Category: Uncategorized

Recently, my eyes have been getting tired (recently referring to my vacation). It generally happens when I’m in the middle of playing Kameo. So I decided to make my eye checkup appointment this week, something I’ve been planning to do for months now, but never really got around to it.

I called on Monday and they told me they had an opening on Tuesday morning at 9:30am. Usually I’d decline and schedule in the afternoon, but this being Thanksgiving week, I decided to just suck it up and wake up really early Tuesday morning. I didn’t go to sleep till 5am the night before, so when my alarm clock went off at 8:30am, I didn’t want to get out of bed, but eventually did. I have been recommended to Overlake Eye Designs by some friends at work and Dr. Tony Wong was really neat. We were chatting and talking about work and school and it turned out be from Berkeley too! We then talked about our game against USC this past weekend (horrible lost) and if I ever went to get my eyes checked at the optometry center in Berkeley.

So he did the normal stuff (actually her receptionist did a bunch) including puffing air into my eye, taking pictures of my cornea, checking my peripheral vision, see what I could read, checking out how my eye responds to light, etc, etc. So then I brought up the fact that my eyes were recently getting really tired quickly. I had mention I was playing games for a few hours and he said that he noticed the bottom of my eyes were rather dry and believes that it may be due to extended periods of not blinking or incomplete blinks. This usually happens in front of a computer or when you’re reading a book. My eyes never really felt tire when I use the computer, so I guess I must be concentrating really hard when I play games. Anyways, he suggested that I take breaks during my gaming sessions and also to use eye drops to lubricate my eye. He suggested something called Refresh Tears. He also mentioned that when playing 3D games, our body may become imbalance as our eye and ear coordination aren’t working as they normally do. This is something I refer to as 3D motion sickness, which I’ve had since I played Jedi Knight (the 1st one) for 10+ hours straight, so I tend to not play fast motion FPS.

Turns out my left eye has no change, but my right eye has almost a 20° shift. The doctor suggested that I get new glasses as it would be better for my eyes as the right eye would be straining at the moment to see clearer. He also suggested that I get anti-glare (which allows 100% of the light to go through instead of 80% which non-anti-glare glasses do). When I went to Costco this afternoon, I dropped by the Optical center to check out glasses. Our insurance provides up to $180 for eyeglasses (single lens), so I looked around and found a pair of frames that I liked. Including the lens and anti-reflective treatment, it came out to only $127.97. Costco is just way too cool.

However, looking at the receipt, that got me wondering, is there a difference between anti-glare and anti-reflective? According to TSP’s Anti-Glare vs. Anti-Reflective :

Anti-Glare deals with external sources of reflection off a surface – like bright sunlight or high ambient lighting conditions – and its impact on the readability of the image or information you are trying to read.

Unlike diffusion-based anti-glare solutions, Anti-Reflection considers all sources, both internal and external, that accumulate to reduce the light transmitted through the display window, thereby reducing the readability of the viewed image or information.

Though, I’m still not sure which is better.

Anyways, I then dropped by my local supermarket to pick up some eye drops and I couldn’t believe how expensive eye drops were! A tiny bottle for $10! Next time when I cry, I’ll store it up in a container so I can resell it later, which reminds me a whole slew of RPGs which has “tears of (fill in magical name)”. Didn’t Lord of the Rings also have tears of something?

Oh yah, does anyone know how often I’m suppose to be using eye drops? Cause the box doesn’t really mention any instructions/usage.

So a month back or so, my CO (carbon monoxide) detector went off. At first I thought it was a fluke, but it was periodical, meaning it would beep for half a minute then stop, and start beeping again a minute later. So I opened all the windows around me, but it still didn’t stop beeping. Finally I got pissed at it and moved it to another location. The beeping stopped. That led me to think there was something in the bathroom coming out that was triggering it. Anyways, I didn’t worry much about it.

A couple weeks ago, I moved the detector back since what good is a detector if I’m just going to put it in some random corner. It went fine for awhile, but started beeping again last week. At first, I was confuzzled, but then I noticed my Roomba was vacuuming the floor at the same time, so I started connecting the dots. The CO detector has this feature where you can test it by using your remote control. My Roomba has these virtual walls that also emit infrared signals.

So I took my virtual wall and aimed directly at it and the beeping went crazy. I turned off my virtual wall and the beeping stopped completely. Guess we found the culprit. Anyways, I didn’t need that virtual wall there. Turns out my Roomba has stairway detection so it won’t fall down the stairs.

Forgot to mention the fact that it went off last week was due to the fact I increased the power of the virtual wall. The virtual wall has 3 settings: 3′, 4′-7′ and 8’+ walls. I had increased the virtual wall from 3′ to 8’+ because I was working from home and didn’t want the Roomba to enter my little office.

Some dude is reselling 100 PS3s, gonna get paid (from Angelus) – Some Japanese consumer named Eiji (who we can only assume is a legitimate ninja) somehow managed to scoop up 100 PS3s in both 20GB and 60GB varieties and is reportedly planning to resell them. It’s believed this is the same guy that hired homeless people to get in line for 20,000 yen (~US$200).

Weird Al – Do I Creep You Out – another music video from Weird Al’s latest album. This one’s pretty funny too! Interestingly Derek and I noticed that you get an ad before the video starts if you watch this on IE, but on Firefox, you don’t get any ad. At first, I thought it was Adblock, but it turns out not to be the case. Even with Adblock disabled, the ad doesn’t play in Firefox. Maybe they just realized that Firefox users are smarter. ;p

As you might’ve heard, the Zune was launched today, and reviews of it have been pretty bad for the most part. Ars Technica’s reviews tend to be quite in depth, and here it is: Microsoft Zune. But you may have heard of all the problems that the Zune is riddled with. I was shocked to find out it was not supported on Vista. Did some guy just think that they didn’t need to support an OS that was coming out later in January of next year for the consumer? Plus the fact that we don’t allow you to use the Zune as a portable hard drive is just plain stupid.

Kiwi! (from Deadlock) – pretty neat animation showing you how birds got wings. Reminds me of why the giraffe grew long necks.

Mario’s movie impressions at E3 (from Digg) – Mario talks? That’s right! Charles Martinet, voice of Mario does a bunch of impressions (and bashes Sony) at E3. Pretty funny. Mario does some funny impressions from movies, including Star Wars. Interestingly, when he cusses, it beeps it out with the coin noise.

Animator vs. Animation II (from Digg) – The badass stick figure is back and this time it’s personal. In this episode, victim becomes victimizer as he breaks out of Flash and takes on mighty opponents like Firefox, the AOL IM guy and the Photoshop* icon. You can also watch the original Animator vs. Animation.

So I just found out the previous owner left some potted plants for me. I’ve only found 2. Maybe there’s more. Anyway, they’re all brown now and looks pretty much dead. One’s hanging from balcony #2 and the other is hanging near my font door. Both are places I frequent very little. I usually enter/exit through my garage and I hardly go out on either of my balconies.

Anyway, I’ve started to water them. Not sure if they’ll revive. If they don’t, guess I’ll just chuck them, but now I have a Tupperware (I thought it was spelled Tuppleware) sitting on my kitchen counter so I remember to water it every night.

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Random Crap

Physics promises wireless power – The answer the team came up with was “resonance”, a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied. “When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly,” Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website. Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example. “When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate,” he said. Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team’s system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays. Neat! No more plugging in my laptop or cell phone or iPod. These chargers will probably be as widely available as WiFi, so I can just walk around with these devices in my pocket and they’ll automatically charge.

KFC targets extraterrestrials with huge logo – From space, extraterrestrials and astronauts can look back to earth and see The Great Wall of China — and KFC’s Colonel Sanders. Here’s a blog entry: KFC’s logo first to be seen from space (from /.) that tells you the story and has a video of the logo being made in progress.

Getting People To Slow Down – Denmark’s Solution (from MS newsgroup) – (NOT WORK SAFE) Denmark has always been a very advanced country. They use novel approaches at solving problems. In Copenhagen, like in many other big cities, speeding is a problem. Most countries would put draconian radar controls, Police check points, speed bumps, etc. But not the Danes….. Here’s the most user friendly and novel approach for getting people to slow down. I like the name they chose: Speed Control Bikini Bandits

Restaurant comes to lobster’s rescue – The Monstro raffle was so successful that Cunha extended it to another lobster, a 9-pounder who’d joined Monstro in the tank a couple of weeks ago. That lobster was set free, too. I should just catch a bunch of fish or animals and ask people to pay me to free them. ;p Of course the money will be donated to better the animal welfare.

Below the Mean (from ChewyDenise) – A comic strip by a Cal student of Cal life. (Cal = U.C. Berkeley). Pretty funny so far. Some humor requires you to actually be a student to understand it, like the Evan’s reference. It only has 5 strips so far, but I see a good future for it.

Bloglines (from Tekman) – Tekman’s actually told me this awhile back. In fact I added bloglines as to my whitelist of being able to load my images. Anyway, with Firefox 2.0, they have several suggested RSS feed aggregators. Bloglines was one of them, so I decided to give it a try. It’s pretty neat! I split my RSS feeds into: Blogs, Comics, Deals, News, and TV. Unfortunately a “couple” of my friends don’t support RSS feeds on their blogs so they’ll probably be frequent less often now.

Older Brothers Suck (from SueOn)- I hope this kid grows up and kicks the crap out of his older brother. Thank god I don’t have an older brother. Then again, thank god I am one. *evil grin* Poor kid. At least the brother had the decency to let him wear a helmet for the “ultimate attempt”.

Worst Burglar Ever (from Digg) – A burglar tries to rob a convenience store but was able to enter, but unable to get out. During his escapade, he screws up multiple times and finally just waits for the owner to come in and when he does, he lays flat on the floor as if he’s given up and waiting arrest.

Inventionland (from Digg) – A pretty amazing place to work. Apparently, this is where you can submit your ideas and they’ll bring to life. However, there’s been a secondary report that only about 0.001% (I just pulled the number from by ***, but it was something extremely small) of the inventions they make for people ever get to see a profit.

Chocolate addiction leads to sweet discovery – They were so addicted, they just could not give up their favourite daily snack — not even in the interest of science. But chocolate lovers who flunked out of a Johns Hopkins University study on aspirin and heart disease helped researchers stumble on an explanation of why a little chocolate a day can cut the risk of heart attack. I didn’t need another reason to eat chocolate.

Thumb-thing for the record books – A Singaporean student broke the Guinness World Record for the shortest time needed to type a 160-character SMS message Sunday after whizzing through the task in less than 42 seconds in a competition. I would’ve thought the Japanese would be the best at these things. You ever see how fast they pump up kanji and hiragana?

5 Toothpick And A Star… (from Digg) – See 5 toothpicks moving without any help…. from nothing to a star… I’ve probably seen this trick before, but it’s always neat. Explanation from PorkyPig: It’s not fake. There are five toothpicks broken in the middle but not snapped, the two halves remain attatched. the wood fibres in this attatched section have been compressed due to the bending action. As the wood absorbs the small amount of water, the fibres start to expand. Very hot water should enable this to happen more quickly. Use a hot spoon to add the water.

Thai zoo finds gold in giant pandas’ dung – A Thai zoo has discovered a way to utilise unwanted dung from a couple of pandas by using it to make paper for souvenirs, the country’s panda project manager said on Tuesday. One panda’s poop is another man’s gold. Reminds me of the story Kimura tells us:

There’s a father or a doctor who’s doing an experiment. There’s 2 kids and he puts them into separate rooms. The first kid is placed in a room filled with toys, while the second kid is placed in a room filled with horse shit. The man began studying the 1st kid in the room with toys. After awhile, the kid began to cry and the man asked him what was wrong. The kid said the toys were no longer fun. The man thinks, if this kid is behaving like this already, I’m afraid to see what the other kid will be like. He went over to the second room to check on the kid in the horse shit room. To his surprise, this kid was having the time of his life. He was digging inside the poop and throwing it around and laughing all along. The man asks the kid why he was so happy and what he was doing. The kid replies, “If there’s this much horse poop, there must be a horse nearby.”

The moral of the story is similar to when given lemons, go make lemonade. Even when given a dump of horse shit, you can still have fun.

Foreigners And Fights, PS3 JPN Launch’s Dark Side (from /.) –

Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away.

20,000 yen is a little less than $200, but to a homeless man, that’s a lot of money for just a day’s work. On the other hand, PS3s have been selling on eBay and Craigslist from $1500 to upwards of $2500.

Along the lines of the PS3 launch, Kotaku also has this article: Harrison’s PS3 Launch Day Scrap Book

Brazilian woman survives 6 shots to head – Doctors could not explain how Pereira survived the attack. The .32-caliber bullets didn’t break through her skull and didn’t even need to be immediately extracted, doctors said. Pereira also was shot once in the hand. Just amazing! What a miracle. This woman has a skull of steel.

– A dead man has been blamed for hundreds of speeding offences in Australia in what police believe is a major fraud designed to help motorists avoid traffic fines. Police in Sydney said 240 people were under investigation over the speeding scam, where hundreds of motorists blamed either the same dead man, or a person living in another state, for driving their cars at the time of the speeding offences.

Canstruction makes creations out of cans – It’s a can-do event. Architects and engineers recently gathered at Canstruction, an annual event held in New York and other cities, to build giant sculptures made from full cans of food. The show is meant to raise awareness of hunger issues. You can see the gallery here.

Help Stop the Largest and Cruelest Slaughter of Dolphins in the World! (from /.) – What a sad and cruel event.

Roller coaster massacre! – Nothing is more fun than watching hundreds of park goers get moved down by a runaway roller coaster cart, except of course watching hundreds of people get run over by three runaway roller coaster carts. Awesome video of using Rollercoaster Tycoon to build a park and crush hundreds of visitors.

Naked man arrested for concealed weapon – A man was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after police found him outdoors — naked — and he told them he had a tool in his rectum, authorities said.

Christmas comes early at Apple: free shuffles for all! (from MS newsgroup) – Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re getting free Zunes. ;p

Oh how I miss Mitch Hedberg: Mitch Hedberg R.I.P

Hacker Puzzle (from MS newsgroup) – A fun little puzzle where I got stuck on ojofuffo. Then I cheated and searched online, but the remainder of the puzzle was easy.

Did you know that most of Will Smith’s songs are just lyrics on top of oldies?
Patrice Rushen – Forget Me Nots vs Men In Black
Sister Sledge – He’s The Greatest Dancer vs Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It

Fired over finger, driver wants job back – The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade. From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back. That’s when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

This entry was originally posted on October 28, 2006 @ 9:27pm, but I just noticed it was marked as Private. Therefore, I’m changing the timestamp so it’ll appear back on the top.

Budlight Radio Commercials (from FuzzyWuzzy) – If you’re looking for the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” or “Real American Hero” radio spots, you’re in the right place. I’ve been collecting these spots for a few years now and it’s grown quite a bit in size and user base. These commercials are funny! He also has a bunch of interesting video clips on his site.

How to prank a Telemarketer (from RayAlome) – an awesome recording Tom Mabe did to scare the crap out of the telemarketer.

Crave TV: 20-inch Laptop on the London Underground (from /.) – How practical is owning a 20-inch laptop? We lug Dell’s massive XPS M2010 from one side of London to the other using the tube and bus. Our PC editor braves the stares of strangers, and the constant risk of mugging. Some of his fellow Tube travellers seem quite shocked by the experience. Check out the video by clicking above and read our full review of this obscenely huge Dell laptop here. Funny video of using the new Dell 20″ laptop in London.

Ugly baby – a live performance by Stephen Lynch on the Carson Daily Show. The song is hilarious!

Waiter, there’s a fly on the wall (from Cari) – Waiter, as the anonymous narrator of this extract from http://waiterrant.net calls himself, has changed details to protect the privacy of his customers, and keep them coming to his upmarket New York Italian restaurant, alias The Bistro. Since April 2004, his weblog has been building into a situation comedy of life in and around a restaurant – its owner and staff, motley customers, the local homeless guy who shows up at the window, or the woman neighbor who stepped out naked on the street — but for a towel — on a dare. This is a waiter who’s been working on trying to publish some of his works. The stories he writes are actually quite interesting.

U.S. casino magnate gives Picasso’s dream the elbow – Picasso’s famed “Dream” painting turned into a nightmare for Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally gave the multimillion dollar canvas an elbow. Wynn had just finalized a $139 million sale to another collector of his painting, called “Le Reve” (The Dream), when he poked a finger-sized hole in the artwork while showing it to friends at his Las Vegas office a couple of weeks ago. I first heard this story from Derek. Did you know that Steve Wynn owns not only the new Wynn casino in Las Vegas, but the also the trio from Ocean’s Eleven – MGM Grand, Mirage, and Bellagio.

Not it! Mass. elementary school bans tag – Tag, you’re out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable. Recess is “a time when accidents can happen,” said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban. There are 2 problems here. Parents who are idiots for trying to sue the school for every little thing and school staff for not knowing better and are afraid of parents. There’s doesn’t appear to be such a thing as “common sense” in American culture. At least we’ve lost a lot of it. If I trip on the sidewalk, I don’t sue the city for not making the sidewalk safer. I blame myself for being clumsy and remind myself to be careful next time. The problem with American mentality is we always think we’re right and we’re never at fault.

Evolution – A very well done ad to show what is wrong with today’s image of beauty. I applaud Dove for doing this. There was a news article just a few weeks back stating that the Spanish fashion show or pageant was going to ban any women who are under a certain BMI because expression of beauty should not be telling girls to be super skinny.

No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted
Every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is.
Get involved at campaignforrealbeauty.com

retrievr (from /.) – working on top of flickr, retrievr utilizes a sample drawing you provide and tries to match images similar in representation. The few I tried were pretty close.

pacmanパックマン (from Cari) – Pacelman. Pacman for Excel. And other games that run within Excel. I haven’t personally tried these as allow unknown scripts run in MS Office applications isn’t something I do.

Home sweet home meet the chocolate igloo – Four Italians have constructed what they believe is the world’s first full-sized chocolate igloo but they have yet to solve an age-old problem. It still melts. Yummy! I’ve always had a dream of swimming in a chocolate river after I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now I can dream about living in a chocolate house!

1K Project II (from MS newsgroup) – 1000 cars racing at the same time – Trackmania Sunrise 😀 Made by Blackshark. Ever wonder what cars would be like if they were like liquid?

So today was supposed to be laundry day. I actually woke up early this morning, before 1pm, but that’s probably because I thought it was 3pm already and that we had daylights savings time change last night. Oh yah, don’t forget to update your clocks/watches. Remember, it’s “fall back”, so decrease your clock by 1 hour.

Anyway, when I woke up, I brought my laundry down with the intention of doing it sometime later in the day. I had a notion that I needed to go out to buy food or other stuff, but apparently there was no need this week. I still had enough food to last another week. If not, there’s always take out.

Anyway, time sure flies and before I knew it, it was already 7pm. I was watching At Home Dad (a new Japanese drama that has Abe Hiroshi – the guy from DragonZakura and The Guy Who Can’t Get Married), and it featured the father trying to do laundry and didn’t know how to start the machine. This triggered my brain and I went to start my 1st load. When the water started pouring in, everything seemed fine, but as I was dumping clothes in, the filling of the tub finally stopped, but I heard water trickling sound. At first, I didn’t think much of it, so I continued putting clothes in and closed the lid. When the washer started to spin up, it was rocking back and forth like crazy. I think this was actually another problem unrelated to what I found later. I read somewhere that the clothes have to be balanced inside the washer (can’t have more clothes on 1 side than the other). I can’t verify that anymore, but I guess it works like a centrifuge and as Mangerino always stated, always have an opposite test tube on the other end when you’re using the centrifuge.

Anyway, while trying to make the washer not rock back and forth, I noticed water coming out from the bottom. I’m like, oh shoot. There’s a leak. The washer was working fine 3 weeks ago (you can tell how often I do laundry). Anyway, I started grabbing towels and old laundry and started soaking up the water coming out. I waited while the run completed, since I wanted the water purged out of the washer and there wasn’t a button to do so. I even got out the mop and started soaking it with the water and draining it out at the sink.

The run finally completed and the clothes inside were still soaked. I dumped them into the dryer and started that run. That run actually took 3 hours or so, but I did a bunch of stuff in the mean time.

So when all the water was removed from the floor. I pulled out the washer and tilted it back and tried to see where the problem was. Earlier, I had shone a flashlight through the bottom and saw water trickling out. I actually used a 24 pack of Dr. Pepper and used it to hold the washer from coming down. Underneath the washer was a motor (which was rocking crazily) earlier and a huge cement block. I couldn’t tell where the water was coming from, but I did find a cork on the floor. I have no idea if this has part of the washer or not, but if you know washers and the cork is suppose to go somewhere, PLEASE CONTACT ME. I decided to start a run and fill it with some water to see where it was leaking. It turns out to be a small hole that was rusting. It might’ve been a few small holes, but since it was tilted back, it was only coming out of one. I thought about taping the hole(s) up, but this would only be a temporary solution. Either way, I didn’t have waterproof tape lying around.

And my 2nd load of laundry hasn’t even started. It contained all my undergarment, which when I run out is the sign that I need to do laundry. I had several options:

• Wear used underwear,
• Find a friend and borrow their washer
• Go to a laundromat

I believed option 3 to be the easiest.

So I used Google Maps and Live Local and searched for Laundromats in Bellevue. Stupid systems both showed a bunch of dry cleaners that weren’t related and at which point I wasn’t even sure if a listing was a dry cleaner or a laundromat. I then hit the Yellow Pages and I guess no one in Bellevue uses a laundromat because the closest laundromats is listed in Renton or Redmond. There was one in Bellevue, but at Crossroads, which is basically Redmond. Either way, that one closed at 6pm on Sunday. The one in Redmond is actually quite close to work (next to Safeway). This one closes at 10pm. I got there around 8 and the guy tells me last load was at 7:30pm and that they actually close at 9pm nowadays. What ever happened to 24/7 laundromats? Then again, the only laundromats I ever used was the one in the dorms and the one in my apartment complex, but I always thought laundromats were 24/7 since they’re like vending machines, but instead of spitting out candy, they wash and dry your clothes. You don’t need people to guard them.

Anyway, I told him my story, hoping he’d feel sorry for me and he bought it. Well actually, he asked if I had a washer at home, and because I told him my clothes were soaked, I thought he was going to suggest me to just dry my clothes. However, upon retrospect, I think he was going to suggest I wash my clothes and take it home to dry. Well, either way, I got to wash my clothes. He even let me stay around and used the big dryers and I got my 2nd load of laundry done. Total cost: $2 (excluding gasoline and my time of course). Anyway, he was an extremely nice guy. Apparently he works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Poor guy. I can’t blame him for wanting to go home early on Sunday and sleep. Either way, I left the laundromat around 8:45pm. My clothes were still somewhat wet, but oh well, I have a dryer at home, and my underwear is clean.

I get home, and my 1st load of laundry still isn’t dry. I put a portable heater next to the washer to dry up the remaining floor. One thing I forgot to mention was the water actually soaked through the bottom. I had a tiny puddle next to my car in the garage. The ceiling was also showing water. Anyway, that’s not something I have to worry for now, since I don’t expect that place to be normally flooded.

After this whole mess, I took a shower, dumped some clothes in the dryer and it’s actually quite nice to wear warm clothes after a shower, especially on these cold nights. Weather has also been a crazy today. I woke up to rain. Sunshine came out shortly. Then it started to rain and followed by hail. Then sunshine came out again. (You can see why I didn’t want to go out today).

Anyways, it looks like I’ll need to spend $500 and get a new washer. The dryer still works fine, so that one I can keep.

Wow, it’s been awhile. It’s also been quite a hectic at work recently. The week before last, I worked over 60 hours, pulling about 12 hours each day and a couple more on the weekend. But it looks like our product (at least version 1) is ready to be shipped. Last week has been quite chilled, but I was busy catching on stuff I missed while working so hard, which included:

• WarCraft III – I’m almost done, just the Elf campaign left
• ドラゴン桜 (DragonZakura) – Another Japanese drama a friend recommended to me that has the guy from 結婚できない男)
• Heroes – Season 1 – Story is getting interesting. Hiro is awesome!
• Veronica Mars – Season 3 – Just started watching
• Random anime episodes which I didn’t have time to watch

Cat – I think there’s a spy among us… (from Esca)

Black cat adoptions banned on Halloween – Like many shelters around the country, the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d’Alene is prohibiting black cat adoptions from now to Nov. 2, fearing the animals could be mistreated in Halloween pranks — or worse, sacrificed in some satanic ritual.

Amazon River Flowed Backwards in Ancient Times (from Cari) – South America’s winding Amazon River flows in an easterly direction across the continent, dumping water into the Atlantic Ocean. But in eons past, it flowed from east-to-west and, for a time, in both directions at once, a new study finds. This is actually quite interesting. The also have a map of showing the flow patterns at LiveScience.

Statue of Dennis the Menace stolen – The mischievous Dennis the Menace has gone missing — except this time, he’s not hiding because he broke the rules. … Police said the statue, which is 3 feet tall and weighs 125 pounds, is worth as much as $30,000. The city is offering a $5,000 reward for its safe return. Article wasn’t that interesting, but I loved the cartoon when I was a kid.

Who on earth would pay $1 million for hell? – HELL.com was among hundreds of Internet domain names up for auction in Hollywood, Florida, by domain asset management provider Moniker.com, a unit of marketing services firm Seevast Corp. The owner put a minimum price of $1 million (527,000 pounds) on the underworld’s domain, confident of high interest after the salacious address, Sex.com, sold for about $12 million earlier this year. But there were no takers with bids failing to reach the reserve price.

Irishmen hit paydirt selling soil to the New World – Two down-to-earth Irishmen have set up a business selling soil to nostalgic Irish Americans who want a handful of “the mother country” on their graves. Pat Burke, 27, and Alan Jenkins, 65, have just shipped their first $1 million (about 528,000 pounds) load of “official” Irish soil to New York — at $15 per 0.75 lb bag — and confidently expect it will be followed by many more. Wow! Now, who could’ve thought of that! I bet there are more countries where this would be a suitable business for. I hope they didn’t patent selling of soil from another country. ;p

U.S. sex offender given “exile” in Canada is freed – A New York state judge had allowed Watson to live in Canada on probation rather than have him spend time in a U.S. jail. Ottawa, unhappy about what it sees as U.S. courts dumping unwanted offenders in Canada, wanted Watson to stay in jail until a hearing to determine whether he should be kicked out of the country. When I first started reading this article, I also thought it was quite weird that we can exile someone, especially a sex offender, into Canada. Wouldn’t the Canadians be pissed? I mean what would we do if Canada exiles their criminals into the US?

Rapist Search (from FuzzyWuzzy)
I actually laughed out loud.

Toddler gets stuck in vending machine – When she turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube. … “He was having a ball in there, hugging all the stuffed animals,” Bierdemann said. “He was so good-natured, but I was shaking like a leaf.” Of course he wasn’t scared! If I were him, I’d be having the blast of my life. Being able to hug and play with all those cute plushies, it’d be like heaven! That statement will still hold true today.

Lik-Sang.com Out of Business due to Multiple Sony Lawsuits (from /.) – Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang’s sales of PSP consoles unlawful. I’m not sure if you’ve been following the Sony circus, but once again, they’ve managed make me even hate them more. Guess the Sony brand is going to be marked off from the list of TV brands I’ll be looking at.

A Hand Drawn Revolution (from RayAlome) – This video was an entry for a contest to win a Wii. The total time spent was close to 80 hours between drawing and editing on the computer. A really neat animation done with pencil and paper.

“Weird Al” Yankovic – Bob (from /.) – It is a song by Weird Al done completely in palindromes

Non-freezing penguin feet and other oddities explained – seems like a advertisment for the book (Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze?) more than a news article, but I went ahead a googled for the answers:

Q: Why don’t penguins’ feet freeze?
A: The system that stops a penguin’s foot from freezing is very elaborate and sophisticated and employs two mechanisms. The first one allows the penguin to control the rate of blood flowing to its feet by varying the diameter of arterial vessels supplying the blood. In cold conditions the flow is reduced, when it is warm the flow increases. The second mechanism takes the form of ‘counter current heat exchangers’ at the top of the legs. The arteries, which supply warm blood and oxygen to the penguin’s feet break up into many small vessels which are closely linked to similar numbers of venous vessels bringing cold blood back from the feet. So, when heat is lost from the arterial vessels, the venous vessels running in the opposite direction pick it up and carry it back through the body, rather than out through the feet. This means that in the very remote regions of the skin, cells get oxygen but heat isn’t lost through this skin. (from answerbank)

Q: Why hair turns grey?
A: As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color – like gray, silver, or white – as it grows. As people continue to get older, fewer pigment cells will be around to produce melanin. Eventually, the hair will look completely gray. (from KidsHealth)

Q: Why fingers get crinkled in the bath?
A: Your fingers and toes tend to wrinkle because of the kind of skin surrounding your hands and feet. As this site in our Skin category tells me, the tops of your fingers and the soles of your feet are covered by a thick, tough layer of skin called the stratum corneum. Notice how the skin of your eyelids is much softer and thinner than on your hands — that’s because it needs flexibility rather than strength. When the stratum corneum (which is Latin for “horny layer”) sits in a tub or a pool for a long time, it absorbs water. As the skin expands with water, it runs out of room to grow, and wrinkles up! (from Ask Earl)

Q: Is the Great Wall of China really visible from space?
A: “You can see the Great Wall,” Lu says. But it’s less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look. (from SPACE.com)

Q: Why left-handers are at greater risk of accidents?
A: I wasn’t able to find much sources in regards to this, but I’m pretty sure it’s because since the majority of the human popluation (~90%) are right handed, machinaries, tools, and even most mice are customized for the right hand, making the job more dangerous when someone who is left handed attempts. I’m not sure if this is exactly the case, but to open a bottle or unscrew a bolt, you turn counter-clockwise. For right handers, that means pushing out the wrench with your right hand. For left handers, that means pulling in the wrench with your left hand, and you obviously should know if pushing out or pulling in has more power. I did find an interesting article, but it seems to no longer be “free”, but clippets of it are on this person’s blog: Are left-handed people nature’s way of starting a fight?

Q: How do ants manage to survive in the microwave?
A: One thing working in the ants’ favor is that they don’t have much liquid in their bodies, so the microwaves– which cook meats by heating their water content– would act more slowly on ants than on people. That could buy the poor ants some time to save themselves. But how? By seeking out the dead spots, naturally. Microwave ovens have them just like concert halls, creating those annoying cold pockets in cooked foods. The ants probably are quite uncomfortable when they are bathed in microwave radiation, so they try to get away. If they find a dead spot they feel better, so they stay there and survive. (from The HooK)

Despite what mothers may have said, there is no connection between being cold and having one.
Though there is no direct connection, isn’t putting your body into a lower temperature make you immune system weaker making it easier for virus to enter?

Q: Why is snot green?
A: Of all the body cavities in contact with the outside world, the nose is probably one of the most hospitable: it is warm, very well aerated, moist and supplies unlimited quantities of bacterial food secreted continuously by the nasal mucosa (mucus contains quantities of glycoprotein and dissolved salts). In other words it is an ideal breeding ground for bacteria, which are always present. Many of the common bacteria associated with humans are coloured, Staphylococcus aureus is a golden yellow, for example, and Pseudomonas pyocyanea (to give it its older, but more explicit name) is a shade of blue. Normally these and the multitude of other organisms that are inhaled continuously into the nose are flushed out by runny mucus, which is swallowed. The bacteria are usually digested. However, if a situation arises where the flow of mucus slows down and then becomes much thicker in response to an infection of any kind, then the bacteria, in their ideal home, can multiply and produce the coloured mucus described. This, as many parents know, is one of the less endearing characteristics of babies and young children! And, by the way, if you’re still wondering where the green colour comes from, remember what happens when you add blue to yellow. (from New Scientist – they actually took down this page and I had to find it through WayBackMachine. I think it has to do with the fact they’re releasing this book.)

Q: Does beheading hurt?
A: Yes, beheading hurts. How much depends on the executioner’s skill, or lack of it. When Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringay Castle in 1587, a clumsy headsman gave her three strokes without quite managing to sever her head. The headsman then had to saw though the skin and gristle with his sheath knife before the job could be regarded as complete. The profound, protracted groan Mary gave when the axe first hit left the horrified witnesses in no doubt that her pain was excruciating. (from New Scientist)

Q: Why is the sky blue?
A: The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue. As you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white. (from Science Made Simple)