Category: Uncategorized

What Grinds My Gears: Has anyone told you to wait in line for them, especially at a supermarket or retail store. I was at Costco today getting some stuff (think Pringles, M&Ms, and 3 Musketeers…), and was reminded all the times my dad or mom would ask me to wait in line while they go get more stuff. I’m fine when the line is long, but as you get closer and closer to the cashier, you start getting nervous and since you’re not the one paying, when will they get back? I’d rather be the guy who goes fetch for the item. At least then I won’t feel the pressure. When it comes to be your turn, you end up giving your spot to the guy behind you until he/she returns.

---

Random Crap:

Monterey Park School Vandalized (from lsiymle) – Hillcrest Elementary School administrators returned to campus Saturday to find its classrooms ransacked, chairs thrown askew and windows broken after vandals broke in. Hillcrest was the elementary school I attended from kindergarten to 3rd grade, at which I transferred to Bitely for G.A.T.E. Still brings back memories of teachers like Mrs. Stassi, Mr. Schreoder, Mrs. Murphy, and a couple others that I can’t remember. Sad to hear that it got vandalized.

Eleksen Introduces Electro Fabric (from /.) – Eleksen, a small UK-based firm is introducing electronic fabric, essentially carbon-embedded nylon sandwiched between layers of nylon mesh that, when a milliamps charge is passed through it, can recognize touch (and it’s location), pressure and even the direction and path of a stroke. This thin, flexible, durable and washable fabric connects to a small 8-bit processor, which then can be connected to a standard electronic device like an iPod. The iPod, or whatever device you’re using, delivers power to processor and fabric. This looks really neat! It’s even machine washable! Be sure to check out the gallery.

The Forbes Fictional 15 (from /.) – To qualify for the Fictional 15, we insisted that members be both fictional (in the sense that we excluded mythological and folkloric figures) and characters (meaning they are part of a narrative story or series of stories). Great wealth was required to be one of the primary attributes of the characters on this list–in other words, we looked for characters that were known, within their universes, for being rich. Quite an interesting 15 with Santa Claus being #1. Someone posted a Santa Claus Timeline. Not really sure where this originated from, and Google wasn’t much help, but it’s quite interesting to see this fabricated.

What’s your favorite weather site? I used to check out weather.com or wunderground.com. weather.com was too bloated in my opinion and wunderground didn’t always find the closest city. So I googled “weather” and I found: weather.gov. I didn’t even know such a site existed and it’s actually exactly what I’m looking for.

Glowing Flowers Touted As Floral ‘Bling’ – The flowers appear white in regular light but emit an eerie green glow for several hours in the dark, FloraHolland BV said in a statement. I don’t know if I’d find that romantic. It’s sort of creepy. Girls, what do you think?

Wife is losing the checkbook tonight… (from ungsunghero) – quite an interesting thread.

I knew we were hurting financially (supporting family of 4 on one salary is hard), but this I was unaware of:

Date Posted Description Amount
12/1/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/29/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/29/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/29/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/29/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/28/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/28/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/28/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/25/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/23/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/22/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/22/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/22/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/18/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/17/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/16/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/15/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/15/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/15/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/15/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/14/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/14/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/10/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/10/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/10/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/9/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/9/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/9/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/9/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/9/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/3/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/3/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/2/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/2/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/2/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/2/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
11/1/2005 *OVERDRAFT CHARGE -29
11/1/2005 *NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGE -29
TOTAL -1102

Apparently she’s been writing checks left and right for who knows what. Heck, if she was awake I’d be dealing with this now. As it is I’m confiscating her checkbook. Grrr…
———-
Update
She woke up around 2am. I was still up. I showed her my printout of the account, her response was to start blaming me.

They were all checks. Some of the places she bounced with were resubmitting the checks, so it’s not as many actual checks as it appears. However, her response was that I don’t give her enough money. Which is strange since I have direct deposit to the shared account.

Anyway, I took over paying bills and confiscated the checkbook. After a long fight we both mellowed and are going to relax and see what happens.

As for online account management, yes, I have that setup. I just wasn’t watching it closely since she has always done our finances. Last night was the first time I checked. And that was because I wanted to know why there wasn’t enough $$ in the bank to pay the rent.

I make $60k a year. That should be enough to pay our bills.

Unfortunately, because of the hole she’s dug by writing checks left and right on money that we didn’t have, it looks like this is gonna be a really crappy Christmas. I feel for the kids.

The interesting thing about this is that he actually makes $60k a year. That’s actually quite a bit of money, even with a family of four… I wonder where it all goes… He made it sound like they live paycheck to paycheck.

The Light Before Christmas (from deadlock) – remember that christmas light video I posted awhile ago. There were doubts of its authenticity, but snopes goes to dig and finds out the truth: This display was the work of Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio, who spent about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama channels that control the 16,000 Christmas lights in his 2004 holiday lighting spectacular. The musical accompaniment is broadcast over a low-power radio station so that it is only audible to visitors tuned in to the correct frquency and doesn’t disturb the neighbors. That’s actually pretty sweet!

Parkour Chase Scene (from deadlock) – this chase scene is actually choreographed really well!

Food critic Coren wins British bad sex award – Coren won it for a raunchy passage from his debut novel “Winkler” which included a description of the main character’s penis “leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath.” “It was the overexcited shower … which clinched the deal for Giles Coren,” judges said. “That and the endlessly long sentence, which squirms and wriggles like the shower head.”

Sexsomnia.. – The Canadian province of Ontario plans to review a court decision that acquitted a man of sexual assault charges because he suffers from “sexsomnia” and was asleep at the time of the incident. At first I had a hard time believing such a term existed, but after googling the term, you can see the research and information regarding this at Sleepsex.org.

Christmas fire (from deadlock) – this fire’s amazing! But I have a hard time believing it was done in real time. The only true reference that’s available is when the lamp ring falls down, but one can easily slow down that section of the video and speed past the rest.

(from deadlock)

Leeroy Jenkins – I was first told of this video by stanman about some hilarious event that happened in the World of Warcraft. Leeroy Jenkins is actualy just one player’s alias on WoW and he made the dumbest move ever caught on video. While the rest of his team was strategizing, he went out to get chicken and missed the entire plan. And it sounded like this whole fight was for him too! Though I didn’t really find it “that funny”, it was amusing. But you know it’s funny when even Alex Trebeck uses him as a $1000 question: Who is Leroy [sic] Jenkins. He even has a website dedicated to him: Leeroy Jenkins.

First snow of the season in Seattle! You can check out some pictures and a video in my gallery album. After getting off work last night at 10:15pm, I slept in this morning till 12:40pm. After I showered and got dressed and ready to leave for work, I find this pretty scene outside my door. It was very pretty. My car was covered with a layer of snow. So I made sure I wasn’t trapped in since I live on the bottom of a hill. There were hardly any snow on the road, so that was a good sign.

Here’s an advice for those have snow covered on the side windows. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SCRAPE THEM OFF BY ROLLING DOWN YOUR WINDOWS! I made the mistake of doing that because it usually works with rain. What ended up happening was snow accumulated at the bottom of the window and when the window went all the way down, the snow came collapsing in since the windows are tilted that way.

It was lovely driving in the snow. It felt like a Winter Wonderland. I’ve seen snow before, I’ve played in snow before, but I’ve never driven in snow before. Hehe. Apparently it started snowing around 11am and people were leaving work afraid they’d get stuck because I heard there’s no snow trucks around here to clear the roads. I even got a email from my manager telling my team we should head back home early and work from home.

Anyway, they say this is once every few years thingy. I wonder if I’ll get to see it again this year.

---

Random Crap:

In Living Color: Jim Carrey as Vanilla Ice (from rayalome) – hilarious video of Jim Carrey doing a parody of Ice Ice Baby.

foobar2000 (from skylancer) – a pretty neat and simple audio player, sorta like the VLC (VideoLan Media Player) of audio and music.

Xbox 360 Window Modded with some Blue Bling (from Microsoft newsgroup) – they’re actually selling this on eBay: Microsoft Xbox 360 Ultra Premium Modded Llamma Edition. With 8 days left for the auction, it’s already at $4,500. You can look at 11/29/05’s entry to see him describe what mods he added to the Xbox 360.

Very, very frequent flyer.. – After two months of zig-zagging across Canada by plane, frequent flyer Marc Tacchi has reached his goal of accumulating one million miles of credits — and become something of an Internet celebrity in the process. On his blog “The Great Canadian Mileage Run 2005,” Tacchi reported on Wednesday that he had racked up 1,003,625 mileage points and spent 56 of the last 61 days in an airplane. … By reaching the one million mile goal, Tacchi gets the equivalent of about 10 round-trip business class flights from Canada to Australia, which he has estimated would normally cost about C$70,000. Wo… That’s C$7,000 per RT business class flight! Is business class really that expensive?

RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs (from ungsunghero) – “We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material,” a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read.

Panda cub takes Washington by storm – He then shook his head and began clambering over the rocky display on wobbly legs, taking a couple of tumbles along the way and nosing at everything in his path. reading this story just makes me go goo goo and awwwww over and over again.

MSN Search: seattle free wifi (from Microsoft newsgroup) – check out the suggestion: seattle free wife. several comments included:

• Don’t believe the hype. The first one is free, and then you have to buy 8 more at regular price within the next year.
• As a somewhat renowned “free” expert, I would say that this is consistent with the concept of “free”, where the up front cost is zero, but the recurring and long term costs are in deed crippling.

Hacking Coke Machines (from Microsoft newsgroup) – pretty interesting… too bad I’m sick of soda since I get unlimited free soda at work.

This isn’t exactly the newest pya! FLOOD, but it’s been queued for awhile and I’m finally publishing it:

(flash) GIGA　Vr2 – a remix of the Dragostea din Tei by O-ZONE. Graphics are a bit scary though.
(img) 切り絵 – Paper Cuttings – some really interesting models this person created by cutting and folding paper.
(vid) すいません、ちょっと壁際通りますよ – Random Cars Flying – a video of a race car game with cars behind the driver randomly flying ahead of it.
(vid) かっこいいボーリングの投げ方 – Groovy Bowling – In official tournaments, does that count as a re-do or a gutter ball?
(img) 地下水の奇跡 – Geyser’s Miracle – That’s one strong geyser!
(img) けむり – Smoke Drawing – i wonder if that’s real. looks really pretty.
(img) 壁紙 – Wallpaper – a nice drawing outside a building
(vid) 驚愕のハード XBOX 360 – Xbox 360 excitement – a parody of how excited Xbox 360 owners are acting
(flash) 爆発ブロック崩し – Uber Breakout – a fun little flash game
(img) 欲張りすぎたか – Strong Ant
(img) nya、読めないんですけど – Cute Kitten
(img) 飛び蹴り – Flying Kick – are sumo wrestlers allowed to do that?
(img) サーモナー(´∀` )グラフィー？ – Lego Cat
(flash) RANDOM BATTLE – a really cool flash video with fight scenes resembling Xiao Xiao’s stick figures.
(flash) Animal Politics – a cute flash animation where our world leaders are animals discussing environmental issues
(img) 同じ種類ですか？ – Same Species? – can rabbits really grow that big?
(img) マリオ死にすぎ – Mario’s Death – how Mario should’ve died along the way
(img) 樹の鳥よ～ – Bird Tree – really cool how they have it above the water
(vid) なわとび – Jump Rope
(vid) アチャー – Acha! – some idiot sticks his hands in a boiling pan of oil
(img) あとは任せた！ – Timber! – some kids knock over a tall stack of milk cartons
(img) コピーするnya – Copy Cat – cute kitten

---

Random Crap:

VLC Media Player 0.8.4 is out! It’s my backup player when Media Player Classic doesn’t work, since it seems the best at playing random crap, but has a somewhat bad user interface. The preference and option settings always take me forever to figure out what to do, but one great thing about it is you can play xvid or divx files before they finish downloading, which most players can’t.

Cute Calendar Puppies (from cari and decathanerd)

Canvascape – 3D walker (from /.) – Apparently Firefox, Opera, and Safari supports this canvas drawing layer and this person managed to write a simple FPS (first person shooter) out of it. It’s pretty neat. No need for flash or any other external plugin. Does not work in IE6.

Hands-on: Sony PSP Talkman – Translate, Speak & Learn English/Japanese/Chinese/Korean (from deadlock) – check out the commercial videos of this new PSP game. Wouldn’t really call it a game. It’s more like a translator/english learning software.

These video links might not work, so you might want to visit the article above and look for the video links there:

• Talkman TVCM “Buy You A Drink?
• Talkman TVCM “Toilet Paper!”
• Talkman TVCM “Korean Restaurant”
• Talkman TVCM “Learning with Max” #1
• Talkman TVCM “Learning with Max” #2
• Talkman TVCM “Learning with Max” #3

No-Flush Urinals Just Waiting for Plumbers (from /.) – I’ve actually never knew waterless urinals existed. I did know that urinals with 2 settings for flushes existed. A half flush for pee and a full flush for poop. But check out what a waterless urinal looks like: Waterless. You can see a simple diagram of how it works here. Seems like an intriguing idea and places have already started implementing these. The flush-free fixtures hanging on the restroom wall look good. The place smells good. The users’ reviews sound good. … Conservationists say the average no-flush urinal can save as much as 24,000 gallons of water a year. They say that the liquid sealant keeps dangerous bacteria as well as bad smells from the restroom without a need for water. Plumbers on the other hand are arguing because of sanitary reasons, waterless urinals aren’t that great of a choice, but that could also be because they might be losing a lot of customers if everyone takes the waterless urinal route, putting many of them out of work.

Strictly Reptiles, Inc. (from deadlock) – has some cute pictures of baby reptiles.

Life of Larry (Part 1 / Part 2) – a college film of Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy. You could clearly see where some of the ideas for Family Guy comes from.

Apparently they’re making a Dead or Alive movie based on the popular game. It’s called DOA: Dead or Alive (from fuzzywuzzy). You can watch the trailer here. The trailer makes it look pretty bad right now, but you know fans of DOA are going to go watch it anyway.

Great scare reaction (from deadlock) – a hilarious attempt to scare a trick or treater and he got so scared, he retaliated.

Baltimore Losing Light Poles to Thieves – City streets are getting darker because thieves, some disguised as utility crews, are stealing 30-foot light poles, authorities said. About 130 aluminum light poles have vanished this fall from locations across the city, despite the difficulty of carting off the 250-pound objects.

Man Cuts in Line, Is Wrestled to Ground – Security guards wrestled a man to the ground in a Wal-Mart after he cut in line to get laptop computers that were on sale Friday, a television station reported. The man started arguing with people inside the store, WFTV-TV in Orlando reported. He then started fighting with the guards, the station reported. One man told WFTV that the laptops were being thrown into the air and people rushed toward them, collapsing on each other. Another man described the scene as crazy.

Vt. Teacher Accused of Anti-Bush Quiz – One example: “I wish Bush would be (coherent, eschewed) for once during a speech, but there are theories that his everyday diction charms the below-average mind, hence insuring him Republican votes.” “Coherent” is the right answer.

Clerk Refuses to Call Police After Robbery – A woman who was robbed at knifepoint while pumping gas into her church’s van couldn’t believe it when the gas station attendant refused to call police for help. … The gas station’s manager said he was sorry about the robbery, but clerks at the station do not make emergency calls from the front counter, fearing retaliation for criminals. Sigh… What has this world come to?

Woman gives new meaning to “fast food” – A day before millions of Americans sit down to eat traditional Thanksgiving dinners, a Virginia woman grabbed the world turkey-eating title on Wednesday by gobbling down a whole roast bird in 12 minutes.

Car stolen? Who you gonna call? – Albanians are so sick of police doing nothing about the theft and hijacking of luxury cars that they’ve taken to setting up their own informal networks of hot-lines and roadblocks. … Using mobile phones, three cars homed in on the late-model limousine from different directions while an unofficial road block was set up near the northern town of Lezhe. The car-jackers saw the private roadblock, got out and took off, the Gazeta Shqiptare newspaper said. That’s great community effort. If the government isn’t going to do anything about it, then maybe it’s time to take it into our own hands.

NES Lock (from deadlock)
Apparently these were sold to parents who wanted their kids off the nintendo game console before finishing their homework. Wonder what was wrong with just taking the power cable.

Street Fighter Salsa (from deadlock) – Ryu and Chung Li go at it…salsa style. A really cool video of 2 dancers dressed up as street fighter characters doing the Salsa. They even insert their own characters trademarked stances once in awhile. Pretty neat!

Danes provide prostitutes for the disabled – The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes. Time to become disabled and live in Denmark.

Xbox 360 day 2: component costs and crashes – First up, market research firm iSuppli, best known for taking apart consumer electronics to determine how much they cost to manufacture, has disassembled an Xbox 360. The verdict? Microsoft is taking a bath on the hardware, to the tune of US$126 for each high-end Xbox 360 sold. The ATI-made graphics processing unit alone is estimated to cost US$141 (including the RAM) while the IBM Xenon CPU accounts for another US$106. … We’ve been getting e-mails today from users experiencing problems with their new Xbox 360s., and a scan of gaming news sites and forums shows that we’re not alone. The most common problem appears to be overheating, with crashes and hard drive problems close behind. One video circulating shows one of the more common crashes, with the console going belly-up while running Project Gotham Racing 3. Owners report that the crashes and error messages do not seem to be confined to a single title or scenario.

Scientists engineer bacteria to create living photographs (from /.) – Scientists at UC San Francisco have engineered bacteria to create living photographs that weigh in at 100 megapixels per square inch. Pretty soon, we’ll have bacteria powered photographs.

Google Click-to-Call (from /.) – an interesting new service Google is providing where you can connect with any advertiser they have a contract with through phone and Google will foot the cost.

Went to Vancouver today with a couple of friends: stanman, Joe, and Saran (the guys I had Thanksgiving dinner with). Had a really good time. Joe was the driver, so much prop for him. Drive took about 2.5-3hrs, wasn’t bad. We started by having dim sum at a place called Floata in Old Chinatown (not the new one in Richmond). Anyway, I was QUITE disappointed with the quality of the food (not the service, but there was that weird waiter). The quality of the restaurant, although recommended by many websites, was subpar to even the level of Southern California. Last time I went to a place called Sun Sui Wah in Richmond and that dim sum was a lot better. After dim sum, we walked around ChinaTown for a bit looking for a martial arts store to check out swords and stuff. When we got there, it showed a sign that said “Be back in 3 minutes”. We chilled at the nearby Dr. Sun Yat Sen Park looking for fish (couldn’t find any though). We also got to see some demonstration against I’m guessing the current mayor for making false promises. When we came back to the martial arts store, the sign changed to “Out to lunch. Be back in 1 hr.” Obviously we left.

We went to Stanley Park next. Stanley Park claimed to be the 3rd largest urban park in North America, which got me thinking, which one’s #1 and #2? Saran thinks Central Park in New York is the largest followed by Golden Gate park in San Francisco. If anyone can confirm, that’d be nice. Anyway, the park was really big and nice. It was basically in a pennisula and had beaches and hiking trails and totem poles. A great place for some outdoor recreation. We walked along the border, checked out the city from afar, strolled along the beaches, took pictures, and just chilled. You could see more pictures of the park in my photo album. Link should be provided near the bottom.

After Stanley Park, we drove along the beach and took a ferry to Granville Island. Granville Island was more of a shopping place with tons of little shops and street performers. After Granville Island, we took the ferry back and drove all the way to Gastown. They had these very pretty street lamps, different from any other part of the city and apparently that’s how you tell where Gastown starts and ends. The famous steam powered clock was also there and we actually got to hear it chirp or play a tune or whatever they called it.

After Gastown, we drove to Davie St since Saran says that’s the street where a good selection of restaurants were. After walking around for awhile, we wanted to try that greek place, but there was a line of people waiting outside and we didn’t want to get home that late, so we tried this other Japanese restaurant which Saran also tried. It was sushi buffet but was by order, which totally reminded me of Sushi Chardonnay back in San Francisco which cari and decathanerd always took me to. The quality of sushi was good. The selection was actually a lot bigger than Chardonnay’s. It had 4 types of sushi (well 3 + sashimi). It had the nigiri (slice of meat on top of rice), sushi rolls, sushi cones, and sashimi. Three types of sashimi were available: Salmon, Tuna, and Toro (fatty tuna). The sides were also interesting ranging from oysters to calamari to tempura to soba/udon to ice cream. Cost was only CAD$19 which is only US$16.25. Tax is also cheaper in Canada, with food service tax being 7%.

Apparently, there’s 3 levels of sales taxes in Canada. There’s the PST+GST, which you have to pay for anything non-food related, like electronics. Then there’s the GST which you have to pay for processed food, such as restaurants or fried chicken. Then there’s food that didn’t require cooking or something like that which is tax-free like USA. I’m guessin GST = General Sales Tax and PST = Provincial Sales Tax, but I may just be pulling that out of my *cough*.

So that ends our trip to Vancouver. I’m pretty sure a lot more happened and many many interesting conversations came up, but it’s too late and I don’t remember. hehe.

Took some pictures (not many), but you can check it out in my photo album.

When I got into my own car to drive home, there was actually ICE on my windshield. Wasn’t much, but I’d say it was about 3mm thick or so. Using my windshield wipers didn’t work. I actually turned on the defroster at high heat and after awhile, you could actually see slushy being formed.

Only thing I was worried about during the entire trip was Audrey the dog. She was basically alone in the house for 16hrs and who knew what type of damage she could do. I was actually sorta expecting the worse where she somehow managed to break the chain off and destory my apartment. I was also expecting her to actually poop and pee on the floor. The worse of my nightmares didn’t come true, but the 2nd closest thing did. Before I left this morning, I took her on a 15min walk to try to get the pee and poop out of her. She only took a piss, so I thought she didn’t have anything. But before I left, she started squirming like crazy (the squirm that either indicates she’s really hungry, she’s needs to use the restroom, or she wants some major attention), but I really needed to go since we setup a time to meet beforehand. So I was hoping she just wanted some major attention and left her. However as I noted, Audrey was always on my mind (not the good part of my mind). Somehow typing that phrase reminded me of the song in my head, “Always in my mind…. Always in my mind.” Anyway, back to the story. This was @ 6:40am in the morning and she was whining and barking. I hope it didn’t wake up my neighbors. I come home and and find piss on the carpet, not too bad, I’ve dealt with that before, but she looked like she really needed to go badly, so I took her for a walk, this time all the way to the park and back (takes about 30mins) and she took 2 dumps and 2 pisses. Hopefully clearing her system. I come up and feed her and lock her in the bathroom while I clean up. Then I noticed the poop smudges. Not a poop, but like it was about to come out and it smudged the carpet (sorta like how when you try to keep poop in your butt, but some of it comes out and smudges your underwear). Anyway, I took care of that with some AJAX. Was easier to clean than what I expected it to be like. Anyway, even after taking her for a walk and feeding her, she continues to jump, bark and whine. So I get pissed at this point and tie her outside literally for 30mins without answer her whines. And lemme tell you, she whined the entire 30 minutes (you’ll find out why later). Somehow she managed to trapper herself by going in circles around a pillar (twice!) and couldn’t untie the knot. I help her untie it and bring her back in and she’s been quiet ever since. I think that’s probably what I’m going to do when she starts whining again for no reason.

Despite what you may be thinking, Audrey is cdmcc’s and Elizabeth’s dog. Cdmcc and Elizabeth went back to San Francisco this Thanksgiving and asked me to look over their dog for them while they were gone. So the reasons why I never wanted a pet dog or puppy, although they’re so cute, is all showing up in Audrey. So I was warned that Audrey likes biting stuff, but I didn’t know that biting involved such wreckage. When I got home on Wednesday after cdmcc dropped Audrey off and we locked her in my bedroom, I find my window blinds shredded to pieces, and by that, I mean over 50% of them were torn off the actual blinds and broken into bits and pieces. So yah, she’s no longer allowed near anything that is even remotely breakable. I actually have her tied to a pole in the restroom which gives her about 8ft raidus to move about, much more lenient than what I think I should be restraining her to. So I’m going to have to talk to the management about getting that replaced. For now, I have a bed sheet covering the window.

Before, I had her tied to the cage and not a pole, so she actually managed to pull the cage some distance and reach areas which I didn’t want her to reach. Thank god, she only got access to several grocery plastic bags, but when I got home today, they were shredded like there was no tomorrow. I’m also happy that I fixed the door to my computer room before I left because before the door wouldn’t close properly and you could push and it’ll open. Somehow, she managed to get my laundry doors opened, but those were sliding doors (sort of).

Next thing is Audrey actually peed on the floor. I guess I shouldn’t have given her such a big bowl of water. She’s already peed 3x on my floor, though cleaning it up wasn’t that bad. She hasn’t pooped on my floor yet and has been keen about pooping when I take her on her walks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes a dump in here too.

The final annoying thing is she always seem to need attention whenever she sees someone. She would even bark and howl if you ignore her, and that got quite annoying at 2am in the morning.

I feel bad about tying her to the restroom. In fact, I originally locked her in the bathroom, but felt bad and I couldn’t figure if I should leave the light on or off, so I opened the door and gave her a bit more freedom. Welp, only 4 more days to go. Hopefully I’ve seen the worse of it.

First, I gotta wish my buddy a happy birthday:
Happy Birthday Belldandy!

I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was enjoyable and fun. I actually got invited to a little get-together with stanman and his friends from UW. Met some of the cool people I met at the little poker tournament stanman held over a month ago: Richard, Joe, and Saran. “More” people were suppose to come, but they ditched last minute, hehe. Anyway, we had a little potluck. Everyone made these really cool dishes. All I took care was the drinks. I know, lazy me, but I did get a 12pk of Pyramid Hefe Weizen, though only 3 got drank, and none of them was by me. I hate beer for all those that know me. So I have 9 beers in my fridge right now. Saran made some salad with oil and vinegar dressing. The dressing was really good. He also made soup that consisted of shrimp, chili, and some other random vegies. Richard made the mashed potatio with garlic and gravy. The mash potato was good, but it had too many garlic skins in it, which would’ve been nice if were removed beforehand, but I’m not the one to complain. He also served the bread and butter and made the cranberry sauce which was really good. Stanman was going to make Teriyaki glazed salmon, but the Teriyaki part didn’t work out that well, so he changed it to lemon salmon, which was delicious, but a little burnt due to a little mishap during cooking. Joe was the biggest contributor. He made the ham, which was cooked. He also made the stuffing with Stove Top Stuffing. Ungsunghero tells me the inventor of Stove Top Stuffing died this Thanksgiving. He also made sweet corn kernels. I forgot who brought the strawberry pie (I’m thinking Richard), but that was good too. We had a loads of fun eating and everyong got really stuffed.

I found someone else like Liam. Richard also is a vegetarian because of environmental reasons. However he does eat fish and seafood (the fake meat). Only difference between him and Liam is that Liam eats chicken and other birds, while Richard doesn’t.

One of the interesting thing that came up during dinner was eggnog. I’ve always hated eggnog. It had a funny taste that I didn’t like. So I obviously declined. Stanman, having never tried eggnog, decided to give it a go. You should’ve seen the face he made when he drank it. Haha. Too bad we didn’t have a camera. If you haven’t figured it out yet, stanman decided never to drink eggnog again. I’ve noticed that people either really loved eggnog or really dislike eggnog. There’s really no in-between I like it somewhat. I wonder why that is…

Afterwards, we watched Shiri, a Korean movie I’ve watched with Liam, janey, cdmcc, and several other people who I don’t remember right now. The movie is fun and action packed, but didn’t really have that punch of a good film. It required some thinking, but it was like “BANG BANG BANG, Oh… so that’s what happened, BANG”. I would rather much watch something like Oldboy (trailer). Not really going to do a synopsis of it.

After Shiri ended, we played Halo 2. Since there were 5 people and only 4 controllers, we took turns. I think the order of skill went like this (from highest to lowest): Joe, Richard, stanman, Saran, me. Haha, I sucked. Though I did win most of my matches. Probably because my partner was usually good. hehe.

All in all, I had a really great time. We might be going up to Vancouver this weekend, but I’m not sure if I want to go since it is raining and all. Plus I have a dog I’m taking care for cdmcc and Elizabeth over this break and man has he caused me quite some trouble already. More on that later.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

(from Pet Health Care Information)

I was going to do a pya! flood, but I got lazy. Maybe tomorrow.

So being curious how cloning worked, I went and asked my bio-friend ungsunghero. The following may be over-simplified, but you should be able to get a grasp on how it works. Apparently to clone mammals, all you need is an egg of the same species and genetic information of the mammal you want to clone. A sperm is not required, which was quite shocking to me. To clone a mammal, you remove the entire nucleus from the egg and replace it with a nucleus from a donor cell. By doing this, you completely trash the original genetic information that the egg carried and by replacing it with a nucleus from a donor cell, you’ve given it the full set of genetic information instead of of half set that the original nucleus had. That’s why a sperm is NOT required at all. And with the full set of DNA, it can start generating cells and creating the mammal once you put it back inside a host.

You can read more about it at Summary of all published reports on mammalian cloning – Somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) efficiency.

Wikipedia: Somatic cell nuclear transfer (from decathanerd). Another confirmation on how it works. Apparently, it’s suppose to be as simple as sticking a needle into a egg, sucking out the nucleus, and then injecting the new nucleus. It is then stimulated in such a way that it begins to divide. Wonder what that really means…

---

Random Crap:

Doki Doki Panic: Special Feature (from ungsunghero) – Did you know Super Mario Bros. 2 was just a skin on a completely different game released in Japan called Doki Doki Panic? They actually made a Super Mario Bros. 2 that was a sequel to the 1st one (no pulling turnips from the ground), but decided this should be the sequel instead. However, this game was released later known as Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels.

SONGS TO WEAR PANTS TO (from deadlock) – I make songs in any genre, for free or for money, based on instructions people send me. This guy is so awesome! You should definitely check out some of the songs he made:

• Beware the Sea Anenemone (Definitely Anememones Remix)
• Napoleode (Featuring EKO)

Several flash videos actually used the songs he made:

• How the Jonses’ 23rd Goldfish Narrowly Escaped Death (creator’s blog)
• The Touchtone Genius

Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter (from ungsunghero) – Apparently this is the 1st one that came out before the 2nd one I posted a day ago. There’s actually quite a few of these at The Kobmat Pavilion.

Laser etched Powerbook! (from /.) – I didn’t really plan using a $20,000 laser cutter on my 17″ Powerbook to etch a 19th-century engraving of a tarsier, a nocturnal mammal related to the lemur (also the vi book cover image, from O’Reilly), but it seemed like it had to done. The results are stunning – photos and more…

nathanng’s Gallery – a friend of mine from E190 back in Berkeley. His drawings are really good!

So when I got home a few days ago, I took out my cell phone to recharge it and it turns out I had forgotten to enable key lock. Actually, key lock was enabled, but did it somehow miracously. However, there was much already done underneath the key lock. The first page after I unlocked the keypad was: “Delete All? Yes/No” I was wo… How did I get to this page, and the Back button took me to my contacts list and etc. It turns out somehow I had pressed the correct sequence of keys where it was going to delete my entire contact list and the amazing thing is after that, it pressed the key sequence to lock the keypad instead of hitting yes. I’m just quite amazed at the probability of this happening.

---

Random Crap:

I got a $100 Visa Gift Card a few days ago and for some weird and freaky coincidence, the pin it used was exactly the same pin I use for all my bank account atm cards.

So ungsunghero and I were chatting about the abacus yesterday and we came upon the question if multiplication was possible on it. I have heard it was, and so was division, but ungsunghero wasn’t quite sure. After a little bit of searching, I found this site: The Abacus Handbook. It turns out that both multiplication and division is possible! Multiplication is nothing more than a series of additions. However, it is not very convenient to do 23 separate adds on the number 47 just to give us the answer to 23×47 ! Therefore, there are specific techniques for performing multiplication on the abacus frame. I’ve learned two different methods and know there are probably others as well – but I will teach only the method that was approved by the Japan Abacus Committee. I have found that this method is least prone to errors and is very simple once you learn the basic technique. You will need to know your multiplication table up to 9×9=81 and you should be all set. For me at least, division was a little intimidating. As it turns out Dave was right when he said, “Trust me. It’s not that hard!” As with multiplication you will need to know your multiplication tables up to 9 x 9 = 81. It might be helpful to think of division as being nothing more than a series of subtractions The techniques I use below are pretty much as they are described in “The Japanese Abacus – It’s Use and Theory” by Takashi Kojima.

Woman weds teen, spends honeymoon in jail – Under Georgia law, teenagers may marry as long as they are at least 16 and have the permission of a parent or guardian. Those restrictions are waived, however, when a female applicant is pregnant.

Prescription for heart disease: pat a dog – you don’t see researches saying the same for cats now, do you?

Mom Makes Teen Stand on Street With Sign – In fact, Henderson has seen a turnaround in her daughter’s behavior in the past week and a half. But the punishment prompted letters and calls to talk radio from people either praising the woman or blasting her for publicly humiliating her daughter. I personally praise both the mother and the child for doing this, but I can see why some are against the idea of public humiliation. I guess being from an Asian family, this would be consider little stuff.

Why I cut my tackle: rugby fan (from dsnuts) – A RUGBY fan who cut out his testicles with wire cutters to mark a Wales victory is at a loss to explain why he did it. A pretty disgusting article, but I thought I’d share.

Atari 800 XE Laptop (from /.) – Of all the portable videogame devices I’ve ever built over the years one system has always been my “Holy Grail” to make – my “dream portable” if you will. (Yes, even more so than my Neo Geo arcade machine) And now after a couple years of tinkering it is complete! After building my very first portable,-the Atari 2600 VCSp, back in 2000 (ever notice how awkward of a year that is to say?) I had a couple of “dream projects” to follow it up with. One was a Nintendo portable, which strangely took 4 years to manifest itself. The other was something I consider impossible at the time – an Atari 800 computer laptop. My ultimate dream portable! If you want to just see the photos, click here.

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (from /.) – A great anantech article disassembling the Xbox 360 piece by piece. I love these type of articles. Maybe I’m just a geek.

Ants eat away woman’s eye in hospital – On Monday, the patient’s family saw a gaping hole with swarming ants in it when they lifted the bandage on her left eye. Yet another gross article, but sharing is caring!

More Than Meets the Eye: Star Wars Transformers (from fuzzywuzzy) – The power of the Force meets the power of the Allspark with a new assortment of Star Wars vehicles from Hasbro that are actually robots in disguise. Star Wars Transformers combine the classic characters and vehicles from a galaxy far, far away and transforms them into mighty mechs with seamless Star Wars alt-modes. This first wave of unique crossover toys includes four ‘bots, with a mix of good and evil to wage shapeshifting battles among your other Star Wars or Transformer toys. Each figure also comes with a miniature pilot.

Popular Science – Best Of What’s New 2005 (from /.) – check out the best gadgets of 2005!

Is a Hybrid Worth It? (from /.) – basically does an in-depth analysis if it’s worth in for monetary reasons to buy a hybrid (where you upfront the extra cost, but save over time by paying for less gasoline). Has a lot of pretty charts and graphs. My opinion was that you would not make back the few extra thousand dollars in 1 life-time of a car, but environmental reasons is the main reason why you should get a hybrid or another ULEV (ultra low emission vehicle).

Kazakhstan threatens “Borat” with court – Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry threatened legal action on Monday against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport. Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in his “Da Ali G Show”, has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth largest country yet still little known to many in the West. Found a short clip from that MTV Europe Awards show: Gorillaz: Feel Good Inc. live I couldn’t tell if the characters on stage were holograms or dolls or just a projection…

Bottler offers salmon-flavoured drink – The salmon-flavoured soda will be offered as part of a $13 “regional holiday pack” that also includes other unusual sodas such as turkey & gravy, corn on the cob, broccoli casserole and pecan pie. Who else wants to barf after reading those soda flavors?

Transvestites Hoodwink Tourists With Kiss – Members of a transvestite gang have confessed to concealing strong sedative pills under their tongues and spitting them down the throats of their victims while kissing, causing them to pass out so they can be easily robbed, police said. The confession came from three attractive transvestites arrested last week in Bangkok for stealing more than $7,300 in cash and valuables from a Bangladeshi businessman, said police Lt. Col. Akachai Chaicharoen. What would you feel worse about? Losing $7,300 or kissing a guy? *shivers*

Supercharged college P2P network closes – A file-swapping network that let college students download movies and music at blazing speeds on the Internet2 research network has closed its doors, the latest casualty of entertainment industry legal pressure. The i2Hub network emerged in early 2004, taking advantage of the supercharged network that connects college campuses to let students trade files at speeds far faster than is possible on the ordinary Internet. i2Hub – You Shalt Be Remembered! *SALUTE*

Did you notice how much gas prices have gone down recently!?!?! Just a month ago, I was paying $2.86/gallon. Yesterday I went to Safeway, and the price was only $2.26/gallon! Are the gas companies artificially inflating the prices because of the natural disasters? Probably. But even at $5/gallon, people are still going to buy it because guess what, people depend on cars so much nowadays, it’s a luxury one cannot afford to give up. Would that make it a necessity then?

There was a thread going on at work where people were asking which brand of gas gave the best mileage, and if there really was any difference between brand name gas and “cheap” gas like Arco, Safeway, and Costco. If I had to guess, both Safeway and Costco buy excess gasoline off of big distributors, so they get it at a discounted press. So one day Costco maybe using Chevron gas while the following day, they may be using Shell gas. The only difference I have heard is that brand name gasolines put more detergent in their gasoline so it’s better for cleaning. Of course, this is all hypothetical and studies show that there isn’t much difference between branded gasoline and generic (if you can call it that) gasoline.

I’ve added a new column to my Gasoline Spreadsheet. I’ve been recording mileage, prices, and volume of gasoline ever since I moved up here to see how my car is performing mileage-wise. Recently it’s been dropping, especially the latest fill-up, I got less than 23MPG. However, that may be because that I haven’t been traveling much and going to work (3 miles) everyday isn’t really good for mileage especially when I have that hill to climb everyday. The new column I’ve added is: Brand. Hopefully, I can make a nice chart and graphs after I’ve accumulated enough data.

I’ve only heard this so I can not confirm if it’s true or not, but rumor says that when car manufacturers calculate their mileage, they use only Chevron gas and this is the same across the board. This is one of the many possible reasons why people prefer brand name gasoline, but once again, there’s no source I can confirm this with.