Monthly Archives: August 2006

A Humble Man Wouldn’t Say He’s Nobody

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Another great insight from CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity — as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble — delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.

The idea that God wants to put us in our place by telling us to be humble is a funny one. Yet it does seem to make sense on a basic level. Well, the natural question here is: what does it really mean to be humble? I have a friend who is always putting himself down and saying that others are better than him at this and that. Is that what it means to be humble? Have a negative attitude, be the worst, have no self-confidence? C.S. Lewis continues.

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

What a profound statement. I believe CS Lewis wrote these words over 50 years ago, yet they are still so relevant today. I think that many people, myself included, have initially had that wrong idea of what it means to be humble. The point is that a humble person isn’t anything like that. He would simply be a “cheerful, intelligent chap” who isn’t thinking about himself at all. There are people I know like this. I don’t notice that they’re humble until I think about it. And for those that appear to be very obviously humble– well, maybe they’re not.

Don’t Spend Money on Bad Marketing

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I was reading Phil Vischer’s account of what killed Big Idea, and found something that reminds me of exactly what Cybiko Inc. did in 2000-2003. Come to think of it, 2001 was a pivotal year for me. I visited China and Hong Kong, I bought a Cybiko and started programming, I bought my first domain name and started doing web development, and I was baptized– all in the same year (if my memory serves). I also suddenly became aware that the world was bigger than California, and I realized the existence of such things as the Pentagon, World Trade Center, White House, politcs, etc. In many ways, it’s like the year my life began. But I digress. I’ll have to write more about that later.

Without further ado, here’s what Phil Vischer said on page 4 of his reflection on what happened to Big Idea.

Between 1998 and 2000 our marketing department grew from 1 person to 30 people.   We gave away 400,000 VeggieTales videos at the grand openings of malls and Target stores and took out two-page ads in People magazine to introduce America to the concept of VeggieTales.   As a result, our marketing expense grew from $3 million in 1998 to $13 million in 2000.   No problem, though, since the team estimated the increased awareness would double our sales within 24 months. 

Except for one thing:  The projected sales growth never happened.  After 1998′s amazing 7 million video mark, sales actually declined in 1999 and 2000.  Our marketing costs exploded, but our sales didn’t.  That was a bit of a problem.

I happen to understand this problem particularly well. It’s almost exactly what happened to Cybiko around 2002. They launched a huge marketing campaign with TV commercials, lots of contents, giveaways, referral programs, free Cybikos, free games, free stuff everywhere. It always struck me as being an incredibly stupid idea. There was no way for them to profit. They were hoping that Cybiko’s networking functionality would mean that the few people who got free Cybikos would encourage everyone else to buy Cybikos. That wasn’t the case. Instead, they all got free Cybikos, too. This made the perceived value of a Cybiko drop to zero. Why pay for something that’s free?

There are far better ways to market your product without losing money. Don’t give away your product for free. That should be obvious. Don’t spend money on something that doesn’t return. That should be obvious. You might say there’s no way to predict your ROI. That’s false. You can predict it very well in fact. It just takes more thought. Just look at Google AdWords. You can track your stats in real-time. If you have a product you’re selling online, you can look at the first $10 you spent, and see if you made anything. If you spent $10 and earned $20, then you’re fine. If you spent $10 and didn’t sell anything, then stop doing it and change something. It’s pretty straightforward. But people get blinded by optimistic thinking. They don’t look at the real people who are listening to the pitches and makng the decisions. It’s simpler than you think. But you have the focus on the right thing.

Remove Language Bar

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With Windows XP Pro, the “Language Bar” always appears in your taskbar on startup. To disable it, go to the Control Panel -> Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages tab -> Details… -> Language Bar… -> Uncheck the box that says “Show the Language bar on the desktop”.

100% CPU Usage

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This afternoon I looked at Kristen’s computer. Its main problem is high CPU usage, often near 100%. It’s not just Explorer using the resources, either, but whatever application is trying to run: Firefox, wmplayer, etc. I’ve seen max CPU usage problems before. Last time, they were caused by an incomplete AVI file. This problem appears to be a bit different, so I looked up some information online. Here are some things that one could try, depending on the particular situation.

1. Start -> Run -> msconfig -> Startup -> uncheck everything and reboot
2. Use Task Manager to see what’s using resources
3. If the problem is incomplete, damaged, or corrupt avi files–

1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the “Default” value which should be “{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}”

4. Could be hardware damage

Well, that’s enough for now. You can find more information on Google.

Reasons more complex than they appear

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More amazing insights from CS Lewis, pages 98-99.

But what, it may be asked, is the use of keeping two people together if they are no longer in love? There are several sound, social reasons; to provide a home for their children, to protect the woman (who has probably sacrificed or damaged her own career by getting married) from being dropped whenever the man is tired of her. But there is also another reason of which I am very sure, though I find it a little hard to explain.

It is hard because so many people cannot be brought to realize that when B is better than C, A may be even better than B. They like thinking in terms of good and bad, not of good, better, and best, or bad, worse and worst. They want to know whether you think patriotism is a good thing: If you reply that it is, of course, far better than individual selfishness, but that it is inferior to universal charity and should always give way to universal charity when the two conflict, they think you are being evasive. [...] they go away complaining that you would not give them a straight answer. I hope no one will make this mistake about what I am now going to say. [...]

This is another thing I have often thought about. Imagine the leap from thinking in terms of good or bad to thinking in terms of good, better, or best. It’s incredible. What’s beyond that? More complex ways of thinking? More sophisticated reasoning? Ideas and truths that I can’t even yet imagine?

The problem with being bad

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From Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (88).

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

I’ve often thought about this problem. If I am bad, evil, ignorant or whatever– the worst part of it is that I don’t realize it. This has always been a common sense knowledge that has bothered me. I like the way CS Lewis put it. It takes my thinking and makes it so much more clear. It’s like a wall that’s blocking me from getting to the next tier– but I don’t know that the wall even exists. It’s really fightening. I might go so far as to say that this is my greatest fear.

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

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I’m about halfway through this book now, and it’s simply amazing. I love his writing style, but even more, I love his ideas. The illustrations he uses takes my thoughts and makes them much more clear. Here’s an excerpt from page 85, one that I really like.

Imagine three men who go to war. One has the ordinary natural fear of danger that any man has and he subdues it by moral effort and becomes a brave man. Let us suppose that the other two have, as a result of things in their subconsciousness, exaggerated, irrational fears, which no amount of moral effort can do anything about. Now suppose that a psychoanalyst comes along and cures these two: that is, he puts them both back in the position of the first man. Well it is just then that the psychoanalytical problem is over and the moral problem begins. Because, now that they are cured, these two men might take quite different lines. The first might say, “Thank goodness I’ve got rid of all those doo-dahs. Now at last I can do what I always wanted to do– my duty to the cause of freedom.” But the other might say, “Well, I’m very glad that I now feel moderately cool under fire, but, of course, that doesn’t alter the fact that I’m still jolly well determined to look after Number One and let the other chap do the dangerous job whenever I can. Indeed one of the good things about feeling less frightened is that I can now look after myself much more efficiently and can be much cleverer at hiding the fact from the others.”

CS Lewis goes on, but to find out all that he says, you’ll have to read the book. There was another great quote from page 75 which I thought applied to Mark 2 quite well, so I emailed it to my Mark 2 group.

Soy Chicken Stir Fry

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Yesterday I went to EVK for dinner, my first time for this school year. It’s exactly as I remember. The food tastes exactly the same, right down to the tomato sauce on the pizzas, which tastes like it came straight out of the can. They did have one interesting dish: soy chicken stir fry. I decided to try it. It was pretty good. I remember that at some point last year, they had a soy meats survey where we tried lots of different “meats” made of soy. Now they’ve decided to serve soy chicken stir fry. I had it with rice (noodles also available). Reasonably good. During dinner, I talked with someone named Neil who lives in New/North. He tried the marching band, but decided to drop out due to the huge time commitment.
This school year is different, but still the same. The freshmen are amazingly cool, and many of them are super-interested in the free In-N-Out event that TCF is hosting tomorrow. Many people have never had In-N-Out yet. There’s an amazing variety of experiences. One might think that “most” people have heard of In-N-Out. Nope– it feels more like 50%. One might think that hardly anyone has heard of InterVarsity. Nope– I talked to someone who actually told me he wanted to get involved with IV, even before I mentioned it. Others think I meant “Intramural” as in sports. Every person is totally different. Almost every possible personality I can think of exists here at USC– at both ends of any spectrum.

They repainted Marks Hall and changed out the carpet in the hallway (a much-needed refresher– I remember stains on it last year) and they repainted the “USC” logo upstairs (why isn’t there one on the 2nd floor)?

I’m really impressed with the work-order fulfillment guys with Trojan Housing. They speak Spanish but are friendly and easy to work with. They came to my room for 2 of my 3 work orders: change the window screen (now done) and fix my desk (replaced with a different one). I had just wiped off the old one, too. Oh well, maybe it will be fixed and put to good use somewhere else. I wonder who used this desk before me.