Aaron Heine's Blog

This blog has moved!!!!

aaronheine — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:08:10 +0000

You can now find me at www.aaronheine.com

Subscribe on the top right and you will be emailed fresh episodes of Aaron’s adventure.

Humbled by the Snowboard

aaronheine — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:22:07 +0000

In my Jan 13th entry I thought I was hot shit on skis. Snowboarding was another story. This was my first time snowboarding.

To make a long painful story less painful I’ll just tell you of two falls.

The first happened on my first run. I had no clue the ground was hard as cement so when I hit the ground I really busted my ass and screwed my hand up pretty good.

I have seen fake snow before, and it looks like snow. What covered this mountain was not snow, it was tiny pieces of ice. Kind of like salt, but a little bigger. It was very slick.

The next serious fall happend to be my last run. I was starting to get the hang of it and and made it to the bottom with some speed. Out of the blue – BAM! I hit the ground hard, hit my head on the ground knocking the goggles and hat off. I mean it when I say the ground was hard as concrete.

I am now sitting on a large black and blue bruise and typing with a wrist that will need some kind of brace.

Almost decapitated

aaronheine — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:24:38 +0000

I was at Gagnam station at the back of the line watching everyone pour into the subway. Just as it starts to fill up all the doors suddenly slide shut. Normally they don’t just shut the doors as people are trying to enter. The guy to the right gets sandwiched right down the middle but squeezes out pretty easily. The girl to the left wasn’t so lucky, the doors shut right on her neck, and her head was stuck inside the subway. She couldn’t get out, so a few people pulled the doors open. Pretty funny I must admit, but wouldn’t have been so funny if the train had moved about 5 feet. Guard rail would have taken her head off.

Noribong superstar

aaronheine — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:53:20 +0000

Last night I was out with my Korean friend Hwan when he gets a call from a mutual friend of ours Milan. She says she’s at a noribong(karioke room) with a bunch of her girlfriends and invited us to join them. You didn’t have to ask us twice. When we get to the room is is full of about ten very beautiful girls. All of them are like, “Wow, an American!” They are all asking me a million questions and were very friendly. Koreans are very interested in westerners, and I often feel like a a guest of honor in social situations.

So of course they want me to sing a song. There was no way I could do that, I don’t even like talking to large groups of people. I tried to say no, but they forced the song book into my hands and I started flipping pages. I was scared shitless as I looked for a song. I felt like I was choosing my own casket. I went with “One” by U2.

I remember doing the song before and it came out pretty good, but now it seemed to sound really good! Maybe it was the effect on the mic or some kind of pitch correction, I don’t know. Everyone was clappinng and oooooing and ahhhhing. I think that is the closest I will ever get to becoming a rock star.

Started a fight! But didn’t get to participate :(

aaronheine — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:13:48 +0000

My friend and I had just sat down at a bar this weekend when a couple Korean guys sat down at our table to join us. One was sober and the other guy was drunk as hell. He was saying the dumbest things and his english was horrible. He was very loud and obnoxious.
So my friend was in the bathroom when the drunk guy spills his beer on the table. He just let the big pool of beer sit there. I suggested he clean it up, he didn’t reply. Then I tugged a little bit on his scarf and said he could wipe it up with that, he still didn’t respond. The beer then began to drip off the side of the table and almost go on my pants. Again I told him he really needs to clean it up before it drips on my pants. Then he got up and started walking to me saying, “Ohhh poor baby, beer on pants, so sad.” I stood up in his face and told him he better get back in his seat now! At that moment the bar tender ran up and the two of them began fighting. A couple overturned tables, broken bottles, and the bartender had to be held back as he tried to slam a chair down on the guy.

A thought on confidence…

aaronheine — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:21:54 +0000

I remember one time when I was about 13 and playing pool with my dad. I had played quite a few times before. Now at the time I believed that if your shot is lined up, for example the cue ball, 7 ball and the pocket you are aiming for are in a strait line than it’s an easy shot. And because I believed that, and had confidence that I would make shots that are lined up, I did always make shots that are lined up.

So when I was playing with my dad I made a shot that was lined up just as I usually did. He said, “Great shot! Those long shots are difficult.” So then I thought to myself, maybe lined up shots are not always easy, maybe a strait shot is difficult if it is done over a long distance? So from that point on I never made all of my lined up shots. Thanks dad!

All browsers are not created equal

aaronheine — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:39:09 +0000

Sorry, but I’m gonna get a bit geeky now. I have been a loyal Safari user for a long time now. I’m kind of a mac loyalist and Safari has worked wonderfully. Never crashes, very fast and seemingly up to date with web standards. I know many people, especially web developers use Firefox, but I never really saw much of a reason to switch. A few months ago Firefox 3 was released and became the most downloaded app ever! Still not enough to make me switch. I’ve used FIrefox before and wasn’t impressed. Firefox is open source, which opens it up to many add-ons, but none of them really really interested me. Until now…

A friend told me about Firebug. This add-on really lets you manhandle a web page. It gives you the HTML, CSS and the DOM in an unobtrusive window. It lets you tinker with any website as if it were your own. It presents tons of information about the the layout in very organized ways that even Dreamweaver could learn from. It’s also is a great trouble shooting tool for my own sites.

A couple more great add-ons.

Fire.fm – This internet radio has been getting more play than iTunes lately.

Morning Coffee - Opens all the pages I regularly visit when I wake.

Twitter Bar - Lets me post to twitter in my navigation bar.

Skiing in Vivaldi

aaronheine — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:48:56 +0000

I went skiing for the first time about a couple of week ago. I went with a friend that had about as much experience as I did. We were not very familiar with the difficulty ratings or where exactly the ski lifts would take us, so the first time up we found ourselves on a slope that we should not have been on. I basically crashed my way down the mountain. It seemed as though as soon as I stood up I was moving 50 miles an hour. Many people were retrieving my skis and poles. My friend had to walk most of the way down the mountain. After shaking the snow out of my jacket I gave it another try and was moving pretty quick. I found that most of the time when I fell was when turning or stopping, so I decided no to slow or stop as much, instead I made large sweeping turns and held on for dear life.

A week later I went skiing again with about 10 co-workers. I was glad I got broken in the previous week. Half the people I had skied with had never been. My stopping got better this time but I was still going quite fast. I am not sure if I should blame my speed on my inability to stop or my desire to go fast.

As I was flying down the mountain I saw on of my coworkers on a snowboard. I decided to pass him kind of closely. As he began cutting my direction, kind of close turned into, REALLY close. It scared the hell out of both of us, but I did manage to yell some profanities at him as I passed. Sometimes it feel good to be hated, ha ha ha ha(evil laugh).

One of the last hills I did was a black diamond. I guess that means it is pretty steep, but it didn’t have any bumps or small hills so it didn’t seem that difficult to me. As I got about 2/3 down I could see the bottom and it looked like a pretty smooth clear run so I decided to just aim for the bottom and hold on. I got going very fast and rode it strait out with just a minor spill to stop me at the bottom. A ski patrol girl hurried over to me looking a little panicked and angry. She couldn’t find the english words to say to me so she didn’t really say anything. I said, “Too fast?.” She nodded her head, and I apologized. Many of my co-workers were at the bottom and saw me flying down as well. Below is a picture of them scolding me. I made two videos of the trip. First one is the skiing, second one is the after party.

Seafood in Incheon

aaronheine — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:58:00 +0000

The teaching staff and I went to a Korean seafood restaurant near the ocean in Incheon. Incheon is like a slightly nasty port for hauling in sea creatures. It was also a very important city during the Korean war. Korean restaurants have lots of side dishes but this is ridiculous. I would say that for 6 people about 130 small plates or dishes where brought out with little samples of vegetables and sea life. I could only recognize about 10% of the food. The Koreans would find translations for the food names on their cell phones, but that didn’t help in my identification. As for the snails and shell fish they went down pretty easy with some hot sauce. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed what I think were sea cucumbers and a few other cut up pieces of raw something. The dolphin was pretty good. Tuna was good also but I don’t think it was dolphin safe tuna. The octopus legs(or arms) that had just been chopped off and continued squirming on the table were the most interesting. When you tried to pull them off the plater they grab hold with great strength. You have to snatch them quickly off the plate. Their fight for survival doesn’t stop once you put them in your mouth. They attached to my lips, teeth, and roof of my mouth with their tiny suction cups, causing a painful ticklish sensation.

Korea in a nutshell

aaronheine — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:48:11 +0000

Korea has been wonderful so far. Everyone, not just the students are very friendly and eager to learn english. My job was a little difficult at first, but after learning how to talk to the kids and realizing that just having fun with them is a big part of making class fun for everyone, I now feel like a natural.

My jet lag was horrible, it lasted about 2 weeks. I always had trouble sleeping at night. The food here is not what I expected. I was thinking it would be more like Chinese food, but it is not. It is very spicy with lots of uncooked vegetables. Meals are often cooked on the table with many side dishes and soups are very common. Meals are very healthy, spicy and inexpensive.

My apartment is nice. Most all the heating in Korea is done by heating water in the floor. It takes longer to heat up, but once it does you can turn it off and it last all night. Next door to me lives Mike, one of my American co-workers. The only thing between my apartment and my school is a beautiful park that is quite a pleasure to ride my bike through.

I have enjoyed not having a car for once in my life. Public transportation is very inexpensive and well organized. I have become quite the city boy!