peterskim blog

…was from the Wall Street Journal. They wrote a piece on how all four conference championship contenders this year utilizes a two running back system. That was extremely fascinating and something that no other major sports news source (that I know of) picked up on.

Anyways, GO BEARS!

WordPress.com has some decent site analytics that help me see how people come to my website. Some recent search terms have been:

• anne curry fan club – This is a result of my post entitled “Brian Williams is a stiff” In case you wanted an update, I still dislike Brian Williams. When I get a chance to watch evening news, I usually watch CBS or ABC now because I can’t stand Brian.
• various search phrases including the words “hand cream” – This is a result of my post entitled “Best Hand Cream”. I hope it was useful to people. If you do a google search for “best hand cream”, I come up on the 2nd page of results. Remember, Aveeno rocks, L’Occitane is overrated.
• various search phrases including the words “MBTA” or “MBTA.com” – This is a result of my post entitled “New MBTA.com website”. Update: I dig the new website. I’m still waiting for the ability to register CharlieCards so that if I lose mine, I don’t lose the stored value that was on the card.

When I went home for the holidays, I experienced HDTV for the first time. My dad has a plasma screen; it looks amazing with an HDTV feed. One thing I was disappointed with is how DVDs look. This is not a result of the TV itself; well actually it is because its high resolution capabilities shows off the relatively low-resolution of DVDs. Even with a purely digital computer animated film like Cars, you can see pixelation on the plasma screen.

HD DVD and Blu-ray players are starting to come out, which will fully take advantage of the plasma screen’s high resolution. But then I’ll have to repurchase my whole movie collection in HD DVD or Blu-ray format. :(

I think I’ll probably buy an HD-DVD player when they come down in price. My belief is that HD-DVD will win out over Blu-ray because Sony has historically been unsuccessful with their efforts to promote their preferred standard.

There’s a good NYTimes article about how Asian-Americans are becoming the majority on university campuses as race-based admissions are being struck down by the courts and legislation.

Little Asia on the Hill

No, ESPN is not just about sports. Jemele Hill, a columnist for ESPN.com, speaks out against the glorification of violence in the African-American community.

A disturbing, violent trend

I’m glad she wrote this column because it will get a lot more exposure to your “average Joe” than a New York Times op-ed piece would.

I just got Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right…But Three Do by Relient K. I like the music, but one of their songs called College Kids disturbs me.

I recognize a lot of these types of songs aren’t meant to be super serious but I’m concerned about the message this song sends. Here are some choice lyrics from College Kids:

Someone please save us, us college kids
What my parents told me is what i did
They said go to school and be a college kid
But in the end i questioned why i did

Oh no, not for me, not for me
Call it torture, call it university
No, arts and crafts is all i need
I’ll take caligraphy and then i’ll make a fake degree

Its time to call my father
Cause its his alma mater
Good grades arent what they seem
I think he knows the dean
Its time to call my father
Cause its his alma mater
He said hes proud of me
But college always was his dream
And i would always say its not for me

Do what will make you happy
Do what you feel is right
Only but one thing matters
Learn how to live your life
Do what will make God happy
Do what you feel is right
Only but one thing matters
Learn how to live your life

Why does this seemingly harmless song bother me? No, college may not be for everyone. But the truth is that in the large majority of cases, college is a requirement for allowing people to do what will “make you happy”, as Relient K urges people to do. If you want to have more freedom to do what you want, to do what will make you happy, you need to go to college. When you don’t go to college (or don’t go to as good of a college than you could have), you have less doors open to you. It also bothers me because punk kids slack off in college, then later in life, start complaining about how the government doesn’t do enough to provide for them. Well, maybe you should have thought of that back when you had a chance to make something of yourself and not be dependent on other people. It’s not government’s responsibility to make up for your bad choices.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to go to college just so they can work for “the man”. Regardless of what career path you want to choose, college will help, not hurt, your chances of being happy in your endeavors.

The USPS and Royal Mail jointly issued a set of stamps of children’s book characters from Curious George, Where the Wild Things Are, and more. I was hoping to get some at some point but not looking too seriously because I figured they would be available for a while. But it seems like they’re no longer available! :(

Oh well. Next time, I will buy them asap from usps.com.

I will get the Gee’s Bend quilt stamps for now. Marvel Comics stamps are coming out this year. (I’m not a huge fan of comic books though.) DC Comics stamps came out last year.

It’s amazing that even though the MBTA heavily advertised an increase in fares, people were still shocked to discover that fares increased yesterday.

Many people were also unfamiliar with the new CharlieCard system and how paying for fares using CharlieTickets and cash is higher than using the CharlieCard.

Here are the full details for the new fare structure:

Fares & Passes (effective January 2007)

I’ve removed a lot of my more controversial posts. Because of a combination of my lack of ability to express myself properly and other people’s inability to understand what I’m trying to say, I’m afraid that readers of my blog will get a wrong impression of who I am and what I believe.

Yes, I know I’ve done this before and I reverted back but I’m going to take another shot at sticking to writing about mundane details of my life.

My hands get REALLY dry in the wintertime and start peeling, so I’ve been on a search for a good solution for the past few years. My mom used to make me put Vaseline on my hands, then cover them with socks before I went to sleep. I don’t think that worked that well.

Here are some of the hand creams I’ve tried:

L’Occitane
Neutrogena
CVS
Aveeno
Eucerin
CO Bigelow

and the winner is… Aveeno!

L’Occitane is the most expensive and probably the one most people think is the best. But for me, it wears off really quickly and smells kinda funny. Aveeno’s hand cream keeps my hands moisturized for a long time, while not smelling badly.

I haven’t tried Kiehl’s yet though but for now, I’m happy with Aveeno.