Author: James

This morning during my leisurely drive to work, I heard them utter on the radio about a new technology regarding sensing anxious support calls and automatically forwarding them to the supervisor.  Well, this reminded me of the days when I slaved away as a phone operator for National Dispatch Center back in the college days in San Diego.

It was a neat experience because all the cast of the show 90210 back then were on alphanumeric pagers, and so were many basketball players.  All the operators knew that Michael Jordan’s alias was “Chris Blackman”.  One time I actually received a call for Chris Blackman, and the caller left the message “Scottie won’t be at the camp Monday.  Call xxx-xxxx.”.  The only Scottie I knew on the Bulls was Scottie Pippen, but to this day I cannot verify the authenticity of this mystery character.  His impression of me wasn’t the best, as he kept calling me “Ma’am”, perhaps because my voice didn’t matured enough back then.  After that call I lowered my voice to a much lower register to circumvent these type of misunderstandings.

I wasn’t exactly the model operator either.  One time when I received a call when someone nicely asked me to send the rhyming message “Where the **** is my truck?”  I innocently sent it and immediately got a friendly visit from my supervisor, who wasn’t exactly thrilled about… the word being on the banned list.  How was I supposed to know?  Did the supervisor expect me to go through the training manual the size of the yellow pages?!

But the most interesting message I’ve received was when this lady left the message, “Left my underwear under your bed.  Get it before your wife comes home!”

I was at Bellevue Square the other day when I saw:

Borders, closing permanently on June 12th?!  Putting on my Sherlock cap, I initiated an investigation on this matter by questioning one of the prime suspects, the cashier.  After my extensive attempt at prying the cause of this operational shutdown, which lasted 3 seconds, she relented and disclosed the reason: “The rent is too high.”

What’s wrong with Bellevue Square?  We’ve already witnessed one of the greatest fiasco in Mall history when Disney decided to close their doors, but apparently that wasn’t enough.  At this rate, the mall will become the Rodeo Drive of Seattle with expensive brands and unaffordable merchandice!

To look on the bright side, I suppose it will put a damper to Karen’s compulsive, extravagant Bellevue Square shopping habits.  😆

Tonight we watched the Miss Universe pagent, skipping insignificant portions with fast forward and 30-second skip, courtesy of Tivo.  Now typically the show is not particularly exciting, but each of us picked a contestant to root for starting with the final 15.   Jeffrey chose Greece, Grace chose Dominican Republic, Carol chose Venezuela, Karen chose Israel, David chose Peru, Freddy (David’s brother) chose Puerto Rico.  Unfortunately, none of us won as Canada took the crown.  The closest was Freddy’s runner up Puerto Rico.  His sophisticated hieuristic for making choices was … choosing the worst candidate, and while the rest of us dropped like flies, he made it as far as the runner up to Miss Universe!  Go figure.

While watching, we noticing celebrity resemblances.  I noticed that Grace, an Alias addict, may have subconsciously chosen Dominican Republic due to her close resemblance to Jennifer Garner.  Let’s put up pictures for comparison:

Miss Dominican Republic

Jennifer Garner

Carol made some associations herself.  She thought that my Mexico looked like Mariah Carey:

Miss Mexico

Mariah Carey

And that Miss South Africa looked like Celine Dion:

Miss South Africa

Celine Dion

Do you see the resemblance here?  I believe mine is the closest thank you very much. 😀

Not exactly world shattering news, however.  Any bum could have arrived at the same conclusion while snoring in their sleep.  I must say, though, that unlike The Apprentice where they had boring fillers with zero substance, the Idol finale drew my attention, for the most part.  Except for the rehash of the audition tapes, I enjoyed watching finalists such as Jessica Sierra come back. Vonzell sang beautifully, Bo and Carrie’s duet was smooth, and Simon’s segment was hilarious, even if partially serving as a therapeutic exercise for Paula’s scandal.

What’s next?  So You Think You Can Dance?  Will need to keep an eye on that one.

I’ve always had a fear e-bay.  What about the scams?  What if you bought a telescope only to receive a magnifying glass?  I’ve seen an e-bay entry where they sold an empty XBox Box for over a hundred!  You can spend the entire week tracking an item only to find out that you didn’t get the item because someone outbid you in the last few seconds.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed more and more acquaintances who frequently conduct transactions on ebay.  A coworker of mine bid on a gas pump used in a movie for over $1000.  I thought his mind went cuckoo, but he justified it with the fact that he can always recoup the cost by resell it on ebay.  I also know that olivetheotherreindeer regularly makes bead accessories and sells them on ebay, and Tim bought some nice Mariners tickets for much cheaper than the face value.

I decided to give ebay a try.

I got two Ichiro bobbleheads, so I listed one on e-bay.  So far so good.  I have an old shaver that I love but could not find the replacement blade and foil locally anywhere any more.  I found one on ebay.  They normally run $18-$25 in online stores, but I got one for $6.99.  We’ll see if it is delivered as promised.

If it all works, I may just have sweep through my garage to see if I can find some junk to sell.  As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!  🙂

Karen and I finished our own Star Wars trilogy marathon, starting from Thursday until today, one episode a day.  It wasn’t until today that I noticed something disturbing in the Return of the Jedi DVD.  This is the original scene I remember:

This is what I saw instead:

What the heck?  Since when did Hayden Christensen get in there, and with the evil eyes too!  Come on!  Stop trying to tweak things.  What’s with Anakin staying forever young next to the Old-Bi Wan?   And to top it off, the original ending music was replaced by another weak ending music. 

In watching this marathon, I noticed there are more holes between the prequels and sequels than my stinking socks!  For one, in the sequels, Yoda seemed to have trained Obi-Wan.  In the prequel, it was Qui-Gon.  In the sequels, it appears that Obi-Wan was also pretty old when trained, but in the prequel, even the baby Anakin was too old.  In the sequels, the emperor refers to the light saber as a Jedi weapon, but he himself used it as a Sith.  Also, in the scene when Luke asked Leia about her mother, they were both there and were both infants!  How could she have remembered anything?  Baby Force?

After watching everything, I must decidedly say that sequels kick the prequels’ butts.  I missed the great acting of Harrison Ford as the smarty pants with witty remarks.  By contrast, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are as stiff as the bolts on the tires of my CR-V!  C-3PO beats Jar Jar the clown any day.  Oh, and there’s something about CGI that just subconsciously doesn’t seem as realistic as muppets.  The old Yoda, for example, just seemed more real even if it’s some little dude holding a Yoda head.

Still, Episode III does tie the prequels with the sequels nicely.

So after attending Shakina and seeing the kneeling prayer warriors, it brought me back to the question of the charismatics versus the conservatives.  Do we embrace the spiritual matters, or do we focus on faith alone?  Should we search our feelings, or do the feelings lead to the Dark Side?

During my high school years, one of the worship leaders at my church, Daniel, was “filled with the spirit” at a conference and started busting out in tongues.  He said he was overflowing with joy that he started crying, and this coming from a geeky computer major.  My first experience with such an event was when we had a fellowship night where some people from another fellowship came over for a “spiritual filling” night. Despite those people layed their holy hands and chanted some mombo jumbo in Greek (as if God spoke Greek better than English), I did not speak in tongues that night, but neither did Daniel.  So much for that.  I have been researching this topic since, but let’s analyze the pros and cons I’ve observed so far.

On one hand, if you accept charismatics, then you believe that the gifts still exist.  That means people still speak in tongues, have gift of healing, have word of knowledge, cast out demons, and prophesy.  As a result, people in charismatic churches tend to seek God more because God is more real.  They pray to God more often, humble at the feet of God, and are more sensitive to spiritual matters such as spiritual attacks.  They follow God with their hearts.  Admirable.

On the other hand, if the very Spirit that inspired the apostles still prophesy through people today, then it’s like a continuation of the Bible.  If anything it’s even more relevant than the Bible because it’s the Spirit Daily with today’s date, instead of back issues from thousands of years ago!  This is where heresy starts in many charismatics churches.  How can you tell between the true believer and the con artist?  Once they learn the lingo and put on the “Praise The Lord” tag, it’s hard to separate the sheep from the goats.

What I see in the conservative church is the opposite.  It’s all brains and not much heart.  Instead of coming to seek God for worship services, the sermon is the service.  Some people felt that if the sermons are dull, then they’re not being fed and they need to look for a different church!  Many people who serve also do it out of duty.  I’ve seen email sent with “It’s your Christian duty to…”  Many people who serve tend to use their own strengths rather than God’s, as sometimes they get so busy they have no time to pray!  And what about the silly little game of putting your thumb up for prayer before a meal?  “Oh no I really put up my thumb before yours!!  You just didn’t see it!  Okay okay, fine…  I’ll pray”.  It’s almost like a punishment!  Prayer is definitely not the same in the conservative church.

Before you still yelling at me saying “I don’t do that!”, I want to add a disclaimer that these are just generalizations and not everyone does everything listed above.  I attend a conservative church and am guilty for some of the items I’ve listed out, but I’m open to either side.

One thing’s for sure, if the Spirit of God is actively working today, I want to be part of it.

That’s the most I can say about last night’s Apprentice Finale.  I’m glad they didn’t ask Regis Philbin to turn it into another talk show, but it was 30 minutes filler and 29 minutes commercial.  The only thing deserving our attention was the part where Trump said “You’re Hired!”, which lasted the whole 2 seconds.  There’s no twist, no build-up, nothing.  I thought Trump would blindside us by hiring Tana, but nope!  Talk about a poor excuse for an extra episode!

Then again, the whole thing is a sham anyway, as the Apprentice really does engage more with the media than doing real work.  Trump has been quoted in Newsweek as having said, “It’s a little bit too much to ask someone to be the president of a $800 million building when they haven’t had that kind of experience”.

So does it really matter who gets hired?  Trump should have hired them both.  At least that’ll give the audience something to talk about.