From the “<sarcasm>nobody saw that coming</sarcasm>” department, everyone that I know is starting to ask me how certain things are said in Korean. Never mind that I’ve had only two classes and couldn’t possibly know how to say much of anything…

I can understand why they do this. Humans are inquisitive creatures that love to experience (and try) something new. A new language provides them this opportunity.

There’s also the fact that I live in the U.S. If your family was born here then it’s pretty much guaranteed that you speak only one language: English. Breaking outside of this typical American mold makes you a caricature of sorts in that you’re so different from the norm that everyone can’t help but focus in on you.

I find myself feeling genuine sympathy for foreigners who move here. I can only imagine how frustrating it must become when a “foreign” language is your native tongue.

Personally, I just wish that everyone would remember that two or three classes isn’t enough to have learned how to say anything of substance… ::sigh::

Oh well. This kind of attention will no doubt increase as the semester moves forward, so I may as well try to get used to it I suppose.

Anyhow, I’m just rambling. Later all,
~Steph

Technorati Tags: language, foreign language, Korean, communication

I love this shot. This woman’s style is beautiful IMO. I love the dragon designs on her arms*, the long dark hair is a given, and the look on her face tops it off. Kind of sucks that she’s probably in a bad mood, but the brooding just goes with the goth look oh so well.

Bet she has a lovely smile though. Attractive and a great style to boot! I had to share this.

~Steph

* duh, she’s Asian… dragon designs.. yeah no kidding. Just say’n, I love ‘em. they look great on her.

Technorati Tags: goth, japanese, japanese goth, goth girl, asian goth, asian

I just ordered some Korean language keyboard stickers. The cost after shipping was just under $6, so it definitely didn’t hit the pocket book too hard.

Actual keyboards (that I’ve found) that are made with the Korean characters on the keys are typically $60+. This price is crazy when you consider that the board that I have now was $15 after shipping and it has multimedia controls.

So anyway, the stickers definitely seem to be the most economical way to go. I just hope that they hold up.

Ideally this will allow me to eventually begin writing posts in Korean. I can’t exactly guarantee that I’ll do so because this depends on how well I learn the language. However, I would like to eventually make my blogs multi-lingual. At the very least, doing so will provide an opportunity for me to continue using the language which in turn should help me to retain it.

Theoretically. Read the rest of this entry »

300’s credits are just finishing up their roll. Gotta say, it was a pretty damn good movie. I don’t know what the actual history of those events were, but this movie is a fitting heroic retelling regardless.

Almost makes me wish that I had went to the theater to watch this one.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: 300, Sparta

Let’s say that through the discovery of a (surprisingly simple) bug on a social web site you find something… revealing? enlightening?… about a person that you’ve known for closeish to ten years. This discovery suggests, rather strongly, that this person has not been very honest with you for the past several years and that you two may not be the good friends that you’ve been lead to believe that you are.

This particular person occasionally reads this blog so I will not be giving any additional information about this situation, or the bug.

Do I confront the person with the information that I learned, do I just say “fuck it, life has more pressing problems” and forget about it, or do I take a middle road and begin to treat them… how to say.. as they’re no longer a part of my very small inner circle of friends?

The question, my dear readers, is what do you do?

~Steph

Technorati Tags: privacy, social web, web 2.0, profiles, social profiles, myspace, friendster, ortuk, livejournal

This is a popular comment that pops up on the ‘net from time to time. It’s a totally accurate comment on dating and women:

DragonflyBlade21: A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.

This is the source, as far as I know.

I must give kudos to the original writer for expressing reality in such a succinct way.

I came across this comment again this morning on Digg.com’s post The Real Reason Women Don’t Like “Nice” Guys.

Technorati Tags: dating, relationships, girls, women, wisdom, insight

There’s something that I would like to point out. It’s obvious, but I want to point it out anyway: Consumers are hypocrits. Total, shameless hypocrits.

What’s rubbing my nerves is all of this BS hype about the iPhone. Let’s get something clear from the beginning: it’s a cell phone, nothing more, and it costs $600!! Despite this absurd price everyone’s gushing about the iPhone and waiting in line for it; in many cases they’re camping over night to spend $600 on nothing more than a cell phone!

What is really amazing about these people is that they - some of them being ‘public figures’ such as Kevin Rose - will complain about the cost of the PS3. They call Sony “nuts” or “insane” for pricing the PS3 “so high”… but here’s a news flash for you, the PS3 is $600.

Yep, the SAME price tag that’s on the iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »

Observation: It’s April 13^th, a Friday, and it’s 40^o F. (4.4^o C.), and it’s hailing outside. This is some seriously farked up weather.

From the “Why didn’t I think of this before?” department, I’m going to try to simply mask my sub-domain here with my new stephsblog.info domain. That way everything remains the same but the’ol personal blog receives a new address.

I’ve been smacked by the duh-by-four,
~Steph

Technorati Tags: duh, masking, blogs

While most people spent Sunday celebrating Easter, I spent this evening buying up a lot of domain names. Today, GoDaddy was having a sale for 99/cents a year on the .info top level domain.

I now own 9 domain names. Soon to be 8 because I’m letting an unused domain fade away.

While I was at it I also purchased a simple $4/mo CashParking plan. I know that this is generally viewed as evil, but, this seemed like a great place to park the domains while I write content for their respective websites.

Here are the domains that I purchased this evening. This should give you all a good hint of the sites that I’ll be working on in the coming months:

• DevPsych.info - I could put my current study of Developmental Psychology into some practical use with this website.
• PsychFocus.info - A more generalized psychology-focused informational website. I do not plan on stopping my study of psychology at devpsych, so this domain will allow me to move on to additional psychology content when the time is right.
• PoliticalMusings.info - A political blog to bring to light certain political goings ons, and for pointing out their possible ramifications on our lives.
• PaganFaiths.info - There is a lot of inaccurate info on the ‘net about various Pagan faiths. This could give good information about various faiths, and link to good sources of information.
• PaganLife.info - This could be a place to provide tips on what one can do in their day-to-day lives as a part of living their Pagan faiths. This would not be a “how to live your life” site, but rather a site with various “huh, why didn’t I think of that?” suggestions to help make life simpler or easier.
• Polytheistic.info - I have found it to be VERY frustrating trying to find information about deities. So many web pages want to limit their “information” to “call on so and so for matters of such and such”, and that’s it. ARGH! I could use this website to give good, academic information about various deities and/their pantheons. As much data as possible would be researched.

…or I could sell the ones that I don’t end up using. Each cost me a whole .99cents, so it’s not like I’m out much. ;^)

Then of course there’s StephsBlog.info for the new blog domain that I’ll be moving this blog to. I’m now somewhat regretting the domain name though. It was cheap, yes, but it’s not necessarily an information website; although you could say that a blog is information about the individual.

The stephsblog.info domain is currently - with any luck - becoming active at Blogger.com. It’ll be hosted free over there until and unless I decide that it’s worth a paid hosting account. If that falls through then perhaps I will use GoDaddy’s free blog offer.

So there’s that! It’s been quite an evening for Stepher’s and the interweb.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: domain names, GoDaddy, websites, blogs