Ho Ho Ho...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my cubicle @ work.... Yep, I've been working from Tuesday...

Went hiking on 23rd @ Pinnacle National Monument, we were the 2nd car there. At the end of the day, when we came back, there were only a handful of cars there, and we didn't see anybody as all during out hiking, that was sweet. Then we had dinner @ Asian Garden Seafood Restaurant(somewhere on Bascom Ave), they make a very unique baked fish. Well, the menu says it's grilled, but Carol keeps calling it "baked fish". I think she might be correct. The fish came out butterflied, with a thin layer of flour crust on the skin side, browned, with sesame seed and some spices and drizzled with some sauce. Very nice. To eat it in traditional way, dip rice paper in a bowl of water, put the paper in a plate, let it sit for a minute or two till it's softened. Add bean sprouts, veggie salad and fish to the rice paper, make into a roll, then dip in sauce(fish sauce and fermented shrimp sauce). Oh, BTW, eat it with hands - the traditional way. Sure you can try fork and knife, chop sticks etc. - but good luck to that... It was a big fish, even though we ordered the smallest one, we still couldn't fish it. We got the big shrimp dish too, it's alot less greasy than the last place we tried in down town San Jose, and the source sweeter. I was supposed to go training, but I was so full and tired, I flaked out :-(

I was "parent sitting" mom and dad during Christmas, since my sister went to ski. We went to have lunch with Carol on 24th at the Grand Century Plaza - Carol said it has the best Pho place in town. The bowls are BIG! Soup is yummy, and the Vietnamese style coffee was great(very strong, smells very nice and taste good too) - even my mom loved it.

Got my parents Columbia watches each, dad's one has back lit button, he loves it. Got a new 7MP digital camera for my sister, she said it's just what they wanted, great resolution, great video, convenient AA batteries, and 2GB memory card! Now, we can let the good 'ol Fuji 3MP camera RIP(it has only a 128MB SmartMedia card), and my good 'ol Digital Wallet.

GTG

I was going to put up with constant "New Hardware Found.." crap whenever booted into Windows. So, I tried to fix it by reinstalling drivers... tried at least a half dozen times to no avail... I was going to give up. So, I thought I'll download the latest diver again. So instead of Nvidia nForce4 ultra drivers,I downloaded nForce4 430 drivers this time, installed... and bingo! All's working now. Also updated JAlbum and DivX, and Ghosted a new image. It's all SET. Still at work today...

BB Pre-test #2

Had a blackbelt pre-test last Saturday... just as bad as the previous #1 pre-test... :-( This is by far the most difficult test I've every done... maybe I should change to something else... Aikido? Kendo?

First, stuffed up pattern "Ge-Baek", messed up twice actually, got confused with other 2nd Dan patterns... and finally got it right the 3rd time. I've been practicing the 2nd Dan ones, and well as all the color belt ones.... except the 1st Dan ones... doh!

Then breaking...didn't break the suspended board with reverse turning kick... :-( now I got a bruised heel... But, did break 2 tiles with a downward knuckle punch... I wasn't allowed to use a knife hand, elbow(or head ;)) will be too easy..., so I opted for knuckles. The right hand is not to bad, I don't feel anything now, but left hand is still a lil swollen and bruised. This is the first time I did breaking with knuckles since I broke my right hand 2 years ago. Guess I won't be testing in January... *kewl*... one thing less I don't have to worry about...

It's alive!

After research on the net, I found many utilities that can read/write MBR: some can save it to a file and then restore from the file, some just zero-out the MBR, and other you can edit it to what ever you like(very risky...).

http://www.techenclave.com/forums/excellent-list-of-hdd-utils-81131.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/partitioneditors.shtml
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/MBR_in_detail.htm
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/BootToolsRefs.htm

....

However, none worked for me. Some works only in Win32, and when I boot use PartitionMagic, it's pure DOS... And CHKDSK won't work off the CD... And although the WD/Zap worked by zero-out the MBR, when I boot from the Windows install CD, it still can't detect the HD. Hell, I even tried install Redhat on the HD... installed successfully, but when I booted from the Win2K CD - still can't detect the HD...

Arrrg... As a last attemp:
copied my backup Ghost image to the laptop;
installed Ghost onto the laptop;
connected HD via USB;
then restored Ghost image to the HD(via USB)

And booted... boom... it's there... That's it for me... not more stuffing around... I put on the covers for the case, and it's quite noisy... worse than I'd expected... and a lil worse off than my old Sonata... So much for the downgrade...

Another thing really bugs me... it always says ..."detected new hardware: nVidia PATA RAID device...", but when comes to install driver, it will always have error, even with the latest driver downloaded form nVidia. Hmmm... to fix or not to fix...

One Dead PC...

The downgrade was going very well, until I decided that I wanted to remove the dual boot... And then when I tried to install new OS(or restore old drive image), it said it can't find any disks... *great*... :-<

Tried every trick I know of: delete partition, repartition, boot using Partition Magic CD/Norton Ghost CD, fdisk... Partition Magic 8.0(blue/white PowerQuest version and Symantec yellow version) can detect the disk, and let me repartition, but once I booted from Window 2K CD or Norton Ghost, it can no longer detect my disks...

And BTW, Norton Ghost suck! I'd much preferred the old PowerQuest Drive Image, it let you image/restore your boot/active partition, where as Ghost, you'll have to reboot to do that ...

Googled web, and found another couple tricks:
"fidsk /mbr" rewrites the MBR or "chkdsk /r" fixes disk MBR. I'll try tonight see if they work...

Downgrade report

So, here's the pics I took with my cellphone when I did the downgrade...

A comparison of an ancient Intel 486 processor(right) against the new AMD Athlon X2 dualcore socket 939 processor(left). Look at the size! The old 486 is actually bigger than the new dual core processor!

A look at the heat sink and fans, on the left is the for the 486, on the right is for the dual core...

Top down view of the same thing, right hand side is a monster...

Processor and video card installed.

The DDR2 memory modules, OCZ PC3200 Premium Series, 512MB x 4 = 2GB!!

The memory installed in the motherboard, they're practically touching each other...

Sliding in the motherboard tray, notice the tiny gap between the case and the fan, and video card. The heat sink and fan is standard issue that came with the boxed version of the processor. If I were to use a more fancy heat sink/fan, it most likely won't fit...

Motherboard fully slided in, and font panel controls plugged in.

The gap between the CD ROM drive and the power supply, barely have room for cables. Planning have become very important for this case... I installed the CD drive first, then tried to plug in the cables - it just didn't work. I had to unscrew the drive from the mount, slide it out completely to plug in the cables - I actually did this twice... What a pain in the butt!

The first HDD installed(74GB 10K RPM WD Raptor) - on top of the CD drive. There's a 3.5" bay under the CD drive, but there's no way I'm going to remove the CD drive for the 3rd time... So I looked around and found some old drive rails in my box of tricks, exactly what I needed. Gotta save those old parts...

The 500GB WD twins(RAID 1) in it's cage...

The drive cage installed in case.

Plug in power and boot...

Front panel showing the CPU temperature.

Last night, the adult students had dinner at the Dave and Buster, and we had a lot of fun playing the arcade games.

Midnight downgrade

I started the "downgrade" last night @ 11pm, and by 3am the machine was up and running... The space inside the case is really tight, no room to spare. After installed the video card and CPU/heatsink/fan, it barely clears the case by 1/4"(or less)! Since the space is at a premium, you really need to plan the steps of what to install first, even whether to plug in the cable first or install the drive first.

Everything booted correctly at the first try, it was kinda loud without the side and top panels. After the initial boot, the noise die down a bit, the fan must have variable speed control. And good thing, I didn't have to reinstall the OS, just updated all the drivers, and it's up and running. But I do have some issue, when the BIOS set with CD as the 1st boot device, HDD as 2nd boot device, the boot just halts says can't boot from CD, and must insert a bootable CD ROM... I had to manual interrupt the boot sequence and select to boot from HDD, and select the HDD I want to boot from... kinda of a really bother...

This morning spend a couple of minutes connecting the front fan and LCD display, boot... and boom... I can see the temperature of the CPU.

Another box

I got another package today... I wonder what's in it... :-)

Ultra MicroFly

...received the case today, the motherboard and memory are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

Weekend

Well, didn't start my weekend so well, I was working late on Friday to to get more work done, a lot of work to be done but I have only 3 days to do it. I have it till Monday mid night to finish it... when the clock strike mid night, my car will turn into a pumpkin... kidding... While everyone partying away at the company wide Christmas party, I sit in my tiny cold cubicle coding away... *weep*...

After work, meet up with Carol to eat dinner, we gave the Korean House in Cupertino village another try, I ordered tofu this time... it's not as good as the Gaesung House of Tofu (2089 El Camino Real) in Santa Clara, but the short ribs are still very good :-) Gaesung is the best tofu house!

Afterwards, we went to see Apocalypto, unfortunately, the tickets are sold out, so we opted to watch a Jet Li DVD "Once upon a time in China" at home, it's one of his early movie, great fight scenes!!!

Had In n Out for breakfast, and watched "Once upon a time in China 2". Today I went shopping for some linen, I never paid attention to those thread count before, but now after used 600 thread count linens, I can tell ya, they're very different. The high threat count ones feels sooooo good, smooth and solid.

City Kabob

Had lunch with a couple of friends today @ City Kabob(755 S. Mathilda Ave, Sunnyvale). This is my 2nd time here, and I ordered lamb kabob like last time. It's very yummy, tender, and fresh off the grill. The onion is grilled just right, well done, not under cooked or over cooked - so it doens't have the storng onion smell or taste. The rice is also very good, there's some sauce in rice, I don't know what, but it's yummy. The food is good, but the service is a bit ad hoc though. We waited for a lil over 30min to get our food, the table arrived after us got their food before us... maybe the lamb takes longer to cook?

Christmas presents

Just order some presents for myself :-) I know I just bought TV/DVD player/receiver/speakers recently, but they're too early for Christmas presents...

Ordered Micro Fly micro ATX case, a new motherboard Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS(nVidia GeForce 6150 chipset) and OCZ Premier 1GB PC3200 ram(matches my existing ram).

Well, this is actually a downgrade.. kinda of...since I'm changing to a smaller case, and a smaller motherboard... Oh yeah, got another WD5000ks 500GB drive yesterday, so now I have RAID 1 hook up, hopefully my precious travel photos will be safe...

Cafe Yulong

That's where Carol and I had dinner last night, it's right off the Castro St, Mountain View, serves northern Chinese cuisine. I never been there before... since I don't usually eat Chinese. Translate literately, Yulong means "jade dragon".

We ordered stir fried lamb - yep, I love lamb. This one came lightly stir fried, with a dash of black pepper, and very tender. Carol doesn't like lamb normally, but she said this one doesn't smell lamb at all, she liked it too. We also got the house made noodles - "Dan Dan Noodle"(? forgot the English name), came in a bowl(dry noodle, no soup), with finely chopped strips of cucumbers and bits of water chestnuts, and topped with tasty light and mild peanut source - you will need to mix them up a bit. We also got dumplings - Chinese cabbage and pork stuffing. Carol initially wanted shrimp dumplings, but I pointed out that northern China doesn't have a lot of seafood, Chinese cabbage and pork is more authentic - at least that's what my mom used to make anyway. It tasted much better than the ones we had in the Cupertino Village. One slight critic though, the dumplings are slightly over cooked - the dumplings skin are no longer smooth instead a lil sticky like over cooked pasta - I'm just being picky, it doesn't change the taste though. Use the dumpling sauce provided - light vinegar with chili, but it doesn't taste very hot - even I can handle it.

This place deserves a 2nd visit.

OMG!

A slow Sunday, not much to do, so I decided to play some computer game, haven't played Oblivion for a while, so it's good time to continue. Launched Oblivion, and be hold! My saved games are all gone!!! Oh, I hate fracking M$! I had a virus not long ago, so I restored Symantec Drive Image, only took a few minutes, not too painful. But, the fracking game saves its data in the fracking Document and Settings directory! Why the hell can't they just save it in the game directory?! Frack, I'm not going to play the game start from the scratch again, who designed this stupid 5h1t!!!

Yung Le's Fusion

Just had dinner there, we didn't order any Chinese fusion dishes... but anyways, the food is not bad. But, then again I'm a lil biased, since my sister did all the ordering. However, my sister absolutely loved it. Chef Le is a very nice person, she came to our table and talked to us, so I asked her about the "Sweet and Sour Pork"...she said she cook it differently from what you normally get from the Chinese take out joint, use less flour in the batter, and less sauce, and not so greasy. One of the dish is salmon wrapped in banana leaf, with some sweet sauce on the side. However, for tonight, we got 2 sauces to go with it - she happened to made a different sauce which is quite spicy. She said she got that from an Australian recipe, it uses dry shrimp, sugar and chili pepper and whole bunch other ingredients, grind them etc. etc. and it took a long time. She said she probably won't make it again, since it took too long. It was nice, I liked it too. The grilled wild shrimp is nice, tasty but a lil on the salty side. All in all, I had good experience, not a lot of people there. The server lady was friendly, and chef Le actually brings out food to the table and talk to all the patrons. I think I might go there again when I'm in the neighbourhood.

Tomorrow's dinner...

Well, not exactly what I'm going to eat, but where I will be eating tomorrow for mom's b'day dinner...

Yung Le’s Fusion
1317 S Winchester Blvd
San Jose, CA 95128

Looking at their menu, I'm not so sure it's a nice place to dine - despite my sister's claim of it's raving reviews. Then again, it is in Santana Row. Just a few examples from the menu: Lemon Chicken, Broccoli Beef and Cashews, Mongolian Beef. Wait, there's more... what's Chinese food without Sweet and Sour Pork?! Well, I'll have to find out tomorrow...

Yummy dinner...again

I just had the pasta and steak Carol made, I have to admit the steaks are quite nice, tasty and at the same time very tender and juicy - even though the steak is well-done, and even though I prefer my steak medium rare. She got some skill! The broccoli is a lil disappointing though, it's just straight boiled/steamed. And again, there're whole cloves of garlics in the pasta. I wonder how many jars of garlic she goes through each week... On another note, the steaks are so tasty, I ate 1.5 pieces of them... I'm going to get fat. I guess I'll have to dump her soon... ;-)

Yummy dinner

Carol brought me some food she cooked last night, since we got take out last night, so I had them for dinner tonight. I tell you, they're yummy... I had some sort of stir fried shrimps - it tastes slightly sweet not too salty, just how I like it. Also, the stir fried string beans with garlic, yummy also, and cooked just right, still a bit of crunchy - very nice. I hate over cooked veggies that taste mushy. Guess she's a good cook :) and she likes to use whole clove garlic :( ... I'm no vampire but I don't like whole clove garlic in cooking ...

There's also the broccoli, steak and pasta I got to try tomorrow.

Blah... Gummy Bear

Carol came over for dinner last night, we bought some take out from the Chavez Mercado, she got torda sandwich and I got my usual super burrito con carne a sada, and a slice of flan cake. She really liked it. She brought with her "Her Majesty's Secret Service", 007 actually got married in this movie!

My wrist has pretty much healed, all the bruises are gone, but I still don't get the full range of motions, and it still hurt when I bend my wrist. Hopefully, it won't be another bone bruise. To get stronger bones, I went to Costco bought a bottle of Calcium supplement, I had it before, but it tasted nasty - just like chalk, and I ended up throwing it away! This time I bought the kid's Calcium Gummy Bears, and it's yummy :-) I'm supposed to eat 2 of those everyday, but I can see myself eat more just like candy...

Entertained...

Finally, my Onkyo receiver arrived last weekend - mmmmm... I mean a week ago.... Hooking up all the components, now I have the basic home entertainment system. The remote works with the Philips DVD player, but not the Westinghouse TV. I tried Westinghouse site, and googled it, still unable to find the remote code... bummer.

The sound effect now is so much better than the TV speakers. I had a lil panic though after hooking up all the components... The Polk speakers were working beautifully one day, then next day I'm not getting any sound out of them at all. I checked and rechecked all the cables and connectors, they all plugged in correctly, but there's just no sound coming out of the speakers! Then something hit me, I turned off the speakers! Silly bugger... I was playing with all the buttons on the receiver and forgot to turn the speakers back on. Anyways, I'm still looking for a sub woofer and a center channel speaker.

Lightsaber

For $80, you can get a Master Replica Force FX light saber @ Fry's. It's the ones that will light up, make humming sound, and clashing sounds when you hit something. It's totally awesome, the best present for a Star Wars fan. I bought one already beginning of the year, it was about $100 then. It's available both online and local store.

The Fountain...

I was browsing through the movie listings @ amctheatres.com to see what new movies coming out this week, and saw The Fountain - I thought I'd give a brief review since I watched it on the day it came out with Carol. Well, the story sees interesting - at least on the paper... I was thinking of a timeless romantic love story... well, it's not quite what I thought it was... It has some romantic scenes, and is a love story - of some kind... But, not a very good one. The review gave it a 2.5 out of 4, so, I guess it's not too bad a rating. But, personally, I'd give it a 1 out of 4 - quite generous already... It's one of the worst movies I've seen the whole year! "The Hill Have Eyes", "Silent Hills " etc. are more entertaining than this! The story line is a chaotic mess, some scenes are repeated over and over, make you wonder if the main character is hallucinate. Through out the movie, I rarely had a clear idea what's going on in the story, it's like a bad dream watching the movie... Some of the review says it's remarkable like 2001 or Blade Runner, I say NOT! Carol says the movie bears the closest resemblance of "The Fountain" is "Solaris", which she isn't very fond of either. The whole experience was just WEIRD.

Carol was telling me that the guy next to her was groaning and moaning in his seat the whole movie - I guess he didn't enjoy it very much either. Carol also said I'd give her a hard time for picking this stupid movie ... you betcha I will... for a long time to come.

BF etc...

Not much happening... went to a Thanksgiving dinner at San Juan Bautista, very nice place, on top of a hill, it must be pretty high - I felt my ears pop as I drove up the hill.

Friday morning went to Bestbuy try to pick up a camera, the parking was all full... finally found a place to park my car, and wen inside the store, it was packed full of people... the camera prices weren't that good though. So, I left to for Fry's, we, it was worse, I can't find a spot for parking, so I just left. Well, I got all my home A/V stuff anyway.

Carol came around noon, I took her to Dadar Seafood restaurant in McCarty Ranch plaza. I ordered: sesame pancake with green onion, sir fry lamb with green onion and combination knife cut noodles - all my favor ates. Carol usually don't like the smell of lamb, but she loved the dishes I ordered.

Then we headed out to SF China Town, it was a nice drive on 280. SF was kinda quite, China Town still have quite a bit of people - according to her, believe it or not, it's my first time there. It's like most China Towns I've been to, but with a lot more souvenir stores... We also paid a short visit to the Chinese Culture Center in China Town, but it's not what we thought it would be - only some com temporary stuff(I won't even call them art....) on display... It will fit nicely if you change the name to something else...

Afterwards we went to Twin Peak to see the sunset, it was a lil cloudy on the ocean, but was beautiful nonetheless. Better yet, after the sunset, turn around, we got to watch the night scape of the city. It was chilling on the hill, should have brought a blanket or something...

Dinner at the Baba Neo in Mountain View, it's one of the better Malaysia restaurant around. Next day, we had lunch at the Gaesung Tofu House - my special retreat, a place I only take my family and close friends to. Carol was surprised at how tasty the tofu soup was without MSG... this is real Korean tofu house. In comparison, the one on Castro in Mountain View is couple of notches below...

B'day

...yesterday, taught class whole morning. Carol and I went out for some Sushi O Sushi with friends, afterwards we meet up at my apt had cake and some port, Brian said he's already doen with the batch of alcohol we bout a year ago, man, he's fast... After they left, Carol and I had a long talk, we both felt that we're too different even thought we're so attracted to each other. I'm just not sure if it will work out. So we decided it's the best we break up now instead later, it will just hurt more. She said I looked a lil scared the night before, hmm, I never thought I'm a commitment-phobic... I don't know. We talked and talked until the morning, as the time passes by, she's still so cheerful, kept talking, laughing and hugging me... It made me really sad, and made the break up really hard, I started to wonder if I made the right decision.... What if I'm wrong, then I'd forever kick m yself, cause I'd never know. It was hearrt breaking, and she's not helping the situation by ebing so cheerful. I broke down, and asked her if she'd willing to give it a try again. Well, this is the 2nd time we break up and make up in a week! She's driving crazy. We talked even more, she said maybe I'm juts scared to get hurt. I don't know, I just know I really like her. Night, Carol. xoxo

Horrible Dumplings

Carol and I went to Cupertino village for dinner. The last time we were here, we were going to try the dumpling place, but it was so full, we had to wait for 30min, so we went with Korean food instead. Against my better judgement, we tried a few dishes. A tray of steamed buns with juice inside(supposedly a famous Shanghainess signature food), but it was very greasy, and tasteless;
also a streamed tray of Chinese chive with shrimp, it tasted just like steamed buns...

Another dish we ordered was the steamed rice with mixed veggies and meat, another Shanghainess signature dish, and yet another disappointment. My mom's is waaaaay better, hell, even mine is way better than this, am not jocking! It's supposed to be cooked just regular rice, add water to rice and cook in any rice cooker, except, mix in with slightly stir fried veggies and meat(Chinese sausage and pork/chicken etc). But, this came out way too greasy, and look stir fried to me, and very salty as well as tasted MSG...

I was going to order the Tong-Po pork, I asked the waiter, he said it's half pork and half fat, slow braised.... mmmmm, no thank you. The rest of dished look pretty common, sweet and sour pork - well, this should not be a Chinese food, instead it should be an American dish - 'cause it's not how it's should be cooked, actually is there such a thing? Hmmm.... Left without much options, so I ordered stir fried fish fillet with some sort of green veggie. This is by far the worst dish here, and to date I've tried. It should change it's name to stir fried fish in MSG... When we left, it's basically untouched. Poor Carol, she had to constantly pour me tea...

No way I'm going back there again. That's the reason I normally don't eat Chinese food given any choice, I'd rather eat sandwich or burger, or burrito, or just a salad.

So, avoid this place. Some cheap Chinese BBQ restaurant make better no frill food. A note on the seasoning in Chinese food in general, what's up with "brown sauce" anyway, most of the dishes came in an unappetizing brownish sauce. Carol says she put Oyster Sauce in every dish she cook, hello! It's just MSG in brown sauce.... Carol says I'm not very Chinese, since I don't eat chicken feet, fish head... , well, lucky me... you can have mine...

Sony inside...

....NOT!!! Today I met up with my friend Josh for lunch in a tiny Mexican restaurant on Fairoaks. We talked about Blue Ray and HD,he said he saw some Blue Ray units on display in Circuit City, and the pictures are great, he might get one, but the image quality is only little better than the DVD, the price of the unit doesn't justify that. And he's looking forward to the Wii launch - not that he's going to get a Wii out right, but if there's a Star Wars title for Wii, he'd definitely get it - mmm... Wii control and the light saber... need I say any more.... Yeah, me too!

But, I would never, ever get Blue Ray... no matter what! 'Cause I HATE Sony! Sony didn't really do anything bad to me, but one of its corporate entity - Sony Online Entertainment(SOE), has certainly pissed off a lot of people, me included. If you've heard what happened to the Star Wars Galaxies, you will understand where I come from. SOE, is a liar and scum, they treat their customers like sh!t. We both are Star Wars fans, and played in Galaxies. I mentioned to him that alot of people said would return to Galaxies if SOE roll back the NGE or install the old one on a separate server. He said he would too, however, I would not! This is how much I hate SOE, they will never get my money - after what they did to millions of people. There's no excuse for what they did, none what so ever! Sony being a big corporate, if one of their company can do such a nasty thing to they long time customers, you can pretty much guess their corporate culture...

So, no thank you. No Blue Ray for me, no Sony camera for me, no Memory Stick for me, no Sony TV for me, no Sony DVD player for me, no Sony receiver for me, no Sony speaker for me... it's just no more Sony for me, end of story. I'm building my home entertainment system, and there's not a single component is a Sony.

HDMIed

Yesterday, the HDMI cable arrived, plug into the TV and DVD, easy enough. Turn on the USB drive and tried to play the Battlestar Galactica episode, but I see no visible difference - yeah, I did set up the TV to use HDMI(with both auto resolution and 1080i)... Oh well...

My receiver(Onkyo TXSR504) should arrive this Saturday.

BSOD!!!

Means "Blue Screen Of Death", it's what you get when your MS Windows PC having a fatal error, and kicks you to the blue screen...of death...

Funny thing is that people hated it when it happens. Now, MS released a screen saver that simulates BSOD - well, not exactly "simulate", but a screen saver that made to look EXACTLY like you're having a BSOD... without all the real repercussions...isn't that ironic? After displaying the BSOD a few seconds, it will reboot... well, not for real of course... But you'll never know... it may actually cause a real BSOD after you installed the BSOD... Don't say I didn't warn you...

Rock on!

You like play air guitar? /airguitar But there's no sound when you play? Bummer... Well, now you can play air guitar and have sound that matches your movement!

On an unrelated news. I had a dental appointmemt around noon, it so happend that it's in Carol's neighbourhood, so I called her up to have lunch. And she says she's pleasantly surprised. We kissed and hugged in the parking lot. She told me that she'd never approve this before, but now she doesn't care. Hmmmm, sounds like daddy's good girl is busting out her shell.

Good weekend

Carol was over for a visit yesterday, we watched Kill Bill movies, she relly enjoyed it. I liked the first one better, but she liked the 2nd one better. She commented that how clean was my place - of course, I just cleaned it! We had Korean dinner at the Cupertino Village, the short ribs are very good - but I'm yet to try the tofu(then I can tell how good is the place :) ). We had lot of deep talks, I like her alot, but she's from a VERY traditional Chinese family... there're certain expectations from her parents that she has to keep(well, she's still living with parents, and brother/sister's family... I should have guessed from that...), she said that I looked very surprised... However, I'm very non-conforming to the least... Like Han Solo always says "I have a bad feeling about this...".

She hates me.... with a big smile.

Honey, I swapped your wedding ring for a PS3....

Burbank (CA) - People are willing to go through hell to get the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 console and there are already lines forming for November 17th launch. We went to the Best Buy store in Burbank where people started lining up on Monday November 6th, 11 days. Watch our video as one guy explains how he quit his job to stand in line, while another won't be buying his girlfriend an engagement ring anytime soon.

............

Waiting in line for more than a week is bad enough, but some in the group called off sick and one guy even quit his job to stand in line. To make it even worse, the one who called in sick has postponed his engagement with his girlfriend because the money that would have gone into buying a ring will be used to buy a PlayStation 3.

The last guy in line didn't want to go on camera, but he told us that he wasn't sure if there were enough PlayStation 3 consoles. Apparently Best Buy employees are very tight lipped on exactly how many consoles the store will be receiving

............

Come on peole, it's just another piece of hardware... I thought I'm a big fan of Star Wars, but then I never waited in line for the movie ticket...

The full article here.

Weird sport...

There's weird science, then there's weird sports... A guy at work was just telling me that he plays for the San Jose Underwater Hocky team, yeah right...what a BS... so I made up something called Underwater Frisbee. After googling it, it actually exists. Holy cow! And a search for Underwater Frisbee also turned up something as well...

Bruised, but not broken

The X-ray confirmed that... so according to my doctor, it should start to get better in a week when it's only muscle bruise, ligament injury can take months to heal.

Big bad bruise

Yep, it's quite bruised now, I can see a big patch of blue, and this morning I'm having probem rotate my wrist, so it's a big challenge just turning on water in the shower, or put on cloth, on turn on the car engine. Basically, I need to use the entire arm instead of just my hand... feel like a robot...

Hurt my hand

At the end of Taekwon Do class today, we did a bit of breaking practice. And we did a bit of real breaking - concrete block of 2" thick. We all did palm heel strike - no way I'm going to use my knuckles... I broke one piece of of the block, didn't break any of my bones this time - good, but still my hand is a bit swollen, and it hurts try rotate my right wrist, I think I will see some bruse tomorrow. About 2 years ago around this time, I broke my right knuckle, it seems this time of the year is my unlucky time - practice for competitions, and black belt test...

Polk Audio Speakers

Picked up a pair of PolkAudio P150 speakers during lunch @ the Fry's, only $49, though not top of the line, but good enough for me. I have a set of 5.1 PolkAudio speakers for my PC for the past 2 years or so, it's quite good. Now, all I need is a receiver, and maybe a subwoofer and center channel speaker.

Fusion v2...

In a stunning move, nVidia yesterday announced a new graphic chip GeForce 8800 GTX...(ok, not quite a stunning move, I'm just being dramatic...)

Nvidia usually focuses on giving customers crystal-clear images on their computer screens. But Wednesday, the chip maker launched a new chip that does more: It not only runs the computer's display but also does some of the work of the microprocessor ``brain'' inside a personal computer.

Previously, AMD announced that it will put GPU inside CPU,; now, nVidia will put CPU inside GPU(in a manner of speak). As I said before, CPU and GPU will merge - regardless whether GPU in CPU or CPU in GPU. And while we have dual core. quad core CPUs, why not dual/quad core GPUs - there will be no need for SLI anymore. Or buy you mixed CPU/GPU core combo. "Would you like to super size you MPU combo to go sir? It's only $400 more to get dual CPU, dual GPU, a real value deal."

More on DVD player ...

Played around with the DVD a lil more, it seems it does have MP3 auto play capability of some sort - I was wrong ealier when I said it doesn't do auto play. There's a "Repeat" button on the remote, press it repeatedly to cycle through the options: Single, Once, Directory, All, Shuffle. But when I choose the shuffle it seems it just playes files in the same directory.

BTW, I do seem to wahtch TV a bit more now, now I watch TV after work. Used to just go right to my computer - since my old TV sucks...

DVD + USB

So I hooked up my new 2.5" USB enclosure to the DVD player, vola! Everything shows up on the TV, even the Recycle Bin... Played DivX, and MP3, all working fine. However, one thing I didn't like, it lacks the ability to create play list or play all files. It's OK for DivX files, since each file is around 45 minutes long - Battlestar, and people don't tend just sit there watch all day long. However, for MP3, it's only a few minutes long each song, so you'll have to sit there pressing the button whenever one song finishes - not very usable... Another thing, you can't set screensaver(or something like that), when you play MP3, the folder/file list just stays on the TV screen. Then again, you won't need it, the TV has screen saver at a minumum of 15 minutes, you would have pressed the play button at least 3-4 times before it will kick in.... *sigh* I'll have to get the Squeezebox after all.

HDMI

So I took a side trip to the Fry's after lunch. The HDMI cables cost anywhere from $49 to upward of $120+, and we're not talking about 100ft long cables... only 3-6 ft long! Checked amazon.com, cheap ones come at around $18, check ebay - a sweet $4 deal! The bluetooth dongle also cost a ridicules $29, and they're pulling them off the shelves... cost around $40-50 at Bestbuy, and on ebay a $4 steal again. So, I only bought a 2.5" HDD enclosure, hope it will work with the Philips DVD player... no HDMI up converted movie tonight.... :-(

Have you taken a look at the back panel of your TV lately...? It's a wild wild world of connectors, connectors of all shapes and sizes... sooner or later we're going to run out of connectors shapes... USB alone, has at least 3 differnt connector sizes/shapes that I know of...

Firmware upgrade

Update the firmware on the DVD player- through a CD disk, it doesn't like the DVD disk for some reason, but once I burned it to a CD, it worked. This is silly, the drive can read CD and DVD, why not read DVD for firmware upgrade? I have a DVD +RW for this sort of things, it's silly to use a 700MB CD for just a 1.5MB firmware file....

Also updated the region code :-), with help found on Amazon.com

1. Turn on the unit
2. Open the loading tray
3. Press the "Setup" button on the remote
4. Navigate to the "Preferences" page using the right arrow key
6. Press the down arrow once to enter the Preference page
5. Enter 138931 on the remote
6. You will now see the current region code displayed
7. Use the Up/Down arrow keys to select the region required or "0" for all regions
8. Press the "Play" button on the remote

I don't have any DVDs other than region 1s, but good to know that when I need it, the player can handle it :-)

Bachelor pad upgrade

Why stop at the LCD HD TV when you can get up conversion DVD player?! Got myself a Philips DVP9560 DVD player tonight, it has up conversion, supports all sorts of CD/DVD +/- R/W disk combos. Better yet, it plays DivX and MP3, and WMV. Don't really care about WMV, but I love the fact that it plays MP3 and DivX. I was going to get the Squeezebox, but this DVD player is so much cheaper, $69 @ Bestbuy. Where as the Squeezebox currently costs $299 even after it's been out for at leat a year... And this plays DivX, but Squeezebox dosn't. Did I mention, it has a USB port? So you can plug in an USB harddrive and play off the harddrive.

It was simple enough to hook up the DVD player, everything just worked automagically :-) So, I plugged in my Thecus YES Nano USB enclosure with a 20GB 2.5" Toshiba drive, but it didn't recognize the drive, bummer, I read that people have been having trouble with the USB drives, most people formatted it to FAT32 and it worked, but some say not to use a laptop drive. Well, guess I'll have to pick up a differnt enclosure to try first - cheaper, otherwise, I'll try a desktop harddrive. My drive is formatted to FAT32 BTW. I thought, it may not like my directory structure, so I copied all the file to the drive's root directory, but it still didn't work...


So, next I tried my memory card reader, it has multiple slots for different memory cards. Plug in, and they showed up on the TV. I have a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo as well as a 4GB SD card plugged in at the same time. They shown up as USB 1 & 4 on t he TV, so I guess it will work if I plug in a USB hub :-) so, I can connect multiple USB drives to it.



I have directories as well files in the root directory on both memory cards. The all files and directories showed up OK for both cards. But, it failed to play DivX file off the SD card - it would play for a few seconds and then just stop. On the other hand, DivX files as well as JPG files all played OK off the MS, in directories and from the root directory. Since 4GB SD card is not standard, I wonder if it has anything to do with it. But it's really cool to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica off my MS :-) And when displaying still pictures, pressing the arrow keys on remote will rotate the pictures.

It also played DivX off DVD +R disk flawlessly, fast forwarding worked great.

I'm quite impressed over all, despite a few minor issues - maybe I'm just too picky. The USB is only 1.1, could have been USB 2.0 - so much faster and will be really helpful when playing HD DivX. A lil slow when detecting disks or USB drive - a few people noted as well. The most annoying part is the file name support - it only displays like 8 characters or so, hardly any useful, it would be a pain in the butt to rename all of my MP3 files to shorten the name - even if I removed the artist name from the file name, it would still be too long. *sigh* Anyways, I'm getting a HDMI cable tomorrow from Fry's to try out the video up conversion. Sweet, my bachelor pad is taking shape :-) Next, a good receiver and a pair of good speaker - the audio sounds rather flat from the TV speakers.

More immediate, I need to get my laundry out of the laundry mat tomorrow morning first thing - forgot about it due to the DVD player excitment... :-)

I HATE...

...logins!!! Today is the first day of employment benefit enrollment for year 2007. Being a ealy starter I thought I should do it now instead of wait fof later... I was quite a procrastinator when I was a kid...

Login to new benefit site, create new account (I thought I had one last year...anyways, no problem...) So, I tried to create new account, need password, etc etc, but it won't accept my universal password I use everywhere at work. It just keeps saying it's in wrong format, what the frack! My universal passwd has mixed cases, charaters and numbers and even a special character - just like any good engineer would use. But, it didn't wortk here. So, I removed special character, it still didn't work! Now I'm more frustrated, since it didn't give me any hint of what's accepted... So, I tried some all number password, and it worked. Great... or maybe NOT... Now I have one more password to remember... frack...What the heck?! What's the reason that they won't allow user to use characters? Not allow special characters, I can somewhat accept, but why reject characters?! Numbers or letters, it's all stored in the database, the computer don't give a frack... And it's all encrypted... should be... so it should be stored as characters anyway... Unless, they store the password as numeric numbers - then it would be clear text ... holy cow... some shitty security measure...

Another grip, why the hack do I create account every year?! Say if they changed supplier, I must create new account. Why the frack everyone has different rules on what's accpeted, what not! User name I can understand that need some restriction, but what the frack wrong with what password I use, they're not going to create an user account for me on some Linux/Windows OS - so it must be able to be typed in on termnal, so why does it even matter?!

Now I'm in, it asked me to create challenge question/answer. The default is "What color is your first car?" Mmmm, Mitubishi Sigma, red... type in "red", click next, it says "Value must be between 4 and 20 characters." Hello! Why don't you just say "Enter any color besides red.". My friend J suggested "burgundy", but it's not the right color; so, he suggest "candy apple red", I guess the validation would say "No space allowed..."; so J suggested "strawberry", then I guess it would complain "Not a color." ROFL! At least there're more questions, so I don't have to use "rojo"...*sigh* OK, see If I can pick a ddifferent question.

Great, timeout... starting over...

Borat

I asked my good friend J today what think of Da Vinci Code - he's your typical white American Christian, happily married with kids. And he said "some people are just silly..." lol, very true. Below quoted from AOL games Daily:

Looking to its second weekend, the question will be how much the "Borat" phenomenon can grow. With humor both low-brow and bracingly satirical, the movie could polarize some audiences, though that is not what the producers found during preview screenings.

"People have taken offense to certain aspects of the movie, but the wide majority of audiences are smart enough to know he's depicting a backwards view in a very smart way," producer Jay Roach said. "He's also able to hold up a satirical mirror to us to expose our prejudices, and people get that."

For example, the speech Borat gave in Texas in this Rodeo competition, he was saying "war of terror" intsead "war on terror", might be just bad English, might be just how the author felt.

Another Jewish friend of mine, also said that some religious people are just self rightious, they think they're better than others. She told me a story that once her grandfather said proudly that there's no poor people in his church, right, maybe those poor people can't afford to give 5% of their income to be close to God... Since when belive in God has to do with donations? When I was in high school I learned that in the Dark Ages, people pay to have their sins lifted... hmmm, interesting... What's up with the Catholic prists and choir boys, Rev. Haggard? And dude, I'm not ignorant of Christianity and faith, I used to go to church when I was in junior college. Lucky me, it wasn't a Catholic church.. kewl...

Dating Pressure

Went out with Yu on Saturday, we had dinner at Yoyo Sushi - not that a good place, she got a Spider roll, the deep fried softshell crab was soggy... my Rainbow roll is not that great either, I think the fish's kinda old, and I don't mean they have mustache or beard... the differnt types of fish all tasted the same :-<

We went to watch Borat, it was funny, all seems going pretty well, but then when it came to the scene when Borat fighting his producer buck naked and biting... Yu stand up and run out... Guess she must've grosssed out. Well, it's just movie... not prono. I can see she's a nice person, but we're just so differnt, not only in terms of hobbies, but view towards the world in general. She's Christian, and goes to church every week. Guess she's just not used to the rude humors. And she hates the Da Vinci Code, even though she never watched it. Because "it lowered God to the level of human and portraits God as just a good person...", and "made some people think the movie is the actual truth..." What?! Give me a break! It's JUST A MOVIE! And most of the movies are made up stories, do they have to say "this is a fictional story" before every movie?! Or should people only making movies that look so over the top that it can not be true, Anime, cartoon? The movie told a story that seems true, it's a darn good movie, and darn good story telling! And I seriously doubted anyone actually belived it's a true story!! She got brained watched by the organized religion... I have lotsa Christian/Catholic friends, but none are this stuckup. It's just not going to work out between us I can feel it, but my sister keeps saying I should give her more time, and I can not tell a person only after a short time! Wrong, even a short time can tell a lot, and I'm pretty good at reading people. It's just not going to work, and waste both of our times! What the frack. One more date and that's it! And no more chics from her church.

Weekend!

Well, yesterday's weekend too, but not much happened, spent most of the day at the Taekwon Do school helping with colour belt testing...

Today's a more proper R&R weekend. Carol and I went hiking at the Castle Rock State Park. It's a short drive, but the view is very nice at the top with its endless forest. The trees nearer to us are green, and as the forest gets farther away, it changes to differnt shades of green, and at the distance, it gradually changes to blue. On the horizon, it became white, I'm not sure it's cloud or the ocean.

Later, she took me to what she calls an authentic Vietnamese resturant, it's not big, but she says they have 2 dishes are very good, and only that 2 are worth trying. She's been going to that place to eat sicne she's in the 6th grade. It's in downtown San Jose, very close to SanJose State University, on E. Willian St(near 8th or 9th st), called something like DaLok(or DaLat or DaLot... err, something like that).

One of them is a noodle dish, dry noodles - no soup. It's came with bean sprout and lemon wedges. The noodle has slices of ham like thingie, a crab claw and big shrimp. At the bottom at the bowl, it has some soy sauce, so you need to mix them up before eating - don't forget squeeze the some lemon juice and add bean sprout. It's not bad.

The second one is rice with prawns. Carol said it she tried to make it at home, but didn't have much success - it's actually hard to make. Of course! The rice is not regualr rice, it's "broken rice", I can imagine it will take someitme and patience to break the rice ;-) Anyway, this is not the main interetsing thing about this dish. I said earlier, "rice with prawn", I didn't say shrimp. 'Cause, they're HUGE! They're not your average big prawns... think big! How big? Think smaller lobsters or crayfish... They're yummy! It's cooked in some sort of redish source, might be just soy sause with sugar. 'Cause it tastes just like how my sister cooks shrimps - stir fry shrimp, add a bit soy sause and sugar. Man, these are good, 'cause you really can taste the flavour, and the bite is mouthful :) I love it! Another thing to note is, that these prawns are fresh water prawns, Carol says they taste different from sea prawns.

For desert, get either Vietnamese coffee or one of those sweet drink. The Vietnamese coffee look and taste like Thai iced coffee, but lot stronger - very strong. This is traditional Vietnamese as well. Traditionally, you'd have to use strainer to let the coffee drip slowly into cup. The other is condensed milk(?) with ice and various jelly bits in it - not so special, I've had similar drinks at other places.

New TV!!!

I've been bad today ... I bought a 32" LCD Westinghouse HD TV at Bestbuy, been looking for it for a while, but the price now is so low and I couldn't help it.... It's on sale now for$699 in store or online. If you want to get one... it's too late, ends today. You'll just have to wait for the next sale, but it shoudln't be that long... Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I was going to wait, but the price is too good to pass - and besides, they do price match if later I find better price elsewhere or in Bestbuy.

Let me tell you... the picture is very sharp. On par with Sony, Samsung etc. I don't have HD TV or digital cabel - just the regular cable. But, is there differece between 480i and 720i and 1080i channel ro what! WOW! To christian the new TV, I played the Animatrix DVD, wow it looked wicked! My Toshiba 5 DVD changer still plays very well, but it's at least 3 years old... and a lil slow when loading DVDs to my taste. I want the new one to be able to play DivX files too. And need a receiver too, and a network MP3 player - really want to get the Squeezebox.

Well, so I also need a NAS server that can stream my MP3 files... so the list goes on and on and on....

Firts time Hawaii food

I had Hawaii food for the first time a week ago with Carol in Mahalo Hawaii BBQ (4750 Almaden Expwy, San Jose). After looked at the menu, I thought I was at the a Japanese joint... Katsu, gaint sushi with spam(what it's called?)... Anyway, I got the combination grill - it's quite nice actually, jucy and tasty. Carol got the giant sushi ;-) I had a bite of the gaint sushi - I'd say, I much prefer the lil ones... Is this Hawaii food, or is this fusion? Or is it both?

Working...

The boss fired the designer a while back, so I'm the only one working on the UI, from design to implementation. Been working on the next gen stuff for a while. I've come up with a lot of new ideas, and made drustic changes - not only the lok and feel but also the way how users interact with our product. I'm quite happy with the way it's going, it's way better than the current design. Current one is plagued with design flaws - not my fault, and I didn't design it, actually I pointed out the flaws but the PM and manager didn't listen... Now, they just leave me alone to do my work. The current statistics presentation is horrible, everything is listed on the page, in a loooong list. How the hack the previous designer came up with this crap?!

In the new design, the differnt sections are broken down to tabs. We track the statistics by HTTP response codes, instead of listing all the numbers for each code. I made summary for each type of code, i.e all the 1xx codes going into a row - kinda like summary or subtotal. And if user click on it, it will expand to show the details - individual statistics for each code. Not only the numbers are there, but they are nicely shown in a bar chart as well - for the subtotals. For subtotal/summary, when expended, there're bar charts as well. The page is alot more readable and clean now.

Downgrading computer

People usually upgrade their computer, but I'm downgrading...

I just recently upgraded my computer to a AMD 4800+ dual core processor, and replaced all my old HDDs(250x2, 60x2) with a single Western Digital 500GB SATA2 16MB cache drive(sepcial edition WS5000KS). Not that I ran out of HDD space, it's just those HDDs are aging, all of them are PATA, and I want to migrate to faster drives, and free up some cluters. The WD5000KS is also very quite. OK, that's the upgrade part :-)

I wasn't thinking about changing anything else, since they work great. My ATI X800 XL video card handles any game I throw at it, even Oblivion with all eye candies to max. I only experience slow down when running through the field with alot of trees and grass, especially when the day time changes - switch between day and night, and foggy days. So, I don't see why I should change anything else. However, lately I got fed up with crowling under my desk, plug/unplug USB cables for my Thecus YES Nano. So, I decided to change to a Micro ATX case, hence the downgrade... I'm changing from my Antec Sonata. Good thing I got rid of my old HDDs, otherwise they won't fit into a Micro ATX.

The case I'm looking at is the Ultra MicroFly, it's small, and fits any Micro ATX, and with lotsa drive space. Althought, I only have 2 HDDs now: 500GB WD and a 74GB 10K RPM SATA Raptor(my boot drive). But, I'm planning to get another WD5000KS to create a RAID 1(mirror). Why RAID 1? Well, the past year or so, I had a couple of drive crashes, and the data recover costed me about $1,000. And not all data are recovered, actually most are lost - including my precious travel photos, and my Star Wars Galaxies screenshots... :-< I never thought it would happen to me, but it did, twice.... I definitely learned a lesson, and all my friends are taking precautions too. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed at the mean time.... since all my data is on the single 500GB drive.... hope nothing will happen before I get my 2nd WD5000KS.

Since I'm "downgrading"...I need to change MB as well...bummper, should have done it together with my CPU upgrade... Anyway, the Micro ATX MB is a lil harder to get. There're plenty of mATX MB, but I have specific requirements.

First, I need at least 3 SATA connectros(2 for RAID 1, 1 for boot drive), so that ruled out alot of MBs that only have 2 SATA connectors.

Second, the SATA needs to be SATA2(3GB/s) instead of 1.5GB/s one.

Third, I need A PATA for my DVD drive. Some MB I came across, don't have PATA...

Looking at the online e-tailers, most of them don't even have these in stock, so my selections are quite limited. I'm holding out a lil longer, since the Black Friday is almost there...

Killer NIC

...that's just a fancy name for a Network Interface Card(NIC)... If you have a computer, well, I betcha you have one, otherwise you won't be reading this... you already have one on your motherboard, but an integrated one instead of seperate plug in card - like the good 'ol times... ;-)

It has a 400MHz Freescale processor, 64MB of DDR RAM, runs a special version of embedded Linux, and costs $300. WOW!

Fot this price, it better speed up your system - or your network for the matter... But, if you use DSL/Cable, DSL will be the bottle neck, what's the point? Then again, unless you're on T1/T2 or T3... well, still, what's the point? T1 network will be so fast, you will have no need for this card. However, if you drive a Ferari, then, this just maybe the NIC for you, but don't expect any network speed boost.... check out the full review by ExtremeTech

For $300, I'd rather get a top of the line dual core CPU or a video card...

Mystery Spot

It was an very interesting experience I have to admit. The first place we were shown changes people's height - at least looks like it, step onto a spot, and suddenly you look like have grown a few inches. And even use the spirit level we can see the place is leveled, but as the guide put a ball in the middle, it started to roll to one side... what the hack?!

Next, it was just on the foot path leading onto the cabin, I felt really comfortable standing there, but as the guide pointed out, everyone is standing(or rather leaning on an angle), even though I thought I was standing up right, look at the people around me, yep.

Then we went inside the cabin, immediately I felt dizzy and disorienated, because everything is slanted. The guide was standing on the edge of ledge, and leaning so far forward, and he didn't fall. It just got weirder and weirder... It was a fun place to visit.

We had lunch on Beach St, one of the Mexican resturant. Forgot what's the name, it was not far from Cliff St, and next door to another resturant called La Hacienda. Well, I'll just call it Casa de Mariscos, since it specializes in Mexican sea food dishes. I had Fajita de Camaron and Carol had some sort of sea food soup served in a stone pot - very neat, it was delicious too!!! Before we decided to eat there, I saw some Latinos inside, so I bet on that - even though the La Hacienda next door seems to have more people. My bet paid off :)

Daylight saving save the day

I'm going to Stanta Cruz Mystery Spot today for a date, and my alarm didn't go off. I was really paniced, I'm still home at the time when I'm supposed to pick her up... But look at my cellphone and clock, they have differnt time, then I realized it must be end of the daylight saving time...kewl... Now I have plenty of time get dressedm and maybe even have some breakfast...

Not employed.. according to credit bureaus

Well, that was quick they got back to me with the result of investigation, but nothing changed, actually it did, they just deleted my employment history all thogether. It's even worse than before - at least I had some record though it's out of date, now I have none. I called them up, and the recording says, it can't be updated. Gee, great...

Up late again...

Last night's digging got me interested, so I got a free credit score report. Well, above average... Anyways, filed for investigation with the bureaus to update my employment history... Yeah, and played a bit of Oblivion... I was so bored... gotta study... now.

YOU DON'T KNOW HALF ABOUT ME...

NO, YOU DON'T.

Have you ever tried the www.annualcreditreport.com for your free annual free credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion? Well, I did, just now, for the very first time... That's why I'm up so late... well at least for today... not playing Oblivion...

And now I'm very sad... not that I have bad reports - stella actually(I think)... But about the accuracy of the information there. 1 out of the 3, has no record of my employment history what so ever, nada. Hmm, I must've got a money tree or cash cow stached somewhere so I can pay my rent and food.... The other 2 has only one of my previous employers. My previous previous employer and my current are not in there. And 2 of my previous addresses are listed as commercial address... I have to admit I was a workaholic before, but even that I spent most of my time at work in a cubicle NOT at home!

How fracked up... check yours... and don't be too surprised...

Fusion

When you talk about fusion, the first thing come to my mind usually is food: California French, Tex Mex, Fusion Chinese etc etc.

Now AMD has completed the acquisition of ATI. This is what they plan to do:

CPU/GPU Silicon "Fusion" - Another Industry First for Customers AMD plans to create a new class of x86 processor that integrates the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) at the silicon level with a broad set of design initiatives collectively codenamed "Fusion."

It's quite amusing to see this actually going to happen... as I was talking to a friend about this a few months back ... jokingly.

The reason we have GPU today is due to the fact that CPU is just not powerful enough in the past to do 3D rendering - CPU is only general purpose. And graphics rendering needs have very specific requirement - floating point calculation. But the GPU today has become so powerful that sometime not all it's calculation power is fully utilized, if I remember it correctly ATI was going to use some of it's GPU power to do physics calculations.

The CPU on the other hand has came a long way as well. From the humble 486 to today's dual core! if you can put 2 or 4 cores into a processor, why not put in a GPU or 2. GPU was split from CPU, and now it's going back into CPU... On one hand, once GPU is fully integrated into CPU, we'll have more space on motherboard. But, on the other hand, we can no longer upgrade them seperately, but I guess it's OK for main stream computers - like those used in offices or in laptops.

Is this Fusion going to be yummy? We will see.

What the frack!

A Hongkong exporter forced out of business because they helped to distribute Sony PS3. If you sell something and it's considered trade mark infringement, then everybody stop selling PS3!

I thought Sony Online Entertainment is fracked up that way they treat their customers(shoud I remind you? NGE, CU). But Sony Computer Entertainment is just as fracked up.

I quite Star Wars Galaxies last year because of the NGE, and so did the people I know. The SOE is like a Sith lord, they will lie to you, they will manipulate you, and they will stab you in the back and spit on your face, and take away all you have. They are evil! A lot of people playing(or used to play) Galaxies want a roll back of the NGE. NOT for me, I'm done with Sony. Even if they roll it back, I would never go back again.

I'm thinking about buy a new stereo system, it might have been a Sony one, but now, it will NOT be a Sony. I will never buy ANY Sony products at all. They will never get a peny from me, NADA!

A great way to start my new blog

Firefox 2.0 is out today!
GOOG @$480 something!!