Month: October 2005

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New Toys!

So I finally setup my new toys:

new toys new toys

The screen is so sweet! I was planning to dual screen with my old NEC 17″ LCD, but as you can see from the image, I don’t really have the space for it right now, so I’m probably going to look for a bigger table. Watching videos on this screen is amazing! Also, check out the the map sizes I can see with this screen:

google maps msn virtual earth

My speaker system is still having some problems. For some reason the Philips External Sound Processor won’t send any signals to my rear speakers, so I’m still using my old Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 for now, which is decent, though I noticed the center speaker (although during tests show that the speaker works) won’t have any sounds coming out when I’m playing music or movies, even when I enable environmental surround sound schemes. The speakers themselves are nice. Especially when they only costed me $35 shipped.

Also, it seems my processor isn’t able to handle the Apple HD Movie Trailers (look for any trailer with the HD symbol next to it or any of the trailers under the category High Definition Trailers). My system plays the the 480p trailers okay (though you can still see some choppiness), but the 720p or 1080p is unbearable to watch. The video lags big time. I have a couple 720p and 1080p videos from WMV HD Content Showcase and they play fine and may I add how beautiful they were on my new screen. My processor and video card aren’t that weak. It’s a AMD Sempron 2800+ and Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro.

Btw, Runts (look at my photos closesly and you’ll see them) are EVIL! I finished an entire box in one night. But fuzzywuzzy says Runts are evil for another reason: runts are evil because i end up with a jar full of banana. i hate those ones, so i throw them in a jar Wonka (owned by Nestle) is the makers of Runts and Nerds and other assortment of candies. I always wonderered which came first, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or the Wonka candy factory. According to Wikipedia, The Willy Wonka Candy Company came after the book. In fact, it coincided when the 1971 movie was released and some candy company purchased the license to it. Nestle didn’t purchase it till 1988. An interesting fact is that for the 2005 movie, Of the 110,000 candy bars made, only 1,850 were real. The rest were made of plastic. They were prepared by the Nestle corporation for the movie.

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Fable – Mature Audience Only

So you can chat, flirt, and even marry people in Fable. They actually have a cut scene that shows you getting married and some narator telling you that for one day, you don’t have to worry about any problems. Welp, according to ungsunghero, it turns out you can have sex with them too! You don’t see anything, but you hear the wife scream “YES! YES!” I personally haven’t gotten it to work. According to ungsunghero, I have to give the wife presents and gems and stuff. I gave a few, but gave up after a bit because it just wasn’t worth it. Supposedly after the sex, you get gold or items, but I’d rather spend my time training than trying to convince my wife to have sex with me. Also I found out through ungsunghero that you can have a wife in each town that you have a house in. I currently own 2 houses and have 2 wifes. I wonder what’ll happen if I try to marry another woman in the same town. There are two beds… ;p

After reading that, I pasted this article from /. to ungsunghero: Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions. He thought we were still talking about Fable, and I could clearly see how the title could be misleading after a chat about Fable. NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2018 and later on to Mars. But a round-trip mission to the Red Planet would probably last at least 30 months and carry six to eight people. That would be a hotbed for intense crew relationships, says a report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). … Palinkas says long-term space missions may be similar to extended periods in the isolated and confined environments of Antarctic research stations. He says crews in those stations often pair up in “bachelor marriages” that last the length of their stay – or less. “If there are instances of sexual conflict or infidelity, that may lead to a breakdown in crew functioning,” he told New Scientist. 30 months w/o sex. Someone on /. commented on how anyone can remain healthy and functional w/o having sex for 30 months. Another person responded that as a married man, he could tell you it’s possible.

Random Crap:

The Million Dollar Homepage (from MS distribution list) – some kid needs money for college tution and puts up this site selling ads. This guy’s made BANK so far. Read about it @ the I4U Review.

A Taste of Home Turns Bitter Over Mall Project (from ungsunghero) – I have no problems of new stores trying to come into Monterey Park. In fact, I was in support of that new mall project they were going to build in the southern parts of MPK. Though what I’m not in support of is governments abusing their power and using the eminent domain clause to take land and property back from owners so they can in turn sell it to the bigger franchises so more taxes can be generated.

Wal-Mart heiress in cheat probe returns diploma (from CDMCC) – Elizabeth Paige Laurie’s name was on a sports arena when a former University of Southern California roommate alleged the Wal-Mart heiress paid her $20,000 to do her homework. Now it isn’t even on a USC diploma. $20,000 to do one year of homework… worth it?

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Week at work

This week at work was pretty tough. On Thursday, I worked from 11am to 10pm (3hour in between was lunch and dinner and breaks), but I was so tired by the time I got home on, I pretty much plopped onto my bed. Slept from 1am to 10:20am this morning. A good 9 solid hours of sleep. I’ll probably have to put in a few extra hours this weekend, but it shouldn’t be a biggy.

Today, the Microsoft Give Campaign held a poker tournament, and a bunch of us decided to join. It was $50 donated to charity and Microsoft matched it. I heard the prize was a trophy. I think the tournament started with 8 or 10 tables of 10 people each. I lasted all the way down to 3 tables and got sucked out on the river. I had AQ and my opponent had AJ, both unsuited and somehow he managed to pick up the flush on the river. Sigh… Oh well, it was for charity. I did have some miraculous hands bringing me back from the dead twice. I think I lasted the longest from the my group of people who went. There was free pizza and snacks.

So my LCD finally arrives today. It came yesterday, but no one was around to sign for it. But it’s currently in the leasing office and I’ll have to pick it up tomorrow morning, most likely afternoon, maybe evening, depending on when I wake up. I did finally setup my Logitech X-530 5.1 speakers with my Philips External Sound Processor. I think there’s actually something wrong with the sound processor because the back speakers aren’t working, but the speaker system works fine with my SoundBlaster Live!

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Working from home

I didn’t feel too well this morning, so I slept in and decided to work from home. I think it’s because of the sleep deprivation I got from playing too much Fable made my body weak. But working home is pretty sweet! Took me awhlie to get my Private Network Connection working, but once that was working, everything else went pretty smooth. Another cool thing was I was able to forward all my office calls to my home phone just by right clicking the Office Communicator software on my laptop and click Call Forwarding: ON and select a # for it to forward to. It actually work because I actually got a few calls. I really love the integration we have with IM, phone and email.

Then there’s all the bonuses of working from home like wearing PJs, not showering or brushing your teeth, and blasting your music.

I was sad however, that UPS delayed my LCD shipment once again. But now it makes sense. I finally see that it has past Portland, OR and arrived at the Redmond, WA distribution center. Unfortunately, no one’s going to be around here tomorrow. For some reason, the leasing office is taking a day off tomorrow.

Random Crap:

poker - quads vs straight flush
Texas Holdem Poker – Quads vs Striaght Flush
Such a painful way to be sucked out.
(from ungsunghero – who claims he was neither player)

So they unvieled the Video iPod earlier this week. Ars Technica did a full review and dissection of the monster. It’s pretty, but not iPod Nano pretty and my 3g (3rd gen) is sufficient as my bulk mp3 player. I like how they did a thickness comparison:

ipod thickness comparison
From left to right: 4G, 3G, and 5G iPod

Just thought it was interesting that the 4G was thicker than the 3G, but I guess that’s because of the 60GB vs 30GB hdd.

World’s Most Elusive Rat Dead After 18-Week Chase (from cari) – article was actually pretty funny, but I was pretty weirded out with this statement: Different methods were used on Otata: buried traps, peanut butter, poison and even trained dogs. Not until more than four months after its release was the rat finally killed, in a trap baited with fresh penguin. Who knew rats were into fresh penguin meat and who the heck came up with such an idea in the 1st place.

More pya!:

(img) おっ・・・落ちる・・・ – Amazing Snail – I wonder how it managed to stretch itself to reach to the other side. It sounds like that giraffe who wished he had a longer neck to reach the leaves at the top of the trees.
(video) 眠いnya – Sleepy Kitten – pretty cute kitty
(video) 舞空術 – The Art of Floating in Air – video wasn’t that interesting, but it must’ve taken them a long time to take that many photos to compile this video.

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The Constant Gardener

So I went to watch THe Constant Gardener today with CDMCC and Elizabeth. Movie depicted Africa and its story really beautifully. The movie was pretty good, but moved a bit slow and there really was no suspense overall, though it was supposed to be a “thriller”. Maybe the book did a better job. You could’ve pretty much guessed the entire movie within the 1st 30 minutes. The trailer basically tells you everything you need to know. SPOILERS! The movie begins with murder of the main character’s wife and the rest of the story is the husband trying to figure out what his wife did and why she was killed.

constant gardener

There was a major plot hole that we were arguing over after the movie. You may want to skip the following block if you don’t want to be spoiled. I found some reviewers of the book on Amazon.com and emailed them the following message:

BEGIN SPOILERS

I noticed you read the Constant Gardener after seeing your review. I recently saw the movie, but there seems to be a major plot hole which I’m hoping you can help me answer.

How exactly were the pharmaceutical companies planning to make money? From the movie, it sounded like the companies did not want to spend more time and millions more dollars in research because they were expecting an outbreak of TB soon and research might take another 3 years which will cause them to lose their leading edge because other pharmaceutical companies were already developing TB medicine. So in order to cover the side effects, they were hiding bodies who died using their medicine. But if they were planning to introduce the medicine into European countries or even America, if people die from the side effects of using the medicine, you can be sure they’d be sue big time. Also, how were they planning to bypass the FDA and get the drug approved.

My friend argues that what they meant by research was that they didn’t want to start from scratch, but continue testing it on humans and refining it until its ready for mass distribution to the people who could pay for the pills.

Since you’ve read the book, I was wondering what your opinion on this is. Thanks!

END SPOILERS

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Stealth

So I watched Stealth today. movie was okay. nothing much happened, though I sorta had a completely different idea of how the movie was going to be. From the trailer, I thought the AI plane was going to attack America and that was why they had to put it down at all cost. There was way too much going on for the movie to do much 2hrs. The trailer basically gave away most of the movie. SPOILERS! A short summary would be an AI fighter jet is introduced to the navy, hoping to learn and one day replace the top pilots. However, a lightning strikes the airplane and instead of frying it, it rewires the plane and now it and feel and think on its own. The AI plane starts to disobey orders and selects a specific target to attack. Their goal is to get the stop the plane hopefully get it back in one piece.

stealth poster

While watching the movie, they had this implosion missile/bomb weaponry. I took a guess implosion was the opposite of explosion and instead of blowing outwards, it would suck stuff in. But that sounded like science fiction and was wondering if they were pulling my leg. To verify the definition, I looked it up on wikipedia. Implosion is a reverse explosion that concentrates matter and energy. Buildings are colloquially described to implode when demolished through explosives, causing them to collapse on themselves. Implosion is the inward collapse, the opposite of explosion. I also googled it, but it only seems implosion is used during the process to create an explosion, never really to cause something to collapse among itself.

So my LCD didn’t come today, so I’m sad. Hopefully, it’ll come tomorrow since that’s the “new” expected delivery date. So my Fable isn’t on steroids yet, but it’s still just as fun. I’m still trying to figure out how to put the 2 speakers behind me. Was thinking of putting a small table there or something.

Random crap:

Mark Newport has 2 galleries up which I found interesting: Lyons Wier Gallery and Greg Kucera Gallery (from /.). They’re hosting comic book character costumes and woven comic book covers. The costumes weren’t that interesting and looked quite odd, but I thought the woven comic book covers were pretty neat.

Think of it like this. Microsoft has, for two decades now, shown itself as the bright younge upstart. But the truth is they are coming to maturity now. They aren’t “cool” anymore. iPods are “cool”. Facebook is “cool”. Google is “cool”. Microsoft is like the youngest uncle at the family renions, too young to know that he’s too old to be hanging out with the kids anymore.
– quote from /.

Parishioners see the light — eventually – artile wasn’t that interesting, but I like the last quote: “When I was a young monk. I climbed up a ladder to have a look at something and two girls whistled and said what good legs I have. I haven’t climbed up a ladder since,” he told Wednesday’s Daily Mail.

VirtualWiFi (from /.) – VirtualWiFi is a virtualization architecture for wireless LAN (WLAN) cards. It abstracts a single WLAN card to appear as multiple virtual WLAN cards to the user. The user can then configure each virtual card to connect to a different wireless network. Therefore, VirtualWiFi allows a user to simultaneously connect his machine to multiple wireless networks using just one WLAN card. This new functionality introduced by VirtualWiFi enables many new applications, which were not possible earlier using a single WLAN card. Basically if you have 10 wireless networks around you, you can log on to every one of those networks simultaneously. Someone did comment that this page doesn’t look like Microsoft at all. It seems it was a project done by a cornell student, most likely funded by Microsoft.

From pya!:

Ｊｒ. – Spiderman Jr. – wearing costumes do give you powers!
ぽけっとまねー・・・ – Pocket Money – the guy bootlegging (is that the correct term) Pokemon/Pikachu t-shirts must’ve been daydreaming.
立可尿 – Pee Standing Up – a device allowing woman to pee standing up.

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Why does it get brighter after it rains?

From elbandmonkey:

subject: From Weather.gov

comments: We are two completely dumbfucks in college and we don’t know why it is goddamn bright after it rains? My theory is that the rain washes out all airborne particles but his theory is that because the air is wet, it’s bright. We have a bet going. If I lose, I have to pay for his next lap dance. That dumbass…thank you. Please respond. Please.

Sincerely yours,
Daniel

From: Ron —– [mailto:w-nws.webmaster@noaa.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 4:49 PM
To: Daniel —
Subject: Re: From Weather.gov

Fine particles (between 0.1-2.5µm) may remain in the atmosphere indefinitely. Fine particles are capable of scattering light, causing a reduction in visibility.

Particles are generally removed from the atmosphere by rain or when they come into contact with surfaces. Some particles may have other pollutants attached to them, which may react with those surfaces.

Windblown dusts, pollens from plants and sea salts are natural sources of particles in the atmosphere. Bushfires, agricultural and forest hazard-reduction burning release smoke particles into the air.

Combustion processes using coal and other fossil fuels, such as power generation, industrial operations and motor vehicle fuels, emit most of the particulate matter in urban areas. Other noticeable sources of particles include agricultural burning practices (e.g. burning of sugar cane prior to harvesting) and emissions from domestic solid fuel heaters and woodstoves

The rain scrubs the particulates out of the lower layers of the atmosphere –

Ron Jones
Web Manager / Internet Projects
NOAA’s National Weather Service
Office of the Chief Information Officer
Silver Spring, MD

Daniel — wrote:
Thank you for your prompt response. I apologize for our vulgar language. We didn’t expect you to actually read this. We also were not intoxicated. I sincerely hope that you took this as a joke and had some fun with it.

Daniel

From: Ron —– [mailto:w-nws.webmaster@noaa.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 8:08 PM
To: Daniel —
Subject: Re: From Weather.gov

Oh yes, we certainly had some fun with it!

Unlike many web sites, all the emails sent to us are actually read by humans – and it’s refreshing to get something other than the “can you name a hurricane after me?” or ‘I have a school project due tomorrow, tell me everything I should write about weather”!

You posed an interesting question – one that made me think my first response was rain cleaned the air) – but I had to locate a valid scientific explanation of why – so I also learned from it!

Thanks for the ’email of the week!”

Ron —–
Web Manager / Internet Projects
NOAA’s National Weather Service
Office of the Chief Information Officer
Silver Spring, MD

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Fable on Steriods

So I’ve played several more hours of fable today. It’s so good! I’ve actually been itching to play since I woke up this morning. Probably even in my dreams too, but I don’t remember it anymore. My 24″ LCD is coming in tomorrow!!! YAY! I’m probably going to set up my Philips external sound processor and Logitec X530 5.1 speakers. Fable on steriods is going to be awesome!!!

Random Crap:

Water Bridge (from deadlock) – The photograph displayed above is one of a real structure, a kilometer-long “concrete bathtub” water bridge over the Elbe River in Germany that joins the Elbe-Havel canal to the Mittelland canal near the eastern town of Magdeburg. Pretty amazing since this is indeed real.

Here’s my pya! flood:

(video) ミミック – Pranks – I literally laughed out loud seeing all the people jump back.
(img) ＯＮ – 40% ON! – I guess Off is out and On is in.
(img) この中に一匹怖気づいてるやつがおる！クマー – Smart Bears – why bother trying to catch food, when food will jump into your mouth.
(img) ガリガリ君 – Lion Tamer – Always feed your lions and make sure they’re full before you put on your act as a lion tamer.
(img) ピットイン – Pin the Wheel on the Race Car – Guess donkeys aren’t popular enough anymore, but F1 race cars are!
(img) 木製PC – Wooden PC I wonder if it’s real.

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Blood+

So a new season of anime is out. Don’t really know what I’ll be watching, but there’s one that’s caught my interest so far: Blood+. I think it’s based of the movie: Blood – The Last Vampire

Blood - The Last Vampire

This anime movie was first introduced to me by crabyaple. Really nice animation. Really gory though. I don’t remember exactly the storyline, but it involved a girl with a katana and lots and lots of blood. So far, Blood+ is quite similar and I’ve only watched the first episode – First Kiss. You can watch some trailers here or at the original link. And I’ve attached some screenshots:

blood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshotblood+ screenshot

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More Fable

I lost so many hours to Fable this weekend. It’s already 4:15am Sunday night. I think I should go to sleep. And who said games aren’t educational? One of my quest required digging around the jetty on the west beach. What the heck is a jetty? According to answers.com, a jetty is a structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide or to protect a harbor or shoreline from storms or erosion. Who would’ve known! I actually minimized the game and searched the definition online. haha. I also learnt that a spade was a shovel. Now it makes sense why they’re called spades on a deck of cards!

So that’s all for tonight. G’nite (-_-x)zzZZ