and type "wiki [search term]" to find something on wikipedia.  Chrome can do this but it isn't as easy to implement.
+ I was never that into the multitude of extensions that FF provides, but it's nice to have the option.
+ The history on FF is much easier to navigate than on Chrome.  Oddly enough coming from Google, the search function in history didn't seem to work well - there's no hierarchy of ranking search results (i.e., if I'm looking for "NBA" in the history, I don't want it to return all the non-NBA ESPN pages I browsed just because there was an "NBA" term somewhere in the text of the page).
+ Interestingly enough, Yahoo! Mail works really badly on Chrome, while working just fine on FF.
+ Finally, FF tends to be tested and supported by more commercial/financial websites, since it was the first "successful" big competitor to IE, so sometimes I'll switch to FF or IE for personal finance stuff, etc.

Anyway, those are some of my reasons.  If FF were to ever implement the features I mentioned in Chrome above... I might switch back.

Here are Lifehacker's reasons for one or the other.  Which one do you prefer?

I ain't got time to (not) bleed

One of my favorite "community service" type activities that I've taken up these last few years is blood donation.  Since I'm in OK shape, not overly squeamish about needles, and have humongous veins running down my arms, I try to go every couple of months - my last trip was a week ago, and over the last few years have been able to donate over a gallon of A+ blood (my blood type, not my perception of my blood's quality, mind you).

I typically visit the Stanford Blood Center at Hillview.  Here are a few reasons why...
- The technicians are pretty good - never had any bruising or mistakes.  I probably make their lives easier with my prominent left elbow vein though.
- They have free wi-fi - I can connect to work through my laptop during the wait/procedure.
- Since I've moved up to doing a "double red blood cell" donation (takes twice as long, need to wait twice as long before coming back, hopefully twice as useful!), they've given out some free T-shirts.  You can never have too many T-shirts.
- The cookies in the break room are quite tasty.
- The cherry on top of this bloody sundae is that if you donate on Mondays, they will often have a promotion giving away 1 (or sometimes more!) AMC Silver Ticket vouchers.

I highly encourage you to donate!  It feels good to "change the oil" in the body every so often, so to speak.

On a somewhat related note, any action movie fan should be able to identify where I got my inspiration for this post title (which came to mind as I had the inspiration for the blood topic).  Here's the other quote that came to mind:

"Wipe yourself off.  You're bleeding."

NBA thoughts

Couple of quick thoughts on the recent NBA draft and the upcoming free agency period...

• The Warriors make me sad.  Out of Udoh, Randolph, Wright, Biedrins, and Turiaf, considering a big man rotation is 3 guys playing big minutes and maybe one other backup, I definitely pick Turiaf (good contract, solid locker room guy, good defense).  I have no idea of who I pick out of the other four.
• Since the sale is taking so long, I think the W's will probably have to write off all hope of improving much this season.  If they can get the team sold and get a competent ownership/front office in place, then spend the season developing Curry and the other young talent, that's about as good as we can hope for.
• Warriors master plan: 
• Sell to Ellison
• Hire a younger, competent GM who apprenticed for other successful front offices like Presti or Morey
• Sign Lebron since he's buddies with Curry.  Okay, maybe that won't happen.
• I hope Lebron goes back to the Cavs.  From what I've read about his impact on the city, and the tortured psyche of Cleveland sports fans, it would be the best for the general level of happiness in the world, methinks.  The Cavs' beat writer made the good point that most of the current Cavs fans are young (teens to 30-somethings) who aren't old enough to remember the old frustrations of the Browns, Cavs, and Indians, so Lebron leaving would create a lot of embittered people.
• That being said, my head guesses that he'd most likely go to Chicago.  Too much talent, and they could pick up a PF too with the cap room available.
• I think Wade will entice Bosh or Amare to come to Miami.  Whoever doesn't goes to Chicago.
• I'm interested in seeing the Spurs make a run at Mike Miller, but they won't be able to do anything without moving Jefferson's contract, so not much will happen.

Gender-specific decision making

Two years ago (wow, it's been that long already?) when we were just beginning wedding planning, something S and I discovered that she would more likely want to research lots and lots of options (photographer, florist, and so on) - not because she enjoyed it, and certainly not because I enjoyed it, but because she was afraid of not doing enough homework and missing out on some really great vendor/service/bargain.  As this was causing both of us some undue stress due to the amount of work going into just one item on a long to-do list, I came up with the (wise, I think) compromise of primarily researching only the vendors that our friends recommended.

This was one instance of many in our relationship where I found that just from the way she's wired, on relatively minor decisions, I sometimes need to step in and make decisions up front in order to narrow the scope of a particular choice or speed up the action.  A lot of times, my decision ends up being pretty arbitrary as the choices on the table are all pretty good, and S is just needing some direction to move forward.  "Should I wear blue or green?"  "They both look good, so, uh, green."

At dinner tonight with a few other couples, we found that this relationship quirk wasn't unique to us - in a few other couples it was also necessary for most minor decisions with good options to be made quickly by the guy.

Is this characteristic for anyone else?  If so, why do you think this is?

An amusing look at church names...

Been a long day and the posts I have in mind to write will take a bit more time to develop, so here's today's fun/humorous link for the day: A Church By Any Other Name.  As new churches have sprung up in the last 15-20 years, trying to differentiate has become harder and harder, leading to more and more creative names.  Since I recognize a lot of these names, this was a fun read, and something to not take too seriously, as the author poked equal-opportunity fun at how some of the names could be interpreted.  Some of my favorites:


3. Radiance (Where the female vocalists all glitter like Mariah Carey.)
4. Elevation (U2 songs every bloody Sunday.)

8. enCompass (Wii th-|-nk [outside] the box. We R crAtiVe.)
9. Epiphany Station (Next stop, Conjunction Junction!)
14. The Rock (If film producer Michael Bay ever created a church…the pyrotechnics are amazing.)
30. Tapestry (Our pastor really loves that “the threads don’t make sense until you turn the cloth over” illustration.)
37. Warehouse 180 (If we can’t grow a church we’ll start a nightclub.)

46. The Well (The un-well best worship elsewhere.)
47. Jacob’s Well (Where bachelors hang out to find their future wives.)
51. Mercy Street (Where Sesame Street characters go for rehab. Cookie Monster has checked in 7 times.)
63. The Upper Room (Where we cling to our guns and religion and hide from the authorities.)
70. The Pursuit (Speed dating every Wednesday at 10 p.m.)
76. Compass (Our sermons have four points.)
84. Scum of The Earth (Finally some honesty in advertising.)
89. Overflow Church (For those who couldn't find a seat at the megachurch down the street.)
94. WestPoint (Praise the Lord. Pass the ammunition.)

Hate-T&T addendum and other happenings

Well, we finally got the internet back up.  Turns out that the new account they accidentally switched us to was incompatible with the original jacks that the DSL modem was connected to, so they had to send a technician out to fiddle with a few things outside our house.

Thanks to a few folks for suggesting other internet providers like sonic.net - we'll take a look at them.  Any other suggestions?  Also, we were planning on getting a land line at some point - given this experience, we'd prefer not to open a new account with AT&T... but aren't sure who else we would be able to go through.  Anyone have recommendations?

On a less-negative note, some recent happenings:

- In our community group, we finished a study of the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero, of New Life Fellowship in NYC.  It's been eye-opening to consider the role of emotions and contemplation in my life to help me to love God well, love others well, and love myself well.  I'll try to write more in-depth about this in a separate post.

- S and I have found that an easy, somewhat unique, and tasty way of entertaining folks for a meal (small group, 4-6 people) is to buy some pizza dough at Willlow Street Pizza, pick up toppings at Trader Joe's, and use our pizza stone to bake up a few pies.  We had my parents and some of my aunts over tonight (one on her first trip to America from Taiwan) and they were a hit - margherita, chicken pesto, and mushroom/onion/fontina.

- We finished season 1 of Chuck.  Highly entertaining and it was nice to get back to some light-hearted fare after Lost and Dexter.  Reminds me of a not-so-serious version of Alias.  I can totally relate to Chuck's geek-ness and have already begun annoying S with quotes from the season.

- Some people might remember my rather-irrational refusal to get into the Harry Potter series during the height of its popularity.  Well, I've finally caved.  2 books down.  Also nearly done with "Band of Brothers."

A local staycation

This past weekend, I took Friday off so that S and I could get out of town for a few days to San Francisco.  We were able to get a decent rate on a hotel room off of Priceline.  It was nice to get away, as the weeks since moving into the house have been filled with busyness at work, housework, ministry items, social engagements, etc.

We tried to spend as much time on our feet, walking around the city, as possible, rather than driving all over the place.  Combined with taking Friday off, I found that it actually felt more like we were on vacation in some faraway city, rather than being just an hour from home - we could have just been in a harbor city like Sydney.  I think walking up and down the hills and streets of SF enabled us to get a better feel for the people and the life of the place.  Didn't hurt that the weather was gorgeous and we could visit farmer's markets, street fairs, and just mingle with people at parks.

We went to the Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park, which had a neat rainforest exhibit that reminded us somewhat of the rainforests in New Zealand, checked out a meter that estimated our carbon output, and unfortunately missed out on the planetarium exhibit because we made the tactical error of not going to get tickets immediately after getting in the door.  Remember to do that if you ever go.

Over the entire weekend, we did a lot of walking to eat at places on the list of 100 Things to Try Before You Die.  SF really is a good foodie town.  We ended up visiting:

The Taco Shop at Underdog's (excellent fish tacos)
Tartine (the fruit pastry for breakfast was meh, we probably didn't order the right thing)
Bi-Rite Creamery (salted caramel and balsamic strawberry are both unique and tasty, but I'm still a chocolate fiend)
Arinell Pizza (cheese slice)
Wexler's (Scotch eggs, skate stuffed with pulled pork)
Rolli Roti (porcetta sandwich, awesome, but super long line, at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market)
Hog Island Oyster Company (clam chowder, very flavorful clams)
Chapeau (reasonably priced French menu)
Fisherman's wharf
Tommy's Joynt (lamb shank)

It was good to get away, and the copious amounts of time to walk gave us time to talk about how things were going in life, God, relationships, work, and what's next.  Plus, it helped offset some of the calories we ingested.  All in all, a better than expected time away from SJ.

Hate-T&T

Our DSL internet has been off since last Thursday, leading to a gradually increasing level of frustration with a certain company that rhymes with the title of this post, and an inability to keep up with my weekdaily posting.  Here's the chronology of events:

Last Tuesday: S calls the company regarding our account's bill, and to change the name on the account.  For some reason, unbeknownst to us, the account rep doesn't make a modification to our current account, but actually puts in a delete order for our current account and sets up a new account for the new name.

Thursday morning: Internet is off.  I spend 2 hours on the phone with technical support thinking that there's a problem with the modem.  We're unable to get it to work.  The technical support people don't think to check the status of our account.

Thursday afternoon: S takes over and finds out that our internet is off because of the aforementioned snafu with deleting and then creating a new account.  Nobody seems to know how to get the new account to work with our new modem, or to re-enable the old account.  Then the office closes at 5 pm EDT.

Fri-Sun - out of town

Monday - S calls again and is put on hold for an hour, after which point she needs to go back to work.  I call again and find out that nobody is available after 2 pm PDT/5 pm EDT.

Couple points of frustration here:
1) Not having internet is really inconvenient in this day and age.  I'm not able to work from home, it's a lot harder to access information/connect with people, less access to entertainment.
2) They caused the problem and haven't been able to fix it.  After this gets resolved we still need to be compensated for the days of missing service.
3) We're tempted to try switching to another broadband internet provider that rhymes with Tomcast, but we've heard equally bad comments on their customer service, so we may be stuck.

Quick thoughts on Lakers-Celtics game 7

A few quick thoughts...

• Player of the game = Ron Artest.  The Celts doubled Kobe and Pau aggressively, and Ron killed them, then gave a shout-out to his psychiatrist, which was awesome.
• Ugly game, but intense all the way through.  No big leads.
• Kobe was carried by his teammates in this game.  After stinking up the first half, I think he took a third as many shots in the second half, which was helpful because Fisher, Pau, Odom, and Artest all hit big shots that swung momentum.
• In the post-game congratulations, Magic said something like, "To the greatest fans in the world - Laker fans!" to which I muttered, "Maybe about a third of them at most would count in that upper tier of great fans.  The rest are front-runners."
• Follow-up to the last point - I'll have more respect for you as a Laker fan if you can name the starting lineup of the Laker team in the '00s that didn't make the playoffs, and much more respect if you can name most of the starting lineups in the early 90's before Shaq and Kobe arrived.
• That being said, all credit to LA - they beat a tough Boston team in a tough, tough game to win it all.  Congratulations to the franchise, and I'm happy for my friends who are indeed real fans.
• That being said, the Gasol trade is still a ridiculous rip-off.