The Republic of Blessing 乔思华

For the last 9 months, I've been renting out my loft to an Indonesian friend. He has since introduced me to the wonderful, expanded world of piracy. If there is a free bootleg copy of any movie or mp3 available on the internet, he will find it. Just this week, he showed me a website that allows you to essentially rip youtube videos into mp3s or other files. Pretty clever



In response, I have introduced him to the world of frozen pizza.

Well, it's been 6 months since I changed jobs and I must say it's been very cool to see how God has provided. Last summer I completed my 6th year working at a local hospital but was unfortunately put on notice that they were planning to dissolve my entire department, of which I was the manager. This was a bit stunning since I had been thoroughly engrossed in a project that the hospital was planning to use to expand our department. But some things happened with one of our clients which caused the hospital to reconsider. To their credit, they treated it as a lay-off, which made my staff and I eligible for unemployment, and they also gave us a 3 month grace period to find other work within the organization or outside.

I was actually hoping to stay within the organization, but that did not work out so I was very fortunate to find a very similar job with a very large company (now fortune 16) whose local office is about a mile from my house. This job so far has been alot less stress and it's allowed me to learn more things from the for-profit sector. It was a slight step down to start but there should be a promotion opportunity shortly. Now, instead of the 60 hours or so I was putting into the huge project at the hospital, I work 7-3:30 everyday and I ride my bike to work when the weather is nice. Plus, I went from having to dress business professional (shirt & tie everyday) to extremely casual (jeans, tshirts, etc). How great is that! He still moves in mysterious ways.

Has anyone tried to bake with splenda? I've tried to make pumpkin and banana bread a few times now and I find that it never rises or bakes correctly. It actually doesn't taste all that bad. It's just drier and smaller.

One of the most irrelevant nights of the year has to be Oscar night. I actually watched it for the first time in several years on Sunday. Should I really stay up to listen to the likes of Melissa Etheridge and Leonardo DiCaprio sing the praises of Al Gore?

What a bore. And for the record, I'll start saving energy as soon as they start buying hybrids and turning the thermostat down to 60 degrees. I'm definitely concerned about the environment, but their doomsday global warming message does seem like a measly attempt to tell the poor and middle class how to live, rather than themselves.

Looks like I'm starting over from scratch again on Truetech...using a different skin too. That's what happens when you have to reinstall XP on your machine and you don't properly back up your posts. Oh well, it feels good. Today is a new day....a cold day, but a new day. Below is a picture I found from this past Christmas. I had a party at my house where I was the only white guy; all the others were Chinese and/or Indonesian. We had a cooking competition and Bible study. I forget why Denis and Farid are paying homage to me in this pic...



Brad, I love what you can do to images now with Tangelo. Never noticed the scaling and brightness capabilities before...