At the mercy of Microsoft

We have been at the mercey of Microsoft for almost a quarter of a century.

Don't get me wrong. I've always been a Microsoft user ever since DOS came around in 1981. We probably wouldn't be where we are now did they not come out with Windows OS.

But here's the problem. What bothers me is that when a company has no competition, they are able to get away with the most ridiculous things. For example, I was trying to archive my 10000+ emails at work today on Microsoft Outlook. I was a happy camper until I saw this hilarious yet absurd error message on my screen.


I couldn't help but start cracking up at my cube. Oh ok let's see.
Some items could not be opened. They were either:

• moved
• or deleted
• or access was denied.

The developer or the product manager was so lazy that they wanted to fit three completely different error cases into one error message. And, on top of this, it does not really tell you what you need to do to fix the problem. Am I supposed to try selecting one email at a time and archive it manually until I find the email that was either moved, deleted, or access was denied? No logs. No further suggestions. Nada. This is a classic developer mentality where he assumes that his code is supposed to work 99% of the time, and for those 1% that run into an ambiguous problem such as this, good luck to you. Thanks for choosing Microsoft Outlook.

I know this sounds really funny, but it really bothers me that I keep getting the "mailbox full" message every 15 minutes now since I am unable to archive my emails!!

Hopefully, mozilla will enhance their Thunderbird email client to support Outlook Exchange. Until then, I am still at the mercy of Microsoft...

Read up on why you should use Thunderbird here.

New hairstyle for Andy

So... Andy and I are being risk takers tomorrow. We are getting a haircut at some supposedly high-end salon that costs $55-$80 for a haircut.

We have no idea who will be cutting our hair, nor do we know whether or not they know how to cut asian hair. Andy keeps on bugging me on what hairstyle he should request. How the heck would I know? But here are some interesting ideas that we might want to bring up to the stylist tomorrow:


What do you guys think? A lot of these seem impossible for him to pull off since he can't really grow a goatee or a mustache. More hairstyle ideas can be found here.

Patrick

U2 kicks off Vertigo tour

It never ceases to amaze me how popular U2 gets whereever they go. For a band that has been around for over two decades, they have got to be doing something right. I was not a big fan of them until 2001, when my friend dragged me to go see their Elevation Tour concert.



The Vertigo Tour has just begun. According to NME.COM, they will be performing quite a few classic songs, notably "One" and "40."

Here's the list of songs that they will be performing at the concert:

• 'City Of Blinding Lights'
• 'Vertigo'
• ‘Cry/Electric co’
• ‘An Cat Dubh’
• ‘Into The Heart’
• ‘Beautiful Day’
• ‘New Year's Day’
• ‘Miracle Drug’
• ‘Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own’
• ‘Love And Peace or Else’
• ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’
• ‘Running To Stand Still’
• ‘Zoo Station’
• ‘The Fly’
• ‘Elevation’
• ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’
• ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’
• ‘One’
• ‘All Because Of You’
• ‘Yahweh’
• ‘40’

What a great list of songs. I can't wait to goto their concert on April 9th and 10th when they perform at the San Jose HP Pavilion!

Arnold bans use of steroids

I guess we might see some interesting looking baseball players during this season, if this is what happens when you stop taking steroids.

Korea House in Santa Clara

Being an Engineer, it is usually quite rare for me to go out and take a long lunch. However, my coworkers suggested that we go get some Korean food with them in Mountain View. Eating in Mountain View would definitely take over an hour. Not to mention the kind of look our bosses will give us when we come back two hours later.

Believe it or not, I actually quite liked the idea of getting some good o' Korean food today. I have been to the korean restaurant in Mountain View before and that place is only so-so. I am not willing to waste another 90 minutes going all the way to Mountain View for some mediocre food.

I began to look for other korean restaurants online that is within a 15 mile radius from Menlo Park. The only other one that I came up with was another one that I went to in Palo Alto, which is worse than the one in Mountain view. Ugh.

So I suggested that we go to this Korean restaurant in Santa Clara that I have been to many times. The restaurant is called Korea House. It's right off of El Camino and San Thomas. If you go there at night, you will undoubtedly spot the owner who works there, as she's this mid 50's korean girl with this hairdo that looks as if she is a startrek maniac. You don't believe me? Go there and you will see. :)

I was finally able to convince my coworkers, Trevor and Ricardo, that the place is really good and it's worth the 30 minute drive to get there. Afterall, if we're going to take a 90 minute lunch, we might as well make it 120 minutes, but coming back refreshed and happy. Right? They both liked the idea, but they said they would kick my ass if the food was no good. Fine. I have been dining around in the Bay Area too long and I know when I am eating some good food. :)

What a horrible mistake we made! Like all previous times at the restaurant, we were bombarded with plates after plates of their "appeptizers." It took us awhile to identify what each of those small plates really were. To make the long story short, the three of us ate SO MUCH that we are not able to focus at all the entire afternoon at work.

So what is the moral of the story? Don't go there for lunch unless you plan on being unproductive at work for the rest of the day!

We agreed while on our way back to work that we should only go back there once a month or something. The three of us probably consumed over 10,000 calories today just from lunch!

Here's the info on how to get yourself stuffed like us.

Patrick

Happy Birthday Van Gogh!

Thanks to Google, for the first time I've come to realize that March 30th is Van Gogh's birthday.



But who cares that it's his birthday? He is not going to come back from the dead and tell me how thankful he is for remembering his birthday. Now if google would let me know whenever it's my friends' birthdays...