Well, I’ve found a club and am now able to get back into my favorite (participation) sport. I’m highly enthused.

I’ve been out of the game for like 8 months due to my move and everything, but I didn’t seem to have much rust when playing for the first time last night (and I didn’t even have my own paddle). I’ve ordered a new paddle and some accessories to herald my return:

• Donic Waldner Dicon Blade (my all-time favorite)
• Butterfly Sriver G2 Rubber (both sides)
• Table Tennis bag (Butterfly)
• Paddle case (Butterfly)
• Rubber cleaner (Butterfly)
• Cleaning sponges (Butterfly)
• Ball containers (Nitakku)
• Three-star balls (Nitakku)

Good stuff.

So evidently, based on my performance last night, I’ve been invited to a private club in some guy’s basement. He supposedly has three tables and tons of room, and is rather selective about who he lets join his little group. So that should be cool.

It seems there’s enough TT activity in this city to play seven days a week if I wanted to (I don’t), so that’s excellent. My intention is to make this a regular thing, i.e. at least 3 nights a week. That’s probably a good thing since this group goes to about a tournament a month.

Anyway, I’m happy to be back, and the competition I’ll be facing off against is several levels above what I have been exposed to in the past. I’m looking forward to what this’ll do for my game.

**By the way, just in case you’re confused, table tennis != ping pong. See to it that you don’t make that mistake. :)

I just got back from the grocery store, and I feel like utter crap. My girlfriend and I were in line behind a young couple; they were indescript enough until I realized how slow the line was moving and decided to tune in and see what the hold-up was.

As it turns out, their debit card kept getting denied, and they were doing the requisite, “Hmm, that’s weird, I should have more than enough…” routine. They were obviously quite embarassed.

His wife was ushered away to try and check out at another counter so that we could move forward, and the husband went to the ATM to check his balance. We shortly joined the wife at the other counter (where we were buying a couple of lottery tickets). About a minute later I saw him come back with a peculiar fascination with his own shoes, and hand his wife the balance slip. She looked at it, paused for a bit, and then did the courteous thing by offering the clerk to put the groceries back.

I knew what I had to do.

My plan was simple — pull the guy aside, hand him some cash and my card (I rarely carry cash, but I happened to have some) , quietly whisper to him to just get with me later to square up, and then walk away. The key here is to do it away from his wife and any other onlookers, and in a way that spared them any additional awkwardness.

I tried to see what was in their cart so I could tell if my roughly $30 in cash could cover it, but between that and actually making my purchase (it was now my turn and there were people behind me) I got caught up and lost a few seconds. When I turned around they had already left their cart and made their escape.

I feel like shit. I’ve been that guy before. I was that guy for a very long time. I know the ride home is not going to be an easy one for him. Not only did he not have the money for the groceries, but he and his wife suffered an embarassing incident because of it. And to top it all off, it’s only the 19th of the month. He was Military, and won’t be getting another check until the first of December.

So that’s why I feel like a pussy. I didn’t pull the trigger. I had a few seconds to step up and do the right thing, but I pussed out.

Driving back I realized what I could should have done: I should have pulled him aside and said, “Hey, man! You still at the same unit? (pulling him aside and saying very quickly and quietly) “Dude, I’ve been there before — don’t sweat it. I’m going to get some money out of the ATM real quick and give it to you. Tell your wife I owe you $80 but I could only give you $60. (That’s more believable than saying I owed him exactly what I gave him)

But no — I didn’t do that. I let the opportunity slip away.

So remember — if you have the chance to help someone like I did, just do it. Do it fast. Right now he’s embarassed without groceries and I feel nutless. If I had done the right thing quickly he would have had groceries, felt better about the human race, and I would have had testicles.

Don’t be a pussy.

So it seems a Spanish group cracked Google’s Gmail authentication and was able to get access to anyone’s account. They reported the issue to Google, and it has already been fixed. Here’s the write-up:

http://www.elhacker.net/gmailbug/english_version.htm

So my buddy Charlie has been hounding me for the last week about giving Safari another chance. He says it’s faster, more integrated with OS X, yadda yadda.

I agree with him on those counts (plus it just looks way better), but I have a couple major gripes. For one, I hate that I can’t use Delicious bookmarks in the bookmark bar like I can in Firefox. Secondly, I can’t tab through to select items in the URL bar (you have to use the arrow keys).

There’s a hack that lets you do quicksearches, though, so that combined with the fact that Safari now passes the Acid test has led me to give it another shot. I’ll let you know if I can stomach it this time around.

“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people, we are scanning them to be read by an AI.” — Anonymous Google Employee

(I used Google to look up the word foreboding.)

So there’s a new Harrison Ford movie coming out called “Firewall”. It’s about a security expert (Ford) being blackmailed into breaking into his own badass security system.

He’s a master hacker, his family is at stake, he decides to get back at the attackers — you know the drill. I’m enthused.

Naturally, I’ll be watching the security stuff closely; I get pretty upset when I see lame stuff in books and movies. The worst of the worst is in Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress” where there exists not only a PGP encryption algorithm, but also “FTP Firewalls” that keep “hackers” out. I threw up in my mouth when I read it.

So anyway, here’s the trailer: Movie Trailer: Firewall

The new Blackberry is upon us, and I’ll be partaking immediately (hopefully the day it hits the shelves).

I’ve never been so impressed with a phone as I have been with these Blackberry contraptions; my first one (thanks to Ken) was great, the next one was even better, and I have equally high expectations for this one.

I’ll keep you posted via a mini-review when I get mine.

I’ve always been obsessed with time and location. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated with how far away things are, or whether or not two events were taking place “simultaneously”.

As you can imagine, Einstein’s theory of Relativity did a number on me. I ate it up, and I count Bertrand Russell’s book on the subject as one of my favorite books to this day.

Well, the latest manifestation of this obsession is my new GPS. Not only does it sate my desire for knowing exactly where I am, what direction I’m heading, etc — but it also runs Linux.

Ah…life is good.

I have seen my God, and its name is VMWare.

“The Rise of the Creative Class” (and “The Flight of the Creative Class”)

I group these together as they are obviously linked. They are most excellent, and like the others mentioned, they offer a different way of looking at things.

In specific, these deal with intellectual/creative talent, i.e. what it is, where it comes from, how it moves, and how it effects the United States.