Wholly Sufficient

Usually I don't make too many comments directly exhorting action on particular bills in Congress. This one is very important though, and I hope that all of you will urge your Congressman to vote NO on the current HealthCare bill.

This bill will:

• Use Taxpayer funds to support abortion
• Outlaw Private, Individual Insurance
• Support more funding of Illegal Aliens
• Punish success and harm the job market

See the Eagle Forum Action Alert for more information. Please take action!
 
[This is cross-posted from my main blog.]

Okay y'all,

Due to a few prank posts lately, I've been thinking, it is high time that we do something to authenticate our own being on our own websites! :-P I say we all use PGP signed messages so that each of us can tell when someone else is posting on our account!

Wait, but if everyone is so trusting as to give out their private keys to the world, I just *know* that this won't work. Bah, humbug. :-P

People just aren't paranoid enough, these days.

Alright, y'all aren't gonna believe this, and I won't blame you, but Johanna and I have figured out a rather interesting way about some things. ;-) I got the idea from my Aunt, actually, who joked to me about having an online wedding. Well, obviously, we wanted everyone to be at the ceremony, so why would we do that!? However, I got to looking at it, and looking at the whole visa situation we are in, and some other stuff, it's actually a whole lot better for us to get married through Singapore and then just have an extra ceremony for all you guys over here!

So, about a couple of weeks or so ago, Johanna contacted the Registry of Marriage in Singapore, which is the place that does all the weddings there. They make you go through a civil ceremony and then go through the regular one later if you want to. They were initially hesitant to do the whole marriage over Webcam, but once Johanna showed them evidence that we had met before, and the like, they decided to go ahead with it if I could get them some papers sent over. Well, I sent them over right away, and just a bit later, we said our vows via webcam!. Thank goodness for wireless accross most of Singapore! That means that we are now officially married! Hah! It's a weird feeling, and it's kind of all in reverse, but that's okay. We're thinking that Johanna will come over here quickly once she wraps up some things at work and we can have our honeymoon here while we are planning the celebration. :-) Then there is a little more paper work to go through to adjust our application process, but after that we should be good!

We recorded the whole ceremony so that the rest of you could see it. Get in on our 21st century tech-style elopment! You all have to comment and let me know what you think! Haha, I guess, this is *so* cool, because now we don't have nearly the hassles that we did before, and I can let everyone know that I'm part of the married world now. LOL

Please take a moment to visit this site. I believe it will interest most of you. I think we could make a movie day of this!

Um...I've been tagged. :-)

I believe I am expected to enumerate ten favorite things starting with the letter G:

1. God - my first love.


2. My Girl - my first human love.


3. Guns - my favorite machine.


4. Gee Tong Long Pai - The general family of martial arts that I like, specifically Kwong Sai Jook Lum Gee Tong Long Pai.


5. Gear Shifters - Because driving stick is fun.


6. Gallant - courageous, heroic, high-spirited, brave, magnanimous.


7. Gazettes - ... ;-)


8. Genealogies


9. Godliness


10. Gimley - we both are very danerous over short distances.

The Many Kisses of Caleb and Elizabeth,

( If you can't handle it, don't enter. )

The End.

For all you who don't track my main blog, I have posted a small, boring account of my view of the action on my home site. Feel free to comment here or there, but if you don't mind, cross posting comments to my main site is appreciated if you comment here.

Alright everyone, this is just too good to pass up. You MUST watch this! Oh wow. ROFL

Fight for Kisses

Hey all,

They've got a phone poll going. :-) Fox News just had a debate, and they are asking people to see who's the winner. If you like Ron Paul, give him a vote by texting "R6" to 36288.

[This message is time-sensitive.]

I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on who they like in the runnings so far?

I am going to say that I think Ron Paul seems to be the only viable candidate so far.

So, there were some good answers, and I have to give those people credit for those answers. :-P Of course, none of them were really the answer I was hoping for. What that means, of course, is that none of you are as ungenerously punctilious as I am. :-)

So, basically, I intentionally misspelled a commonly used colloquialism to see if anyone would catch me on it. It is "bated breath," not, "baited breath." ;-)

[This is a trick post, see if you can figure out why. First one to comment with the correct observation wins!]

Heh, so, I often find myself waiting with baited breath for my time to talk with Johanna. :-) It's a wonderful thing.

If anyone here needs a real demonstration of an interactive, live demonstration of cool interactive programming, check out the piano exhibition of this programmer. :-) It's a screen cast of a programming session that results in music generation in real-time, live.

Check out the environment used to create this by examining http://impromptu.moso.com.au/.

Oh, and by the way, it's Scheme. ;-)

http://homepage.mac.com/digego/study_in_keith.mov

So, I guess now's the time to put out a question to everyone. I kind of want to take a poll of the general attitudes of my friends around here.

Question: What is the definition of integrity, and consequently when one maintains a character and a personage of integrity, what obligations should he/she be expected to fulfill, considering the spectrums of both their word and their "conversation" (in the biblical sense)?

I look forward to everyone's general and specific thoughts on the matter, if anyone cares to comment. :-) I think I'm going to do a biblical exegesis on this as well.

You know, it seems like I want to come on here all the time now to post little tidbits of information that have utterly no import to the wide range of people around. :-/

Bottom line, stop buying Linksys and Netgear routers, and start purchasing Airport Extremes. I just reset an entire network, and had the following ideas:

I wanted to span 14000 square feet and I needed to cover multiple levels. This made WDS a necessity. I had to get it up quickly, otherwise, I'd be in trouble. It had to be able to easily share printers and hard drives, the two most basic remote facilities.

Linksys makes you have separate devices for every tasks. First, they make you have a router. Second, if you want to add a printer, you have to have a print server device. If you want to do WDS, you have to get a Repeater (that is, unless you want to use 3rd party firmware). That's three separate devices. That's a lot of money. The Airport Extreme + Airport Express does all this with only a few devices, making them cheaper.

Now, when I tried to set all this up, I initially had some Linksys routers, and they DIDN'T work. I tried to call support to figure out how to do this, and I spent over three hours trying to get that stuff working. Finally, I quit that, called Apple Technical Support, was connected in a matter of minutes (think maybe 2), and immediately was given all the information necessary to set things up. I went out, bought the routers, and after some toying, had everything up like I wanted. The instructions made sense, and things worked, and it all cost less than the other set-up would have cost.

Bah. Linksys Tech Support is the final straw to their pathetic devices that fail to allow you do to simple things that they should have enabled by default, especially at the price you end up paying.

I am, even now, in the midst of a deep and harrowing conversation over IM, which may or may not complete itself in the course of the next few hours. However, having attempted such a conversation now, and recalling previous conversations, I feel compelled to make an observation of such a medium as IM, and in the light of other forms of media, make a comparative contrast of the various forms we humans often employ to facilitate our communication and their appropriateness for any one given level of gravity and seriousness of that communication.

Let us examine four methods of electronic communication: the website, the usenet group or mailing list, the e-mail, and the instant message. In each of these four media are two attributes: ease of response, and ease of presentation. Additionally, there is also a third attribute: ease of elucidation.

Now, I am convinced that the medium of IM is the least capable of providing proper elucidation. There are textual limits on the size of one's messages, and the nature of the beast seems to require that one provide only short, informal responses which fail to clearly and unambiguously state a position. It takes a great deal of patience between correspondents in this medium to "let the other" have the floor for long enough to hear them out entirely.

However, ease of response is absolutely greatest in IM. Hence, when attempting to begin any sort of discussion, it is often easiest to begin over IM. It is however, a little less well endowed in ease of presentation than some of the others.

For e-mail, ease of response is most certainly hardest. When conversing with multiple people it's often cumbersome to keep track of everyone: that is, it requires specific, ACTIVE management on the part of all individuals to keep things going smoothly. If anyone becomes lazy, it's very easy to the whole set to degenerate quickly, and the increase in workload of the others always goes up.

However, e-mail probably ranks highest in terms of elucidation. All the other media have some constraints on elucidation, but e-mail allows precise, long, accurate, and essentially unlimited explanation. It gives the author and reader the power to perfectly state their cases in clear, logical, and orderly terms, and to continue a discourse in great order. Unfortunately, the ease of response of e-mail means that for anyone to begin or continue correspondence, it takes deliberate effort on their part, and while the subsequent accuracy and precision can be higher, it often is not, because people are unwilling to invest that amount of time.

As for ease of presentation, e-mail again scores highest. No other medium permits the level of flexibility in textual encoding, attachments, or other supporting materials to allow the author to present his ideas nicely.

Usenet is very similar to e-mail. It has most of e-mail's benefits, but they are not always as great, since there are often other additional limitations on usenet. It's presentation cannot be as flexible, and it's elucidation is somewhat limited as well. However, for these pains, one gains the possibility of a greatly increased ease of response for multiple participants. Maintaining and managing a serious discussion over Usenet or Mailling List is easier than trying to do the same thing with e-mail. So, in a sense, you get the benefits of clear discussion, combined with ease of response. However, it is really only suitable for group discussion.

Now…I say this because I want to make a point. Everyone today seems to be in IM mode whether they are on an e-mail, IM, or mailling list! It's time to change some of that. The world is degenerating in its laziness to IM-mode, and not taking the time to be clear and concise in its other forms of communication.

It seems that it is far too easy to have miscommunication nowadays because we do not properly think about what we say and then clearly and succinctly state it in an ordered fashion for easy consumption to those around us. We are often just worried about ourselves and getting our own word out with the least difficulty to use, thereby providing us with a fulfilled sense of pride, while at the same time catering to our detest for labor.

This comes to light in all forms of electronic media in general, because now, people are rarely able to complete a sentence or a paragraph without going back and erasing or changing things. There was a time when failure to accurate and completely state your desired piece in one go cost you all forms of misery. Perhaps it is time that we all start learning how to do that again.

[Now that I have written this, I have absolutely no idea what prompted me to go on such a rant, or to post it, since this is most certainly an useless post of no real benefit to anyone. I suppose I just felt like talking.]

See if you can find Waldo (me). The Answer forthcoming.

The Answer: http://umsl.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2770&l=7355b&id=516072794

For anyone who is in the U.S. and did not get my e-mail message, I'm sending out a rare LJ post, because this is important.

The Senate is currently making a vote on Cloture for an Amnesty Bill on Monday. They are trying to push this thing through quickly so that it does not come under scrutiny. Everyone who believes in the rule of law and the right of sovereignty needs to move on this. Please call your Senators today and voice you strong disapproval of this bill and urge them to vote NO on cloture.

Below is an excerpt detailing some of the issues we face:

Perhaps the most staggering issues is the cost. Amnesty will cost the American Taxpayer two and half trillion dollars. The true costs of this amnesty will slam taxpayers and endanger this country’s economy at a time when social security will face insolvency. When all the Senators who played politics and passed this bill are gone, our Social Security system will be bankrupt. The Heritage Foundation recently released a report that analyzes what low-skilled households cost the U.S. taxpayer. For every dollar they pay in taxes they get three dollars in benefits. The drain on the U.S. economy will be unsustainable.
- U.S. Rep. Ed Royce

www.royce.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=65326

May 17, 2007

AMNESTY VOTE DELAYED UNTIL MONDAY!

Tell Your Senators to Vote NO on Cloture!

This could be the most important alert you have received from Eagle Forum! The Senate negotiations on an immigration bill continue at this moment. Because a deal could not be reached by Wednesday, the vote on cloture (whether to proceed to the amnesty bill) has been delayed until Monday. This means you have until Monday evening to be as active as you have ever been on any policy issue!

Senate negotiators, led by Republican Jon Kyl and Democrat Ted Kennedy, are working toward a bill that will legalize the millions of illegal aliens in our country and will likely increase immigration at the same time. Although we have not seen the language of the bill (expected to be over 1,000 pages long, according to Sen. Jeff Sessions), we can almost be certain that it will be worse than last year's Kennedy-McCain-Hagel-Martinez amnesty. Why else would the text of the bill be held so secretly? Why does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) want to ram through perhaps the most far-reaching legislation ever voted on in the Senate without committee hearings and with little more than a week's debate? The answer is they know their bill is amnesty and they know the American people don't want it!

Immigration touches every aspect of American lives. Tell your Senators you oppose any guest-worker/amnesty bill because it affects every aspect of your life including:

• Fiscal Responsibility: This bill will likely be the largest expansion of entitlement spending in Congress. Tax increases will be required to pay for services for the massive influx of unskilled and uneducated immigrants.



• National Security: Fraud will be rampant in any amnesty, as it was in the 1986 amnesty. How will any illegal alien prove they are who they say they are? We could be giving legal status, and potentially U.S. citizenship to those who wish to do harm to our country, including gang members who terrorize our neighborhoods.



• Healthcare: Hospitals are already overburdened with illegal aliens who use their services for routine treatment. Legalizing them will not alleviate the burden because many illegal aliens will be low-skilled workers and not have health insurance. Next step-national health insurance . . . Hillary-care anyone?



• Education: Classrooms are already overcrowded and bilingual education continues to be a failure. How can adding more pressure to the system be the answer? Local property taxes would be forced higher to pay for new schools, as well.



• Political Fallout: This bill will ensure the Republican Party becomes a permanent minority party because most illegal aliens will vote for the party of the welfare state-Democrats. All American lose when we are relegated to a permanent one party system.

Don't let Washington elites push through their amnesty! Call your Senators and tell them you want to see a copy of the bill before they vote on it! Tell them to vote NO on cloture!

Republicans CAN stop this dangerous bill. They can vote against cloture on Monday, stopping the Senate from proceeding to debate on the bill. Please call your Senators and tell them to vote NO on cloture on any immigration bill.

Call Your Senators Today!
Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

(I have the video blog of this on my site: http://www.aaronhsu.com)

So, it's been many many months since the release of this movie and the rave reviews all my friends gave it. I said that I was going to watch it and see what I thought. At the time I was doing a lot of blogging, so I naturally agreed to put my opinion up somewhere (I don't know when or where I said that, but I feel that I should be on the safe side and assume that I said I would blog about it). So, I have finally watched the movie, and now that every one has no interest in the movie (I'm sure), I'll just let you all know what I think:

A REVIEW OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005)

When I first heard that Keira Knightley was to take the role of
Elizabeth Bennet in a new version of Jane Austin's ever classic and
universally admirable book, "Pride and Prejudice," my heart sank in
dread. Keira Knightley garners no such affection by me that I should
think twice about any of her movies. Unfortunately, I am such a fan of
the book and also of A&E's excellent rendition of the literature that
I could only imagine a dreadful insult resulting from a new version
being made. Even so, as the movie was finally released, and my friends
began to watch it, I was alarmed at the near glowing reports of the
movie. Even some of those ardent Knightley critics of my acquaintance,
indeed, they gave the movie very positive reviews. To be sure,
astonishment was my only response.

I am, however, a somewhat reasonable person, and I was at least
passingly determined to watch the movie and see for myself what kind
of movie it was. With all the reports, I began to think that there was
hope after all, and that this movie would be a pleasant thing to
watch. I did not however, get to watching it until now. So, as I said
I would do, I am writing out a review of the movie to put at ease my
thoughts.

Let me first and foremost say that I did enjoy the movie, so much as
it is. There are very few things in life which I find I cannot really
enjoy if I try. I was very determined to like this movie, because I am
well aware of my prejudices.

That being said, let me state up front that this is the most atrocious
butchery I have ever had the displeasure to encounter in third
generation literary movie making. I ask all my friends' forgiveness,
but I cannot and must not give any sort of approval of this dreadful
movie. On each and every account the movie missed the mark entirely.

Let me start with the technical aspects of the movie. The camera work
save only a few cuts was enough to make riding on a roller coaster
seem like an ideal place to cozy up and sleep. The music was cutesie
and lacked all form of weight and scarcely showed a decent bit of
applicability. The timing was horrendous. One could not have found a
worse combination of marketable timings and flow for the movie. Not
only was it a short cliff notes version of even the A&E selections, the
flow felt rather like jumping through hyper space without artificial
gravity; it hurt, a lot. The scenery was artificial and fake looking,
the costume and dresses were more like a circus than anything, and
the variety was non-existent.

Still, I shall save the most glaring technical and logistical
nightmare for last. I have never seen a worse casting for a movie in
my entire life. Even the choice of Elves in Lord of the Rings, of
which I am no fan, was better than this. There never was a worse
choice for Elizabeth. The father was the laughing stock of the movie,
and the mother was almost sympathetic! Lydia caught no one's eye, and
Mary was perhaps one of the most agreeable ones of the bunch, instead
of being the philosophical social outcast. I have heard accounts of
the real beauty of the choice of Jane here, but I must admit, I was
appalled by the choice. I am not one to criticize the general
attractiveness of a lady, and Jane was attractive, to be
sure. However, for one to claim that she ought to have been the most
attractive one of the bunch there, is laughable. In fact, the real
shiner in that category was another example of bad casting: Lady
Catherin De Burg's daughter was more attractive than Jane, and much
more attractive than Knightley.

And while we are on the subject of Knightley, let's get it mostly out
of our system. She stunk, royally. Not only did she feel stunted and
unauthentic, her lines were curt and useless, and felt like some
author want to write his/her own script, but still feel like they were
as eloquent as Jane Austin. They failed, miserably. I have never heard
such a bad script spoken of so highly. Whoever could have thought of
Knightley as an even hopeful choice was sorely mistaken and deluded. I
feel sorry for the poor fellow. Every time she smiled or grinned or
tried to make some kind of facial expression it hurt me; I was cut
like with a knife every time she attempted to add a third dimension to
her character. I was thoroughly disappointed.

The one saving grace of this movie was that the lettering used on the
correspondence of all the letters is nice looking; this however, is
also a falsity, since not everyone's handwriting would have looked
like that back then. It also felt artificial, but at least it was a
nice artificial at which to look.

And we are talking about a romance story, right? Hah! As if one could
feel romantic coming out of this movie. Mr. Darcy was too goofy
looking to be proud; no one could take a man like that
seriously. Bingley made a laughing stock of himself every time he
attempted to grace the screen with his monkey like smile. And speaking
of laughing stock, while they manage to capture the vixenish quality
of the sister Bingley, they utterly missed everything else. Repulsive,
that's all I have to say.

So...what am I to think? I guess I could try to find something else good
in the movie, but I can't. I have tried in vain to see the good
here. Nothing remotely important was done right in this movie.

So let's recap: the timing ate monkey grass; it was the casting from
Waldo's world; the musical score came from a two-year old's scribbles;
the depth makes the second dimension seem like time travel; the
romance is about as romantic as kissing a farm hog; the story lies
butchered by the maid with the knife in the drawing room; and
Knightley's name is a fitting title to grace this movie which never
should have left the cutting room alive. It's roughly comparable to
the A&E version as a Wal-mart $5 Mickey Mouse watch is to a solid
white gold 100 year synchronized manual mechanism master craftsmen
timepiece. Jane Austin's book is about equal to God's sub-atomic
particle vibration timings in this scale of things, if you are
curious. No, I didn't think the movie was worth anything, and if any
of you want a real feel for how the movie should have been done, watch
the whole A&E series straight through when you have your minds active
and your hearts ready.