Wednesday morning, I crapped in the middle of a public road.  I wasn't embarassed, although there were people walking around me, because I don't get embarassed by stuff like that.  But it was messy and I had the mess all over my hands and clothes.  Then I woke up.  Yeah, it was a dream.

When I told my wife about the dream, my wife said "Wow, a lucky dream.  Let's buy lottery tickets!"  You see, most Koreans believe dreams foretells the future.  Dreams with feces and pigs are considered lucky and are even bought and sold for small amount of money to transfer luck.  We didn't buy the lottery ticket because I was lazy and the California drawing was Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, I was in a bed with some girl when two Italian mobsters broke into the room.  One of the guys came over with a gun and placed the muzzle on my left temple.  I thought he was going to say something like in the movies, but something entered my brain and I died.  Then I woke up.  Yeah, two in a row.

I told my wife again and she consulted my mother.  Their conclusion was that death dreams are also good dreams.  They are not common like dreams involving feces or pigs so I didn't know.  My wife said, we should really buy some lottery tickets.

Koreans take dreams seriously.  If my mother-in-law calls out of the blue, it's because she had a bad dream about my wife.  When a Korean woman conceives a child, she is expected to have a Birth Dream (Tae-Mong) which differ from mundane dreams in intensity and content.  Some dream of birds or fishes jumping into their body.  Others see dragons or deers coming into the house.

Do Koreans really believe in these dreams?  Wrong question.  The right question is Why take unnecessary chances?  Aren't these dreams saying something about mental problems?  Again wrong question.  Why worry about the past when there is the future to worry about?

I am about to go to sleep now with my fingers crossed.  If I get run over by a herd of pigs in my dream, I am going to buy some lottery tickets as my way of saying I got the damn message!  ;-p

Update:

Dang.  I had a dream of something but I couldn't remember what it was.

A conversation from the near future overheard somewhere in Asheron's Call, Microsoft's MMORPG.

Fizban:  Hey, did you hear about the Cave of Longhorn?

Missalot:  Isn't Longhorn code name for Microsoft's new OS?

Fizban:  Yeah, its finally getting released so they are doing an adventure to promote the release of Longhorn.  Ad-venture, get it?

Missalot:  Haha.  So what's in the cave?

Fizban:  A user-friendly Minotaur named Longhorn.  He drops Longhorn discount coupons up to 50% off.  Longhorn is a tough mob though.  He'll stun you with Longhorn marketing mumbo-jumbo and power-hack with a double-headed axe named Scobleizer.  Best way to get him is to lure him into narrow corridors so his swollen head will get stuck.

Missalot:  Wow.  I could use 50% off.  Let's go get Longhorn!

Fizban:  Hehe.  You'll be a-mazed.

I just wanted to say that six degrees of separation is real, but I don't give a damn about it.  One degree, friend of a friend, is where the action is and two degrees is the maximum under most social circumstances.

What this really means is that so called social network services are in the business of short-circuiting the six degrees of separation so the person you want to meet is one degree away.  In the case of dating service, the dating service is the short-circuiting friend/pimp.  That makes Jonathan Abrams the first pimp to be popular among VCs.

Hey, I got nothing against pimps.  I think they have a much better business model than most startups.

But then I do believe in Lassie so let's say there is some value in being able to meet friend-of-friend-of-friend-of-friend-of-friend-of-friend-of-friend.  Hold the music please.  They are not all friends, are they?  Dang.

Many people are expressing surprise over the AtStake fiasco, firing of Dan Geer over a report (PDF) critical of Microsoft.  How can Microsoft or AtStake not behave that way when alternative is counter to survival instinct?

Of course, AtStake did not do Microsoft any favors by firing Dan.  All they did was confirm the concerns raised by the report: Microsoft can't help but be a bully even if it turned into a flower child overnight.  One doesn't have to be a bully for others to feel threatened.  It's like bringing a 800lb gorilla to a party and telling everyone to relax because it is so gentle.

Even when online social networks becomes common place, nothing much has changed in the way people meet each other.  One could even say social network is degraded somewhat by people hunting people they want to meet by following the visual map of relationships made possible by social network services.

One can imagine Power Law working at multiple levels to route attention to people with the right look, positions, professions, money, and connections.  Play forward a bit and one could see how the popular nodes becoming ragged pretty fast.

If a girl looks great, she'll get a lot of wannabe friends who ponied up money for the chance to say hello.  Even with traffic control of sort, she will eventually feel like a dumb whore, dumb because she ain't getting paid for her troubles.  Profit sharing is not a solution because that just leads to world-wide whore, sorry, dating networks.

If it's some business person in a key position like CostCo Executive VP of Purchasing, same thing happens except there is a different kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge going on.  Social connections based on one-sided needs is not a social network IMHO and unstable by nature.  Over time, these networks will be sapped dry of valuable nodes, leaving behind only a network of predators.

As I mentioned before in my posts about the value of random encounters, new solutions are needed.  Game of Seven is one example.  The Game of Seven forms a random group of seven people that lasts a month as if seven random people got stranded on a deserted island.  One could run into great, mundane, or even terrible people.

You can sell individual Game of Seven too just like packs of Pokeymon or Yu-Ki-Oh cards.  You'll never know what you are going to get.  Maybe you'll meet the girl of your life.  Maybe you'll end up changing your definition of an a**hole.  The unknown is the product being sold.

To spice things up, each Game of Seven should be given a task to perform.  Result affects individual participant's stats that has some consequences.  If one acts like an asshole consistently, his stats should reduce his chance of meeting people with good stats.

Frankly, I have no idea whether solutions like the Game of Seven will work.  I am just using it as an example of possible solutions.