Garglefish

I started a new job about a month ago at a great company called StarrTech Interactive, which is part of a bigger group of companies called the Anthology Group, a marketing firm.  StarrTech does the web side of things – the flash banners, the websites, the social media, etc.  I got hired on to be the Level 1 Tech Support, but after working there for a very short time, I have really become a programmer to a certain extent.

The best thing about working at StarrTech is the people.  That’s what Wenona, my manager, told me during the interviews.  And she was right.  Not only are they nice, but they all strive to produce excellent websites, effective marketing schemes, and fun, creative flash games and ads.  The guys play foosball during lunch and surf before and after work (when the surf is up).  The ladies are, well, nice.  And the management is full of energy and excitement for the future of StarrTech.

Programming for a big company such as StarrTech has made me a little wary of returning to school in the fall.  Soon I’ll have to get back to the grind, working 3 days a week, teaching and taking classes the other two days.  It will be interesting trying to fit everything in, but I will do my best.  After I graduate with my masters, I’ll be able to work for a while longer if I like.  I haven’t been feeling the desire to go get my doctorate so much lately, now that I don’t really want to be a professor.  I think it would be great if I could start of some papers or research during the summer so that I don’t have to do so much during the semester, but it is turning out to be more difficult that I had anticipated to study and do research after work.  Oh well…

Devilbird

Last week my family came to Hawaii to visit my wife and me (or at least that’s what we like to think).  It was a great time.  What made it even more memorable, however, was the camera that we bought just before they came, a tool which enabled us to encapture each and every moment for later enjoyment and life-long memories and all that jazz.  Among the many pictures my wife and I were able to take (we easily filled a 4GB SD card in about 7 days), there are some which really stand out, like the pigeon here with devil eyes.  Here are some more fun pictures from the trip:

The word scholarship has a couple of uses, and the one I’m going to use right now is not the one that involves money.  It’s just the plain old studying, theorizing, writing, thinking, etc. kind of scholarship.  Lately I’ve been thinking intensely and deeply about what I want to do with the next few years of my life.  I am almost 100% sure that I want to finish my master’s degree here at the University of Hawai’i, but then what?  And for that matter, what should I study and research while I’m here getting my degree?

As for the first question, I am considering many options – some include leaving paradise for a more suitable school for my interests (which have been in the direction of computational linguistics lately) and others include getting a job somewhere or just staying it out here.  The second question has kind of been getting to me lately, though – itching at my thighs.  I don’t know what in the world I should research.  I talked to my professor last semester about re-doing some research that I had done on a phenomenon in Korean called the sai-sios, but every time I think of sticking instruments in people’s mouths and then taking pictures to see how they pronounce certain sounds, I feel somewhat disgusted and discouraged.  The only reason I veered away from being a dentist was the thought of looking at people’s plaque and gums and saliva and such all day every day.  I may now be doing a dentist’s job, but as a linguist.

The good side of the Korean stuff, however, is that I am sure I will get a lot of support from the professors here.  Many of them are interested in Korean, and some are interested in the palatography (taking pictures of the inside of the mouth after putting some kind of potable black ink on the subject’s tongue, all in order to determine where the tongue goes during the articulation of the sound).  The results, I am sure, would also be interesting.  But is this what I want to do with my life?  Find interesting tidbits about certain languages?

The fact of the matter is that my interest in the sai-sios comes from my big-headedness.  I was angry about certain spelling conventions and certain claims about Korean pronunciation because I thought that they were wrong and that I was right.  I was probably wrong, though, so doing any such experiments will probably only confirm their decisions and make me seem a fool.  Or maybe not.  There’s no real way of knowing without actually doing the experiments.

I guess there is more to it than that.  If I do find that my ideas are correct, then my research will lead other researchers and research to a better understanding of certain morphological and phonological processes in Korean, and how the processes work in people’s minds.  It may also help with other ‘useful’ things, such as speech technology and machine translation.  Heck, it might even be used in Korean language teaching, for all I know.

Well, maybe it isn’t such a bad research idea after all.  I’ll have to think about it some more…

I just finished chapter 12 of 1^st Nephi.  I think it is so amazing that Nephi could go to the Lord with a simple desire, believing that he would receive, and then get his desire fulfilled, especially when his desire was such a rare one.  I don’t know if people very often go to the Lord in prayer asking to see the visions that the Prophet sees in our day, but I think that we should.  Even if we are not guided by the Spirit as Nephi was, I’m sure we could gain a vision of what the Prophet sees and what he knows is right for us.  In fact, I think that when we feel the Spirit when we listen to the Prophet’s words, we are in a sense experiencing that same vision that he sees.

I heard that a seminary teacher somewhere once taught that we should seek to see the vision that Nephi saw, and that we could see that vision.  I don’t know if he added any conditions, like if we were worthy or if we desired it enough or if we prayed enough, but I don’t think it matters.  I’m sure the Lord could show us that same vision, and seeing that vision could be important for some people for some reasons that I am unaware of, but for most people, I think there are more relevant visions that should be sought after for our day.  Visions of our personal future, for example, would be quite enlightening, as would visions of the coming of the Lord in his Day.  Visions of creative ways to progress His work, inspiration about helping humanity, serving the community – these are worthwhile visions.  I once wanted badly to see Nephi’s vision, and I still would not mind, but I think that I will now seek out visions more relevant to my time and to my life.

As for visions that I wish to see, I would say that above all I would like be able to envision the possibilities that lie ahead, be inspired on how I should live my life and where I should go with my career, be given insight into gaining charity for all men.  These are the things that I desire now, and I will ask the Lord for such.

The Lord is good to us.  He knows our needs and our desires.  It is our responsibility, now, to seek out His will and do our best to act in accordance.

I’ve been writing in my blog now for about five days straight.  I kind of skipped a day in the middle, but I made up for it.  It’s now midnight where I am, so I’m slightly late for this post as well, but I’m still writing it during my waking day, so I’m going to count it..

I decided to change my commitment slightly.  I’m still going to be writing posts every day, but I think I’m going to add some more variety and write posts to my other sites as well.  I signed up for Google’s AdSense program, just for kicks, last night, but it has motivated me to try to get my readership up.  I don’t want to contaminate this blog with ads, however, so I put the ads on my Garglefish 2 blog, which is where I write about more technical stuff (like how to put JavaScript into Drupal themes, etc.).  I have actually only written one blog so far in my other blog, but I intend to write more.  In fact, the blog-craze has really set in with me, and I am thinking about buying a new domain.  I won’t write about it here, for security’s sake (”Who’s going to even look at this post?” you say, and I say, “No one, but anyway…”), but it’s going to be awesome.  I’m almost 100% sure it won’t make any money.  You probably have to get tons of visitors to make a dollar, let alone $100, which is the minimum required before Google will pay you anything.  If I did get $100 a year, though, then than would pay for 10 domain names, which isn’t bad at all.

So, my formal commitment is now to write a blog a day, but it doesn’t matter which blog I write it on.  I’m going to continue to write in this one often, because it serves as a kind of journal for me, and I don’t keep one separately…

So, even though my post was almost completely about blogs and writing blogs, it still counts, so I’m going to go to bed.

Good night.  Sogni d’oro. 안녕히 주무세요~