Irv’s Journal

Guess it’s been a while since I’ve done a straight “weekend update.”

Friday:  Got up a bit early, considering it was my day off.  For that, I’ll say THANKS to the guy who felt the need to bump Linkin Park in the car at 7:15 while waiting for the traffic light.

Sometime or other, I logged onto WoW.  Messed around for a while and chatted with Craig, who, believe it or not, was at WORK.

Anyway, it was the usual Friday off errand day for me, and then I headed over to Craig’s.  There we chitchatted a while, logged on and off of WoW, and played some stupid cheating Mario Party 8.  (We were WELL ahead with about 5 turns to go, when suddenly the computer decided to cheat it’s way back on top.)

Esther managed to catch an early flight back from her business trip, so we waited for her and then picked up some Shakas for dinner.  Yum.  After considering some options such as shopping, or strolling Old Town, we decided we were relatively tired, so we headed back to Craig’s for some more MP8 while Esther took a post-dinner nap.

Saturday:  Esther and I were feeling a bit ambitious, so we decided to head out and start our wedding registry adventure.

Picked my mom up and took her to Cho Dang for her first taste of Korean tofu, then called it an early night.

Sunday:  Lunch at CPK ASAP at South Coast.  Continued our registry adventure, then headed over to Mark and Christina’s to visit their nearly two month old, Keira.

Somehow, the weekend was already over…

Originally Posted by goodmagazine.com
Math Wonder
Danica McKellar Is Counting on Girls to Love Numbers
Words By Corey BinnsWhen a classmate in her freshman math class at UCLA tapped Danica McKellar on the shoulder and asked, “Aren’t you the girl who …” she expected him to quiz her about her role as Winnie Cooper on the iconic television show The Wonder Years. Instead he continued, “… got the best score on the exam?” For the first time, McKellar felt recognized as something other than a child actress.

Even though the show’s producers needed to hire an advanced calculus tutor to keep up with the child star’s aptitude, she had never considered becoming a mathematician. Social conditioning, says 32-year-old McKellar, made her believe girls didn’t have a place in the math world. “Who did I think math was for, if it wasn’t for me?”

McKellar headed to college intending to study writing and directing, but ended up putting her numerical skills to use instead, earning a math degree summa cum laude and co-authoring a research paper that solved a statistical mechanics problem involving magnetism in two dimensions—a solution now known as the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem.

From her math classes, McKellar learned that solving probabilities wasn’t going to solve the biggest math problem in the United States: “Girls fear math,” she says. Although girls and boys in fourth and eighth grades have similar math and science proficiency scores, a national survey recently found that girls are less likely than boys to agree with the statements “I like mathematics” and “I like science.” Teachers often unknowingly foster this preference, which, McKellar claims, isn’t helped by the feeling among young girls that they need to act ditzy in order to get boys to like them. The negative attitudes girls hold for math translate into career choices later on in life: Four times as many men as women hold full-time university faculty positions in mathematics, science, and engineering. And as McKellar sat in a sea of male classmates in her advanced classes she realized she was living the direct repercussions of these early gender inequalities.

McKellar plans to change these statistics by putting some of her other skills to work. “Math doesn’t have good Page Ranking. I’m going to do my best to do great PR for math,” she says. As a spokesman for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, she testified to a Congressional subcommittee in 2000 about the country’s need to better prepare math teachers and draw more young girls toward math, especially at the age when they tend to start avoiding the subject. “Not only is middle school a time in life when girls are dealing with so much emotionally, it’s also when math gets harder.”

Problem Solved! Part of the proof of the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem.

To help girls struggling with the complexity that comes with seventh-grade math, McKellar has penned Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, which hits shelves this August. The book hones in on middle school’s trickiest points-––like fractions, ratios, and percentages—and presents them in a style that’s appropriate for the cool kids’ lunch table. Figure out your “type” in boys and you’ll understand greatest common factors. All of those iced lattes celebrities drink make multiplying fractions tasty. Plus, savvy shopping requires killer decimal skills.

As McKellar fields math questions from kids on her personal website she sees how the hard work and persistence required by math can empower girls. The subject has a reputation for being tough, but coming up with the right numbers can give girls an important boost of courage.

Holy smokes, who knew when watching Wonder Years that she was really smart in real life?

Esther’s younger sister Sarah was the victim of a peeper while she was using the restroom at this restaurant.

I’m a victim of a GROSS PEEPING TOM!!!
To: Brodard Owner and Manager
Brodard Restaurant:
9892 Westminster Avenue / Garden Grove / California 92844
Telephone 714.530.1744
e-mail: manager@brodard.net

Re: Peeping Tom Incident in your bathroom
June 17th, 2007 @ 7:15 pm

Dear Sir or Madame,

I would like to make a formal complaint with your restaurant about your lack of security and for not providing sufficient safety to the people who use the restroom at your restaurant. Tonight, I went into your restaurant around 7:15 pm with my boyfriend Arnold (we were Arnold, party of 2 on your waiting list). I went to use the facilities by myself, before we ordered.

As I walked outside the main restaurant to the hallway restroom, I noticed two Hispanic men outside the restrooms speaking in Spanish. One was wearing a blue apron of your restaurant, one was wearing a green T-shirt. They saw me walk into the restroom alone. The door to the men’s and women’s restrooms were both propped open to the hallway. I purposely went into the 2nd stall from the sink, since I was weary of the two men standing outside. As I was in mid-stream, I heard a funny noise coming from the 1st stall closest to the sink. I had not heard anybody walk into the restroom, so I was curious to see what made that noise. I looked under my stall (to the right) to investigate further and found a MAN’S FACE LEERING AT ME, watching me pee. We made eye contact and I started verbalizing how disgusting the situation was. Then I started screaming my head off and continued to scream as I finished the facilities. As I exited the facilities, the two men who had been standing outside prior to me entering, had miraculously disappeared.

I ran inside the restaurant and yelled for my boyfriend. Half the restaurant patrons (those on the side closest to the bathroom) heard me scream, ‘ARNOLD, THERE WAS A PEEPING TOM IN THE BATHROOM WATCHING ME PEE!’ We informed our waiter, who made a futile effort to contact the security guard. We ran outside the restroom hallway to the side exit and found 4 men standing around, 3 of whom were your restaurant workers in blue aprons, and 1 in the green T-shirt. I am almost 100% sure that the man in the green T-shirt was the man who was the peeping Tom in this incident. With our waiter, we confronted these men who played dumb and pretended to not speak any English. We kept on questioning them for 5 minutes or so, in broken Spanish and English. I pointed out the culprit to the waiter and my boyfriend, but he kept on denying having done anything wrong.

I would like you to know that I am making a formal complaint with the Police Department of Garden Grove, and the Better Business Bureau of Orange County. These type of incidents are preventable and cause unnecessary harm and danger to the victims.

#1) Your bathrooms should NOT be open and exposed to the public! As it currently stands men can easily walk into the ladies’ room undetected and vice versa. You should provide access to the restroom within the perimeters of your supervision or provide supervision to the restroom facilities, at all times when the restaurant is open.

#2) You should do a more thorough background check of your restaurant employees, such as the legal right to work in the U.S.A, felony/misdemeanor records, and see if they are a registered sex offender in California. ( http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/homepage.aspx?lang=ENGLISH)

Because of tonight’s incident, I will no longer be a patron at your restaurant. I will be informing my friends, church, and family members to stay away from your restaurant until better conditions are provided.

Sarah

I wanted to tell everybody to BE CAREFUL when using public restrooms in general.
I’M JUST SOO ANGRY AND SOO DISGUSTED THAT SUCH A THING LIKE THIS COULD HAPPEN!
so warning to my beloved girlfriends, BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!
dont’ think that just because we live in America, that we’re safe from perverts and malicious people!!!
now always try to go in pairs if possible to the restroom!!!
i feel soo violated and disgusted!!

All I can say is GROSS. I’m not sure what can be done against the restaurant, since apparently those restrooms are in the strip mall and not the actual restaurant, but the guy was one of the employees! Blech.

Did some wedding stuff, which will be posted in the wedding blog, and then…

Amie, Andy, and Craig missed out on Esther’s recent birthday bowling outing, so we scheduled this past Saturday night for some King’s Fish House in Laguna.  Craig and Darren had made some prior carpool arrangements, so he came to pick us all up for the trek to south OC.  Those of you who travel on the I-5 as of late will know that traffic has been worse ever since they started the expansion project.

At the restaurant, we all splurged and ordered Maine Lobster (except for Darren who ordered a surf & turf, and Andy who ordered Alaskan halibut).  Well, Esther had actually ordered king crab legs, but somehow her order got screwed up and she ended up with the lobster.  Unfortunately we didn’t really pay attention, so we were stuck with WHOLE lobsters that we had to work on.

Luckily, the lobsters were yummy.  The only problems i had were with the very ends of the claw meat, and the gross liver part.  Actually the gross slimy black liver that Esther’s lobster had.  YUCK.

After loading up on food, sides, and dessert, we were all near food coma, so we decided to split off and head home.  UNFORTUNATELY, caltrans had decided to do construction on the I-5 on Saturday night, at the Irvine Spectrum, on Father’s Day weekend.  Brilliant.

We ended up taking the long way home, which didn’t bother any of the passengers.  133-241-91-57-60.  LOL

Caught this movie the day after Pirates.

The good ol’ cast is back, minus Julia Roberts.  Newbie is Al Pacino.

Funny and pace was good.  Much better than Ocean’s 12.

Cool easter egg – The charity mentioned at the end of the film is real.  Pretty neat that they were chosen for mention (or a really big coincidence), but apparently they were mentioned without any prior notice.

Recommended.

As expected, this movie starts off exactly where Pirates 2 left off.  I think part of this is because they filmed these two together and cut them up afterward.  Definitely recommend watching part two before this one.

Overall enjoyable movie.  Nothing really bugged me.  There were some pretty funny scenes, and it was mostly action packed.  I think they could have shortened it a bit, but it didn’t really feel as long as it was – I guess that’s a good sign.

There’s a short scene at the end of the credits… I won’t say it was worth staying for, but you might be able to find a clip online or something?

Recommended.

Four day weekends never feel long enough, you know?  Luckily before you know it, it’s already Friday again!

What have we been doing?  Well, Memorial Day weekend turned out to be quite busy.

Friday: Went to Lexus National Headquarters over in Torrance.  Took a tour around and got to get up close an personal with a few Lexus/Toyota/Scion vehicles.  The notables that I can mention: 2008 IS-F and 2008 LX570.  WOW the IS-F’s Ultrasonic Blue is a really nice color in real life.  Basically everything about this car says yes to me.  The ultra-wide fenders up front, low stance, huge brakes, interior, engine bay.  If I was richer and didn’t have to think about buying a house, I would already be in line.  Heh.

Saturday:  Had a get together at The Loft in Torrance.  One of the old time IS300 forum moderators was on vacation from Florida, so we had a small meet and greet.  It turned into a 3 hour gabfest inside the restaurant.  The staff kept looking at us wondering when we would leave…

Afterward, Esther and I headed out to Upland to meet my coworker’s (now 8 month old) baby.  He is HUGE.  At his age, he’s already wearing 18 month old clothes!  Wow.

Sunday: Since my dad was in town, my mom invited Esther’s parents out for some Thai food, at the Thai Nakorn in Stanton.  The food was not too bad, so I guess I would go there again.  Esther and I ended the night hanging out at Darren’s place.

Monday: Darren decided to hold a small bbq at his place.  We ended up just sitting around the firepit telling stories while grilling up burgers and yummy Aidell’s sausages.

And thus the end of the weekend was already upon us.

Good news, it’s cake tasting this weekend!  Whee.