My #@!$%#@# Monitor!

I have had my 19" Sony multiscan monitor for almost eight years. Throughout these eight years, my monitor has visited the following places:

• Berkeley
• Davis
• Milpitas
• Pleasanton
• Cupertino
• San Jose

Five minutes ago, my screen starting twitching up and down almost every 0.3 second. What the hell?? I guess it is time to buy a brand new monitor...

But wait a second - thanks to the one and only thing that I learned from college, I proceeded to turn off my monitor and turn it back on five seconds later. Viola! The twitching has gone away.

I am a genius.

Yahoo Launches Personal Search Engine

For those of you who enjoy searching for porn online, be careful:

Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. has introduced the beta release of My Web from Yahoo Search, a personal search engine that lets users save, recall and share online information with friends and colleagues.

What the hell? Who cares what my friends have been searching online. Why don't they come up with something that is a little bit more useful, like, a way for Warren Buffet to share his minute-by-minute trade activity with other strangers online. Now that's something I am going to want to follow every single day.

Kenneth

I just learned from my friend that one of my best friends from childhood and teenage days had passed away in Hong Kong last Wednesday. I have yet to find out exactly what happened. The last time I saw him was in October 2003 when I visited Hong Kong; We had long chat about life and about what we had planned for the future. I'm still a little bit shocked he has passed away at such a young age, and I will never get to see him again.

It seems to always take a tragic incident to make one realize how precious life is. We should all be quite thankful for what we have in life and appreciate the simple fact that we are alive and we get the freedom to do the things that we enjoy.

Rest in peace, Kenneth.


Kenneth Siu (1979-2005)

Update: I just found out from my other friend that he had hung himself in his bedroom at night while his wife was asleep. It was only 1am when his dad found out, and his body was already cold. This is so sad. Why would anyone hang himself right next to his loved ones?

Training Day

In preparation for Bay to Breakers, I ran from my office all the way to the Bayfront Park by the Dumbarton bridge during lunch time today. Fortunately, prior to running, I uploaded the song "Eye of the Tiger" to my Ipod shuffle. I had it on repeat the entire time while random people on the street joined me and cheered me on.

I was exhausted by the end of the run, and I got a lovely blister on my left foot.


This is the trail that I took today. Run Frodo! Run!
According to Duc, it was approximately a 5 mile run


Now that I've experienced the pain of running long distance, I think it is total bullshit how Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee were able to travel over 1500 miles from the Shire to Mordor. I mean, won't they get blisters? Even if they were wearing the nicest pair of nike shoes, they would have been worn out before they are half way there!

The World's Greatest Hacker

Once upon a time, a dork (bitchchecker) on IRC accused Elch (channel operator) for kicking him off the channel. He threatened to hack Elch's machine if he continued to kick him off the channel. He dared Elch to give out his IP address, and the IP address given was, ahem, 127.0.0.1.

Am I Color Blind??

I had to look at some graphs today at work, and realized that I had the toughest time discerning which line was red and which line was green. I asked Jenny to take a look at the graph and she said she was clearly able to tell which one's red and green. Sh*t.

So I went online and found a color blind test:

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html

The ONLY one that I got right was the one at the top left. I am so pissed. Let me show you one of the pictures here, how can anyone read the number 6 from this??



I hope companies don't start testing if candidates are colorblind during their interviewing process because, if they do, I will be kind of angry.

Help Wanted

I am looking for someone to compose a list of songs to put into my ipod shuffle. I plan to listen to these songs in the next few weeks while I train for the Bay to Breakers 12K.

Ideally, the chosen songs should:

• make me want to run fast
  
• make me want to shout
• make me want to screeeeeeeeeam
• be in the techno or trance genre
• not be hip hop (somehow I can't follow the beat while I run)

Just to give you an idea on how bad I am at finding the right songs for running, here are some of the current songs on my ipod shuffle:

• John Mayer - Your Body is a Wonderland
• John Mayer - Daughters
• U2 - One
• U2 - With or Without You
• Allure - All Cried Out
• 4PM - Sukiyaki
• 98 Degrees - I Do
• Josh Groban - Never Let Go
  

If you know of any good songs for running, PLEASE let me know!

Perfecto!

After the awesome week that I had and the week long of alcohol withdrawal, I am pleased to announce that I have just received the good news from the test:

The results of your RHCT Certification Exam are reported below. The
RHCT Certification Exam allows candidates to qualify for the Red Hat
Certified Technician (RHCT) certificate.

SECTION I: TROUBLESHOOTING
RHCT requirements: completion of compulsory items (50 points)

Compulsory troubleshooting score: 50.0

SECTION II: INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
RHCT minimum requirements: 70 percent on RHCT components

Installation and Configuration score: 100.0%

RHCT Certification: PASS

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Rico and Trevor for all their help over the past two weeks. I wouldn't have passed this test without their help.

Bring out the keger!

Miller Moment of the Day

This happened while we're on our way to lunch in Trevor's car today:

Rico: Hey look, there's a skate park there!

Debbie: What? There's a gay bar there?

Arnold Schwarzenegger does California

I heard this news on the radio on my way home tonight:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly apologized Wednesday for his earlier statements that California should "close the borders" with Mexico to control illegal immigration, saying he had misspoken because of a "language problem.''

"Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States," Schwarzenegger said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America. "Because I think it is just unfair to have all those people coming across, have the borders open the way it is, and have this kind of lax situation."

"The bottom line is, I misspoke, and I'm sorry if I offended anyone," Schwarzenegger said about his comments Tuesday to a newspaper publishers' group in San Francisco. "I meant 'securing' our borders, not 'closing' them.

Seems like Arnold screwed up big time there. It is pretty funny that he used English as an excuse for "mispeaking." Can you imagine what happened during the meeting he had with his advisors to come up with an excuse for what he had said?

Advisor: Mr. Governor, I think you should tell people that you mispoke, since your English sucks, and you're a dumbass.

Arnold: Good idea. But how dare you call me a dumbass?

Advisor: The bottom line is, I mispoke, and I'm sorry if I offended you. I meant your ass is so strong that you can use your ass to lift up a dumbbell.

Arnold: Indeed. I'm a cybernetic organism: living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

You can view the article here.

Still at work?

Yes, I am. I have also reunited with Carls Jr, whom I broke up with after graduating.

I'm not sure if I'm starting to hallucinate, but I think the can of Heineken in the fridge under Rico's desk is calling my name.

But I must resist. Two more nights of studying and then I'm a free man comes Friday afternoon.

Don't you worry, Heineken, you are so mine in two days.

Ouch! This one is going to hurt...

I used to think that Rico was a stud. During the winters, he would cruise up to Lake Tahoe in the snow on his AWD Subaru Legacy without putting on chains.

A nail went into the right-rear tire of Rico's car today. When we took his car to the shop to be patched, the dude told us that the hole was unpatachable, and that it would cost $600 to replace all four tires since it's an AWD.

Ever since this incident, I don't envy Rico anymore. I feel lucky to own a 2-wheel drive 96 Mazda 626 instead.

Awesome Week

A week ago, Rico and I decided that we should get certified to be a Linux guru by Redhat. So we went onto their website to look up the details on the RHCT certification exam.

They recommend that you go take one of their courses before taking thie RHCT exam. The problem is that if we want to do that, the following exam date won't happen until July. It seems like it is going to take quite a bit of effort to enroll in that course and waiting until July. So we decided to bypass the course and sign up for the exam that is coming up this Friday.

With only two weeks to learn the material, Rico and I have been spending some quality time at the office studying and talking smack about pretty much any mutual friend that we know. I just realized that I spent the entire last week and this week at home or at the office. Here's our last week's and this week's schedule thus far. How exciting!

The Best Way to Resolve Conflicts between China and Japan

For those of you who don't read the news, let me summarize what has been happening:

There has been an increase in anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Protests have been seen in different cities, where protesters were seen trashing Japanese cars/restaurants, throwing stones at the Japanese Consulate, and flipping random people off.

China demands Japan to apologize for raping over 80,000 innocent women and killing over 300,000 people in China during the Nanjing Massacre. Apparently they are also pissed that the Japanese has been publishing high school text books that distort the Japanese war-time atrocities.

In my humble opinion, Japan should just apologize as soon as possible before the protests spread to the United States because:

• I drive a Mazda and I cannot afford a new car if it gets trashed by protesters.
• I go to Miyakes at least twice a week and I do not want the california roll makers there to be in any kind of danger.
• I intend to go to the Cherry Blossom festival in Japan town next week in San Francisco and I do not want to be killed just because I'm Chinese.
• There are many Chinese Americans here who own Japanese restaurants, and they would be totally confused on what they should do.

This kind of protests have been going back and forth for years. It is only a matter of time until the United States get involved, and it might very well turn into World War 3. I demand some type of resolution immediately!

Fortunately, with the major advances in technology, the friction between these two nations can probably be solved without real life bloodshed. China and Japan shall appoint Hu Jintao, the president of the People's Republic of China and Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minster of Japan, to settle their differences on Street Fighter II. Hu Jintao must pick Chun Li whereas Junichiro Koizumi must pick Ryu Hoshi. They will play in a best out of 3 rounds format. Whoever wins 2 out of 3 rounds will be considered the victor.

vs

If you guys can think of a better method to settle this, please let me know.

Before you decide to kill your wife...

Let's look at some of the recent high-profile cases as a barometer:

OJ Simpson - not guilty
Scott Peterson - guilty
Robert Blake - not guilty

This tells you that 66% of the time, it is a good idea to kill your wife, if you're rich.

But if you are still really pissed at your wife but you are not fortunate enough to assemble a legal dream team, go here and let them talk your way out of it.

Taxes made me lose my arm and my leg

In case you haven't found out yet, today is tax day, aka the day to lose your paycheck, an arm and a leg to the IRS.

I paid $40 for Turbotax Prmier as I always did for my previous filings. But for some reason it told me that I owed Uncle Sam over $2000, which didn't sound quite right. So I went to an accountant to double check, and he told me that I actually owed them $2200 instead and, he's going to charge me $160 for doing the taxes for me. Oh boy, I'm screwed.

The IRS works in a very interesting way. They hire these guys to design the forms such that it's impossible for anyone with average intelligence to understand. If you have some money, you will get it done through Turbotax or get an account to do it for you. If you're broke, you are stuck doing it on your own, which means you will probably make tons of mistake, and end up getting audited by the IRS and fined up the wazoo.

IRS' algorithm

if( upper_class )
    tax_amount = yearly_income / 2 + accountant_fee + arm + leg + your_wife;
elseif( middle_class )
     tax_amount = yearly_income / 2.5 + turbotax + arm + leg;
else
    tax_amount = yearly_income / 3 + arm + leg + family;
    audit_user(); // screw over this guy since he probably did his taxes himself.

Filing your taxes is a lose-lose situation for most citizens. Shouldn't the governemnt pay these accountants to do our taxes instead of us using our already-taxed income to pay for software or accountants just so we can give IRS our money?

And the Worst Dim Sum Restaurant Award goes to...

Cho's Restaurant

Today, Rico convinced Andy, Ray and me to have dim sum with him on California Ave in Palo Alto today.

When we got there, I saw this huge sign on the wall that says in chinese - "Dim Sum World." So I thought to myself, Okay, these people at least know chinese, and so the food shouldn't be too bad. Sounds like they should have all kinds of dim sum there.

When I went up to the counter to order some dim sum, the owner told me that all they had were pot stickers, dumplings, egg rolsl, and pork buns....

Each of us paid around $6 for the crappiest dim sum ever, and we proceeded to throw up for the rest of the afternoon.

The person to put together the "Guide to Good Eat - Student Life" at Stanford University should be shot because here's what it says about the restaurant:

Dim-Sum

Cho’s Mandarin
213 California Ave., Palo Alto (650) 326-4632
A little hole in the wall next to Kinko’s. Cheap and good (& sometimes greasy) dimsum. Be ready for a line.

Lesson of the day: Do not trust your mexican friend's recommendation when it comes down to chinese food. (J/K. We still love you though, Rico!)

That's it for now. Gotta go throw up some more.

University of Cincinnati Bearcat Adopts New Logo

The Bearcat announced that they will be adopting a new logo for the university. Supposedly they paid some design firm $35,000 for it. This marketing genius went on and created this new design. How exciting!


Old Logo vs New Logo

They could have just bought me a long island and I would have given them a new design by pressing the bold and italics button on their existing logo in Photoshop. Oh and, if they would buy me some california rolls as well, I would even go the extra mile and put a few extra lines on the logo to make it look somewhat different. Oh well, it's too late anyway.

Oops. Messed Up Baby is On Its Way

Britney Spears Announces She's Pregnant

My Take on Terri Schiavo's case

There had been a lot of talk among my friends and coworkers about the Terri Schiavo's case up until the day she died. Now that nobody seems to want to argue about the case anymore, let me voice out my take on this.

Honestly, I don't give a damn about it. The only people who should care are the family members.

And who were these random people protesting outside of the court every day? Don't they need to work? I spend 40 (...ok maybe 30) hours/week working and another 20 hours/week blogging. That adds up to one week already. Where can I find time to care about someone I don't know?

I only care about the well being of family and friends and, of course, celebrities.

Oh man. This is going to make my score much less impressive

We all know what the SAT is; It's that boring test that requires all high school students to take if they want to get accepted to a university. Apparently they have recently changed the perfect SAT score from 1600 to 2400 by adding a writing/grammar section to the test.

Suddenly, my SAT score doesn't look so good.

Oh well... Who cares. One of the best things about being in the professional industry is that you no longer have to deal with tests like the SAT. If you decide to go to graduate school, you might have to take the GRE or GMAT, but at least those tests use the adaptive method, which is a slightly better reflection of your intelligence than the SAT.

One thing that some of these top universities haven't yet learned is that the SAT is so incredibly overrated as a predictor of success in higher education, and even in life. This test is so ridiculously coachable that anyone with money can take test prep classes to increase their scores by 200-300. With this score change it is going to give the low income kids a bigger disadvantage than there already is.

In a perfect world, I wish universities would de-emphasize the importance of the SAT; But this is not a perfect world, and so it probably is never going to happen. My advice to these kids - life is not fair, deal with it.

Save Toby

WARNING: If you are an animal lover, read no further.

I would like to share this website that I came across today with all of you out there:

http://www.savetoby.com

Once you go there you'll see this cute picture of Toby:

At first I thought it was a squirrel, but upon further reading, it turned out to be a bunny.

My initial feeling of this website is that Toby has some sort of disease and they are asking for donations so that Toby would be able to go under some sort of surgery. Boy was I wrong. Here's what it has to say:

Welcome,

Toby is the cutest little bunny on the planet. Unfortunately, he will DIE on June 30th, 2005 if you don.t help. I rescued him several months ago. I found him under my porch, soaking wet, injured from what appeared to be an attack from an alley cat. I took him in, thinking he had no chance to live from his injuries, but miraculously, he recovered. I have since spent several months nursing him to health. Toby is a fighter, that.s for sure.

Unfortunately, on June 30th, 2005, Toby will die. I am going to eat him. I am going to take Toby to a butcher to have him slaughter this cute bunny. I will then prepare Toby for a midsummer feast. I have several recipes under consideration, which can be seen, with some pretty graphic images, under the recipe section.

I don’t want to eat Toby, he is my friend, and he has always been the most loving, adorable pet. However, God as my witness, I will devour this little guy unless I receive 50,000$ USD into my account from donations or purchase of merchandise. You can help this poor, helpless bunny’s cause by making donations through my verified PayPal account by clicking on any of the Donate buttons on this site, or by purchasing merchandise at the Savetoby.com online store.

After reading that, I started cracking up big time in my cube. I bet my cubemates were wondering what I was reading that's so funny. I especially liked the way they capitalized the word DIE in the sentence "...he will DIE on June 30th, 2005 if you don.t help." Supposedly they have already raised over $20,000 of donations. I guess that's not too bad considering the site made it to NBC news.

Hmmm... is there something wrong with me? Why do I think it's so funny? I guess it's just funny because if Toby was a cow or a pig instead of a bunny, people wouldn't react to this the same way.

How did YOU react to it after reading this?

Google Maps Meets Craigslist Housing

It appears that Paul Rademacher has combined the power of Google Maps and Craigslist to create this awesome house hunting tool that displays rental and for sale properties listed on Craigslist. This is an excellent example of what a simple idea can now be done via the use of Ajax.

Thanks Andy.

Do Dogs Watch TV?

For those who don't know me, I adopted a Chow chow puppy five years ago when I was still in college. I named her "Princess Pei Pei" after the character in the movie Shanghai Noon since that movie was pretty popular at that time. After awhile I started calling her Pei Pei instead because she didn't really act like a princess.


My awesome dog named "Pei Pei" (on the left)

Every morning as I'm about to go to work, Pei Pei always gives me this guilt trip on how she's going to be bored and lonely while I'm away from her the entire day. Sometimes I will leave the radio on so that she can listen to some Elton John or Celine Dion songs; Other times I will leave the TV turned on, tuned to some cartoon channel for her to watch, even though I don't know if she knows how to watch TV or not.

I was at the mall last week and I walked into the grand opening of this Pet gadget store. They were selling this DVD called "Dog Sitter." I thought that was sort of a strange DVD so I picked it up and started reading what it's all about. Here's what it says on the cover:

The Dog Sitter dog video was shot from a "Doggie Cam" view! The Dog Sitter video is filled with creatures that excite and delight dogs! Now your dog will never have to be home alone!

Dogs can hear 10 times better than humans, so the Dog Sitter Video is loaded with up to 8 layers of sounds. There are also subliminal messages that say "Good Dog, Good Dog." This dynamic soundtrack filled with the sounds of nature in stereo put the final touch on the best video ever produced for our canine friends. DVD.

The cover also has a picture of these dogs laying in front of the TV watching the DVD. I couldn't help but imagine Pei Pei doing that while I'm away from work. At that moment, I felt that I was about to get suckered into buying something sooo stupid; I proceeded to pay the $15 for the DVD however, knowing that there's a slight possibility that Pei Pei might enjoy watching that.

To make the long story short, I put the DVD into the player the moment I got home. I made Pei Pei come sit in front of the TV with me. Then there comes the introduction scene with this dorky guy talking to me and Pei Pei, telling me to keep saying "Good Dog! Good Dog!" to Pei Pei throughout the show. After that, it started showing these hidden camera views (or so they called 'Doggie Views') of squirrels eating nuts, ducks swimming around the lake, and birds flying around. Pei Pei didn't even look at the TV throughout the entire time! She ran back to her sleeping spot by the front door after a few minutes and fell asleep, and I was left alone watching that DVD instead!

So here's my genius conclusion - Dogs do NOT watch TV! And I want my money back!

Caltech Unleashes Pranks at MIT Campus

Remember those days when your high school senior class decides to play nasty pranks on your teachers and the campus? It appears some of the students at Caltech think they should do the same thing while they're in College.

These Caltech students traveled to the MIT campus last week and unleashed a series of pranks at the Prefrosh weekend. They handed out t-shirts with "MIT" on the front and "...because not everyone can go to Caltech." They also put out a banner that transformed Massachusetts Institute of Technology into That Other Institute of Technology.

You can visit their official "Caltech vs MIT" website here. Pretty funny stuff.

Now I certainly hope these nerds will grow up real soon. Otherwise we will soon see Microsoft employees playing pranks on Google campus or vice versa. Now that's lawsuits waiting to happen!

U2 Vertigo Concert Review

Just got back from U2's Vertigo concert in San Jose . U2's performance was equivalent if not better than the Elevation Tour concert that I went to four years ago. I left the concert feeling that I want to go see them perform once again.

For those of you who are still looking to buy tickets, I highly recommend getting the lower level section seats that are either next to or behind the stage. In my opinion these are the best seats that are available since you are actually located very close to the band and you can actually see their faces. In addition, it is a rounded stage and Bono and the Edge often times will come face the fans behind the stage and they have access to get pretty close to them as well.

Several highlights that are worth mentioning:

• Bono shared his experience about meeting Pope John Paul II at his private summer residence in Rome back in 1999. He then proceeded to take out this necklace from his pocket and hang it around the mic stand, stating that the Pope had given that to him. He dedicated the song "Miracle Drug" to those who are very sick and to the doctors who save many people's lives.
• They showed a clip of a young woman reciting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a disembodied voice, notably "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." and "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
  
• Bono talked about the battle that we are facing now in year 2005. He said to forget about the civil rights and all the other things in the past. We should now fight for humans to be treated equally. He then made everyone in the audience take out their cell phones and hold it up in the dark, which I thought made a really cool scene. He said that each and every one of us has the power to make a difference by voicing our opinion to the government.
• The last song was "40" from the album "Under a Blood Red Sky." The band left the stage one after the other with the entire audience singing "How long....to sing this song...." repeatedly until they all disappeared.

My only disappointment was that I got stuck sitting right next to these two druggies. They were smoking pot during the entire concert! Other than that, the rest of the audience were great; About 95 percent of the people were on their feet during the entire show and even this 90 year old grandma in front of me was seen enjoying the music and bobbing her head up and down.

The Office Space Scam

If you are in the engineering industry or you live in the Silicon Valley, chances are you have watched the movie "Office Space" numerous times. You probably still remember how the three men in the movie try to scam their corporation by transferring a penny out of each customer's account.

Apparently these folks at a call center in India tried to pull the same gig, but failed miserably when a customer found out $350,000 USD had disappeared from his bank account. Oooops! I hope these guys have watched Escape from Alcatraz before going to prison.

How well do you know me?

So my good friend Andy Choy demands that I create my version of the "How well do you know me" quiz. I guess he still can't over the fact that I got all 10 of his quiz's questions correctly.

Those of you who know me well enough should do quite well on my quiz. Don't worry - even if you got 0 questions correctly, I will not hold it against you, unless your first name is Andy and last name is Choy.

Take my Quiz! and then Check out the Scoreboard!

And your rank is...

Sometimes, the best way to boost the morale within the company is to come up with some great news that tells everyone how great of a job we are doing. However, when I stumbled to this latest news headline that's related to my company today, I don't know whether or not this should make me feel good?

E-Trade Financial Ranked 919th Largest Company In The World

Revenge of the Nerds

Imagine this - You're a die-hard Star Wars fan + virgin all your life. You went to the opening premier of all the previous episodes. With 'Revenge of the Sith' coming out about a month away, you start lining up outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, only to find out that they are not even prmiering the film.

Somehow I doubt these guys are waiting in line a month in advance because they want to make sure that they get tickets to the movie. I am just going to Fandango it while they are being interviewed by Triumph the insult comic dog.

George W. Bush be spittin'

If you're bored, you might find this quite amusing. Watch & Listen to our President rap the parody of "P.I.M.P" by 50 cent.

"D.R.A.F.T"

Hacking WEP encryption in three minutes

Having a wireless network at home is great because it allows you to have access to the Internet anywhere at home (even in the bathroom!). But have you ever thought about being hacked? I have always known that the WEP encryption scheme is not 100% secure and someone can break into your network after sniffing your packets after many hours or a few days using the Brute Force technique. And now even the feds can hack into your network in three minutes with some of the new network cracking tools and techniques.

Special Agent Bickers and his team have some tips for us in order to make our network more secure:

1) Network segregation
Put your access point on a separate subnet, with a firewall separating the wireless and internal users

2) Change the default settings on your access point
Default settings (SSID, administrator password, channel) are well known and even included as part of some WLAN attack tools

3) Use WPA with a strong key
WPA is a definite improvement over WEP in providing wireless security. But the version intended for home and SOHO use—WPA-PSK—has a weakness shared by any passphrase security mechanism. The choice of simple, common and short passphrases may allow your WPA-protected WLAN to be quickly compromised via dictionary attack (more info here).

4) Update your firmware
This is helpful if your AP or client doesn't currently support WPA. Many manufacturers have newer firmware for 802.11g products that add WPA support. You may also find this for 802.11b gear, but it's not as common. Check anyway!

5) Turn off the WLAN when not in use
A $5 lamp timer from your local hardware store is a simple, but effective way to keep your WLAN or LAN from harm while you're sleeping.

Google Adds Satelitte View to Its Maps

Google announced on their Blog today that they have added Satelitte View on their popular Google Maps. This new feature was made possible through their recent purchase of Keyhole technology . I was able to spot my house as well as my office. However, I am unable to locate my two bikes that were stolen two years ago. :( Now if they would also support satelitte views of the war in Iraq.... Oh well. At least they do have a map of Area 51.

Funky Ad Banner

While I was reading this one news article on http://abcnews.go.com that titled "35,000 New Stories on Pope After Death," I suddenly noticed this banner on the right side that made me feel as if I was on some terrorist website:

Perhaps they hired a graphics designer who used to work for some Terrorist Website?

IRC On The PSP

According to an article on SlashDot, this guy was able to hack the hidden internal browser of PSP and get it connected to the Internet via wireless network. Cool deal!

And then there comes this other guy who decides that it would be a great idea to get IRC to work on PSP so that people can socialize on their PSP.

Yeah. It will definitely be so cool talking to your friends on IRC using the six buttons on PSP. I can just imagine this scenario happening:

Pat: Hey dude! I can see that you are signed on from your PSP!! How do you like it?
Pat: Hello? You there?
Pat: Be right back in 2 hours, I'm going to see a movie.
Pat: Back. You there?
Pat: Hello?
PSP_Dude: jjhfhhhh
Pat: wtf?

Perhaps they should just alias different buttons to "yes", "no", "wtf", ":)", ":(" and "this sucks"

Maybe someone should now create a hack that allows the user to plug in a standard keyboard to PSP :) Or get IRC to work on your cell phone if are so in love with it.

Here are some of the lovely PSP IRC screenshots:
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2
Screenshot #3
Screenshot #4
Screenshot #5
Screenshot #6

This is funny

I have been doing some research on how much more $$ I would get back on my paycheck if I were to start financing a mortgage. So yesterday I went to the Withholding Calculator on the IRS website to find out what number I should be putting on the W4 form. The calculator asks you lots of personal question, and there is one particular question that completely threw me off:

How do you click on that checkbox if you're blind? I would give this form the benefit of the doubt if it says "The tax payer is blind"... But all it says is "You are blind." That's like calling an automated voicemail that says "Press 1 if you are deaf." This form would be impossible to fill out even by this blind student who has just earned his M.D.

Oh well. I just thought that was funny. At least it further confirms that our government is run by monkeys.

To blog or not to blog. That is the question, AGAIN.

If there's a competition on the number of blog sites a person holds, they'd better make me the champion! I probably own at least one or two blog accounts on every major blogging sites such as Xanga, Blogger, and Live Journal. I gave up writing on each of them pretty quickly. I hope this one will not be another victim. I guess you learn from your past mistakes and you make it better the next time, right?

In writing this article, I asked myself why I want to start yet another blog. My previous blogs failed because they lacked its purpose and substance. Looking at the blogs from three years ago, I cannot imagine anyone would have the slightest interest in reading about what I had for breakfast or what project I was working on at work. I thought it was cool at the time, but I certainly don't think so reading it three years later. I quit writing because I had no motivation to write something that people have no interest in.

My purpose of starting this blog site is really effectively communicate my opinion on issues around the world to the readers. Through doing this, I hope to also attract readers who enjoy reading the things that I have to write about. If you look around your office or your government, the people who are most influential and get what they want are those that communicate effectively. I suppose blogging is a great way for you to practice that.

As a naive Computer Science major back in college five years ago, I thought I would never have to worry too much about writing or communicating. I cannot stress enough on how important it is for any engineer to go out and take lots and lots of GE or English classes that require writing. The more writing, the better. I will make sure that I don't bitch about my life here. If you catch me doing that, please let me know!

My goal is to write about interesting topics here that will at least keep you awake. So far I think I am doing a good job since you've read this far already. :)

Till next time!

Patrick

The passing of Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul has passed away today at 9:37pm.



"I find great peace in thinking of the time, when the Lord will call me from life to life. At the hour of my death, call me Lord, and bid me come to you. And when the moment of our definitive passage comes, grant that we may come with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind. For in meeting you lord, after having sought you for so long, we shall find once more every good which we have known here on earth. In the company of all who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith and hope. May we pray for us now, and at the hour of our death." - Pope John Paul II

The Foolishness of April Fools

Back when I was young, I thought it was always fun to lie to your friends on April's fool day. Most of the time it was harmless, as they were things so small and irrelevant that it wouldn't really impact anyone.

However, lies and rumors spread like wildfire with the help of the Internet these days. It makes you do a double-take each time you read a news article online on April 1st. Here are some of the cool articles that caught my attention today. Let's see if you can figure out whether or not they're real:

• Tiger Woods signs long-term deal with Apple Computer as Mac OS X 'Tiger' spokesperson
• SkyTag™ - Green Laser Aircraft Tracker
• Executive Pong™
• Paris Hilton Recruited to Publicize Linux
• Man Sells Baby for Gadgets
• Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
• Google Pulp