I’ve now ridden this rock around the sun 47 times, and here are some things I’ve learned:

Your comfort zone is a safe place, but it’s very boring. You need to spend at least a little time outside of it.

Get a large enough group of people together to make them identifiable, and they’re crazy. Americans are crazy. Vietnamese are crazy. Republicans are crazy. Democrats are crazy. Somebody, somewhere will think Identifiable Group X is crazy.

Fight for what’s yours. Don’t let go. Ever. You will always regret it in hindsight.

Never confuse “the first” with “the one”.

Keep your eye on the ball. This applies not only to sports, but to an amazing number of non-related fields. Politics. Business. Family. Work.

Each of us is given five balls. One is rubber and four are glass. The rubber ball is work. If you drop it, it will always bounce back. The other four glass balls are family, friends, health and integrity.

Major strides are being made in cancer treatment every year. There are treatments for breast cancer today that didn’t exist ten years ago. These treatments increase your odds of 5 year survivability. None of this matters, of course, if you get breast cancer today. This applies to any type of cancer.

If you’re being served “bbq meat”, never inquire too closely as to the type of “meat”. (I’m pretty sure Viet Nam is not the only place where this is critical advice.)

You can never follow through if you don’t commit.

In any argument, ask yourself “Is this the hill I want to die on?” You’ll be surprised at how much you learn to let go.

Let go.

Almost all of the sentiments expressed in “We Are The World” are bullshit.

A 110cc scooter can go 80km an hour.

If you brush up against a guardrail while riding a 110cc scooter at 80km an hour, bad things will happen. Really, really bad things that’ll make you wish you spent more on your helmet.

Children are irreplaceable.

Raising a child is like gripping a watermelon seed. This truism is truest during the teen years.

You will make mistakes. The biggest mistake you will make is a refusal to learn from your mistakes. Don’t make that mistake.

Leave a mark.

Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Leave those footprints in the odd places, off the beaten path, whenever possible.

I know it’s trite and smacks of Apple fan-boi’ism, but it’s so true: Think Different.

Nothing helps a child learn like sparking imagination. Lego, FTW!

You don’t have to be a child to enjoy Lego.

Smaller, faster, cheaper. At some point, it’ll be small enough, fast enough, cheap enough. That’s a good place to stop.

Learn to be satisified with material things.

Never be satisfied with the knowledge you’ve gained. Always reach for more.

Question everything.

“Perfect” is the enemy of “good enough”.

Never settle.

I have a confession to make. As a much younger man, I spent hours fighting monstors in the dungeons of Diablo and Diablo II. I’m on pins and needles waiting for the release of Diablo III, and I’ve been following the progress of what’s sure to be an epic game with great interest.

I’m not sure what appeals to me about Diablo. There are certainly parts of the game that are tedious and almost mindless. These are the parts commonly referred to as “grinding”–taking on monsters because you need gold or EP to level up before you move on with the central story. Whether I can explain the appeal or not, Diablo was one of my first gaming loves.

As we all eagerly await the release of Diablo III, a digression has appeared on the horizon. Part of the original Diablo team, combined with folks from Fate and Mythos, have created Torchlight. Torchlight resembles Diablo in many ways, but in many other ways it’s a very different game. For one, it’s more “cartoony” in style, which some folks don’t like but I love. The art is very well done–dark, yet colorful. The music comes from the creator of the original Diablo soundtrack and is wonderful. The gameplay is almost pure Diablo with a few “fixes” that I really like. In short, Torchlight has all of the things I love about Diablo and a few new things that make it even more attractive.

You start off the game by choosing a character from one of three classes: Destroyer, Vanquisher and Alchemist. You choose a pet–either a cat or a dog. Your pet is part of you and follows you everywhere. It carries a pack and you can move items between your pet’s inventory and your own. You can even send your pet to town to sell items! Once you’ve gotten your character and pet generated, you materialize in the town of Torchlight.

Torchlight is a mining town built atop a vein of Ember. Ember is the source of magic in the Torchlight world, and there’s a war going on in the mines for control of the Ember there. The battle is, of course, between good and evil, and you’re recruited to the forces of good.

So far (and I’ve played to Level 20), there’s very little grinding involved. Characters advance at a good, steady pace. Dungeon exploration is fun and there are a myriad of side quests that allow you to explore through a variety of tilesets and dungeon styles. Monsters grow in strength the deeper you go and the closer you get to the main Ember veins. The story line is interesting, and the main characters are well voiced. Everything about the game play draws you in to the superbly crafted game mechanics.

The system requirements for Torchlight are suprisingly mild. There’s even a “Netbook” mode! I’ve not yet tried it and my main gaming machine is gross overkill. Still, I can play at 1600×1050 and the graphics are stunning. The animation is smooth and there’s hardly any jerkiness (there have been moments where things start to stutter, but those typically involve large numbers of enemies being destroyed by multiple, chained lightning bolts).

If you, like me, were a huge fan of Diablo, I urge you to try Torchlight. It’s $20 well spent. Runic, the creators, are working on an MMO based in the Torchlight world, and I can hardly wait. I’m hoping they go the Dungeons & Dragons Online route and use in-game purchases to generate income, rather than a subscription model. If they do that, I’ll be all over it.

Last night I was heading home from a tutoring gig. It was quite hot, and a gentle rain began to fall. I recall thinking “How nice–a cool rain.”

Soon, the drops began to *hurt*. At that point, I pulled under some shelter and got into my rain gear. While putting on my poncho, the skies opened up. In moments, water was streaming down the road and the drains were overwhelmed.

Cold, dark, wet. Three not-so-great driving conditions when you’re on a scooter. I’ve not travelled the particular road I was on a lot, so I was unfamiliar with the topography. I had to resort closely following other scooters and observing water depths as they fought their way through ‘puddles’. Often, the water was over my footpegs and I was concerned about the engine flooding.

In the end, a 20 minute drive under normal conditions turned into an hour+ slog through the cold and the wet. Several lessons learned:

1) Timbuk2 bags rock. The outside of my messenger bag was soaked. The insides were dry. As it should be (but often isn’t).

2) The normally ‘charming’ habit of Vietnamese drivers who like to drive without headlights takes on a terrifying new meaning in a major rainstorm. WTF? If you’re going to insist on driving without lights of any kind, the very least you can do is avoid *me*. *You* can see *me*.

3) Disc brakes on scooters. Seems silly, but, trust me, well worth it. Especially if the idiot from point 2 *doesn’t* avoid you…

Over the past few days, storys of Typhoon Ketsana have been causing all our friends back west to write or call with concern. Is everybody OK?

Happily, everybody is doing fine. Ho Chi Minh City didn’t get hit very hard at all. We were mostly dealing with high winds and a couple of serious rain showers as the storm cell skirted past.

There are a couple of more typhoons heading this way. It’s that time of year, so it’s expected. We’re in a good, solid house that we can button down pretty tight. Our neighborhood is new and drainage is solid. We’re not worried about flooding.

Oddly, I first heard news of the devastation in the Philippines and central Viet Nam from friends in the West. Since I don’t (can’t) read Vietnamese newspapers, my news intake is a little delayed.

My long weekend in Can Tho is coming to a close and I’m returning to Ho Chi Minh City tonight. I was able to relax even though I got quite a bit of work done. The pace in Can Tho is much slower than Ho Chi Minh City. Scooters don’t seem to exceed 30km/h. Cafe wait staff take their time. People go to bed after dark (but wake up at dawn–what’s the matter with them?). Traffic is much thinner. Things just slow down…

The trip to Ho Chi Minh City is approximately 180km. It’s a 4 hour bus ride. That’s right: 4 hours to go 180km. Fortunately, the bus is very comfortable. iPod+headphones+nap makes the journey speed by.

Back to work tomorrow with a couple of critical deadlines. Happily, I’m mostly caught up on the work so I should be good.

Today, I got caught in a terrible rainstorm. I’ve been lucky so far in that I’ve only been caught in mild rain (relatively speaking). Today’s storm was bad. Lots of people flooded out their bike engines. Water was over the foot pegs on my bike. Even with a poncho on, I got completely soaked thanks to cars that didn’t bother slowing down. Waves of water would assault me from the side, often shooting up under my poncho. I was as wet as I could be, and it wasn’t pleasant.

On the way home, I had to stop at the Sufat dealer where I’d purchased my bike. There was some paperwork to finalize. The manager took one look at me and immediately dragged me to the back room, where he made me take off my soaking wet shirt and gave me one of his own to wear. He then made me hot tea and sat me down so I could warm up. We finished the paperwork issues (still have to go back one more time–the Vietnamese do love their paperwork) and I went on my way in a clean, dry shirt. 10 minutes later I was at home.

The rain finally slowed down. Our neighborhood was not as hard hit as the center of the city, where I started out. Still, it was a hard rain. As wet as I got, I still had fun.

I tried goat for the very first time tonight at a BBQ place in Hai Phong. There were two types of meat served: one predominantly meat and one predominantly fat. I didn’t care much for the fat, but the meat was very, very good. There was a wonderful dipping sauce that was spicy, but not quite too spicy. There was also the usual assortment of vegetables and seasoning, including mint and bay leaves.

One of the specialties of the restaurant we were in is a soup made with the brains of the goat. We all passed on that…

I’m travelling for work this weekend and had the opportunity to spend an evening in Ha Long. This shot is of the bay from the beach. Ha Long Bay is really very beautiful. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I’m hoping to spend more time here, and soon. I would like the chance to take a boat and explore the islands.

One of the interesting parts of the visit to Ha Long was the trip to the market. I picked up some souvenirs. Unlike a lot of markets I’ve been in here, this was very low key and relaxing. Maybe it’s because we were there in the early evening, but none of the vendors yelled at us or grabbed us or tried to force us to buy their wares. I quite like it and probably bought more than I otherwise would’ve…

FPT, my Internet provider, is done pretty much country-wide at this point. They’ve been down since last night.

It’s not unusual for Internet at the house to be down. We’re in a relatively new neighborhood and the connection can be spotty. When I lose the connection to the house, I just dash off to a cafe to get some work done.

The problem, of course, is that a lot of the cafes use FPT. This outage is particularly bad because I can’t fall back to a cafe without doing a lot of searching. I can still post updates from my phone, and I’m now working on getting my phone tethered to my laptop in case this happens again.

Isn’t the Internet fun?

This is an absolutely amazing video:

Stunning. It’s also fun to note how much of it I recognize….