Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

Four…

FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
1. Marketing Manager, Ambrosia Software.
2. Assistant Product Manager and All-around Nice Guy, Green Dragon Creations.
3. Media Relations Manager, United Developers.
4. News Assistant, Star-Gazette (The First Gannett Newspaper).

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1. Pink Flamingos (If I wanted to go blind)
2. Back to the Future
3. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
4. Attack the Gas Station!

FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:
1. Rochester, New York.
2. New York, New York (Queens).
3. Elmira, New York.
4. Dallas, Texas.
(I do not list any Maryland cities, because I have not lived in actual Maryland cities. There are so few cities in Maryland that most Marylanders don’t live in them. Silver Spring, for example, is not a municipality of any sort; it’s just a region or area (defined differently by three different government agencies) inside Montgomery County.
FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
1. The Daily Show
2. Any news channel
3. A few hours of Current TV
4. Local news

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. Fenwick Island, Delaware
2. Cancun, Mexico
3. Hong Kong and Macao, People’s Republic of China
4. Seoul, Korea

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. Metafilter, because it’s funny to watch people yell at each other online.
2. Regret the Error, because I’m not the only one that screws up.
3. Star-Gazette, because I work there.
4. Cruel Site of the Day, because I am an Internet old-schooler.

FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE RESTAURANTS:
1. Woo Lae Oak of Seoul, Arlington, Virginia. It was the first elegant Korean restaurant I’d ever been to, and may be the best on the east coast.
2. D.P. Dough, Ithaca, New York. I admire the person who developed the idea of personal Calzones; while not cheaper than splitting a pizza with a friend, they’re definitely cheaper than getting a medium pizza for yourself, which is why it’s such a good idea.
3. Tanino Ristorante, Horseheads, New York. The place is run in such an elegant way, they don’t have to upsell you on the glass of wine.
4. The Cheesecake Factory, Washington, D.C. Admittedly, I refuse to eat here more often than once every few years. But by golly, when I do, I get cheesecake.

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:

1. garlic
2. beef
3. scallions
4. rice

FOUR SCHOOLS YOU’VE ATTENDED
1. Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York.
2. Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland.
3. Eastern Intermediate School, Silver Spring, Maryland.
4. Kemp Mill Elementary School, Silver Spring, Maryland.

FOUR PLACES I’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. Maryland
2. Rochester, New York
3. Irvine, California
4. New York, New York

FOUR PEOPLE ON MY F-LIST I’M “TAGGING” TO DO THIS MEME:

1. Corey
2. Guy
3. Ben
4. Kristina

I went back to Maryland this weekend for a few reasons, both of which were birthdays. My grandfather turned 83, and my friend Jon from junior high, high school, and college turned 30. So I got to see them both again!

Erin was a bit upset that she could not come with me, but she was sick, so she had a good excuse.

At Jon’s party, I had the opportunity to catch up with Sarah, a person I knew in college. I got the sense from talking to her that I knew her and she knew me, but we weren’t sure how we knew each other. I think she was my TA. I know we worked together on the Ithacan. But beyond that I’m sure we just worked on a bunch of stuff together without thinking about it. But we were both conversational and it was quite fun.

Additionally, the weekend proved to me that I can do weekend trips to Maryland, as long as I take a day off for travel. It’s only about a 5-hour drive; I am not young enough to try this without taking a day off anymore, but it’s still very doable when the timing is right.

Here’s the context: Chris is thanking me for the recent gift I sent his way. It was as stereotypically Maryland as it could get: crabs, oysters, and McCormick Old Bay seasoning. The crabs and oysters were in foil pouches, but neither were from Maryland.
Chris Whong: yo
Chris Whong: oysters
Jason Whong: yeah
Jason Whong: are they legal to import into Kuwait?
Chris Whong: I don’t know
Chris Whong: I don’t eat oysters, but I am sure someone will
Chris Whong: thanks
Jason Whong: hehe
Jason Whong: what about the crabs
Jason Whong: did they arrive too?
Chris Whong: I might be brave enough…
Chris Whong: something about crabs in a pouch
Jason Whong: It’s like any other MRE
Chris Whong: yeah, avoid like the plague
Chris Whong: I heard they have new MREs
Chris Whong: but we have to eat the old ones first
Jason Whong: Maybe the old bay can go on french fries
Jason Whong: I doubt i am the first person to think of sending that
Chris Whong: I shall use it
Chris Whong: no, I have 4 cans
Chris Whong:
Jason Whong: agh
Jason Whong: one for every squad
Chris Whong: It’s ok
Chris Whong: can’t have enough old bay
Chris Whong: oh
Chris Whong: the platoon has like dozens
Chris Whong: we store it in the community locker

They’ll probably have enough Old Bay that they can leave a case for the next company or battalion that arrives.

Last night I played my second gig out with the Hepcats Big Band, a group of about 20 musicians that I joined recently. I play second alto sax, with a few caveats:

1) I don’t read music very quickly. I never have. That means I really need to practice in order to know the music. I got by doing this in junior high school because we played each piece every day. At some point I didn’t have to look at the music anymore. I just watched the conductor and played everything.

So for the Hepcats, it means that I am growing into them. I knew about half of the songs we played, and I kinda fumbled my way through them, hitting notes when it mattered, and missing them when it was harder to detect. The rest of the band made me look good.

2) I don’t like to sit out when I am lost. So if I don’t know where we are, I play by ear. Sometimes this gets me into trouble. I latched onto a rhythm I could hit, and played it, but then I noticed it was a trombone part I was playing. Good for them, I guess. But bad for my fellow sax players.

Anyway, there’s another gig next week. I am going to try not to screw it up!

Earlier, I posted about Eugene’s Shingen the Ruler FAQ. It inspired me to play the game once more (probably my last time ever) just to see how quickly I could beat the game.

It turns out there are two goals in the game: capturing the capital in Yamashiro, and conquering all of Japan. Up until now, every time I played, I always made Yamashiro my last conquest, so I think I missed out on the cinematic reward for conquering Yamashiro.

Anyway, because of random events, there is no real skill involved in getting a quick victory. Either it snows and you can’t attack, or it doesn’t snow, and you can. My personal best is now:

August 1554

And if I ever play this game again, I am officially a loser. The opponents’ AI is so weak that it is not really a game. Maybe I play it like an American instead of a Japanese person would. I really don’t know. The AI consistently leaves the safety of cover and charges at me, so that all I need to do is walk a few squares and hit him with my rifles. It rarely waits for me to come within range of its rifles. Back in the day, I would think that noticing this made me smarter than the programmers. Now I realize that playing against such a crippled algorithm is not smart, but rather a waste of time.
When it came out, it was a great game, and a splendid way to pass a few hours a week, unifying a nation under my rule. But I hope that the next time I play this game, it will be when I am in a nursing home or something.

OK, I am changing the rules. I used to say “I don’t blog about work,” but what that really means is “I don’t blog about things at work that I should not blog about for reasons of prudence and propriety.”

So we got some new chairs today. They all look the same. So how was I to mark my chair in order to differentiate it from others?

Instantly, I remembered that my little brother had sent me a patch from Iraq. So I stapled it to the chair:

(forgive the cruddy photo. it was late and I am tired…)

I sent him a package today. I hope it doesn’t get destroyed in the mail.

I have to say I am proud of my brother, Eugene, for posting a FAQ for Shingen the Ruler at GameFAQs.

This was one of my favorite games growing up, mostly because so few people played it, so I had a chance to devise all of the exploits myself. I wonder… You know how there are places that do speed runs of games? I wonder if there could be competition to complete this game the fastest, in human time, and in game time.

I’ll play it and post my month of victory. Maybe Eugene will do the same, and we can compete! Of course, anyone else who wants to compete is welcome.

I had my annual review today. It was a stellar review, I think.

Though, I still think annual reviews are useless as management tools, without quarterly reviews to back them up. Too often they’re just about the months preceding the review instead of for the whole year. And they become “your permanent record.”

By this summer, the Star-Gazette will have been my longest gig ever (assuming that it continues that long). Hopefully by then I’ll have met my three goals I set when I came there: to impress the heck out of people at a large, relevant corporation (so far, so good); to demonstrate I can hold a job for at least 2.5 years (since my last two gigs were under a year each, and my “self-employment” was 2 years long); and to get back in touch with my journalistic roots, even if they were planted in high school and mostly stifled in college.

Congratulations to Hines Ward, MVP of SuperBowl XL. He played his buttocks off, and he deserved the win.

Sports Illustrated posted a photo of his tattoo.

It’s Mickey Mouse in a Heisman pose, with “Ha-in-su War-du” (Hines Ward) written above it in Korean.

It’s not very neat Korean, but I have to admire him for getting the tattoo when he was in high school. He “never learned Korean,” like me, but at least he learned to write his name (and like me back then, it was somewhat sloppy.)

This is a quickie. For the last few hours I have been working on some changes at whong.org. With luck, it will be a place where all whong.org blog content shows up, thanks to the magic of RSS.
 (Update): No, I am not done yet.
 (Update): OK, I think I am done now.