Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

There is always something new to learn.

I have thick black hair, thanks to my father. It is strong and straight.

If you cut it, it gets sharp ends. If you cut it twice, the clipping has two sharp ends.

One of the clippings fell into my sock. It probably stayed there through several washings, because I don’t turn my socks inside out when I wash them. So it was up near the front of my foot, and one of the sharp edges entered my foot between the grooves of my foot print (the thing that looks like a fingerprint on the bottom of the foot). I probably didn’t notice. With every step I drove this tiny hair further and further into my foot until it was completely embedded.

That’s when I noticed the occasional pain when I walked. So I looked at it: a black splinter. How odd. I pressed on it and noticed it was flexible, and immediately deduced that it was hair. On its own, it didn’t hurt at all. But pressing on it caused the sharp ends to stick me, and that stung.

A hair splinter. Imagine that.

It was embedded at varying depths; very shallow at the point of entry, then deeper on both sides. So I took a needle and attacked it from the middle. By ripping the outer layer of skin slightly, i was able to get the needle under the hair. From there, all I had to do was pull, and both ends of the hair came out. It was very hairlike and very unsplinterlike as I removed it. And when it was completely out, I checked it, and it was just a harmless piece of hair.

Judging by my age, I am going to guess that something like this probably happens one in a lifetime for someone with hair as thick and straight as mine. At least, I hope so. Because if the next time it happens is 31 years from now, I’ll be 62 and I don’t know if I will be flexible enough to remove it on my own.

I’ve been playing around with various Wordpress themes lately. Don’t mind the mess. Things will settle soon.

Also, when I upgraded to WordPress 2.1, I neglected to upload every file needed for the update. Each time someone hit the site, it was looking for this file that wasn’t there (or something like that…) since this file is used by background processes, it was also being looked for a lot, and tying up resources when it could not be found.

Anyway, my web hosting company figured out why their server became slow and called me about it. Since I could not fix it at the time (I was away from the computer), I asked them to take the site offline for a few hours until I could get home and address the situation. In doing so, they proved to me they know their stuff. Rather than letting the server suck, they knew why it was sucking and went to great lengths to avoid turning my site off. So I salute them. They rock.

I just looked at the terms of the Apple Store’s employee purchase program (for employees of certain corporations). It says I can sponsor the discounted purchase of 6 computer/monitor combinations and 10 iPods per calendar year for friends and family.

So, if you are looking at getting some computer gear, please talk to me and see if I can save you some bones. I talked to one friend of mine today and calculated he’d save $90 on a MacBook Pro and iPod; another friend would save at least $200 on a Mac Pro.

Since I don’t want to be accused of cheating, we have to be friends or family for you to take advantage of the discount.

Stay in school and be committed to getting the story, and you, too, can be paid to go sledding.

I made this icon of myself at a site called Portrait Illustration Maker. You can probably make one of yourself, too, if you have the patience. I think this comes pretty close, but let me know if this doesn’t jibe with your mental image of me.

I am sorry for not posting a lot lately. I need to post more frequently.

I’ve been having fun shooting still images of sports. I have been shooting a lot of basketball and hockey for the paper where I work. Since my work belongs to the paper, I am not going to repost it here, but I will link the photos.

Fighting for the ball. Two girls fighting for a basketball. The one on the right loosed the ball from the hands of the one on the left. Someone was so moved by this photo that he wrote to me, saying it was the photo of the year for showing true competitive spirit. Then he put a stamp on it, but he was so excited that he ended up hand-delivering the letter so I would see the feedback immediately. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I really like this one.

Bench crash. I like this one because of the expressions on the faces of the crowd.
Rebound. I like this one because this girl (who is easily her team’s MVP) has three girls around her, but she still gets the rebound. I probably could have spent more time fixing the eyes on the girl in the back.
Save! I forget who won this game. I just know that this is an awesome save by the goalie.
A-ha! This photo tells the story of how local fans taunted the opposing team’s goalie. They weren’t totally rude, but the home team won.
Foul! It’s nice and tight. Also, it doesn’t look like a foul, but the whistle was blown and the shooter went to the line shortly after this shot was taken.
Flying. The four closest guys in this shot are local, so I figured I’d get them all in at the start (when they were closest together). The person who got the best start won the race.