Finally in Korea!

After what felt like days, we are finally in Korea!

The flight from Houston to San Francisco was ok but JJ developed some kind of fever and was very cranky.  🙁  So at the wonderful airport of San Francisco, we got him some medications.  On the flight to Korea, Singapore Airline was great.  Service was more than terrific as the stewards and stewardesses kept checking up on us, the mere economy class, and took extra care and time on the kids.  However, food sucked still.  Badly.  Worse than some other airlines, including Korean Air.

Overall, I felt like a zombie on the plane.  But I managed to stay awake till midnight (locally) so I am somewhat adjusted to the time zone here now.  Now, bring on the food!!  😛

AMD’s new X3: Tri-core Processor

Gizmodo news

The phrase “a little bit and a little too late” came into existence for a reason.  And that also applies to AMD’s new “tri-core” (read, triple core).  While it sounds cool in theory and with the performance between dual-core processors and quad-core.  That’s fine.

But as Gizmodo also noted, the price is what’s killing this great concept.  Chances are high that AMD’s new X3 isn’t so new… but rather an X4 Phenom quad-core with a failed core.  While it’s a great idea to recoup cost by spinning off a failed X4 as a new product X3, the price doesn’t justify it.  It starts at close to $200 and with only bit more, you can get Intel’s quad-core Q6600.

In my opinion of 2 cents worth, what AMD should’ve done is price the X3 to replace dual-cores.  That would’ve given the consumers more incentive to buy more of AMD’s products than Intel’s.  I don’t want AMD to die.  After all, AMD has been the only major contender in CPU market against Intel.  But if AMD keeps its practice at such terrible pace, it won’t survive the future.  I sure hope AMD sees its faults.  Soon.  Before too late.

Scout: Korean Movie Review & Politics

I came across this Korean movie entitled “Scout“.  It was about a guy who worked at a university as a baseball scout.  There was a up-and-coming talent from Kwang-ju.  So how can you go wrong with a sports movie, right?!  Wrong!!  🙁

Shoot… don’t wanna mess up your plot but let me point out that it does bring up and rotate around the infamous Korean massacre from 1980.  It was called “Kwangju Massacre“.  Since the Korean general Chun Doo-hwan took over the government via power and coup d’état, Koreans took it upon themselves to protest against the power.  This happened in the city of Kwangju.

I am more than furious about this … watching the movie reminded me of it… now, of late, I have been hearing how they miss both loser “presidents”… Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan did some nasty and terrible stuff and if I ever hear again how they miss some of these worst humans ever, I’m gonna explode!!  If you are willing to exchange food for people’s lives, you are …. erg.  Forget it.

Kids being Kids: Having fun

So I have asked God that my kids would be able to be just that: kids. And they have been. They love to have fun and it shows. Here are two video clips to prove it. I can only wish that I had that much fun in my childhood… and I am also very thankful that Anna and JJ can play so well together! 😀

Folding @ Home – Stanford’s Crusade against Cancer

Folding is a some kind of bio/chemical process.  That’s my extent of the knowledge in that field.  I try to get people to donate their computer time to help in this cause to find a cure for cancer, and trying to understand better about protein and its behaviors.

In research, resources are hard to come by.  So what Stanford University’s Prof. Vijay Pande started 2001 is recruiting people’s computer for time to crunch through the computer simulations.  Ever since I found out about it few years ago, I have thrown whatever I could at donating time.

On personal side of things, I have lost way too many people to cancer.  First person was my cousin who died in his early 20’s due to leukemia.  Then over the time, I have lost 1 aunt, 1 uncle, 2 of my grandparents, 1 friend, all to cancer in one form or another.  Soojin’s 2 uncles and 1 aunt have died from liver cancer, another uncle just recently diagnosed with early form of liver cancer.  It sucks.  I hate the disease with passion.  And for the longest time, I felt helpless.  But when I found out about this distributed computing, I signed up.

Sure, you have to pay for your own electricity, but if my computer helps in finding a cure, it is a small price to pay.  You can donate as much or as little as you wish.  With today’s computers, this form of distributed computing surpasses that of supercomputers.

So please, please, please!  Donate your computer and its time!

My Trip out to Huntington Beach and LA

So for work reasons, I had to fly out here to Huntington Beach area.

My layover was in Las Vegas, and though I only had 10 minutes inbetween connection flights, I had time to take pictures…

Due to constricted schedule, I couldn’t go to the beach… so on Tuesday night when I flew in, I barely had time to eat dinner with a long-time friend of mine, Roland.  He is now in southern Cali doing what he wants to do: counseling.

Then after horrendously long 8-hour presentations, I headed up to K-Town area to meet up another long-time friend of mine: Dan Suh.   He was my roommate back in ’95 when Won Lee was our 3rd roomie.

And guess what?!!  Won Lee calls me (that’s who Dan is talking to!) and he’s freakin’ getting married in Anaheim in August 16th!!  Won Lee is a character…  but Dan is now a college pastor at Onnuri in LA area.  If you are looking for good down-to-earth pastor, check his church out.

Danny Rhee!  Oh he was my favorite to hang out with when I was in Austin!  Why?  ‘Cause he was the only one that would laugh at my ssul-lung (off-the-wall, random) jokes!!  😛  Good kid, but I learned that he had a tough life.  To talk more, we went to hang out at the infamous…  Pinkberry!

We talked for about 3 hours there… God did some amazingly cool (and funny) stuff with (and in) Danny’s life!!

While it was great to see them, I still am bummed that I didn’t get to see KJ Ahn (now an associate EM pastor at Young Nak, I believe).  Maybe next time…  nonetheless, it was great to see them all…

Traveling Newbie

Last time I traveled on business was 3 years ago almost and that was my one and only time!  Now that I will be on another one tomorrow, I guess I must’ve some anxiety and/or excitement in me because I dreamed of traveling to somewhere for business.  😛