Author: Glen

XBox Live

By the way, if any of my pals out there have XBox Live accounts email me your gamertag. We’ll have to play some Halo 2 togeth­er.

Curt Harlow Blogging

A good friend of mine Curt Har­low has begun to blog. Check out http://www.curtharlow.com/. He also has a Xan­ga site which does­n’t seem to have the same con­tent, so you can also check it out (or just sub­scribe to his Xan­ga RSS feed).

Curt, inci­den­tal­ly, is relo­cat­ing from the Chi Alpha cen­tral office in Spring­field, MO to serve as our West Coast overseer/coach/supervisor type. His for­mal title is “West Coast Field Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

We can’t wait to have him out here!

Halo 2

At 12:01 am I became a proud Halo 2 own­er.

At least, in the­o­ry I did. I did­n’t actu­al­ly get a copy in my grub­by lit­tle paws until around 1:00 am.

I had pre­paid for the game and it was wait­ing for me in the store with my name on it, I just had to wait in line behind approx­i­mate­ly 200 oth­er peo­ple who also the­o­ret­i­cal­ly owned copies.

Really–there were at least 200 folks there, and I think the real total was clos­er to 250. For­tu­nate­ly most of them were groups of two to four folks who all intend­ed to go home and get their game on right after­wards. There were prob­a­bly 80–90 actu­al game acquisi­tors (is that a word?) ahead of me.

Over­all it took me an hour to make my way to the front of my line.

Nick Hasu­lak (a stu­dent from our min­istry) had bummed a ride off of me to pick up a copy. He had­n’t pre­paid or pre­order or pre­con­sid­ered. He just decid­ed to hop in my car and pur­chase the game for him­self.

Here’s the kick­er: he got his copy before I did in the “VIP” line for ful­ly-paid pre­orders. I guess the store fig­ured that since we had already giv­en them our mon­ey they did­n’t need to wor­ry too much about cus­tomer ser­vice.

I’ll remem­ber that next time I’m tempt­ed to pre­pay.

I’ve now rat­i­fied my geekdom–I stood in line at mid­night for a videogame.

Of course, Halo tran­scends social stra­ta and so at least half the peo­ple stand­ing along­side me looked like they had just stepped out of an Aber­crom­bie and Fitch com­mer­cial… maybe this isn’t the act I’ve been look­ing for to firm­ly estab­lish myself in geek cir­cles.

Any­way, I’ve start­ed play­ing and the game is incred­i­ble. It ful­ly lives up to my expec­ta­tions, at least so far.

If You Can Make It Here, You Can Make It Anywhere

Stan­ford is the sec­ond best uni­ver­si­ty in the world, accord­ing to The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rank­ing of World Uni­ver­si­ties.

Wow. It’s a priv­i­lege to min­is­ter here.

I can’t help point­ing out that Berke­ley is num­ber 4.

Yes…

…we just vot­ed.

Now you go do your part and togeth­er we’ll make some deci­sions about our gov­ern­ment, trust­ing in the Wis­dom of Crowds.

Seriously, How Much?

Bill Sny­der from the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team is stay­ing with Paula and I right now. On the way back from pick­ing him up we stopped at the local super­mar­ket so that he could buy some snacks.

He bought one two-liter bot­tle of Diet Coke and a bag of grapes.

$10.02

I looked over and Bill was lit­er­al­ly frozen in shock, hand halfway towards his wal­let, as the price reg­is­tered in his brain.

Prices in the Bay Area real­ly are out of con­trol, but I found that hilar­i­ous. I’m still laugh­ing out loud even as I type this.

Bumped to Room 200–015 this week (Oct 20, 2004)

We’ve had a sched­ul­ing break­down, and so Chi Alpha will be meet­ing in 200–015 instead of our reg­u­lar 300–300 this week only (Oct 20, 2004).

That’s in the base­ment of Lane His­to­ry Cor­ner.

The time and dura­tion are the same: Wednes­day from 8:00pm to 9:30pm.

This week we’re talk­ing about What To Do When You’re Over­whelmed based on Psalm 46.

You Know You’re From Silicon Valley When…

I usu­al­ly hate these, but I ran across this and just had to post it here. Some of them don’t apply to Paula and me, but I found the list pret­ty fun­ny.


You Know You’re From Sil­i­con Val­ley When…

Your com­bined house­hold income is $140,000 and you can’t afford shoes for the kids

You think any­thing slow­er than DSL is bar­bar­ic, but can’t get it in your neigh­bor­hood

You know what DSL stands for

You and your spouse almost come to blows decid­ing to hit Peet’s or Star­bucks

You think that Amer­i­can food includes sushi, naan, pho, pesto and pad thai

You met your neigh­bors once

When asked about your com­mute you answer in time, not dis­tance

Even though you work 80 hours per week on a com­put­er, for relax­ation you read your email and peruse eBay

You have worked at the same job for a year and peo­ple call you an ‘old-timer’

The T‑shirts you val­ue most were for prod­ucts that nev­er made it to mar­ket

You can name four dif­fer­ent pro­gram­ming lan­guages and you are not a pro­gram­mer

You remem­ber the names of the three clos­est cheap sushi joints, the loca­tion of all the Fry’s in the area and which com­pa­nies your friends work for that are going pub­lic in the next year, but don’t know the name of the may­or

Stand­ing in line at Star­bucks you won­der why the employ­ees don’t call a head hunter

You work 6 miles from your home and spend two hours a day com­mut­ing and $40 a week on gas

Win­ter is when your lawn grows too fast and sum­mer is when it dies

The medi­an price of a house is $500,000…for 1200 sq. ft. with no yard because it’s a town house

You live on some of the rich­est farm land in the world but most of what you eat comes from South Amer­i­ca on a boat

Your best friend lives across town but you hard­ly ever see each oth­er because after your com­mute you’re too pooped to spend anoth­er hour dri­ving to their home

You have a mas­ter’s degree in engi­neer­ing but half the peo­ple in your depart­ment either did­n’t go to col­lege or have his­to­ry degrees, except if you have a mas­ter’s from Stan­ford, in which case every­one in your depart­ment has a mas­ter’s degree from Stan­ford

You cringe when you see peo­ple in suits at your office, won­der­ing if some­one in man­age­ment will make you stop wear­ing bun­ny slip­pers

You plan your vaca­tion so that you don’t have to dri­ve back from the air­port in com­mute hours

You don’t go to sport­ing events unless you are giv­en tick­ets by your employ­er

You could sell your home and live like a king in 99% of the rest of the world, but don’t because it would be dif­fi­cult to move back.

You have at least three com­put­ers at home.

You own at least one domain on the Inter­net, prob­a­bly sev­er­al.

You think it’s nor­mal to see chip-design soft­ware or rela­tion­al data­bas­es adver­tised on free­way bill­boards.

You know that Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just one big beach.

You know that not every­one in Cal­i­for­nia surfs.

You know there’s lots of ski­ing in Cal­i­for­nia.

You know your rotat­ing out­age block num­ber at home and at work, and lis­ten for them when­ev­er there are rolling black­outs.

If some­one refers to “Sun­ny­to­gaDeAn­zavale Road”, you laugh and know what they’re talk­ing about.

You take your out-of-town friends to see the techie gad­gets at Fry’s. But you don’t let them buy any­thing.

You know how to rec­og­nize re-sealed returned elec­tron­ics at Fry’s.

You don’t ask the staff any ques­tions at Fry’s. You know they hire idiots and pass the sav­ings on to you.

You watch dot-com boomers go back to the states they came from, and the traf­fic gets bet­ter by the month. But you are home so you’re not mov­ing.

You own a Sport Util­i­ty Vehi­cle and have nev­er tak­en it off-road. You would­n’t know what to do if you tried. Same with all your friends.

You don’t know how to dri­ve in snow. You’re a road haz­ard when you vis­it the moun­tains.

You think bicy­cles don’t belong on the road.

You think any car ahead of you does­n’t belong on the road.

Your out-of-state friends are impressed at how much mon­ey you make… until you tell them how much you pay for hous­ing.

You know that a “fix­er-upper” home could cost a half-mil­lion dol­lars.

You do a “Cal­i­for­nia stop” at stop signs. And you think it’s only Cal­i­for­ni­ans who call them that.

You aren’t both­ered much by earth­quakes because you’re ready for them. But the thought of tor­na­does and hur­ri­canes ter­ri­fies you.

You clear­ly remem­ber where you were when the Loma Pri­eta quake hit.

You know sev­er­al fun­ny sto­ries about swim­ming pools in the quake.

You can’t rec­og­nize a thun­der­storm with­out see­ing light­ning first.

You cringe when a South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian refers to high­ways like “the 101”. It’s just “101”. No “the”.

You call low clouds “fog” even if they’re hun­dreds of feet off the ground.

At least once you have gone to San Fran­cis­co for the day wear­ing shorts and a t‑shirt because it was a warm clear day in San Jose. And you froze your lit­tle *@#!% off in the fog, driz­zle and wind.

You say you’re from Sil­i­con Val­ley because no one knows where San Jose is.

You actu­al­ly get these jokes and pass them on to oth­er friends from Sil­i­con Val­ley.