So, I was listening to a This American Life on the way into the office this morning, and there was a discussion about having a scientist convincing a global warming skeptic that global warming was real. And the interesting thing, to me, was that the scientist made an argument by citing facts, measurements, trends, and scientific consensus, and it had absolutely no impact on the skeptic.

Which was, I thought, patently obvious.

The problem was that the skeptic had already discussed how or why they were skeptical, and the underlying reasoning was simply that there are “two sides to every story,” and the skepticism came from the inability to accurately assess the merit of the arguments that were being made.

But so the interesting thing to me was that the scientist utterly failed to have an impact because they weren’t able to assess the argument that needed to be made.  And holy cow, I’m guilty of this at times. But you can’t convince someone who doesn’t believe in facts with facts.

So what do you do? I’m not sure, honestly – because ultimately what you need to do is you need to teach someone how to think. If you ever get into an argument and someone says “there are two sides to every story,” you’ve already lost because saying that indicates that that person has no ability to give weight to an argument.

But I think the fundamental point is that you have to start with the fundamentals. You have to teach people how to judge how to tell good information from bad, and that anyone can have an opinion, but those opinions aren’t all worth the same. Which seems to be generally where Democratic politicians fail – you can’t argue policy or facts without teaching your opponents the fundamentals – and it’s a hell of a lot easier to teach someone to be willfully ignorant and believe whatever they want to believe. 😛

Yeah, that post went nowhere.

So… this is kind of a weird thing to write about here, and I’m not even really sure it’s my place to write anything about it at all. But it’s just… I can’t stop thinking about it, and I want to tell someone, because I have no idea how to deal with it. (and goddamn, it’s so selfish to even have that as a concern.)

A friend’s newborn son died today. And it’s a complex situation – not something that was sudden, or not even necessarily a real possibility from the start, which maybe made it one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen. The parents have been … I dunno how to put it, really – incomparably brave in the face of unbearable difficulty.

The difference in perspective between having a child of my own and not is extraordinary. Before being a parent, I think it’s easier to say, “This is the situation, here is what is realistic.” Now, it’s easier to understand how you would move heaven and Earth for even a moment with your child.

There is some bond, some …furious… connection that I feel towards my son that I simply couldn’t articulate to the pre-father me. There aren’t really words to describe it. To say that a moment when he puts his head on my chest makes my entire life worthwhile seems strange, an understatement so vast that it is a massive failure of language.

Their situation, it’s utterly unimaginable to me – I think like that bond between a parent and a child, there’s an inability to truly empathize because there’s nothing in my life that even comes within leagues of their experience – I have no way to understand it, other than to imagine pain equal in proportion to the love I feel for my son, and the thought is too terrible to bear.

It’s …disorienting. The simple fact is that on a day to day basis, one never has to actively remember that this kind of tragedy is real. And knowing that it is throws everything out of perspective. Except one thing – that I love my son, my family, with every fiber of my being, and that I remember how valuable the moments we share are, and how damn lucky I am to have them.

RIP, P.

Keep it simple:

1.) Exercise regularly, one full run of P90X before the end of the year.

2.) Get company to profitability

3.) Spend a bunch of time with the kiddo & do my best to help him learn as much as possible.

4.) Travel somewhere

Had a great couple days in Watsonville (of all places) with some friends & the family.

The last few weeks have been, literally, a triple-combo of illnesses. It looks like basically it went stomach flu -> regular cold -> regular flu, starting the Monday before Christmas and lasting until about midday yesterday to finally kick the last bits of the last illness. Gah. Insane.

Still, a quiet holidays with the three of us. Ei-Nyung got me one of the new Kindles, which is pretty sweet. It has a cover with an integrated light that’s really nice. Grabbed Tony Horton’s book Bring It, as well as Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Both good, but very, very different. 🙂

The little kiddo’s really walking around almost everywhere now. He still crawls after he stumbles, but in the last few days, he’s decided that walking is the better way to go, and he only crawls out of convenience. I think this is a conceptual switch for him, where previously, walking was a weird novelty without much practical use. Ha!

What a weirdo.

So… yeah, it’s been a crazy year. Not the kiddo’s first Thanksgiving, but the first one where he was alive for the whole year. Hopefully there’ll be a lot more of those.

Thing I’m thankful for the most? Ei-Nyung & the kiddo (and Mobius gets to come along for the ride). Couldn’t imagine a better family, a better wife, or a better son.

Work’s been great as well – obviously, any job has its ups and downs, and this one’s had its fair share, but overall, it’s the best job I’ve ever had, I love the things that we’re working on, and I think we’re making something really pretty revolutionary. Can’t ask for a lot more than that.

Overall, it’s been a pretty spectacular year. Let’s have a bunch more like it!

Happy first birthday, little fella.

Hard to believe it’s already been a year. Feels like yesterday and forever. I remember the first time I ever saw you. Your mom asked me to look over the curtain, to see how things were going, and my first reaction was a horrified, “NO!”

Heh. What can I say? I’d never make it as a surgeon.

But I looked. And I saw your first moments in this world, as the doctors held you. Covered in goop, you were. A little weird looking pink thing, with wisps of hair, looking like a little comic book drawing, as though someone had just drawn little lines for your eyes.

The first days were strange. I suppose they are for all parents. The books talk about “getting to know” your child, and that’s really what it was like – even though you slept most of the time, and only woke up to do your business(es), we’d watch you for hours. We’d look at your little hands, poke your little feet, and marvel every time you yawned or made a sound.

It was stressful – full of uncertainty & tiredness, sometimes even fear – but watching you over this year has been the best year of my life. Hearing you laugh, for the first time. Watching you watch us, curious. Giggling hysterically as you playfully tried to bite my nose.

The first time you let out a little shriek, scampered over to the edge of the bed, and pulled yourself up on my shirt, arms extended, asking me to pick you up… yes, I admit it, I cried. I bawled like… well, not like a little baby. I have no idea what any of these “like a baby” sayings are from. “Sleep like a baby” = what, wake up every 45 minutes screaming? Heh. I suppose in the end that was our fault, but we figured it all out eventually.

And now? Now you’re almost walking. You recognize a handful of words. You bang on the drums, you eat all kinds of stuff, you’re *funny*, which is still weird, to me. You’re growing every day. You try hard to do things, and when you get a goal in your little head, you work hard to achieve it. I hope that sticks with you, and that you never let that go.

Happy Birthday, little fella. I love you.

Had a nice afternoon/morning up in Napa – a friend of ours got us a gift certificate for a stay up there, and so we used it last night. It’s been a stressful handful of days, and so I’d pretty seriously considered not going, just because traveling, etc. was gonna be more trouble than it was worth.

Nope. Turns out to have been a good, laid-back time. We went to the Inn, had some random hors d’eouvres, then headed over to what was Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, and is now Gotts’ Roadside for dinner. I got the ahi poke tacos and a vanilla shake. The tacos were a touch too salty, but the shake was AWESOME. Ei-Nyung got a great korean pulled-pork sandwich and a raspberry smoothie (which was incredibly… smooth. I have no idea how they did that, but I suspected it might be replacing the sugar with glucose syrup or something), and some excellent sweet potato fries.

I realize it’s a burger joint, so next time, I’ll get the burger. But it was good anyway, and it was a really nice place to go with the kid. We sat outside in the sun, and he got to see a lot of people.

Headed back & spent the rest of the evening just hanging out.

In the morning, Ei-Nyung had taken care of the kiddo for a while, so when she handed him off, I went out to the breakfast area, made a waffle, and ate it with him. Got a little bit of coffee, and wandered around for a bit.

Hung out the rest of the morning, went back to breakfast with Ei-Nyung, then packed up and headed to Bouchon for lunch. At Bouchon, I got the tartine, which turned out to be a steak & blue cheese open-faced sandwich with fries. Best fries I’ve had maybe ever, but one thing it did confirm is that I’m just not a blue cheese guy.

Ei-Nyung got the tuna tartare (weird repetition here), which was quite good, a side order of beets (best beets I’ve ever had, but still tasted of dirt), and a French onion soup, which was delicious.

We then headed over to the bakery, where we grabbed an epi, some macarons, and a pot de creme. Walked around Yountville a bit, then headed home.

Was it as restful as I’d have liked? No, not by a longshot, but it was fun to get out and about with the kiddo. And now, time to sleep. 🙂

Went down to LA for K&N’s wedding on Sunday. J stayed with Ei-Nyung’s mom & little brother for the 24 hours we were gone, and they took great care of him.

It was great to see the two of those suckers get married. Took ’em long enough, but obviously, we couldn’t be happier for them. It was a great, really laid back and personal ceremony. It was a great time, and I just wanted to mark it so that if I go back & read this blog 10 years later, I’ll remember.

So, I was talking with my carpool on the ride home about the benefits of owning vs. renting – or rather, the lack thereof, and that in many ways, if I could go back to me-in-2001, even knowing that this house has been a relative bargain, I think I’d talk myself out of purchasing anything, and instead have just remained a renter.

But that said, there are periodically some upsides. Mobius, for one – we wouldn’t have (in good conscience, anyway) have been able to get a dog without having a sizable yard. We could have rented a home just as well, I suppose, but knowing we had this space made having Mobius a lot easier.

Second, I took a bath in the ofuro – it’d be a rare rental that has a deep Japanese-style bath. Yeah, it’s a small thing, but one of those moments where I realize that this isn’t just any house, it’s *our* house.

Most of the wacky things you can do to customize a house are just incredibly expensive, which makes the prospect of owning a home less interesting, because even though you *can* do all manner of stuff, we have neither the time nor the money to do the things we’d love to do – we just keep fixing things that are busted.

But then again, there are parts of the house that we had a personal hand in designing or building, and in the end, yeah – it’s a nice feeling. Worth the cost of ownership? Who can say, really?

Well… things have been busy. Lots of weddings! A&K’s wedding in SD, and P&C’s wedding in Grass Valley… in both cases, couldn’t be happier for the bride & groom, and got to see friends I don’t normally get to see, but whose company I really enjoy. So that’s been awesome. And so there’s a month until K&N’s wedding, and the brief respite would be greatly appreciated, as I could use a weekend of pretty much nothing… but it’s not to be.

Work’s got a lot coming up. In the next week, we’re likely to launch on another platform (Android!), and start an open beta test of our newest game. If you’re interested in checking it out, just drop me an e-mail. So things have been hectic, but largely positive on that front. I love it when a team works well, and though I find that I’m a pretty inept manager, we’ve got a really good group of people. Seeing them firing on all cylinders is a joy to behold. 🙂

I have no idea where the little guy picked up the chicken face. He did it pretty regularly for a few days, then has mostly stopped. What a funny little weirdo. He’s getting old, already! More than eight months have passed since he popped out, and wow – it’s hard to imagine life without him. He’s getting bigger, he sits up on his own, he tries to crawl about (though while he’s using his legs more or less correctly, he’s trying to support his upper body on his face, which isn’t working out as well), and he’s been eating a wide variety of foods.

He’s got something like seven, maybe eight teeth poking through his gums already! Yeesh. He’s also (finally, I think) responding regularly to his name. For a long time, even to him, we just called him “bebeh”, so I think he might not have glommed on to the fact that he has a name as early as we might have hoped. Ah, well. That’ll work out in the end.

One thing that’s also really, really nice, and this may be TMI for peeps without kids, but at least while at home, he hasn’t pooped in a diaper in weeks! He goes into the toilet when we give him the opportunity, and as a result, I haven’t changed a poop-filled diaper in … man, maybe close to a month. Supposedly, this may change for the worse at some point, but for now, AWESOME.

Seth’s here for the summer, as he’s been for the last few years. It’s really nice having him around, actually. He’s useful, entertaining, and we’ve put him to work for us. Literally. It’s great.

So, yeah – that’s more or less how things are going. Been trying to keep doing p90X when I can, but things have been busy/stressful enough that it’s been hard to keep up with it regularly. Ei-Nyung’s supposedly going to hop on the bandwagon when her work tapers off a bit, so we’ll make a solid push then to not skip anything.

*whew*. Good times.

Oh, yeah – anyone remember this?