So apparently there are two schools of thoughts about how to score miniature golf. One way involves numbers:

The other way… well, does not:

By my math, "awesome" is greater than "poop", so I think I may have won.

In the latest issue of This is True, list owner Randy Cassingham linked to a piece about the Columbine massacre, written in 1999 by Dan Savage (of the Savage Love fame). I hadn’t seen it before, and I found Savage’s thoughts to be very interesting.

"The motivations of the two killers," [the cover story on Columbine in] People continued, "were hard to fathom." Actually, I had no problem fathoming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s motives. While I didn’t suffer the extreme abuse some of my friends did, I was fucked with enough to spend four years fantasizing about blowing up my high school and everyone in it. I can only imagine the scenarios that must have rolled through Marty’s head on a daily basis. Watching SWAT teams inch their way toward Columbine High, I wasn’t shocked that something like this could happen in a high school. I was shocked that something like this hadn’t happened at any of mine.

Savage doesn’t aim to excuse or justify the actions of those two boys, but he does bring a perspective that was absent in the mainstream media at the time. I was lucky to not have a high school experience like his.

As you can see, this blog continues its timely coverage of current events. In the future, you can look forward to my thoughts on Y2K, 9/11, and the Bush/Gore election.

I’ve given up on the idea of writing a coherent blog post to sum up the last 6 months. With each passing week, it gets more overwhelming to think about recapping, so if I don’t just start posting my usual random stuff here, I’ll never use it again. In no particular order, I have:

• Seen the launch of the new Shipwire.com in October, as well as many new features since then.
• Taught a two year old that "mooses" is the plural of "moose" after his mother laughed at me for not remembering that (despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen a moose, let alone more than one, so this is hardly relevant information).
• Tricked someone into redesigning my site for me, only to procrastinate on actually slicing the images and building it.
• Started taking guitar lessons again.
• Become obsessed with Rock Band.
• Decided to start a new genre called Agnostic Rock to compete with Christian Rock, including such bands as Unknowable, A Priori Objections, and Scintilla of Evidence.
• Wasted thirty minutes researching agnosticism to write that joke.
• Come to believe that people riding their bikes on the sidewalk is bothersome, but less so than people riding their bikes the wrong way in the bike lane.
• Ridden Rachel’s horse.
• Killed my Treo 650, thus getting an upgrade to a Treo 700 and giving me an excuse to purge my phonebook of people who I never call and who never call me.
• Come to terms with the fact that my musical taste leads to like bands who are younger than my brother.
• Received a USB humping dog due to contractual obligations.
• Rocked out in matching haiku shirts with Rachel and Allison.
• Spent my second consecutive New Year’s Eve in Minnesota, as well as many other weekends along the way.
• Been to see Cowboy Mouth, Melee, Matt Nathanson, Magic Bullets, Glen Phillips, Jonathan Kingham, and Will Hoge in concert.
• Attended An Event Apart in San Francisco.
• Voted for Obama.
• Started planning a trip to Hawaii.
• Lost 12 pounds on an office diet bet to avoid dressing as Santa.
• Partook in a Wii hunt during the holiday season.
• Forgotten many interesting and exciting things I have done in the past few months.

Tonight I rode my bike to the store to get the lemon I forgot to buy when I was there on Monday. Four hours later, I looked down and realized I still had the right leg of my jeans rolled up.

Yep, it’s one of those “I haven’t been blogging” posts. I like to think of them as the blog equivalent of the sitcom “clip show”. Remember when….

• Over on the Dilbert Blog, Scott Adams blogged about a comic called Basic Instructions. I’ve really been enjoying go back through the archives. Some of my favorites include How to write a self-evaluation, How to explain a plan, How to use the universal comeback, How to create and wear a memorable Halloween costume, and How to pitch a movie idea.
• The new Matt Nathanson album Some Mad Hope came out yesterday (well, today, but yesterday is when my preorder arrived), and it is just fantastic. It has been in constant rotation ever since I opened it.
• I also bought Bubba Ho-Tep (Hail to the King Edition) from Best Buy. I love that movie ("They dyed me this color!"), and the packaging is excellent. The DVD box has a sleeve that looks like the Elvis shirt in the movie. Also, there’s a commentary of “The King” himself (Bruce Campbell does it in character). Fantastic.
• The new job is going great. I checked in my first files, which is always an exciting milestone. Also, my Mac is so very sexy. We have a fully-functioning development environment set up, so I can work even without internet access. Very nice.
• While working on this blog entry, I won $40-something playing online poker. I would have been more, but I let my focus slip while making some of the above links and made a dumb play. Still, it’s nice to be reminded that I’m okay at poker when I’m running bad and not playing as much.
• Of course, none of these things even hold a candle to Peru. Rachel and I leave in about 16 1/2 days for our 18 day trip. We’re both a little crazed with final plans and shopping and such things, but it’s shaping up to be the experience of a lifetime. If you want a postcard, make sure I have your address before I leave!

Jason has tagged me with this, and I can never resist a good tagging, so I thought I’d play. Some of you probably know some of these, but I don’t know if most of you know all of them. Not that they are especially secretive, as this ended up more of “8 facts that define me” than “8 things you didn’t know”. The result of rambling while so tired, I guess. And away we go:

1. I have a tattoo on my right upper arm that says “Winter Pays For Summer” in a Celtic font (picture here In addition to being the title of the Glen Phillips album containing the song, the phrase comes from the song “Duck and Cover”. The line is “One way or another / Winter pays for the summer / Won’t get what you wanted / What you got’ll be good” (full lyrics here). It very much reflected what I had learned in 2005 about the unexpected nature of change, but that good can come of just about anything.
2. Related to my tattoo, I do my best to not regret in life. I will make mistakes and/or be the victim of unfortunate circumstances, but I can’t find a single decision in my life where the weight of the negative repercussions can even begin to approach the positives. This sounds very strange when I type it, but it has served me well.
3. When I was in high school, I formed a rogue organization to revolt against the dictatorship of the computer club. We were called P.R.O.Z.A.C., which was the People’s Resistance to Over-Zealous Andy Chow. We were quite an eclectic cast of characters and had our ultimate victory when I was elected president of the computer club when Andy graduated. I ran on a platform of “I don’t like Andy Chow.” I was removed as president by the adviser a few days later (who though my platform was a cause for concern).
4. I have had two knee surgeries, and have the ACL from a cadaver in my left knee. I like to think this makes me “undead”, even if only in a small percentage.
5. I want to spend at least one year of my life living somewhere that has 4 distinct seasons. I have yet to work out the logistics given that the bay area is where all the jobs are, as well as most of my people, but some day I’ll figure out a way to make it work.
6. I am what Butch Walker called "slow-convert pescatarian" (vegetarian + fish). Originally, the decision was for health reasons after reading The China Study and Eat to Live. I’m starting to come around on the moral aspects of it as time has gone on. I just wasn’t ready to process that at the time, but now it’s starting to sink in. I remember when I couldn’t imagine a day without meat, and now I don’t miss it. Even fish is something I eat less and less.
7. I plan to name my first son Raisin so that his nickname can be “The Roof” (Raisin “The Roof” Kujala) and my first daughter will be named after Meadowlark Lemon, my favorite Harlem Globetrotter. (Okay, so this one isn’t true, but who actually thought I could go this long without making one up?).
8. I’m leaving Yahoo! on Friday. (Look how sneaky I am, combining two blog entries into one!) I’ve accepted a job with Shipwire and start next Monday. It’s a very small company, which is something I’m excited about after being at a big company for the past two years. I’ll be working on the frontend of the site and will be reporting into Evan, my manager for my first year at Yahoo! I am sad to leave the Autos team behind, but I am excited about my next adventure.

Those who I wish to tag next: Rachel, Steph, and Katie

We had a consultant meet with some people from our team over the last couple of days, and he referred to me as the “court jester” and “the wise fool” after only knowing me for a couple of hours. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it’s really true. I have a tendency to do what Al Franken calls “kidding on the square“, sometimes without realizing it. It lets me be a lot more honest than I might normally be able to get away with. It’s interesting how quickly he nailed that trait in me. I also realized for the first time than I’m an extrovert. I’m a weird type, in that I don’t really do well in large groups, but I’m very comfortable in a smaller setting. Oh, the things you learn about yourself.

In other news, my new couch is here and my old couch is gone. I am very happy.

I haven’t been attending Bootcamp for the past few weeks (despite pressure from Tom to come back and play with him), but I still receive the e-mail updates. From an e-mail from Russ, I learned that last week, Chris Rummel (one of our bootcampers) had a severe motorcycle accident. Yesterday afternoon, he passed away. I did not know him long or know him well, but he always seems like a very happy, positive person. He will be missed.

I planned to write more, but I lack the words.

I get that Pernice Brothers song in my head every time I think about the Great Gorilla Run. It was a complete blast.

Kai picked Blake and me up at my mom’s house, and we took time for a photo shoot. I’m the one in the purple hat, Blake is in the green hat, and Kai is the naked one (he put on his thong later). One more so you can appreciate the full outfit:

When we met up with some of my Yahoo!’s Your Daddy folks, Joe noticed the Sponge Bob boxers I was wearing and asked “You have Sponge Bob boxers?” “No, I borrowed them from Blake.” (to Blake) “You have TWO pairs of Sponge Bob boxers?” We were looking sharp.

The race itself was fun, although it’s undetermined exactly how far anyone went. The course was poorly marked and some gorillas were wandering off the course, causing much confusion. It’s the first year in SF, so I cut them some slack. All in all, a good time was had by all.

More photos on my Flickr page

One person who was not there was the poster of this comment on the blog post Rusty wrote for Yahoo! Yodel. And boy, that anonymous person who replied sounds like quite a guy.

I stopped at Togo’s for my usual post-tutoring sandwich (because I am rarely up for cooking by the time I get home on Tuesdays), and I was chatting with my usual sandwich guy. He noted that I never get meat on my sandwich and asked if I was a vegetarian. This ended up starting a discussion about my eating habits and how much weight I’ve lost, and ended with me giving a recommended reading list (Eat to Live) and diet tips to the cashier. It’s still so weird to see the look people give me when I put a number to my weight loss, like I’ve just told them that I have done something to alter the state of the world.

In other news, we move to a new office on Friday, which means a day off for me. Helloooooo sleep. Speaking of sleep….