Thanks to Deep and Reshma for setting this up. A bunch of us UC Berkeley folks got together on Wednesday and had lunch at Claim Jumpers. It was actually pretty cool and fun to see some familiar faces. We all talked about… work. Haha. It was weird telling each other our experiences and where we see ourselves in the future. The people that found time to come included Deep, Arjun, Jeffrey, Lexin, Krishnan, and Reshma. There were 7 people altogether: 6 guys and 1 girl. There were also 6 software engineers and 1 marketing. Guess who was marketing. You’re right if you said the girl.

Speaking of food, last night I decided to cook lasagna. No, not home made. I actually bought the frozen Kirkland Signature lasagna at Costco. Got home around 7:45. The instructions said to put it in the oven for 115-125 minutes. For some reason, I thought I was going to be able to eat around 9pm. Maybe cause I was thinking 115mins was 1hr and 15mins or maybe I was thinking it was 7 and +2hours equals 9pm. Either way, I didn’t get to eat until it was 10pm. I’m not sure if that was a deciding factor in how delicious the lasagna was, but it was darn good! Most Kirkland Signature stuff I’d have to save are above average and should not be considered a generic brand. Ungsunghero and I had a long discussion on what what types of products we’d use a generic brand and what generic stuff are just as good as brand name stuff. The only 2 items I can come up with that I see generics equally as good as brand name was medicine and gasoline. Kirkland Signature was brought up because there’s many many Kirkland Signature products I used, but I wouldnt for generic brands. Anyway, back to the lasagna. I was only able to eat about 25% of it, maybe less. I have so much left overs. hahaha. Oh well, the microwave’s going to like me for the next few days.

Here I’m actually going to tangent into 2 different categories. I’d talk about microwaves first. Microwaves are so cool. You know what? They condense what takes an oven 12 minutes to cook into 4 minutes of high microwave power. That’s a savings of 2/3 of the time. I was also looking at my chicken wings and that condensed 25 minutes to 5 minutes which saved 4/5 of the time! One time I was told when I was small, was NEVER to stand in front of a microwave when it’s on due to the radiation. Is there any truth in that? Do microwave radiation really leak out of the microwave? If they do, it wouldn’t necessarily be coming out from the window only right?

The 2nd category I wanted to talk about was Costco. Several interesting things I found today when browsing Wikipedia. It all started several weeks ago when I couldn’t remember the name of that big department store we used to go to in Pasadena. It was a fun place to go to. The only gripe my dad had against it was it was so far. While ungsunghero and I were talking about Target (that’s another whole ballpark which I don’t feel like getting into), I suddently remembered the name Fedco. I wasn’t too sure if I was right. Googling it didn’t help much either. So I wikied it and bingo! It actually went bankrupt back in 1994: Fedco (Southern California). Membership-based department store—including grocery, and in some locations, furniture—that served middle class. Went bankrupt. Circa 1950-1994. and was under the list “Defunct U.S. chains not acquired by extant chains or liquidated”. But right above that was something interesting which led me to investigate Costco so more:

• Fedmart (Southern California) First mass-market discount retail/grocery chain Sol Price founded. Was headquartered in San Diego in the 92111 ZIP Code. Price voluntarily closed the chain. Price later founded Price Club based upon what he learned from his Fedmart days. Price Club has since been merged into Costco. Circa 1965-75.
• In 1997, PriceCostco changed its name back to Costco, under which the company currently operates. Costco has also changed the site of its corporate headquarters from the city of Kirkland, Washington, to Issaquah, Washington. – The first Costco (in Kirkland) is actually the Costco I go to. Unless there’s 2 Costcos in Kirkland…
• Costco caps its profit margin on most products at 14% and allows itself slightly higher margins only on its Kirkland Signature store brand (a name derived from its previous headquarters in Kirkland) with a strict 15% profit limit. – I actually knew the name Kirkland Signature was derived because the Costco was their first HQ, but I didn’t realize the profit margins were capped. But even capped higher that the other products, Kirland Signature items are STILL SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER.

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Random Crap:

I was checking out this movie: The Game of Their Lives. IMDB users gave it a 7.6. It’s a documentary about how the North Koreans got into the World Cup (soccer). I haven’t watched it yet, but during the skim through of it, I found a really nice scene. Enjoy!

Forlorn Lover Leaves Ring in Unlocked Car – An anonymous gift-giver, apparently depressed over a lost love, left a $15,000 diamond engagement ring in somebody’s else’s unlocked car in a commuter parking lot. The ring came in a box topped with a white bow and accompanied by a note, which read: “Merry Christmas. Thank you for leaving your car door unlocked. Instead of stealing your car I gave you a present. Hopefully this will land in the hands of someone you love, for my love is gone now. Merry Christmas to you.“

Superman ‘too big’ (from rayalome) – The new Superman is giving movie bosses a headache – because of the size of his bulge. They fear Brandon Routh’s profile in the superhero’s skintight costume could be distracting, reports the Sun. Hollywood executives have ordered the makers of Superman Returns to cover it up with digital effects. Haha. Did you also know they had to digitally resize Lindsey Lohan’s breasts in Herbie: Fully Loaded because mothers during screening were complaining they were too big? Maybe next time when they audition for the next Superman, one of the questions they’ll need to ask is, “How well endowed are you?” I don’t think they can ask how long his *cough* directly, can they? Would that be sexual harassment? Here’s some shots of Superman in his skintight costume:

2005 Offers Fresh Tales of the Bizarre – some really funny stories!

Kaptain Krunk (photoshopped by deadlock) – Parody of Captain Morgan

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Random Crap:

Court pardons smitten bra burglar – He told the court he swiped the woman’s MP3 player because it was in need of repair, but admitted he “took her bra and photos out of love for her.”

Weebls Stuff – Toy Ad (from deadlock) – Remember that Lions and Tigers in Kenya flash? Well, they are now selling the plushies for it!!! They’re so cute! Check them out at the Weebls Stuff Store.

Honda Debuts New ASIMO (from /.) – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today debuted a new ASIMO humanoid robot that features an advanced level of physical capabilities. Compared to the previous model, the new ASIMO achieves the enhanced ability to act in sync with people. In addition, ASIMO is now capable of running at a speed of 6km/hour and of running in a circular pattern. Videos available here. The robots pretty cool!

Top 10 System Administrator Truths (from /.):

1. Users Lie
2. Email is the Lifeblood of Non-Techies
3. Printers Suck
4. Cleanliness is Godliness
5. Backups are Crucial
6. Switches and Hubs (Usually) Die One Port At A Time
7. No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft
8. Politeness > Brevity
9. Know Your Needs
10. The Holy Grail of Tech Support

Click the above link to see the actual descriptions of these truths.

Someone later in that thread posted this interesting piece which differentiated between 4 types of administrators:

1. The TECHNICAL THUG. Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
2. The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
3. The MANIAC. Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
4. The IDIOT. Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

So you’d like to… fireproof your fish pond (from Microsoft newsgroup) – Pretty funny guide. You’ve probably seen it before, but someone commented they’ve finally figured out how to create a phishing firewall.

Got this comment from /.

Definitely. American companies put way too much HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in their products, and it’s nasty stuff. About two years ago I decided to avoid HFCS, but still eat sweets like I normally would. Ie, I still ate ice cream, cookies, sodas, cereal, etc, but only those brands that use cane sugar instead of HFCS. You can get good products at places like Whole Foods (pricy) or Trader Joes (similar price or even cheaper than a supermarket). [In fact, Trader Joes cereals, which don’t have HFCS, are cheaper than the corresponding kinds from Kelloggs and General Mills which do have HFCS.] Anyway, the interesting result is that, without meaning to, I lost about 15 pounds while still eating all the desserts I wanted, just by avoiding HFCS!.

One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the ‘full’ feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.

It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it’s up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.

Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.

Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.

Another thing is that it’s more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.

Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it’s good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America’s obesity problem. It probably won’t cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.

There were many interesting things from this comments and several highly doubtful things. I’ve bolded the things which I found interesting. However, I was interested in the High Fructose Corn Syrup and was wondering it there has been any studies regarding this. Sugar coated – We’re drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the risks go beyond our waistline? (from ungsunghero):

Other studies by researchers at UC Davis and the University of Michigan have shown that consuming fructose, which is more readily converted to fat by the liver, increases the levels of fat in the bloodstream in the form of triglycerides.

And unlike other types of carbohydrate made up of glucose, fructose does not stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin. Peter Havel, a nutrition researcher at UC Davis who studies the metabolic effects of fructose, has also shown that fructose fails to increase the production of leptin, a hormone produced by the body’s fat cells.

Both insulin and leptin act as signals to the brain to turn down the appetite and control body weight. And in another metabolic twist, Havel’s research shows that fructose does not appear to suppress the production of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger and appetite.

“Because fructose in isolation doesn’t activate the hormones that regulate body weight as do other types of carbohydrate composed of glucose, consuming a diet high in fructose could lead to taking in more calories and, over time, to weight gain,” he says.

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Random Crap:

Library Seat in Main Stacks for Sale (berkeley) (from chewydenise) – Its Finals week! Thinking of studying in the main stacks but don’t want to walk around for minutes/hours/days looking for a seat? Well my seat is up for sale! It is on level C main stacks, in the big tables. I have a lamp next to me and an outlet great for charging laptops/cellphones/ipods/vibrators or any electronic device you might use. The spot also includes a chair. I will even throw in an energy drink. I will set the price at 5 dollars or best offer. I can take pics with my camara phone so email me if you want to see pics. This is PRIME REAL ESTATE.

Control the Show (from Microsoft newsgroup) – This site merges many aspects of technology and fun into an interactive Christmas light controller. That’s right! You can control the Christmas lights on my house. Using the web interface YOU can control the light schemes and spread a bit of holiday cheer on to everyone else watching the show online or to visitors driving by. The system will come online each night in the evening at 5:30pm EST until midnight.

Phony Photo Booth at Universal Studios – a hilarious clip from Jay Leno of how far people will go just to get a free photo. They don’t even question technology. I’ve seen this a long time ago, but it’s hilarious to see it again. Make sure you see the last one!

Kotaku – xbox 360 japan launch guide – interesting turn of events makes the Xbox360 not a sell-out in Japan. In fact, the stores are overstock with them. I wondering what’s going to happen now…

Lineage II Movies (from tera) – some really cool animations and videos of the game Lineage II. Check it out. The Lineage II animals are so cute:

Meebo (from /.) – a pretty neat AJAX application. Allows you sign on to any IM client (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, or GTalk) without downloading any client and all with a nice and easy to interface. Only thing I’m worried is the privacy issues. Who knows if they’re going to be storing my password or recording my conversations. Of course they say they won’t and it looks like the password passing is encrypted, but still, it worries me that I have to go through a 3rd party site.

DKNY Men’s Leather Pants I Unfortunately Own (from mandalayx) – a really funny eBay auction. Be sure to also check ou the Q&A on the bottom. It’s even funnier!

Got several videos from thatvideosite.com:

• Revenge of the Sith Easter Egg: Yoda dancing
• Conan kisses Rebecca Romijn
• More awesome christmas lights – I finally found the 2nd song of Carson Williams’ christmas lights. Only one I’m missing is Frosty the Snowman.
• Hahahaha. Milk. – Guys will do anyting to reduce the symptoms of PMS.