Category: Uncategorized

First of all, HAPPY BDAY LILPEBBLY!!!

Haha. My colleague went home at 2:30pm today because it’s Valentines day. I didn’t get into work till 12pm. ;p

Did I have plans tonight? Sure I did! I get to watch more videos on my computer and relax after a hard day of work. My power is still funky but I did manage to take a shower in another vacant apartment. I called PSE (Puget Sound Energy) and they said they’ll send someone out to take a look. I’m not too sure if they could do anything just from the outside, but when I got home tonight, the problem was still there. The worst part is most of my laundry is still in the washing machine.

Thanks to all those who wished me Happy Valentines day, though this day doesn’t hold much meaning for me (yet).

I did get a nice SMS from a friend:

Today is national good looking person day. Send this to someone gorgeous. Don’t send it back to me, i’ve received hundreds.

Apparently UC Berkeley web designers decided to follow the Google route and modify their logo on Valentine’s Day. Thanks to Decathanerd for telling me. Not sure if you can see it by the time you read this, but you can check it out on their homepage. What sucks is they’re using Flash to do this when it should be an animated gif at worse. Though, I have to give it to them for making it only 18kB. Looking at the code, they also have a version for browsers that don’t support flash:

Click on the image to see the flash version.

This is the worse form of advertisement fraud ever! So during my last trip to Costco, I was looking for cereal to buy. Ended up picking up a box of Grape-Nuts. It sounded good. I’ve heard of it before. The picture looks yummy.

But that was the worse part! The picture was only there to deceive! My box actually had both raspberries and blackberries. Today, I got some milk and when I opened my box of Grape-Nuts, what was I to find? Nothing besides these grain/wheat/barley thingies.

Is this sort of deceiving allowed?!?! I mean if they said Grape-Nuts and then showed me a picture of their cereal w/o the berries, I can understand that their cereal won’t contain those berries, but to have a name like Grape-Nuts and then show a bowl of cereal filled with berries… Sigh…

F**K! I’m having major deja vu. I swore I wrote about Grape-Nuts before… F**K!

Anyway, I found this site: How can Grape-Nuts cereal contain no grapes or nuts?

Dear Cecil:

I was idly reading a Grape-Nuts package the other day and was struck by the fact that the ingredients seem to have nothing to do with either grapes or nuts. Reading the fine print, I see that it’s really “grape nuts brand natural wheat & barley cereal,” etc., but the type sizes jump around madly and any normally myopic person would just see the “grape nuts.” So here are my questions: (1) Can I market my “100% Lean Beef brand desiccated corn husks” without getting in trouble with the consumer protection people, the FTC, et. al.? (I assume anything I do will get me in trouble with Ralph Nader.) (2) If I can’t, how can the Post division of General Foods? (3) In any case, how did they come to call them Grape-Nuts? — Winfield S., Chicago

Cecil replies:

Your corn husk scheme shows a certain evil ingenuity, Win–I have come to expect this from the Teeming Millions–but unfortunately you can’t market it, because the Federal Trade Commission would promptly slap you with a cease-and-desist order for promulgating advertising with a “tendency to deceive.” (Although you never know. The way things have been going lately, they might give you an award and appoint you commissioner.) In the early years of the FTC, an equally ingenious predecessor of yours tried to sell Ice Cream brand bars that did not, in fact, contain any ice cream, but he was shot down forthwith.

So how does Post get away with it? Here we must delve into the mysteries of history (rhymes, doesn’t it?). Grape-Nuts was introduced in 1898 by Charles W. Post, founder of the company that was later to become a division of General Foods and inventor of such other gustatory delights as Post Toasties. C.W., as he was known, was given to devising extravagant names for his products, with advertising claims to match.

Post Toasties, for instance, was originally known as Elijah’s Manna, although Elijah had not actually endorsed it, having expired several thousand years earlier. In touting the advantages of Postum Cereal Food Coffee over conventional coffee, Post accused the latter of containing “poisonous alkaloids” that caused rheumatism, “coffee heart” (true enough, I guess), and other disabilities. A diet of Postum and Grape-Nuts, coupled with abstention from coffee and “poor foods,” presumably meaning those made by Post’s competitors, would cure “any known disease.” The brand name Grape-Nuts was conceived in a similar spirit.

Nonetheless, there was a rationale, however thin, for the name. The product contained maltose, known at the time as “grape sugar,” and it did have a nutty flavor. Moreover, bearing in mind that the name is properly spelled “Grape-Nuts” and not “Grape Nuts,” one might argue that while there were generic commodities known as grapes and nuts, there was nothing called grape-nuts, in the sense that there were cashew nuts, and thus the name could have no tendency to deceive. A fine distinction, I suppose, but that is what we have lawyers for.

Anyway, the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act specifically excluded “fanciful” (as opposed to deceitful) trade names from prosecution, and when the FTC set up shop in 1914 it showed no inclination to get persnickety about things. We might finally note, Winfield, that while you and I are insignificant insects (well, you are, anyway), General Foods is a multinational megacorporation. But of course that has no bearing on the matter at all.

–CECIL ADAMS

So I still attempted to give it a try. No more than 6 spoonfuls of it, I was ready to give up. I pour 80% of what was in my bowl down the trashcan. Anyway, now I have this 5lb box of Grape-Nuts up for grabs.

I did get strawberries and whip cream, so my dessert was awesome.

Arggggggh…..

So I was doing laundry and vacuuming at the same time when the breaker snapped. My apartment’s electricity is already finicky from the start, but I thought all I had to do was flip the breaker back on. I go to my breaker panel and and all the breakers were in their on position. I try flipping a few off and on, but that didn’t seem to help. I even tried flipping all of them off, waited a few mintues, and flipping them all back on. No luck.

I then went to talk to the apartment manager, so she tells me about this “other” breaker switch that’s supposed to be in my 2nd bedroom. I go back down and can’t find it. Apparently the 1st floor breaker panel location is different from the other floors. Anyway, the maintenance guy won’t be here until tomorrow and there’s no one around to help me. I give PSE (Puget Sound Energy) a call, and they told me that because my neighbor’s electricity was still on, that a power outage that they’re responsible for was unlikely. She said she could send someone out, but if they find out the fault isn’t theirs, they can charge up to $150 for the visit. So I’m like, let me talk to my apartment manager again. We didn’t get too far with the 2nd talk, but she did mention about a main breaker switch, but had no idea where it was at. She asked if I had any place to stay tonight and I said I could probably take care of that in the case where I do need to find some place.

I went back and started searching outside the complex. I found the electric meters and they were all locked. Then I noticed this small latch underneath each meter which wasn’t locked. I opened the one that seemed to be mine, since it’s the lowest one and its meter wasn’t moving. Behold, it was off. I switched it back on, and my power came back up. I thought I was set.

I go and tell my apartment manager and she’s happy and I’m happy. I come back and find out, not everything is working. My washing machine and dryer won’t turn out. Trying to use it to actually knocks the power out for several rooms. My bedroom electricity seems to be super finicky, where turning on a light will dim lights in other rooms. My computer won’t even turn out w/o switching over to the UPS power supply.

But not all hope is lost. There seems to be a set of outlets that aren’t affected. I’ve moved my computer out there for the time being.

So I went and tried to troubleshoot this problem. I turned each breaker off one at a time, to see if there was a certain breaker that was causing this problem. That didn’t turn up anything useful. I unscrewed the outlet where the vacuum cleaner was last plugged in, but everything in there seemed fine. I was thinking something might’ve shorted or is still being shorted.

Anyway, I’ll have to talk with the apartment manager again tomorrow to resolve this.

So I was cleaning out my fridge the other day. Threw out a bunch of food. Haha. I think I’m going to only purchase food that lasts longer than a year from costco now. Threw away an unopened package of ham (the ones that usually come in 2 packs). It expired on 11/2005. Threw away 1/2 a pack of hot links. I think there were like 12 hot dogs altogether, but white stuff was growing on it when I checked it. I think I got the hot dogs back in December. I don’t exactly remember anymore. I had 1 Chinese sausage (臘腸) left from August when my cousing gave it to me. That went into the trash. I also threw away 3/4 of my package of salami. I never did eat that much of it besides when I had croissants and cheese. That was purchased back in August or September too when I first got my Costco card. There was stuff growing on the salami too. Haha.

You know what’s the best? Cereal. These guys last forever! Oh yah! Pasta too! Trying to think what else is in my fridge. Hot wings, mozzarella cheese sticks, dumplings, chicken nuggets, ice cream, cream puffs, fish and shrimp balls (what was left from our Chinese New Year hot pot), water, juice, bread, eggs, soda, tons of sauces, and … yogurt… Shoot, I think those yogurt expired back in October or November. Haha, into the trash they will go.

That reminds me, I need to do laundry this weekend, or what remains of it.

I never did get to tell you how my Snow Tubing event went. It didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would be. Playing in the snow is always fun (unless you saw my 5yr old video when a snow ball was thrown into my face). Haha. So yah… let’s end that story there. Anyway, it was quite tame. How it worked was there were about 10 seperate slopes blocked off from each other by a 3ft (?) wall of snow. You basically start at the top and slide straight down. Head first, feet first, on your belly, on your butt, on your back, they don’t really care.

When you’re at the bottom, you can clip your tube to this line tugging thing and it’ll pull you back up to the hill. There was a 5 minute line, so we decided to walk up the hill. Oh how wrong we were. By the time we got to the top, I had to take off my jacket because it was just too hot. It was very tiring walking up that hill, so yah, we used the line tugging thing every time afterwards. We also threw snowballs at each other on our way up. I realized how weak I was when my snowballs couldn’t get too far.

After a couple more dives, I decided it was time to stop. Plus there was free hot chocolate, apple cider, and coffee back at the lodge. There were also chests full of candy and trail mix and granola bars. Couple of us just chatted for awhile and waited for time to go. When Jeremey came in, he was totally soaked. Apparently he wasn’t really planning on coming, but a couple of people convinced him and Tekman to join us, and he went snow tubing in regular clothes.

The morale event used to be skiing, but someone got hurt really bad and was paralyzed for a year, so they changed it to a event with a smaller chance of injury like snow tubing.

You can check out the photos I took. It’s a pretty weak album, but I didn’t really want to damage my camera either. Although, I think it’s time for a new one. The new Canon’s have a much better LCD which I like, but I don’t want to switch to SD (Secure Digital). I still like CF (Compact Flash) a lot. There’s also 2 videos in the album, but it’s just me video it snowing, nothing too exciting.

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So during the Anti-Super Bowl party, Guy brought up an interesting game. Let’s say this game exists (no one really plays this game and I’ll explain why later). The game works like this. There are 2 players. Player 1 chooses a number between 1 and 9. Player 2 then chooses a number between 1 and 9, but not any number that has already been picked. This goes back and forth till either player has any 3 numbers that can add up to 15. If all 9 numbers are used and neither player can add up to 15 with 3 numbers in their set, it’s a tie.

Is there a winning path? Does the 1st player always have the advantage since he gets 1 extra number? I’ll let you think about this for a bit and if you’re ready to learn more about the game, open the spoilers.

Spoilers: (Show)

Do you remember magic squares? A 3×3 magic square is defined as having the sum of the numbers in each row, column and diagonal equal to 15.

In a sense, playing the 3 numbers to add up to 15 game is like playing tic-tac-toe, but the spaces are defined by a rotatable and flippable 3×3 matrix of numbers.

Pretty interesting huh?

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Random Crap:

Made several updates to my previous posts:

1. Added a new all 3D CG scenes video to Final Fantasy VII – Dirge of Cerberus.
2. Corrected who the artists of The Internet Is For Porn were.

Did you know that Dead or Alive‘s Hayabusa was taken from Ninja Gaiden? Ninja Gaiden dates back to 1988 back on the NES and I actually owned Ninja Gaiden 3 on the SNES. I had no idea that the ninja in Ninja Gaiden was called Hayabusa, but Cari showed me a picture today and she was saying how he was from Ninja Gaiden and then saying he was from Dead or Alive. I asked her to clarify which game he was from, but apparently he’s from both!

Kirby-ful Color (Oil Painting) (from Cari)
Taken from Into The Pixel 2005

The Cubes (from Skylancer) – Hilarious site selling products with the effects of Dilbert and Office Space.
Corporate Protester (Personnel File)
Job Title Generator – (Personnel File)

Runaway Cars Tagged to Stop Chases (from /.) – Car chases, a staple on cable news channels, often end in deadly outcomes. Last year alone, there were more than 600 pursuits in Los Angeles and more than 100,000 nationwide. That’s like almost 2 chases / day in LA. Sigh…

Whisky PC (from /.) – I already had a powerful computer setup so I wanted something more quiet, small and low power consumptioning to function as a basic home server. I love to tinker with hardware etc. so I wanted to make something quite unique for a case. I have seen many nice and creative cases before but none of them were made out of a bottle. In November I bought an industrial 3.5″ SBC board (with Socket370). For the project I selected a 1.5 litre Ballantine’s bottle for case. That was the proper size and shape for the task at hand. Pretty cool how they were able to fit all the PC parts into a whiskey bottle. Sort of reminds me of the mod that made it looked like 3 volumes of an encyclopedia.

Brokeback to the Future (YouTube mirror / Putfile mirror) (direct download) – Hilarious parody taking Back to the Future scenes out of context and mixing it with Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. Brokeback Mountain the movie just never appealed to me as something enjoyable to watch, but I’ve got to say, the soundtrack from the trailer is pretty amazing. This parody was released by Chocolate Cake City.

Today was the Super Bowl something, whichever number it is on. Anyway, earlier this week, Tekman invites me to his Anti-Super Bowl party, where we do nothing that’s related to football. The party was planned to counter the Super Bowl completely. The party started at 3pm today and I left his place almost at midnight. It was really fun! He made barbeque ribs and both honey and spicy chicken wings. There was shrimp cocktail and even homemade cookies by Angel. There were also gummies (worms, sharks, fried eggs) that were brought by Guy. Other people that attended the party included Jeremy, Eric, Christine, David, and Ryan #2.

I actually had a lot of fun! More than I expected. Ryan #2 brought his XBox360 and we played Gauntlet, Hexic, Marble Blast, and Geometry Wars, all which are available for download through Xbox 360 Live for a few dollars. Geometry Wars was actually really fun. Check out the videos here. It reminded me of asteroids, but the graphics are a lot better. You also control 2 joysticks, one for controlling the plane and the other for controlling the direction of the fire power. It was originally a easter egg or hidden feature of Project Gotham Racing 2. We also got to check out the other features like demos and HD trailers. One of the games Ryan #2 showed us was Full Auto. The graphics were stunning and one of the coolest features in the game is the instant rewind. Did a turn that you didn’t like, you have a bar that increases as you race and that defines how much time you can rewind. The remaining video game we played (or more like they played) was DDR Max and I’ve gotta say, Angel is good!

The events continue with the series of board games. I got to learn 2 new games today! I first played Ticket to Ride with Guy, Eric, and Christine. The only person who’s played the game was Guy in our group, so he had the honors of explaining the game to us. It’s a pretty simple game. The object of the game is to get the most points by building train tracks to connect big cities in North America. You can get points in 3 different ways.

1. Each track you build gave you points depending on the length.
2. You fulfill tickets by connecting cities defined by the ticket which gave you points. However, if you have a ticket you couldn’t fulfill, you lose that amount of points.
3. The longest track would get an extra 10 points.

I came in 3rd out of 4th in this game, but it was so fun!

Next I played Puerto Rico. I may have mentioned this game before, but this was my 1st time playing it. It’s somewhat like settlers without the trading between players and a much more complicated turn. It’s much more complicated than I can describe here, but it involved plantations that grew crops like sugar, tobacco, coffe, corn, and indigo and buildings that refined them. Then there was the trading aspect where you get money from the bank and the shipping of products to get victory points. Then there’s the concept of people working on the plantations and buildings. It’s a lot more complicated than Settlers, but it requires a lot more strategy. I was basically pulled along in this game and ended up last place. But it was a very close game. The # of victory points starting with me was 28, 29, 30, 31.

So I get home today past midnight and through MandalayX’s instant message, I find out that the Seahawks had lost. I checked the scores online, and the defeat was pretty embarassing. 21 – 10? I thought we were suppose to be good. Oh well. Good thing I didn’t have to go through that I guess. MandalayX also helped fill in some of the blanks and made some corrections on my lyrics I had attempted to transcribe from the Seahawks Rule song I posted yesterday.

Xombie: Chapter 7 (from Deadlock)

Finally! A new chapter! You can visit the official website Xombie Online to see the rest.

Xombie: Chapter 7 is a continuation of the Xombie Animated Series, which chronicles the adventures of Dirge – a hybrid zombie with a mind of his own – as he battles global zombie infestation in the year 2033.

Chapter 7 pits Dirge against the Vulture, a mysterious battleship piloted by his otherworldly nemesis; the Xar-Ggothua.

I’ve been waiting this for ages. Just to give you an idea, chapter 6 was released on 6/21/2005.

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Random Crap:

How to dance like a white guy (from Artemyst) – Great Instructional video. Showing all the hippest and raddest dance moves known to white men.

Internet is for porn (from Artemyst) – This is not a porn movie.. Just a wow movie about internet is for porn. Hilarious video! I’m thinking the video is from WoW, but I can be wrong. The song sounds like it was originally imitating Sesame Street characters. Thanks for MandalayX for updating me with this information. Apparently, this song was from a Broadway musical done called Avenue Q by Avenue Q. You can check out the album on Amazon.com or iTunes.

Is it best to expect the worst? (from /.) – Most people believe that mentally preparing for the worst outcome in an examination or race will soften the disappointment if we flunk or flop – and heighten the joy if we succeed. But the idea has rarely been put on scientific trial. Quite an interesting study and the results are quite shocking. Does that mean what I’ve practice all these years in college was all for nothing? Anticipating failure at a forthcoming mathematics test or public talk, for example, is thought to help some anxious people motivate themselves to study harder and avert their dismal prophesy. Psychologists call such individuals ‘defensive pessimists‘. I think I’m a defensive pessimists according to psychologist… though, even if I anticipate failure, I don’t bother studying harder. Hahaha.

The Wisdom of Parasites (from /.) – As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. Basically what’s happening is these wasp like insects are turning cockroaches into zombies that hosts their eggs. Pretty scary…

Bash Quotes:

#533472 (from Tera)

<yoozer> the speed of sound is defined by the distance from door to computer divided by the time interval needed to close the media player and pull up your pants when your mom shouts “OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING”

Sailor Gets Angry Reply to Bottle Message – A sailor who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from England — accusing him of littering. “I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished,” Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.

Whale soul for sale — one tragic owner – It used to be a practice confined to pacts with the devil, but now an anonymous vendor in America is attempting to sell the soul of the London whale.

Man Downs 173 Chicken Wings to Win Contest – A 22-year-old from San Jose, Calif., won Wing Bowl on Friday by setting a new record at the annual chicken wing-eating contest. Joey Chestnut ate 173 wings to take the title and top prize, a 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara. I wonder how much time was given…

Karate Experts Hired to Control Parrots – Organizers of a vintage car rally have hired karate experts to protect vehicles from marauding native parrots, a media report said Friday.

Octopus Eats Shark (from Deadlock) – Sharks arent that bad. I wonder if this octopus develop a taste for sharks after joining the aquarium, or before… Do octopus actually eat sharks in the while?

McDonald’s videogame (from Deadlock) – Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all. Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaught, from the restaurant management to the branding. You’ll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest company of the world. This game actually entertained me for quite some time. It reminds me of one of those Sim games where you have to manage many aspects in order to make profit. Here you have to manage cows and cow feed, the slaughtering, the cooking (if you can call that) and cashiers, the promotions/advertisements, and even the corrupting of officials. Then you also have to worry about organizations rallying against you, disgruntled employees who spit in the food, diseased cows, and even land from getting overused.

Overcrowed Disneyland in Hong Kong (from JS8) – This video link was taken from TVB 6:30 Evening News. It’s completely in Cantonese, but you can pretty much make out what’s happening. Due to Chinese (Lunar) New Year, many tourists are visiting Hong Kong and visiting the new Disneyland. Of course with bad planning, the park was overbooked and people who purchased tickets months in advance weren’t able to get in. Some people accepted the refund offer, but others who had planned this vacations months in advance got physical and even started to jump over the gate. At 1:30pm, they reopened the gate, but the situation wasn’t any better. The line for teacup was 2hrs according to a man. I wonder what the wait time for the better rides were.

New device fights tooth decay with electricity (from /.) – The Israeli company Fluorinex Active has developed a new technology for fighting tooth decay. The company is currently working on a small device which together with a gel will impose an efficient ion exchange process through an Electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the Hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth. This is intended to produce a new mineral layer with significantly improved chemical and physical resistance to the aggressive bacteria and the resulting acidic environment in the mouth.

2 of these are a day late. Gomenasai!

Happy Birthday GwaGwaSan!!!

Happy Birthday Robert!!!

Happy Birthday Lsiymle!!!