Okay, degeneral emailed me today and asked me when Oktoberfest was.  So I looked it up and found out that it's held in September.  Actually the three weekends after Labor Day.  So the derfman's accusation that Oktoberfest is closer to my birthday is wrong.  But seriously -- I would like to go.  Here's the information i found so far:

CHICAGO:

Traditional Oktoberfest with live, traditional music.

Tonight I thought that I would go to the Wicker Park Chess Club and see how it was.  Well initially I went to the Lakeview-Cuyler chess club, only to find out that they are not meeting for the summer -- they could have mentioned that on their website, but I'm not bitter.  I just drove 5+ minutes to Myopic Bookstore where the Wicker Park Chess Club was being held.  If they weren't there, I could at least shop for some books.

Okay let's see, how to describe this...  Think of a room full of very smart people, some successful, some bitter because they aren't that successful, but all very smart, now think of these individuals trying to demonstrate how smart they are by beating you at chess (I have to admit that for only a few people is this really true -- but no one likes to lose.)  Now imagine these same people trying also to tell everyone how much they know by pulling Cliff Clavin's during interesting conversations.  Well tonight wasn't anywhere near what I just described.  Except for the guy I ended up playing.  I played this guy Dennis who talked to himself and swore when I made good moves and he made bad ones.  He was sitting alone and I ended up playing with him.  He asked me my name and pulled out this square of paper on which he proceeded to write his name, my name and the word "draw".  He then proceeded to heep track of wins and losses, I broke even with him.  Seems neurosis and social retardedness almost always goes hand in hand with chess talent (this writer is the rare exception.)  He also didn't really know how to shake hands, it was like holding onto a limp fish.

Okay, after all of this whining on my part, I kinda liked playing against real people face to face over the board for a change.  I think I'll be going as many Wednesdays as I can.

Yesterday, Rea and I went out for dinner with my parents, and hers.  My sister and my future brother in law Chris were there too.  Basically it was a dinner for Rea and a belated birthday celebration for my sister Jin.  Jin has a pretty quirky sense of humor.  Once when one of my college friends called me during spring break, she answered and made him think that I was killed in a car accident before telling him that she was joking and putting me on the phone.  Lance (yes, that was what he was callig himself then and probably why my sister played that joke on him) gave me an earful.  Well it was a good dinner and I think it was a pretty good wind up to all of Rea's birthday celebrations.

She didn't expect much from me (based on past performance) in terms of presents and I encouraged this making her think that I made her coupons for free back rubs or romantic dinner with Jae (hehe).  To her credit, she did figure out that I got her a unique piece of art jewelry from this store neaby, but she wasn't expecting the electric piano.  She was pleasantly suprised, but I suspect also that the fact that I didn't try to give her a coupon helped with her being pleased.

At the dinner we were talking about a number of different things with Jin and Chris and I mentioned the Superhero show.  This set Jin off as she mentioned this to Chris and he was kinda like "huh, what".  We were thinking about superhero names and powers and I figured that I'd pick the geek braintrust that reads this site for superhero ideas.  Wikipedia has an interesting article on Superheroes and while I probably won't immediately agree with the category system, it's still pretty good.  SO what do you think?  If I were to try out for the next season of Who wants to be a Superhero, what kind of superhero should I be?  I'm not much of a fighter, though I have done Kendo and a sword wielding superhero is pretty 80's and lame.  I'm thinking more of someone who likes to outsmart his foes, who has a backpack full of gadgets and a head full of ideas, who sets elaborate death traps for his unwitting supervillan foes.  That's kinda more my style.  Of course this kind of character works well in a team so who would my natural counterparts be?

I have a new guilty pleasure.  I've been watching this reality show on SciFi channel called Who wants to be a Superhero.  Cool concept, you'd think that they'd screw it up, but no.  Stan Lee presides over a Big-Brother like situation where people are in a superhero lair.  Each show has different challenges and activities and there have been multiple eliminations per show so far.  It's cool to see how some of the people are really buying into their superhero personas.  I've seen one of the more interesting things done to an eliminated contestant in a reality show in the last show.  I won't say what it is in case some of you decide to try and catch some of the show reruns on SciFi.

Another show I've been watching recently is Eureka also on SciFi.  It's about a secret town full of super secret government scientists.  Basically we follow the sheriff around and see things through his eyes.  It's an action drama with some suspense, but when I watch it, I get the same vibe I got from watching Northern Exposure, even if they're such different shows.  I am totally buying into the characters who are a good mixture of the stereotypical types you might expect in a show like this, but you get a real sense that they have more to them than you may think.

Okay, one puppy incident.  Nori met his first bad kid today.  I was watching Mochi and this kid with his mom, aunt and grandmother gave Nori a kick.  Today was the first day in all my experience working with kids at Sunday School, Children's ministry situations, and Day care that I REALLY wanted to hit a child.  What kind of kid (he looked around 4-5) would kick a cute little dog. 
I hope some bigger dog bites him.

Nori is adjusting well to living with us and especially with Mochi.  But I'm not going to post about the puppy, even though he does some really cool and cute things.  Instead this is a geek post, more like a geek rant.

Ever since I was in grade school/high school, I've been looking for chess on television.  I guess it had to do with that episode on Family Ties where Alex plays that russian kid and the russian kid tries to throw the game (unlike other depictions of chess on television this episode must have had a chess consultant or a real chessplayer involved.)  Ever since then I would carefully scrutinize these depictions of chess to see if they got it right.  Chess is often used as a shortcut for the TV writer/filmmaker to show that the person who is playing is very intelligent, I suppose I wouldn't have such a problem with this if they actually get the situation correct.

Case in point, the most common mistake that people make in media when they try to depict chess is the setup of the board.  The chessboard must be oriented so that if you put your hands on the two corners in front of you, your right hand will rest over a white square.  Almost always I see that this square is dark, it doesn't matter whether it is in print media, on television or in a film, this is usually the most egregious problem.  There are other more subtle errors that show up here and there.  I have no issue if this was a single honest error, but what really gets me mad is that with the widespread use of Chess as some kind of intellectual metaphor, the people using it are so either so boneheaded, lazy or have such a disregard for the intellectual capacity (geekiness) of their audience, that they don't seem to bother to double check simple things or get someone to give an informed opinion.

Why am I talking about this?  I just watched this HP commercial for their laptop, you know the ones with the celebrities talking about what they have on their laptops and the models impersonating them doing some mime with their hands while animation illustrated what they are talking about.  The commercials are well made.  What gets me is that Jay-Z is playing a game of chess online and makes a move and declares that the game is over.  If he meant that he lost (badly) he's right, because the move he just made was a total blunder.  I was able to reconstruct the following from the magic of tivo.

Jay-Z plays white and moves his rook one square to the right.  This is absolutely the wrong move as black will now wipe him from the board after Bishop captures g2 (the white bishop) giving check and then after white recaptures on g2 with his King, Black captures at c3 with his rook and black is an entire rook up in material.  White's passed f and g pawns are now useless.  Of course this is all dependent on the people producing the animation, but one wonders.

I wondered if chess was doomed to be portrayed like this.  But my optimism is always bouyed when I see the first few minutes of Casablanca.  Humphrey Bogart loved chess and insisted that this scene be written into the movie.  Contemporaries considered him to be a very strong player.  I have yet to see another example of a better depiction of chess in movie or television.

Hmm as rants go, this is a pretty poor one.  Perhaps, I should stick to puppy postings.  Don't worry, I have 100+ pictures that I'm processing now and will post these soon.

He's Here!

I swear, I had totally forgotten how to housebreak a puppy, I guess I had conveniently blocked that part of Mochi's puppyhood out of my memory.  Nori has many similar habits to Mochi when he was a pup.  One of them is that he's like a pee and poo ninja.

MOCHI!!!








It's fitting also that your brother is coming home today.

RIP
1946-2006
"Shine on you Crazy Diamond..."

Actually it'll be closer to 53 hours as of this writing.  Dawn (our breeder) says that Nori and his brother Liberachi love playing together in this pile of stuff that they have been putting together which consists of socks, shoes, a newspaper, various toys and a dryer sheet which she took away.  It's really interesting since Mochi really likes to play with spent dryer sheets.

Yesterday Mochi spent an afternoon enjoying himself while mommy went shopping for various items.  We took him to my parent's home where he got to run around in the back yard and chase the water from the hose.  It was pretty hot and he got a good soaking and cool down which he really needed.  He loves the hose, chasing and running away from the water and you'd ROFL if you see him trying to drink from the water stream.  We left him at home while we went to dinner with Bobby&Sarah and John&Masae.  While we were gone Miki and Anthony come by and celebrate an early birthday with Mochi.  Mochi loves Costco chicken so he got a bowl full of chicken pieces and skins which he loved.  He also got this cute little pillow which looks even cuter when he puts his head on it and goes to sleep.

Here's a picture of Nori, pictures of Mochi are coming.

After a short discussion about an anime I'm watching called samurai 7, I was thinking about how many movies were directly inspired by Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and how many you can remember or come up with.  Here's my list:

1. Magnificent Seven (Yul Brynner never looked cooler)
2. A Bug's Life
3. Samurai 7

hmm... I can't think of more than these two right now.  I know there's a 70's b-movie scifi flick that was based on the same plot, but the title escapes me.  I would also collect other films that are based or remade from other Kurosawa films but name the film and the film it's borrowing from e.g. Fistfull of Dollars/Yojimbo.