Bureaucracy Stinks

Rapist claim ‘brought too late’ (from deadlock) – Mr Justice Jack ruled last week the decision was correct and on Friday said this was because the claim was made more six years after the assault. Mrs A was earlier ordered to pay around £100,000 towards Hoare’s legal costs. Stupid legal system. Sigh…

U.S. offers donated Katrina meals to othersEarly on, there was a need for about 500,000 readily packaged meals and the State Department asked its embassies worldwide to seek food donations. Britain was among the first countries to offer MREs. … An additional 33,000 MREs from Germany, Russia, Spain and France had also not been distributed to hurricane victims because of U.S. legal restrictions, Ereli said without elaborating. I can understand not accepting the British MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) because there’s a ban on cow import from England due to Mad Cow disease, but I can’t see any reason, besides the government being stubborn, to not distribue the other countries’ MREs when we really needed them.

Woman With $1.16 Tax Bill Faces $4K FineA woman who hasn’t paid a $1.16 income tax bill to this Cincinnati suburb faces up to 18 months in jail and $4,000 in fines. Though I’m not exactly sure of the situation, but it seems that this woman got numerous warnings, but just ignored them. On the other hand, it was just $1.16. How much money is going to be wasted trying to get this woman to pay that fee.


Random Crap:

World’s oldest noodles found — in ChinaItalians are known for them and theories suggest they may have originated in the Middle East but scientists said Wednesday the world’s oldest known noodles, dating back 4,000 years, were made in China. It’s always been rumored that pasta (aka noodles) was invented in China and brought over to Italy. I had always thought it was Marco Polo who introduced it, but I guess I was wrong. Legend has it that Marco Polo introduced to Italy some products from China, including ice cream, the piñata and pasta, especially spaghetti. However, these legends are highly dubious — for instance, there is evidence that pasta was known in Italy since antiquity. Another thing is… since this is food, shouldn’t it be bio-degradable. If so, why is it still intact after 4000 years?

So artemyst was complaining how slow his 50MB email upload was going, so I was trying to convince him that you should never really upload such a large file through email. 1. The mail protocols weren’t meant for transfering large amount of data (http wasn’t meant for that either) and 2. You can’t gaurantee the recipients will accept emails with such large attachments. I know most servers only allow upto 10MB attachments, though they might have gigs of email storage space. He then tells me, he’s really uploading to himself on GMail for backup purposes. So I then show him this tool which I’ve shown you guys before: GMail Drive shell extension. This little tool actually creates a drive in Windows Explorer for you so you can access files directly from your GMail account. Where it stores, I’m not really too sure. Though the last time I tried it, it was rather slow, but expected.

So I played more Fable today. Several hours actually. I’ve been waiting since this morning when I woke up and was thinking I wanna go home to play Fable. Haha. So yah, if you were looking for me between the hours of 9pm and 12am, I probably had an away message up stating I was playing a game which required my full screen.

I guess the content rights to the video with Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite finally reliquished it and allowed people to post it online: Bill Gates Goes to College. Just like Napoleon Dynamite the movie, it requires a specific sense of humor to enjoy. Either you love it or you hate it. hehe.

The latest Las Vegas attraction: sumo wrestlersThe daily life of a sumo wrestler mainly involves waking up early, skipping breakfast, and practising intensely in the morning. They then eat hearty stew-based meals with plenty of rice, then sleep in the afternoon to bulk up. – besides the waking up early, it sounds like a pretty sweet life!

Dude! I need to got watch Serenity. It’s been out for 2 weeks and I still haven’t seen it. grrrrrrrr. To promote the movie, they released the 1st 9 minutes of the movie online. Probably to attract more viewers. Opening week, Serenity ranked #2. This week, they’re currently ranked #8. Go watch the movie if you haven’t.

New gadget to make theft of mobile phones harderFinnish scientists have invented a device to make it harder to steal mobile phones and laptops by enabling them to detect changes in their owner’s walking style and then freeze to prevent unauthorized use. 1st of all, as someone who has lost his cell phone in the past, I don’t understand why cell phone service providers don’t help you track down your stolen cell phone. Instead they tell you to lock you account to prevent abuse or else you’ll be liable for the charges. Cell phone tracking technology (triangulation) has been available for quite some time. 2nd, you really think locking the cell phone would deter thiefs from stealing them? They’ll probably just reflash the phone and WA-LA. 3rd, detecting difference in walking patterns isn’t really useful. What if you lend your cell phone to a friend? What if you injured your leg or foot? What this does is just create inconvenience for the consumer, while not for the thief.

What art is hiding on your microchip? (from /.) – That was just the start of a catalog that now holds more than 100 images of extremely small automobiles, dinosaurs, birds of prey, cartoon characters and even a wedding announcement silhouette–all tucked away among microchip circuits. Davidson calls the collection the Silicon Zoo.

Random Crap

e honda
e honda! though swirly aura slap wasn’t really one of his moves – from artemyst

TheKen (Ken Stokes) Music (from lsiymle) – fan of Linkin Park and know how to play the piano? Well Ken here posted up piano sheets (I think he wrote them himself by listening to the music). It’s not bad.

toothpick gallery (from /.) – these toothpick carvings (if that’s what you can call them) are amazing! so intricate and details are so fine!

Remember how WhiteHouse.com was a porn site? Apparently WhiteHouse.org is a parody site of WhiteHouse.gov. Learn How to Be a Cigarette-Safe kid! (from artemyst) has these funny pictures of kids smoking. quite disturbing though.

Stories that make you cringe!

Teen Finds Razor Blade in Chicken SandwichCraig Beat was not injured when he found the blade in his chicken patty Sept. 21, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said. Reading that and imagining someone biting into a sandwich with a razor blade in it just forces me to cringe as I imagine a mouth full of blood.

Man coughs up screw after operation“I have had a cold for the past few days,” Verhees told daily Gazet Van Antwerpen. “I had a terrible cough a few days ago. That’s when I suddenly felt something in my mouth. “It turned out to be a screw.” How the hell does a screw holding your spine get into your throat and ultimately into your mouth? Is there a hole somewhere that I’m missing?


More stories, not necessarily cringing though.

Arkansas Mother Gives Birth to 16th ChildTheir children include two sets of twins, and each child has a name beginning with the letter “J”: Joshua, 17; John David, 15; Janna, 15; Jill, 14; Jessa, 12; Jinger, 11; Joseph, 10; Josiah, 9; Joy-Anna, 8; Jeremiah, 6; Jedidiah, 6; Jason, 5; James, 4; Justin, 2; Jackson Levi, 1; and now Johannah. As cari noted, that’s almost 1 kid every year! They’re like rabbits!

Woman on Motorcycle Collides With Bear – story wasn’t that interesting, but: The bear fled the scene after the collision. They make it sound like the Bear was a hit and run case.

School expels children’s author for swearingReverend Graham Taylor, who wrote the novel “Shadowmancer,” which centers on witchcraft and battling evil, said teachers had got upset because he used the words “crap, poo, fart and bogey” in his talk at Penair School, in Truro in southwest England. “I think that my language was appropriate,” he said. “Language changes, and words that once were deemed unacceptable are now part of our culture.” and I totally agree! How is crap a swear word?

Berkeley Friends’ Visit

It’s been a crazy weekend! Couple of friends from Berkeley came up and visited CDMCC and me. Liam, SFHalcyon, Vandel, and Brenna flew all the way to Seattle to visit us. We had a blast. Went out to several fancy restaurants. Went out drinking. Played a lot of fool and asshole (Big2 with slightly different rules). Just to show my appreciation, I took a shot of Grey Goose. Was pretty horrid and guess who chickened out in the end. HAHA. Though he did have a Long Island Ice Tea beforehand. Liam didn’t really get to enjoy his vacation much. Spent both Friday and Saturday working on his CS162 project (operating systems) because as he claims, “his partners are idiots.” On Sunday, we all went out hiking at Twin Falls (where Twin Peaks was filmed). The waterfalls there were pretty and we all had fun. My legs did get a bit sore, but not as much as I was expecting. Check out the pictures I took in the photo album. Be sure to check out the videos at the end of the album.

So lemme back track a bit. It’s been probably over a week since I last posted. Maybe just a little under since the gang showed up on Thursday night, and that was when I stopped posting. Thursday night before they arrived, I met Karl’s UCSD roommate Joseph and Joseph’s current roommate Tyler. CDMCC introduced me to them and they were new hires too and we had dinner together. It was pretty fun. Joseph is on the MSN team and Tyler IIRC was on the Windows MSI team.

Afterwards, time was running close to arrival, so both CDMCC decided to go straight to the airport to pick up Liam and SFHalcyon. Was a bit on gasoline, but there really wasn’t any other better plan. Vandel and Brenna’s flight got delayed and would be coming in around midnight. It was awesome to see Liam again. I’ve missed him so much! The next few days were a blast. I had to work on Friday since ZBB just past (zero bug bar) and ZRB (zero resolved bugs) was the following week, but I met up with them after work for dinner.

On my way over there, I hit major traffic jam, even though it was 7:30 already. Turns out there was some sort major car accident. I passed by a black car on the side of the freeway, crushed in the front, flipped over, and police officers trying to tear the car apart. After I past that wreck, it was smooth sailing… until I hit the Mercer exit. I usually take the Stuart exit, but CDMCC told me the Mercer tends to be faster. I got lost. hahaha. in the middle of Seattle. But after a number of wrong turns and just following my instincts, I found my way to CDMCC’s apartment complex. What usually took 20mins ended taking over an hr and change.

Liam also ended up staying over at my place and we had a great time watching the 1hr Bleach special. It’s getting exciting!!! I can’t wait to see Ichigo’s bankai! Let’s see, what happened next. Oh yah! On Saturday afternoon, we all chilled at the Microsoft field across from Building 16 and played catch and threw the football around. It was rather fun. The girls didn’t join in though. Later on, Vandel started whipping people with his extra long chewed bubble gum and that was a quite sight.

Sigh…. It was so disappointing. After lunch, we all went back to CDMCC’s place to watch the Cal vs UCLA football game. Both teams were undefeated. It was such a great start for Cal, but HOW THE HELL DID WE LOSE!?!?!? Sigh… It still hurts to think back to that game. Only thing we can hope for is that we defeat USC and USC defeats UCLA. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. We were planning to.. well THEY were planning to have a big celebration after we “win” the game, but everyone was so disappointed after the game, we just sat around doing nothing.

Sunday was pretty sweet. Liz and CDMCC took us to Twin Falls, just east of Redmond. The drive was around 40 mins or so, but I wasn’t really counting. Apparently this was where they filmed Twin Peaks. The waterfall was pretty, though I didn’t get to try that “great cup of joe” as the series advertised. CDMCC did mention that to stay at the hotel for a night cost $200 or was it $400. At the scenic viewing spot, there were TONS AND TONS of ladybugs. I’m guessing it was ladybug mating season and they were landing all over me. Liz was scared because she kept thinking they were some dangerous type of beetle. Can’t seem to remember the type right now.

Afterwards we went hiking. The hike took about 2.5hrs (to and back). It was quite a workout which I haven’t had in some time. Got to see some nice scenarys (see photo album). Nothing much happened during the hike, besides the “conversations” we were having were quite inappropriate to be spoken in the public. But everyone had fun and Brenna and SFHalcyon had a flight to catch @ 8 so we left quickly and headed back.

CDMCC took us to this fancy restaurant in Fremont and they had TONS AND TONS of beer. Belgium beer I believe was their specialty. I had my lemonade, though it wasn’t quite sweet enough. Everyone had a blast. I decided I’d take Liam to the airport the next morning, so he came back to my place. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to wake up at earlier than 7am. That’s like my sleeping time! The drive there was pretty relaxed since I was able to take the carpool lane, but the drive back took a bit longer than expected cause I was hitting morning traffic. Vandel left later that day, but CDMCC took him to the airport.

Microwave Power Levels

what grinds my gears: how come microwaves don’t have a standard? P100 on this microwave doesn’t mean P100 on another microwave. 5 minutes cooking in this microwave at the same power level doesn’t equal the same 5 minutes in another microwave. for me, i always know to undercook in my microwave because setting the given amount of time always has overcooked anything i tried.

been a long day. tired. so short entry.

thanks to kharizma for donating this flash game: Poke the Penguin. try a few times, there’s different endings.

thanks to kharizma for donating this link: Bunny suicides. sad, yet cute.

got this article from yahoo: Doctor sued for sex treatment for back pain. An Oregon woman whose doctor convinced her that he could cure her lower back pain by having sex with her … and sent to jail for 60 days last year for charging the state’s Oregon Health Plan $5,000 for his 45-minute “treatments” involving the woman.

got this article from yahoo: Bogus work excuses on the rise: ‘God didn’t wake me’. Reasons not to show up for work ranged from: “I was too drunk to drive to work” to “I forgot I was getting married today.” One employee who did not believe in alarm clocks told the boss that “God didn’t wake me.”

Hippo and Hippo Jr.

nothing much happened today. was rather boring. spent most of it sleeping. hehe.

welp, i’m brain dead @ the moment. so i’ll just post up some pictures of hippo and hippo jr.:

good hippoevil hippohippo with hippo jr.

Story actually goes like this. i got hippo and mono from a fund raiser for my science club. turned out to be a lot cuter than what i expected. hippo was definitely cuter and i was actually going to give it to my brother for christmas but i ended up keeping it. hehe. well, hippo came with a hook which i hooked to either my backpack or my pants whenever i went out or to school. it was like a new thing and hippo enjoyed sight seeing. one day, i realized he was not hooked onto either my pants nor my backpack. i frantically searched for him and asked every single one of my friends if they’ve seen hippo. apparently one of my friends said she saw it on the top of my car, which i recall never placing him. sigh, as you can tell, i was majorly depressed. i emailed the fund raiser company asking if they had any left which i can purchase from. the sweet lady replied back apologizing that they no longer carry this item, but will try to see if they have any left overs. well, this story has a happy ending and 2 days later i got another email and said they found ONE LAST ONE and was going to mail it to me for FREE! i was like AWESOME and i couldn’t thank the lady enough. welp. hippo jr. and mono are here with me in Berkeley, but hippo (sr.) will never be forgotten. *sniff*

Halloween Flashers

today’s entry is going to super short. studying previous midterms and i’m getting stumped left and right. sigh… wish me luck on this tomorrow.

one of our favorite holidays are coming up, but some people just get WAY into the season, sometimes even a bit overboard, but thanks to mandalayx for sharing this picture with us. WARNING: pumpkin porn is involved so reader BEWARE!

In God We Trust

grrrrr, we miss the delivery truck today =(. it was suppose to contain our 3 bookcases. came @ 1:05pm which I was home but apparently I was on the phone with AT&T as i noted on yesterday’s news so they got a busy signal when they tried calling me down.

thanks to mkko, he found a hilarious film on the net. I present to you In God We Trust. hope you’ll enjoy it as much as i did. ^_^x

Fishing in Ensenada

guess what! i’m home. i had an awesome time!!! was too tired last nite for an update, so doing one today. hehe. for those that don’t know where ensenada is, it’s actually part of Baja California, about an hour south of Tijuana. It’s a great vacation place. If u wanna find out more about it, click here

i went from BBQ to kayaks to seadoos (aka larger versions of jetskis) to fishing. It was really fun and I had a great time. ^_^x Guess what?!?! While i was on a seadoo, i fell off the boat and lost my glasses in the water. actually, my turn was too sharp and it flung my cuz who was sitting behind me off and he pulled me in with him. all in all it was fun and i took a lot of great pictures and is being uploaded as I speak. Comments of course will come later.

here’s some video clips I took with my new digicam. some were meant to be photos but it was accidentally set on camcorder. hehe.

trailer tour: a tour of the trailer my cousin annd I slept in. everyone else got a hotel room, but we liked the trailer more. it was fun and who knew you could fit 5 beds in one small trailer. (7.44mb)
estero beach: was walking down the beach and decided I should take a video clip of the beautiful scenary. (7.61mb)
boat tour: the boat was mighty rocky and i just did a 360° of our fishing boat. (3.39mb)
barry’s first catch: this was really meant to be a photo, but like i explained before, stupid mistake. Barry’s first catch was a Yellow Tail!!! I unfortunately didn’t catch a single one. sigh… (1.12mb)
fish tail: again, this was suppose to be a foto. but go fish tail! (2.56mb)

so yah, go check out my photos! they’re really kewl! hopefully i’ll have the comments up really soon. enjoy ^_^x