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. 😛
NY Times: Johnson & Johnson Ticking me off
Like I was saying earlier, things like this just makes me mad! Johnson & Johnson taking the easy way out! They say they did everything right when in fact, they took their sweet time (6 years!) in releasing what they found out about their own product to the public!
Johnson & Johnson will be on my first anti-pharmaceutical list! If I can boycott their products by buying a different brand I will! You can go suck an egg and stay in the corner, Johnson & Johnson!
Talking about Injustice
I don’t know what started it… but we were coming back from our Connection Group meeting from church when we started talking about how expensive insurance is even for us Americans and how you can’t get good medical care these days.
That started a rather passionate and heated talks between Soojin and myself about that. And then it reminded me of how pharmaceutical companies are greedy b*****ds for taking only money. You see, while in Ethiopia, and through the book, There is No Me Without You, I discovered and came to realization how greedy and injust these pharmaceutical companies are! Medication to treat AIDS/HIV has been around since late ’90s yet the company that developed it did not want to let go of its patent(s) and so generic medications couldn’t be made by a 3rd company. This meant that the price of medication was even too expensive for middle income families of America, let alone the poor $1-per-day income families of Africa! I was so furious and mad that it brought back that sheer anger and madness at such injustice!
We met an infant at Haregewoin’s orhpanage who looked so much better thanks to the generic medication that is now finally available. You see, the patent expired few years ago (finaly-freakin’-ly) and now it costs orders of magnitude less!!
Erg… if you know who these pharmaceutical compan(ies) are, let me know… I want to do something… at the least, to make people aware of these selfish injustice around the world. To put more value on money over people is not just injust, but inhumane. I am still mad thinking about it….
Ares I Thrust Oscillation Problem
Wow. I’ve heard of the issue… but wow.
All pictures are hosted by NASA. You would not think that such a SOLID rocket booster could have such odd oscillation problem… but it does!!