Category: Uncategorized

I just got news that grandpa passed away. I just recently found out he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I think I might actually be the last person in my family (parents + siblings) to actually have seen my grandpa when I was a freshman or sophmore in college. Though I am saddened by this news, I didn’t really know my grandpa that well. To me, he was just a jolly old man as I can recall.

There has always been a misunderstanding between my dad, and my dad couldn’t find it in himself to forgive grandpa for the longest time. When he heard about grandpa and his diagnosis, he was heart broken and even decided to go see him for the last time after probably almost 10 years now.

I can’t say I can understand what my father is going through right now, but I know how much it must be hurting him. After all these years, he’s finally decided to forgive grandpa, and grandpa leaves a step too early. I recall when I was young, and my dad would play dead. I actually fell for the trick multiple times. He actually got me believing that if these little warts on him popped, he would die. I remember crying for the longest time because my dad wouldn’t move, and when he woke up, I was the happiest little boy on Earth.

Unfortunately, it appears this story won’t have a happy ending.

Goodby Grandpa.

So I started using my oven recently. Got my cookie trays from Costco. Bought a box of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies from Costco and when using my oven, I noticed a latch. I thought it was to lock the oven from accidentally opening, but apparently, the moment I latch the door, the “auto self clean” light turned on. Of course I undid the latch, but it got me wondering how an oven can clean itself, or what exactly does the auto self clean do. Is a water source connected to it and would come out and swirl around like a dish washer? Turns out it was not quite what I had expected.

From Yahoo! Answers:

How does the auto clean feature on an oven work?

Self cleaning ovens work very well. The oven is heated up to 950 degrees F. and that burns off the dirt and turns it to a gray ash that you wipe off with a damp cloth.

You should remove the racks before cleaning or they will turn an ugly blueish color and eventually an ugly grayish color unless they are porcelain coated as some of the newer ones are. You should not let the dirty broiler pan in the oven or it could start on fire. You should also wipe(not scrub) the interior with a wet soapy cloth to remove the excess spillage, grease and spatter.

The self clean cycle is usually a four hour process that slowly heats the oven taking almost an hour for it to get up to cleaning temperatures and the door latch locks so you cannot open the door once it reaches 550 degrees F. and it will remain locked until it cools to below that temperature at the end of the cycle or you abort the clean cycle for any reason. It can take a while for the latch to unlock so if you attempt to unlatch the door and the lever will not move do not force it just wait longer. Many newer ranges do not have door latch handles and latch and unlatch on their own.

You can self clean an oven up to three times for the price of a can of oven cleaner so it is more economical as well.

Source(s):
40 years major appliance repair.

So at 950°F, I guess everything just burns to ashes. Interesting way to “clean” an oven. Good thing I didn’t leave that “auto self clean” thing on or my cookies may have actually caught on fire.

So I purchased some batteries a month ago from FifthUnit: ALHAGEN – Lithium Cell Battery Sets. They were the AG13 model, but I’m not sure if that’s the universal name. They were cheap and I bought my toy LED flashlight from there and thought I might as well get some batteries from there too. It was just a toy, something I would rather not waste money getting good quality batteries for. Anyway, I stored them in a tiny ziplock bag since it came in a plastic carton type thing with dents/holes for the batteries.

Today, while I was running some tests, I suddenly hear a loud pop and my bag of batteries sort of jump. I take a look at it and my ziplock baggy now has a hole. I dump them all out and here’s what I see:

I mean, literally, they were just sitting on top of my desk. There was no heat fluctuations. It did rain last night/this morning, so it might’ve been the humidity. When I touched the batteries, they were cold (like what ambient metal temperature should be like). I guess this is what happens when you buy cheap quality lithium batteries. And people wonder why their Dell’s explode into flames. You get what you pay for (unless you buy Sony). That’s why I stick with IBM (now Lenovo).

A bunch of my friends have been taking this personality test, so I thought why not. First seen on Xyon’s blog.

My Personality

Neuroticism	47
Extraversion	38
Openness To Experience	54
Agreeableness	43
Conscientiousness	36

You are neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox. You enjoy time with others but also time alone. Stressful and frustrating situations can be upsetting to you, but you are generally able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. A desire for tradition does not prevent you from trying new things. Your thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others you appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. You have some concern with others’ needs, and are generally pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative. You are reasonably reliable, organized, and self-controlled.

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report

I have got to say, this is one of the milder personality tests I’ve taken, ranking me pretty much in the middle for most things, and it’s description of me seems to be a bit toned down than what I usually see.

Oh yah, the code they give you to copy and paste is ugly. There was so many problems with it and it didn’t conform to XHTML standards either. Spent awhile fixing it and also getting it to show up correctly.

Got this hilarious breaking news story (from MS newsgroup):

NEW YORK – A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement.

He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. “Al-gebra is a problem for us,” Gonzales said. “They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute values. They use secret code names like ‘x’ and ‘y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, but we have determined they have some common factors and we believe we have found a common denominator”

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.”

White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the president.

Allergic To Sperm (from Tera) – Question 1: Almost every time my boyfriend and I have sex (we are monogamous), I get a vaginal infection about a day later with itching, discharge, and some pain. Could I be allergic to his sperm? / Question 2: I am in a committed relationship with my girlfriend. Recently, whenever I ejaculate during sex, she experiences irritation and burning in her vagina. Use of a condom prevents this but she is allergic to them too.

Hoe Down (from MS newsgroup) – how fast did the tractor have to be traveling to actually drive the hoe that deep into the bridge?

Addicted to YouTube – video wasn’t too interesting, but was very cute. I always imagined and dreamed about my stuff animals moved around when I’m not looking. Be right back, gotta go get my Pikachu.

Crazy Indian Music Video (from MS newsgroup) – pretty funky dancing in this music video. Apparently the male lead singer is often called India’s Michael Jackson.

One-Letter Ticker Symbols on NYSE – this started off when Jeremy and I saw that Nabisco/Kraft had a cracker called Cheese Nips. I was then wondering who made Cheese Its (apparently spelled Cheez It). Turns out it was Kellogg/Keebler and while looking on Kellogg’s wikipedia page, I noticed its ticker symbol was K. I was curious what the other one letter ticker symbols on NYSE was. The only other one I knew was T = AT&T. After find this page, we went down the list. We saw some letters have been decommissioned while there were 2 that were currently reserved. Reading more, it turns out that they are holding it for 2 different companies to move over from the NASDAQ: The Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange has publicly said that he is holding the symbols “M” and “I” for two companies he hopes to convince to switch from Nasdaq to the NYSE — Microsoft and Intel.

Barats and Bereta: Auto Insurance (from DeadLock) – a hilarious reenactment of why males and under 25 have such high insurance premiums.

Blind man sentenced for dangerous driving – A blind man who was convicted of dangerous driving after he admitted being behind the wheel of a car that touched 35 mph was given a three-month suspended sentence on Monday.

I first saw this article: Chinese furious at star’s toilet humor and it got me searching for the video. There were tons of blogs and photos, but no one seemed to link to the video itself. I did happen to find random clips of the show online, but nothing regarding the toilet bashing.

From the article:

Jessey Meng, who made a name for herself as an actress and a television presenter in China, joked about mainlanders’ toilet habits to a chorus of laughter from fellow guests on the show “Red Storm” last week.

“Many mainland toilets don’t have doors and even when they do, most people don’t even shut the door!” Meng said.

She regaled the host with a story about a toilet in a Chinese city where she had seen “hundreds of pale bottoms all lined up in a row.”

Equipped with just the English name of the actress and the show, I went on to find the Chinese counterpart:
Jessey Meng: 孟廣美 (孟广美)
Red Storm: 紅色風暴 (红色风暴)

As I mentioned before, I was unable to find the video anywhere, until I landed on a bittorrent file from YYTv0. There were split into 2 parts (apparently this talk show was broadcasted on sepearted days). After downloading the first part and watching it all the way through, I didn’t find the part where she bashes China’s toilet. Although I was disappointed, I did see a hilarious clip:

A Time Sex Thing (Is Work Safe, but requires understanding of Mandarin)

They have a Chinese phrase and were told to translate it. Before this, it was giving the real definition for uncommon Chinese sayings. So when they were asked to translate 一次性用品 (which refers to paper plates and plastic forks), I thought it was going to be something like one time use. Turns out they were going for the funnier aspect with the direct/literal translation:

一次: One Time/A Time
性: Sex/Gender
用品: Goods/Things

which ended up with: A Time Sex Thing

Jessey goes on and asks if she got this from the internet, but it was actually a photo submitted by a viewer from a supermarket. Jessey then tells her about her experience when she was somewhere in China and someone was selling dry goods. In Chinese, dry goods is called 乾貨, however, being in China, they use simplifed: 干货

Here’s what makes this funny, the simplified version 干 has 2 traditional counterparts: 乾 (dry) and 幹 (do).

Just like Engish, do can refer to multiple meanings including to kill and to have sex with (to f***).

So, underneath the Chinese writing, it said: F*** Goods

The chubby Chinese guy was hilarious mentioning One Night Stand (which was actually pretty pretty close to the real answer) and converted 乾貨 to 跟貨 or 跟者我的貨 (follow me goods).

Now back to the original topic, I downloaded part 2 of this talk show and finally found the clip that had Jessey bashing the toilets in China:

Red Storm – Jessey Meng – Toilet

I honestly didn’t think even think the insults made were that mean. It was funny, I’d agree. I mean she was talking about back then too, although she did say that currently if you walk into a ladies rest room, there are still 2 or 3 out of 10 stalls where people don’t bother closing the stall doors, but this was obviously made out as a joke. I mean even the government has to tell their own citizens who are travelling abroad not to not spit or litter in public areas to give foreigners a better impression of them since it’s sow common in their own country: Guidebook spells out etiquette for tourists. Also an article regarding why foreign counties don’t particularily lke travelers from Mainland China: Chinese travelers’ bad manners earn a chilly reception

If you want to watch the entire video, you can do so here: Red Storm – Jessey Meng, although it is ~200MB and if you’re watching it in your browser, it may take some time to start.

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Random Crap:

Xerox reveals transient documents (from /.) – This offers the prospect of reusable paper in the sense that the content is automatically erased after a period of time, ready for fresh printing. Inspired by the fact that many print outs have a life-span of a few hours (think of the emails you may print out just to read, or the content you proof read on the train journey back home), the specially prepared paper will preserve its content for up to 16 hours. Someone brought up an interesting point in regards to contracts with disappearing ink.

Motorist jailed for blowing up speed camera – Craig Moore, 28, took his revenge on the camera, which had flashed him in the Hyde area of Manchester, in August 2005. Although the camera itself was badly damaged, images of him speeding and returning to destroy the evidence were stored in recording equipment in its unscathed base. I don’t remember if I posted this article before, but if I did, this one now has the picture of the blown up camera.

Michael Paulus :: Skeletal Systems (from Cari) – A character study of 22 present and past cartoon characters. A pretty interesting yet creepy site showing familiar characters such as Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Charlie Brown, Power Puff Girls, etc and what their skeletal structure would be like. (for a moment there, I forgot what PPG were called, and I searched for Bubble Girls; DO NOT SEARCH FOR BUBBLE GIRLS!)

What the Bagel Man Saw – He had also — quite without meaning to — designed a beautiful economic experiment. By measuring the money collected against the bagels taken, he could tell, down to the penny, just how honest his customers were. Did they steal from him? If so, what were the characteristics of a company that stole versus a company that did not? Under what circumstances did people tend to steal more, or less?

Apparently Berkeley now has a class called Basic Study of Magical Creatures 101 (from Esca)

N.Y. woman wins $1 million lottery again – A woman who won $1 million from a state lottery game four years ago has improbably hit the jackpot again. … A lottery spokeswoman verified Wilson was a Cool Million winner in 2002, but declined to confirm her latest win until a planned news conference. There have been only two previous repeat million-dollar-plus winners in the lottery’s history, according to the state. This really got me thinking about playing the lottery…

Auto-eroticism undoes driver – A Slovak driver who crashed into a bus shocked rescuers who found him unconscious and half naked with a vacuum pump on his penis.

Mass hysteria in children after snake killed – Dozens of children have fainted, apparently because of mass hysteria, after school authorities in Nepal killed a snake, considered as sacred by many Hindus, witnesses said on Thursday. At least 67 students, aged between nine and 16 years, have had fainting fits since Tuesday in the mainly Hindu country, they said. As FuzzyWuzzy says, “Where’s Samuel L Jackson to yell. IT’S SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!“

About 3 weeks ago, I opened my microwave for the 1st time and I realized something… it didn’t have a turn table. I’m like, they still make microwaves like that!?!? I believe all the microwaves my dad’s ever purchased had a turn table. By turn table, I mean there’s a dish that rotates inside when it’s microwaving so you dont have to stop midway, flip your burrito over and continue microwaving. Anyway, it looks like I’ll need to pull out my microwave from my storage room.

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Random Crap:

Kids buy lunches with scans of fingers – Rome City Schools is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their accounts. In the past, students had to punch in their pin numbers. When did we get rid of lunch cards?

Telephone telepathy — I was just thinking about you – Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone. “The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected,” he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. “The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one.”

I was driving this morning and on a license plate frame of the car in front of me, the bottom said “Not A Magician”. The font on the top was smaller so I had to drive up closer to read it, and the full sentence said:
I’m A Beautician
Not A Magician

Have you seen the new show on Nick Jr. called Lazytown? Isn’t Nick Jr for like kids 8 and below? Anyway, it’s about this bright pink girl that dances to techno music. Here’s some example videos:

• You’re A Pirate
• Bing Bang
• Take a Vacation
• There’s always a way

Police: Man robs bank to be ‘supported’ – Police said Gaetan Roy had just lost his job, so he came up with a plan: Rob a bank, hang around, then get taken to jail to be “supported.”

Cell phones found inside four prisoners – “Each one had a cellular with a number of chips,” Arevalo said, adding that one also had hidden a charger in his anal cavity.

Sodium Party (from /.) – I’d read about, and heard stories about, throwing sodium into water. It’s a classic thing chemistry students do in college, and based on the reports I have been able to find on the internet, they are often drunk at the time. What do you get when you purchase 3.5lbs of solid sodium metal (~$100), have your own private lake, and an experimental mind? KABOOM! Do check out the videos and pictures he’s posted.

So as I mentioned a few days back, I got a new desk. It’s labor day weekend and everyone got off early on Friday, so I came up and built this desk. It’s really pretty. With my new setup, I have so much more space. I guess before, all the space behind me wasn’t being used.

To build the desk, I first had to make froom for it, so the old desk and all the other crap were taken down and moved to the side. Yes, both my computers went down as well as my internet connection. Now, I’m also facing toward the window(s) instead of facing toward the wall. It generally feels more secure and like I said, I feel that I have more space now and I can even fit another table on the left of me.

Anyway, after everything was built and setup, I noticed I needed more furniture to hold stuff, like the networking crap in the corner and the rear speakers that are sitting on the floor. So since I didn’t have any plans today (besides sleeping in, which I did till 3pm, or was it 4pm), I headed over to IKEA to check stuff out. I made measurements on what I needed to fit nicely into my setup and also to give enough space for my Roomba to come in, though with my new setup, the Roomba’s bound to start eating up cables, so I need to figure out how to avoid that.

I decided I needed a bookshelf for the networking hardware and it’ll also hold my left rear speaker.
I needed a little box to house my computer and to put the printer on top of it.
I had some space between my desk and the wall and thought it be nice to have a drawer/cabinet type thing.

After getting to IKEA, it took quite some time to find what I needed, though choices were aplenty.

I ended up getting the KILBY bookcase for $19.99. The one I linked to is the larger version for $29.99 because I can’t seem to find the smaller one on their site. It was a bit wider than what I was looking for (would end up extending past an electric outlet), but I decided that due to it’s “cost” and I can always just not install the back panel, leaving the back through to the wall completely, it was worth it.

I ended getting the CORRAS bedside table to use as my printer stand. It was just right, had an internal height of 18″ (my computer was 17″ tall) and would fit my printer on top quite nicely. It did come with a shelf, but I didn’t bother installing it. This was also the most expensive piece at $34.99 (though the site says $29.99; did I get gypped?).

The hardest one to find was the drawer, because I only had 14″ to spare (or I could push my desk further away from the wall, but that seemed like a big hassle with all the crap already on it and setup. Then there was the price of ~$50 for a tiny drawer. That’s why I ended up with the FLÄRKE computer unit, though I wasn’t going to house any computer in there. I thought my trash can would fit nicely in there and I could hold some documents on the top shelf and on the top of it, I can put my scanner.

Welp, there you have it!

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BUT PROBABLY DON’T (from MS newsgroup)

Bolded were ones I found interesting
Italicized were ones I already knew

1. Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.
2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
3. The dot over the letter i is called a “tittle”.
4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
6. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
7. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
8. The ‘spot’ on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was albino.
9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily.
10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
11. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.
12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).
14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.
16. Upper and lower case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters.
17. Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time, hence, multi-tasking was invented.
18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before! turns out to be false: source (from HJO3)
21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver
22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.
23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was a Captain Kirk’s mask painted white.
25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)
26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)
27. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with apples!
30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

This really started last night, so maybe it should be titled Extreme Days. I was at work trying to figure out why some desktop handles weren’t being released and left work around 11:30pm. I started making dinner and my sister calls me on the phone asking me how to convert coaxial to network cable (RJ45). I spend a good chunk of time saying that’s not possible, but she kept insisting that the hotel had internet access and that was the only thing available. After enough convincing, she believes me. I asked her if it could possibly be wireless internet access, but she says she wasn’t able to see an access points, and she’s wandered up and down the halls looking for a signal.

So after dinner, I took a big dump. A BIG DUMP. So big that it didn’t flush. This wasn’t the normal clogged toilets I usually deal with. Normal clogged toilets still trickle down. This did not move down even an inch when I woke up this morning. It did when I got home tonight at 12pm. So going back to the story, I have this weird plunger I got from Fred Meyers called the Master Plunger. It’s worked plenty of times before, but this time, it wasn’t even pushing any water away besides out of the toilet bowl.

The good thing about this whole incident was there was really only 1 big piece of poop so there weren’t any small floating pieces. And since I added Clorox Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner tablets, the whole bathroom smelled like bleach.

I had a bottle of Liquid Plumr (which I always thought was spelled Liquid Plumber) I purchased from Costco, but it specifically states for not usage in toilets. It’s because of the trap design on toilets. Liquid Plumber and Draino work by pushing down. There were also sites that warned that that once Draino started working, it got so hot, that it cracked the toilet bowl.

I began searching online for home remedies on how to unclog the toilet. Here were the suggestions I saw:

• Add liquid detergent
• Pour a lot of hot water
• Add Draino/Liquid Plumr and use plunger to push liquid past the trap

Adding the liquid detergent was suppose to make the poop easier to slide, but all I got was bubbles. It did make my bathroom smell like lemon instead of bleach.

Since the water line wasn’t moving, I wasn’t really able to add a lot of hot water.

So I tried the Liquid Plumr suggestion, though as an afterthought, that may have been a bad idea. First, this method did not work either, but since my water was mixed with bleach, I remember reading somewhere that mixing Liquid Plumr and some other chemicals may result in deadly gases. I immediately turned on the vent and left it running for sometime. I’m not sure if bleach + liquid plumbr = deadly gas, but I’m still alive.

I decided to give up at 3:30am and went to sleep. I decided I’d get a better plunger tomorrow. For some reason, this morning I had the idea that I heard the toilet flush this morning and was actually excited to come down to see a working toilet, but only to be disappointed that the water line had not moved at all. It isn’t like this is the only toilet in the house, since I have 2 other toilets which I hardly use (since they’re on the 2nd floor), but I just felt uncomfortable having a clogged toilet.

This morning, I had planned to get the rock chip on my windshield fixed. However there was some major accident on the 520 this morning: Truck Crashes Into Sammamish River. It took me 20 minutes to reach the traffic jam and 40 minutes to get through 2 exits. I was pretty pissed.

I had actually gone to this glass shop on Tuesday morning, but apparently someone took the resin and they weren’t able to patch it. They apologize for the inconvenience and told me to come back after 2. I told them I’d come back Wednesday morning. The place I went to was called Evergreen Auto Glass and they did a pretty good job filling the rock chip. I had actually gotten this on my trip back from Mt. Shasta, and finally decided to get it patch now. Another reason was that I found out we had Prime discount at this place, so the fix only costed $15 (vs $45 w/o Prime discount). The nice thing is I found out this repair comes with lifetime warranty, which I thought was nice. You could still see some scars, but I’ve seen what can happen to these rock chips if you don’t fix them.

Afterwards, I dropped by Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up a “toilet” plunger. Apparently, a regular plunger is for sinks since they’re flat and toilet plungers have this little extra pouch which gives a tighter seal on toilets. This plunger is amazing! It must be the special knob. Just 3 or 4 plunges, and my toilet was unclogged. Stupid Master Plunger, don’t you guys fall for it too.

Anyway, back to work. I was just working on some test code when suddenly my display begins to act funny by drawing weird stuff on the screen. I tried rebooting the machine and then it would freeze trying to log me in. I logged in as the Administrator and windows were missing titlebars. Opening display properties resulted in it telling my display driver was made for a previous OS and my current resolution was set to -1 x -1. I finally was able to log onto my account and then it tells me my profile was corrupted and they’re creating a new one for me. This all points to signs of my hard drive dying. I had a spare IDE drive, but as I found out, my computer only has 1 IDE port and 1 SATA port. The slot for the hard drive is also custom fitted for a SATA drive. They also only have 1 standard 12V power adapter which was used by my DVD-ROM drive. So I ended up unhooking the DVD-ROM drive and now the hdd is just sitting on top of my floppy. Installed Windows Server 2003 and everything seems to be fine now. Been busy setting up my machine for the rest of the day now that all my programs are gone. Good thing I could still access my previous hard disk and grab the data off it. A scan disk on that drive did end up freezing though, so I don’t think that’s a good sign.

I also got my review back today. The review is this thing that happens once a year at Microsoft where they determine your raise, stock award, and bonus. I won’t be saying any numbers, since I don’t think I’m allowed to. I forget what my lead exactly first told me, but it scared the bejesus out of me. I think it was something like, “So I tried…” The thing is, when I submitted the review, he had told me that I had done well and he was going to suggest/recommend X and Y. So when he started out saying “So I tried…”, I was like shoot, that means I didn’t make it. But turns out he was just going to mention what I did well and what areas I could improve. Honestly, I don’t remember what he first said, but that was the most tense 30 minutes I’ve been in awhile. He finally told me my #s and I’m happy!

My OfficeMax order also arrived today. One of the glass L desks I’ve been eyeing finally went on sale again: Pisa “L” Workcenter (normally at $150). I went searching around for a $30 off $150 coupon and thanks to some friends at B$, I got one. To fill my order, I purchased a lamp because the master bedroom currently has no lighting and I’ve been meaning to get a lamp. The lamp turned out much nicer than expected:

I haven’t had time to setup the desk yet. It’s still sitting at the bottom of my stairs. That thing is heavy. So it’s been a pretty extreme day.