More tries by the internets to read my mind.

The search guesser distracted me, and I needed a few minutes to remember what my original search was. :P

Now that I’m reading it again … “how to get a six pack in 3 minutes”?!?!? HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAH

Not sure why Facebook thinks I’d be a great candidate for … pole dancing classes.

Here’s a close-up:

Maybe FB knows I like … deals and discounts?!?!!?!? o_O

So we hugged over webcam. :)

My mom successfully installed a webcam and software via instructions over the phone before I strangled myself. ‘Tis nothing short of a freaking miracle.

Tidbits of the conversation:

Me: Yes Mom, go into the e-mail account we set up for Grandma and click through the invitation.
Mom: OK. Where it says, “Verify your account”?
Me: Yes.
Mom: OK. It is asking if I want to “Run” or “Save”.
Me: (afraid my mom won’t know where she saved the file) Just click “Run”.
Mom: OK. It’s downloading now. OK so now it says, “Verify your account”. I’m going to click that.
Me: (confused) Um, OK.
Mom: It’s asking if I want to “Run” or “Save”.
Me: (still confused) Um, I guess “Run”.
Mom: OK. It’s downloading now. OK so now it says, “Verify your account”. I’m going to click that.
Me: Wait wait wait, Mom … what else do you see on the screen?
Mom: “Archive”, “Report Spam”, “Delete”, “Move To”, “Labels” …
Me: MOM! YOU’RE STILL IN GMAIL! STOP CLICKING ON THAT! YOU ONLY NEED TO CLICK ON THAT VERIFY LINK ONCE! GO TO THE LOGITECH VID WINDOW!
Mom: Huh?
Me: Do you see any other windows at the bottom of your screen that are open … ? That little bar at the bottom?
Mom: Well, there’s Logitech Vid, and Gmail …
Me: Well, go to Logitech Vid.
[ we finally start to get into the installation part of the program; it is really hard bc my mom is not reading everything out to me as she goes along bc she thinks I have every screen MEMORIZED ]

----- 15 long minutes later -----

Me: OK. Now you have to login with her e-mail address and password.
Mom: OK. [ typing ] OK I did. It says “No account found”.
Me: [ feeling really helpless ] OK Mom. PLEASE double-check that you typed it in correctly.
Mom: [ spelling out the e-mail address ] So I got it right.
Me: Mom, did you put “@gmail.com” at the end?
Mom: No. Do I need to?
Me: YES. YES YOU DO.
Mom: OK. [ typing ] OK I hit “return” and it still says “No account found”. Oh wait [ double-checking ] … I mistyped it. Heehee, my mistake!
Me: [ pulling my hair out and trying not to scream bc I know my mom is trying her best ] OK Mom. Yeah. Please double-check.
Mom: OK it works now!

----- ALMOST THERE -----

Mom: Where do I plug it in? The front or the back?
Me: Wherever you see a USB slot. Do you know what those look like? Do you see the plug that you are holding in your hand, the shape of it plus how part of it is indented?
Mom: OK so front or back?
Me: [ to my dad, who did it before - “Dad, where are the USB ports on Grandma’s computer?” Dad: “Just find one wherever.” Me: “DAD! JUST PICK ONE, OMG!” ] OK Mom, look in the back. Do you see slots?
Mom: Oh, there are a lot. Which one do I pick?
Me: Any one, Mom. As long as it fits.
Mom: The HDMI one?
Me: [ raising my voice ] MOM, NO. WHATEVER FITS, WITHOUT FORCE. THERE’S ONLY ONE SHAPE THAT WILL FIT.
Mom: Oh OK. [ sound of rustling ] [ phone goes dead ]

----------

Me: Mom, what happened?
Mom: Oh, the phone cord wasn’t long enough. Oh, how about this … [ plugs it in … I see a signal, but it’s black ] Now what?
Me: [ seeing the light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel ] OK Mom, good, good! Now, you’ve plugged it in, and it works, but there’s a COVER on the webcam you have slide off. Do you see that sliding thing?
Mom: Where … hmmm … [ I am sweating bc we ARE SO CLOSE ] Like this?
Me: YES! YES! OMG! YES! I SEE YOU! OMG MOM, GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK now position the webcam so we can see Grandma while she sits in the chair… OK you got it … OK you can stop moving the webcam now … you’re sure it won’t fall off the monitor, right? OK then that’s good … STOP MOVING IT MOM, YOU GOT IT ALREADY … OK well put Grandma on the phone!

----------

It was totally worth all the frustration to see my grandma’s face, though. :) THANK YOU, MOM!!!!

Keeping my fingers crossed that the computer won’t need to get formatted again in the near future. (I don’t imagine my uncles are that web savvy, I think they click on pop ups and other random stuff … sigh …)

My dad is usually a serious no-nonsense guy, but it’s times like these when I get a glimpse into who he REALLY is, deep down inside.

Behold the gift he brought me back from Asia: Crunching Dog!

Dunno if you noticed the text at the bottom:

Various views of “Crunching Dog”:

OK kids, get your minds out of the gutter now. :)

And of course, the video. Well, it didn’t work so well with my computer at work with the vertical USB port, but you get the gist:

And no, it does not double as a USB flash drive. Hahahah doh!

I would prefer it to be more practical (I am my dad’s daughter, fo shizzle), but my dad knew I would love this: it’s both cute and techie / geeky. Thanks, Dad! :)

I asked my grandma to gather in front of the webcam with my uncles so I could “take a picture” of them. After taking the screenshot, my uncles asked, “Can we see the photo?” Hahaha, sorry, no … :)

So the video call is not perfect. We are not using microphones to talk over the internet, but instead just calling on regular phones (calling cards are pretty cheap calling from the US to Taiwan, anyway). But I think it’s actually a good thing, in that my grandma doesn’t have to deal with too much of a technology jump, and I’m much less annoyed with potential sound lag.

I’m using Logitech Vid, and I successfully walked my dad through installing it (here’s the email text). My grandma is not the one operating the computer; my cousin / uncles / whoever is there will power up the computer, double-click on the Logitech Vid icon, receive the incoming chat request, and plug in the webcam (somehow, plugging in the webcam earlier doesn’t work, must be in this order). I just wanted the EASIEST thing possible since I can’t tell how tech savvy my cousin / uncles are. It only does video calls; no text chatting, nothing. The interface is truly super simple. Click on the person you want to call. And I think you can only call one person at a time even. PERFECT.

I’m proud to announce that my grandma sounds like she actually looks forward to seeing us when we call her once a week. Or she at least pretends to. :)

Hi all (yes, all … 11 of my ADORING fans),

My awesome webhost and buddy Dean (of Envador, GoGoStand, and DeanYing fame) is moving me to a new webserver. Hold your breath until he gets it back up and I can start posting again (and you all – yes, all 11 of you - can continue to leave your awesome comments)! :)

<3 the pinkster :)

I had been using a physical fax machine, but with the increased amount of electronic insurance billing I’ve been doing, insurance companies have been faxing me like crazy. This is great for helping my patients save money! However, it was way annoying that fact that they chose the weirdest times to send me stuff (3:00 am! what!!?!).

I started looking for a fax number that would receive and route to e-mail. And because I’m cheap, preferably free. :) And so! That narrowed down my search greatly. I’ve been using K7.net coupled with a gmail account (big, fat, and also free) for a few months now and it’s been great. K7’s basic website did not inspire immediate faith in the service, but it’s been really smooth for me. Here’s a brief review:

Pros: free (funded by ads), can choose to set it to Fax Only mode or can use the Fax + Voicemail mode (voicemails show up as .wav files in your e-mail), reduces paper waste, NO MORE FAX RINGING OFF THE HOOK AT 3:00AM!!

Cons: can’t choose a number in your area code (by default you get 206 for Seattle, WA, so perhaps people in Seattle would consider this a “pro”) … but that hardly matters to most, especially to the insurance companies who are sending stuff to all sorts of area codes. If you set it to Fax + Voicemail mode, sometimes the faxes are interpreted as voicemails with that intermittent beep.

The “catch”? Gotta use it at least once every 30 days, or else it’ll be deactivated. It’s an automated system too – I know, because I got deactivated. I sheepishly wrote into customer service and they graciously gave me my fax number back as a one-time courtesy. The trick? Set it to Fax + Voicemail mode, call in every 2 weeks and leave yourself a voicemail, and you’re golden.

Thanks K7 for letting me sleep through the night!

If you’ve tried K7 or any other free fax receiving service, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Potentially confusing: “K7.net” and “www.K7.net” go to different pages. The one with the “www” prefix goes directly to the fax-to-e-mail service I have described here.

Googling "free simple html editor" today brought up Arachnophilia in the results. It sounded familiar ... turns out it was the same software that I had used many years ago (probably circa 2000). Even with major updates to the software, the site hadn't changed much; the words "Arachnophilia is CareWare" still remained at the top of the page. I'd forgotten what that meant, guessing it was some variation upon shareware, like postcardware or something. Reading further for clarification, I came across a paragraph that I'd always kept with me, but as usual had forgotten the source:

So here is my deal: stop whining for an hour, a day, a week, your choice, and you will have earned your copy of Arachnophilia. Say encouraging words to young people, make them feel welcome on the planet Earth (many do not). Show by example that we don't need all we have in order to be happy and productive.

The selective bolding is by me, showing the words that resonated with me so long ago and helped shape who I am by just a little bit. Common sense, for sure, but to actually put it into practice? Not so easy. At the time when I read this, it made me question if I'd ever been made to feel welcome on this planet. A very touchy subject for me, since people have made fun of me since the beginning of time, and then on top of that my whole sense of identity was hurled into a black hole of confusion while living in China. (I've come out of that hole since, yay!) But even so, with careful thinking, the answer was ... yes. To the teachers, mentors, and peers who consciously made and make the effort to make me feel comfortable in a sea of derision, jealousy, insecurity, and negativity, thank you. And I guess that's why it stuck. And then the thought that followed was: well, if people were kind enough to do it for me, then I hope I can be that person to someone else. Yeah, I think I saw that movie Pay it Forward around that time too.

So this seems like a lot of strange mush to have written regarding some html editor, but it's really not about the html editor at all. I thank Paul Lutus for his hard work on it of course, but more so for positively influencing my thoughts and actions for the last 10 years ever since I read his words.

Oh, and I did download and use Arachnophilia. Perfect fit for my needs today. :)

I've gotten them before, but here's one I got today:

Clicking through, it's even more "ugh":

 

Well anyway, if any of you single ladies out there want to hit up 22-year-old Humphrey in Kenya, please feel free to do so. Oh, and if anyone calls me "Princess" in real life, please don't be surprised if I sock you in the face!

My homeboy EnVaDoR has been up to no good as usual with his modding antics. His latest: getting noted on lifehacker (with a mention on gizmodo) for his DIY iPhone Paper Clip Stand!

 

A search turns up a whole lotta hits where he gets mentioned, but true 6334dom is appearing on lh and gizmodo, right? :) From one geek to another, here's to you Dean: the King o' Geeks!

[ his original post ]

Before the Canon SD1000 got discontinued, that was my general recommendation. Now I would now recommend the Canon SD1100 to anyone who now asks me the billion dollar question, "Hey Caroline, which camera should I get?"

This is actually a question I get asked pretty often, and the answer really depends on how hardcore you wanna be, your budget, and how you're gonna use the thing. But if ...

- you could stand to pay $200 or less
- you want the ability to pick a stylin' color to match your personality (silver / blue / *pink* / gold / brown)
- you want to have something compact and lightweight to take with you while travelling or partying or clubbing
- you like sharing your photos online and occasionally printing out 4x6 photos or making photo gifts for people
- you want the ability to take decent video also (this was done with the SD1100 time-lapse function built-in by a friend)
- you have no idea what f-stop or DOF means and don't care / these terms scare you

... this is your best bet, imho, until this thing becomes discontinued, anyway. AND it even comes with IS, or image stabilization, which has been a feature in cameras priced around $300 or higher generally.

General marketing hype to avoid

- number of megapixels. This thing has 8 MP, which is already overkill for the average consumer. In fact, for regular 4x6 photos, you only really need 3 MP, but all the manufacturers want you to believe the more = better. It's only better if you plan on printing life-sized photos (for the SD1100, up to 16x22), which the average user does not do.
- digital zoom: this is fake zoom. Be sure the description says "optical zoom".
- humongoginormous screen: well, all screens nowadays are over 2" diagonally. It's really mainly for composing pictures, so you don't really need much more. Personally, I like that the SD1100 also has an optical viewfinder, so if you're really trying to squeeze the last few pictures out of the dying battery, you can turn off the screen and just take pictures by looking through the little hole.

So I was going on a bike ride, and wanted to record video while doing so.

I was gonna buy the Flip Action Mount (marketed as an accessory with the Flip Ultra / Mino) and was also thinking about a Gorillapod ...

Then I chanced upon Camera Hacker's site with instructions and other links on how to make your own!

I read it excitedly, but realized that I had no access to power tools in the time frame that I had (2 hrs), plus I wouldn't know how to use them anyway, and almost dismissed the idea from my mind.

Well, on a lark, I still went to the dollar store as Camera Hacker suggests for the first piece in his bicycle camera mount. I realized with dismay that 1. they didn't carry anything like he said, and 2. I didn't remember any other details, and didn't have time to go back and look them up, ie. like what size screw fits into the camera tripod mount hole thingy!!

With sheer dumb luck I bought a few pieces, brought them home, and made my own within 45 mins, a little over a dollar's worth of materials, and with minimal tools.

Materials:

1. Ghetto-looking hose clamp that happened to have just the right size screw for mounting a camera (2-pack; $1.09)
2. Ghetto rubber chair foot covers (4-pack; $1.09)

The result:

  + =

You know I'm all about the g-h-e-t-t-o, but this doesn't look half bad, if I do say so myself. :) [ get the play-by-play with commentary on the DIY project here ] [ resulting footage that catches me biting it on my way home after the ride ]

Let's see.

I can do everything except for ...

surfing the web
checking / sending e-mail
online chatting
uploading pictures
updating my website
checking in on my finances.

My home DSL is spazzing out. So, I've been sleeping earlier. And talking more on the phone. Hmm. Imagine that.

Just felt like posting these pics of doggies that I am honored to be aunties to. Surprisingly nice pics taken with cell phones!

Mollybee (pic by A, with her Motorola Razr):

Happy (with my Nokia 6103):

Merhaba everyone!
my apologies for not getting in touch sooner...man this place is crazy! i tried writing an email earlýer but ýt was erased and ý was gettýng frustrated wýth thýs freakýn turkýsh keyboard. 

I'm confused by how there are intermittent "i"s throughout the e-mail, though they have mostly been replaced by "ý"s (I would imagine because of the keyboard layout).

I tried looking up the Turkish keyboard layout and couldn't really find much - there's this on the Microsoft website - must use IE to view - looked at both the Turkish F and Turkish Q layouts. Still confused as to why the "ý"s kept showing up.

The rest of the e-mail is funny to read, just because it's like going through someone's poorly typed message and your eyes are coping with the massive bludgeoning of the language. (You know it's hard to read something that has tiepose evvry uther werd or was typed in l337-ShOrThAnD-TeEn-ChAt-SpEakzZz? Sorta like that.)

Love ya, E. :)

Adobe Premiere, I hate you. You too, Photoshop.

vs.

After reformatting, I was all psyched about trying to use this alternative to Microsoft Office. Seemed full-featured, fully compatible with MS Office documents, free, open source, and legit - all this gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Well, I've been slowly opening up my old MS Office documents into OpenOffice. Today I opened up my third document and to my dismay, it was not displaying correctly. There are three lines of text that I want printed out aligning to the bottom margin. In MS Word it'd be somewhere under Page Setup. I could not figure out how to fix this within 15 30 45 minutes, even after using Help (I'm not afraid to ask for help!). And THEN I remembered that my old copy of MS Office is actually legit (thank you UT student discount!). I tried one more thing and OpenOffice is crashing as I type. Sigh ...

This kinda sucks, as OpenOffice seemed to have a lot of cool goodies. Ah well. Back to MS Office it is ...

Afterthought: I was gonna keep OpenOffice on anyway for one reason and one reason only: it has this really cool grid thing in its page setup that prints out sheets for practicing my Chinese writing on (I'm pretty sure this wasn't OpenOffice's original intent?), the really old-school ones with the space to the right for the BoPoMoFo - it got me all nostalgic. I actually stopped everything I was doing because I've wanted to write out the Heart Sutra in Chinese for a long time (weird, yes, I know - just another of my "Things to Do Before I Die"). However, this would be a silly reason to keep the whole suite, so the thing is out tha door - I can easily draw something up like this in MS Word. Sorry OpenOffice!

Is the Obsolete Computer Museum's website run off of obsolete computers?

I would rather eat rocks than buy anything at Best Buy.

I've developed a cough. No cold symptoms, just a cough.

I forget that most mothers don't work on Mother's Day, which is why I can still run around and get her real present ready today (she has no idea).

Just got back from a one-day trip to Dallas for a funeral. It's hard not to cry when your friends (children of the deceased) are crying while recounting the happy memories.

Reformatting my computer solved a bunch of little problems I'd tolerated for the last 3 years, including:
- external volume mute button: if I unmuted the laptop, then hit the increase volume button (also external), it'd mute again. So I'd have to hit "unmute" AGAIN, before I could use the increase volume button.
- I tried out this notebook utility that came with my computer called "battery calibration". Now, it actually gives me at least a few minutes after warning me before shutting down when the power is low. Before, it would go, "Better plug in now" and then shut down immediately.
- scrolling with the touchpad is much more consistent, whereas before it would just stop working sometimes. Strangely I'd read that you have to install a generic Synaptics driver to get hardware scrolling working in Firefox.
- the built-in wireless had been starting to crap out, so I'd bought an external wireless adapter. After reformatting, the built-in works fine.

Will add to the list as I find them. Good grief, should've done this sooner.

Off to finish off our gift to my mom!

My webhost, EnVaDoR, has once again made the limelight for his l337 "modding" skillz. I say "modding" because well, it's more like carpentry and/or engineering and/or design. He has truly succeeded in not only thinking outside the box, but also outside your humdrum regular computer case. :)

The initial photo of a computer that comes up is also EnVaDoR's, the Dashboard PC. Scroll down to "Mods from Envador" and watch the cool little slideshow of his "work" plus his telephone interview with Intel, which provides insight into Dean's personality. At 4:30 into the slideshow, he says some things that truly inspire me. Thanks, Dean!

So without further ado: [ Intel® Core™ Processor Challenge PC Design >> Share Your PC Story ]

Been reading about it, and I figured I should just try it. The name "Twitter" reminds me of twitching ... which is pretty accurate for me, since I start twitching unattractively if I'm unable to blog. [ my twitcher, i mean, twitter ] Add me if you have it!

Update: added a twitter badge to the left side. Code thanks to Jonathan Aquino. And in my search for this badge code, came upon an even more obsessive site: Jaiku.

Update: I just checked out the finalists and ... we are not amongst them. Darn. Ah well, 'twas a good run. I gotta admit though, most of the ones that made it into the finals are really good. At least I wasn't beaten by crappy entries! Anyway, at the end of the day - I am hugely grateful for all da love, so thanks, guys!!

------------

Voting for the competition has closed, and according to the rules, the top 13 most voted videos get into the finals, and Vanilla Ice picks the top 3 from these 13 finalists. So far, I have gotten NO word at all as to whether or not I have made the finals. [ update: supposedly the finalists have been announced, but I can't access the site! ]

Who'da thunk I'd learn so much from submitting a silly little video? And would have so much fun. And would end up being totally overwhelmed by the amount of support from all of you. Words cannot express how I feel right now ... amazement really is the closest approximation to it.

Much gratitude to those who voted. I know it was a pain, especially for those who didn't have a YouTube account already. The following are some the obstacles people went through just to vote for me:

• After watching the video, then going to the signup screen, those less familiar with the internet often got stuck here, what with the confirmation e-mail and all.
• After signing up successfully, people had to figure out how to navigate back to the voting page, since YouTube did not take people directly back there.
• And if you *did* find your way back to the voting page, there was a banner on the right that contained the exact same icons as those used in voting, thus looking like you could actually click on it to vote! In actuality, it was just a toggle to go to another random video contest entry. (I wrote about this to the sponsors, and they actually removed click-ability on the banner in a couple days.)

My most unlikely fan? My dad. I thought he'd immediately banish me from our family tree for being a time-wasting, camera-whoring daughter. Instead, he liked the video and song (despite not understanding a single word), used sharp observation skills to distill out key improvements that could be made, and quickly offered to translate my instructions into Chinese and e-mail them off to friends and relatives on the other side of the world. My dad! Giving me tips on how to make my rap video better!!!

What was really touching was how my relatives in Taiwan were trying to vote for me as well. My 60-something-year-old uncle wrote me for clarification. I mean, a 60+ guy daring to surf the internet outside of his comfort zone is already a huge feat; for him to take all that time to figure out all the steps to sign up so he can vote on a video for his crazy niece in America? Priceless.

Getting feedback about the video was awesome. Friends as well as total strangers wrote e-mails / left kind comments. It sure was great hearing from some people I hadn't heard from in YEARS all of a sudden drop me a message saying, "Hey, I voted for ya! And I got all my co-workers to vote for you!!"

And then the promotion by others. That was super-duper-awesome too. Again, both friends and total strangers started to pimp me out in various ways. Mass e-mails to friends, blogs ...

Thanks for all the love, folks. My patients are gonna feel this overflowing of love for sure. :)

And now that I'm just playing the waiting game on this whole video thing, I need to hurry up and uh, "TurboTax It!" ... or something like that.

================

Miscellaneous Facts About The Making Of:

• the song took 7 [major] revisions to get to its final incarnation.
• the video took 3 [major] revisions.
• additional filming was squeezed in 2 days prior to the deadline.
• the deadline for uploads ended 24 hours early due to a technical problem that was finally fixed 12 hours later; I nearly had a heart attack when I couldn't upload! (Homie A now knows the sound of my voice when I am about to cry in the middle of the night)
• the pr0nstar tank top was a self-designed iron-on that was made for a friend's bachelorette party
• Adobe Premiere 6.5 was used for the video; Sonic Foundry Acid 2.0 was used for the audio.
• the chorus was done by me, repeating myself 6 times at different pitches, so it sounds like a bunch of people saying it at once.
• the red room was at A & C's home. Yes, they really do have a room that is all painted red.
• Seconds after running into the center of a certain stadium, honking from the upper levels began, accompanied by yelling: "GET OFF THE FIELD!!! GET OFF THE FIELD!!!" The individual who helped me film this segment (who shall remain unnamed for protection of their dignity) was understandably greatly embarrassed by my sudden unannounced maneuver.
• all video and audio editing was done on my dying 3-year-old, hp pavilion ze5375us laptop (Intel P4 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 7.5 lbs)
• total time spent: 3+ weeks. No, I did not allow it to interfere with my day job. :)
• a student of mine in China asked me what the song meant. You know, it was pretty darned hard to translate it into semi-normal English!! :)

Here's how:

1. Watch my 2-minute video where I make a total fool out of myself. Yes, it's a rap video. Where I had to make my own music, my own lyrics, and video. About TurboTax software. Who has hired Vanilla Ice as their spokesman for the contest. Not sure how much more bizarre it could be, but here it is!
http://www.youtube.com/contest/TheTaxRap?goto=287

2. Laugh. And vote for me! (Positively if you can.) You need to create an account (free!) to do so. Once you login, click on the above link, and you'll be able to vote!

3. I need to be in the top 13 most voted videos to get into the finals to even be considered for the [big] cash prize. I'm not that popular, but I know my friends (you guys!) are popular. So please tell your friends (if you're not too embarrassed, hehe) via e-mail, blogs, forums, whatever, to use the above link to vote for me by April 8th! Go entry #287!

4. If you have a few more minutes to spare, click through and leave a comment and rate my video. That way I look and feel popular. :)
Oh and don't worry, I won't be leaving my day job anytime soon. Acupuncture is much nicer than being a rapper!

Thanks, guys. Oh, and as a bonus, I made an outtakes reel too. :)

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am.

Chinese dating site for singles seeking Chinese women for love and marriage

I found the site browsing through a fellow acupuncturist's website ... related ads, eh? o_O

I've been sorta thrust into dealing with Chinese computing issues simply because 1) my dad created and maintains a Chinese website, 2) my parents like to read Chinese news websites, and 3) they have friends and relatives in Taiwan who send them e-mails in Chinese. And so, I've had to help deal with viewing and input issues on all sorts of fronts. It's hard, since my Chinese is hardly up to par (except on the karaoke mic, haha!), but I've slowly gotten used to computer menus and commands in Chinese.

My dad's been wanting to get some sort of digital addressbook for keeping his friend's contact info close at hand. But since most of his friends are Chinese and their English names are foreign to him, he wanted to be able to input and view their names in Chinese. He didn't need a color screen (nice but optional), nor Wi-Fi, just a functional, portable, searchable, and easily update-able addressbook.

I figured this shouldn't be hard nor expensive (I estimated less than $100USD), so we looked for something suitable for him while in Taiwan last year. I was so wrong. The market in Taiwan for such a device lays in three possibilities, as far as I could tell anyway:

1) A Chinese-English electronic dictionary with addressbook functionality as a side-benefit. Not generally searchable. Not generally able to sync with computer. At least about $200USD. My dad doesn't need a crappy Chinese-English dictionary with a crappy addressbook to boot.
2) A cell phone. Input is tricky. The ones with actual handwriting input are outdated (this was shocking to me - unless the salesperson was just lying to me). To get one that syncs with the computer would also be at least $200USD. My dad does not want to own a cell phone.
3) A PDA. In Taiwan, the low-end, basic PDA (I was thinking something along the lines of a Palm Z22) is extinct. Could of course handle all imaginable addressbook and syncing needs with ease, but they all were these super-duper hi-res screen multi-tasking monster machines with GPS. (I got laughed at when I asked if they carried a "basic PDA without GPS".) We were thinking about it, since it would be possible to download US maps onto it and use it here, but the price tag was at *least* $250USD, but mainly $300 and up. I have never used a GPS, and could not figure out how to use my uncle's while in Taiwan, all menus being in Chinese.

So we get back, and along comes my good friend April who has just upgraded to a nice Palm Pilot and isn't using her trusty Sony Clie PEG-S320 anymore. (I actually used to own one myself, but some punk in Beijing pickpocketed it.) She was nice enough to give her old one to me, and I figured I'd see if I could make some use of it, and did some research into viewing and inputting Chinese on an English Palm OS. It was surprisingly easy to do!

1) Install CJKOS. Get the right one for your Palm OS version. The Sony PEG-S320 (Sony has long since discontinued their PDA line and this was one of their earlier models) runs Palm 4.0. Lots of versions floating around but this one is available from reputable Asian viewer / input software website NJStar. Free demo, $28USD after that, not sure about details of the license. Allows you to view Chinese and input using the Zhuyin method. There's a fake handwriting input where you can write the Chinese character on the screen (not where you usually input English text) but it doesn't convert into digital Chinese text - it just saves it as your chicken scribble verbatim, which syncs as gibberish.

2) If you want to get fancy, install PenPower for Palm after installing CJKOS. $60 for demo. The demo sucks - it expires after 100 characters (it took me like 10 minutes to reach this limit), and then the $60 is per user, per computer. So if you ever upgrade your computer or PDA, you have to dish out another $60. This is a really easy-to-use handwriting input program though - you write Chinese on the screen (not where you usually input English text) and it converts it into digital Chinese text.

3) I have still yet to try PalmDragon Chinese Input. I think you also need CJKOS for this. There is no English documentation at all, and I can't even find any Chinese instructions. Yargh. Will need dad to help me with this. $30 after some sort of trial period, I think.

Well, at least now we know it is possible to input and view Chinese on a PDA running an English Palm OS! If I were to get my dad a new Palm PDA with a nicer color screen, and pay for all the necessary software again, it would still be cheaper than any of the options available in Taiwan. I suppose one could say that I *could* just get the fancy PDA with the GPS, but with my dad's needs, more isn't necessarily better - he wouldn't be using half the functions available. As it is, he's only interested in the addressbook, which is 25% of the PDA's major functions. I'm pleasantly surprised he's even inclined to learn how to use a PDA to begin with! :)

Online-wise, I've been out of commission for a few days. My 3-year-old workhorse of a laptop's power cord overheated, minorly burned my thumb, then spit out a spark, freaking me out enough to unplug it at once and to not use the computer again until replacements came [ pic of hole in cord ]. So, in backup (quite the understatement - really, just to fulfill minor internet surfing and chatting abilities so I wouldn't go through withdrawal symptoms), I have been on my brother's 7-year-old mini laptop.

This is a laptop that not even my mom wants to use, it would freeze up so much whenever she used it. Strangely, it works well enough for me, only hating me when I remove devices such as USB printers or wireless cards from it. It's super-cute and super-portable, as the CD-ROM and diskette drive(!!!) are mounted on an external thingy, and sporting a  12.1" TFT LCD 800 x 600 x 16M screen; PENTIUM 3(!!!!!), 450MHz, 64 whopping MEGABYTES of RAM, 6 whopping GB of hard drive, Win 98 SE. How did my bro live on this thing for 6 years?!

When was the last time you saw these specs? And did you laugh in disbelief looking at them just now? :)

The battery life and fan quietness are way better than my big loud workhouse though. Sigh. I really am glad I actually had internet access. I'm grateful for the backup, but I am also pretty glad to be putting that thing back in its case for the next time [knocking on wood!] ...

---------------

I did contemplate briefly just upgrading to a new laptop, going for about $600 these days after rebates. However, my biggest fear was Windows Vista and how everything's still catching up to be compatible with it. This has got to be the first time I've ever been scared to upgrade. Are my fears unfounded? Am I just an old fogey who is reluctant to change? Anyone out there running Vista yet?

---------------

My dad's good friend, a Buddhist monk, is visiting Houston sometime in the next couple months. He asked if we could help order a load of mp3 players for him and other monks overseas. I'll give you three guesses as to WHICH mp3 player the BUDDHIST MONK requested:

A) the iPod series
B) the Creative ZEN series
C) the Sandisk Sansa

Ha ha. Get it? GET IT?!?!? I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but OK, being on my computer again and being able open more than 3 Firefox tabs at once is getting to me here, forgive me.

So my dad instructs me to order the load o' stuff, AND gives me the green light to take one out and figure it out so I can show the monk how to use it. Actually, this monk is already pretty tech savvy (he is the TECHNOmonk!) as he told me he chose one of the models for its line-in capabilities, but hey, I am not going to look a gadget box in the eye and say, "No, I will not open you and play with you"! I believe that I don't have an addictive personality but have an absolute weakness for shiny new electronic toys (yet I am reluctant to upgrade to Vista). This has got to be as expensive if not more so than any drug addiction ...

---------------

OMG IT FEELS SO GOOD TO BE BLOGGING AGAIN!!!!!!

OMG. Sw33t!

I always thought us Asians were the most corrupt people on the planet. Now, I realize that greed is universal. :)

Some of you may remember the tragic death of my beloved Canon Ixy Digital 50 (aka Powershot SD300). Well, it technically was not a complete and utter "death" since it still takes pictures - the only thing that's really "dead" is the LCD screen. For most digital camera users though, this is a huge cripple, in relative inconvenience and also because nearly all the settings are set via LCD.

It did seem a pity that it was just sitting around, and I remembered that younger bro had been wanting a digicam. So today I called him up: "Yo bro, want a free digital camera with a broken screen?" "YEAH! SURE!!"  Although younger bro is a whiz with everything TV-station-related, this is his first-ever digicam, and on top of that, it has no screen. Time to make sure it's as easy to operate as possible!

I learned a few things today. I learned how to reset the camera to its factory defaults (after powering on, hold down Menu for at least 5 seconds, go Right one, hit Set to select OK). I learned how to study menu diagrams to set the video settings by trial and error. I learned that I can at least change the time and date and format the SD card via the easy-to-use CameraWindow software (thank goodness), which can also be set to download pics automatically upon connection (major points for ease-of-use here!).

How many of you are like me, and take for granted that all the included software is downloadable online? I usually trash the CD after installation thinking that a simple online search would suffice for a future re-install. As it turns out, the easy-to-use CameraWindow software is ONLY ON THE DISK and NOT available for download. Of course I'd tossed that long ago; heck, I tossed the disk for my new Canon Powershot SD600 pretty much right out of the box. (To see the sad collection of downloadable software on the Canon site, go here and click on "Drivers / Software".)

There ARE 3rd-party solutions - one attractive solution is GetCanon!, a nice small program which seems to do everything except let you change the time/date or load up automatically after connecting your camera. Another option is hitting up a fellow Canon point 'n shoot camera owner (I can count 7 off the top of my head). Someone's gotta have the Solutions Disk!

I decided I wanted to learn some Flash animation. So I hit up this great Flash tutorial online and started whacking away. Here's the example I was trying to emulate:

... which I thought was boring, so here's my version. (You need sound to fully "appreciate" my work of art here.)

Not sure why the screams are off. They're not supposed to start before you hit the button, and they're certainly not supposed to be continuing after her untimely demise.

*Update: I've figured out how to stop the annoying screaming-upon-pageload, but I can't figure out how to cut the screaming short after the squish. Hmm.

Lesson learned: just because I had a hassle-free experience purchasing from an online merchant 6 months ago does not mean that I should trust them again for other purchases without checking ResellerRatings.com first.

Turns out a merchant that I bought from a while back has been getting tons of "Very Dissatisfied" reviews as of late, but I hadn't checked. Well, at least I was able to cancel the order, and my credit card company is always on my side.

Still don't have my goodies though. Poop.

Starting January 2007, I will no longer shop at Best Buy.

Well, I think I have a $50 gift card still hanging around somewhere. I suppose I'll spend that, but that's it.

It's gonna take me a few weeks to get used to writing "2007" or "07" at the end of dates now.

Hope the coming year is good for you all, in stepping closer to realizing your goals and dreams, and in keeping safe and healthy.

I'm spending the day at my parents' house in front of the TV, setting up a Logitech Harmony 659 universal remote (my gift to them, fulfilling the geeky curiosity in me). It's supposed to be really easy to setup. I am always scared whenever something is advertised as "really stupidly simple for dummies" to set up, cuz if I can't figure it out, that means *I* am stupid and dumb. It NEVER goes smoothly for me ... been at it now for 2 hours and counting. This is gonna be so worth it, though - my parents have a bucket of 5 remotes that I will hopefully be replacing. (I think I'm the only one who is proficient at the use of all the remotes in a somewhat harmonious manner.)

Big juicy thanks to Dean (aka the L337 case-modding-revolution leader EnVaDoR aka the BillSplit mastermind) for upgrading my dasBlog! And continuing to graciously host my insanity that is iHaTePiNk year after year! I would kiss his feet, but he ain't within feet-kissing distance (fortunately for him probably, haha)! :)

In a fit of frustration over hating opening a billion chat clients to chat with friends, and with a bad experience with the free version of Trillian crashing my comp, I was on the prowl for another all-in-one chat program. I happened upon Meebo, and setup was seriously so easy I HAD to try it out.

And my first impression: oh, how I heart thee, Meebo! Nothing to install! A clean, cute interface! Sign in once and get signed in to my accounts on ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and GoogleTalk all at once!

A few details that I have yet to iron out, ie. making my display icon uniform across chat clients, making sure Chinese fonts are supported, and figuring out how the chat histories are saved. Nothing major though. I am mucho grateful for the convenience of the service.

They don't seem to support Skype, but methinks I'll be keeping that on for my internet telephony needs anyhoo.

Not yet on my buddy list? If you know me, you can e-mail me with your screen name, and we can waste time / stay up way past our bedtimes together! :P

There is a slight delay in the posting of tonight's segment due to er, technical difficulties, if you will.

 

 (or download the YouTube-logo-less version here, WMV, 39secs, 2.2MB)

-----

There are few things I will cry about, and I am determined that the loss of my Rebel XT shall not be one of them. It is, after all, replaceable. I could upgrade to a Rebel XTi, but I have had the chance to play with one, and the miniscule differences don't convince me to get the newer model. Btw, I love the Japanese names of these cameras. :P

As seen on Alex King: if you have a blog, you can get a free "pro" Zooomr account, which gives you 25GB of space. You have to host at least one pic on their site, so I picked a nice juicy Engrish pic from Taiwan (taken with my camera whose LCD was already broken, btw):

One of the unwanted souvenirs I returned with from Taiwan was a broken digital camera. My beloved Canon IXY Digital 50 that I bought in Japan (known as the Canon Powershot SD300 here) dropped just one foot onto tile floor in a moment of excitement over stinky tofu. The LCD promptly went all white with some weird blacked-out areas, but the camera still could take pictures and movies. But without the LCD, you can't preview your pictures after you take them, and you can't change settings. To fix it would have cost 3600 NTD (about $112 USD). It mostly doesn't make sense to fix electronics nowadays ...

I headed to Best Buy only because I had been given a Best Buy gift card, as that would help offset some of the costs in getting a new point 'n shoot. My choices came down to the Fujifilm Z3 and the Canon Powershot SD600. Eric Cheng previously made a similar comparison between the Fujifilm Z1 and the Canon Powershot SD400, which are predecessors of the ones I was looking at today.

Things I Care About	Fujifilm Z3	Canon Powershot SD600
Color	PINK!!!! AIEEE!!! (exclusive to Best Buy, actually) :)	Silver :|
Design	Totally stylin' :)	Nice, but the Z3 is still nicer :|
Viewfinder	LCD viewfinder only :|	Both optical and LCD viewfinder :)
Brand Loyalty	My first love (camera-wise) was a Fuji :)	I've had great experiences with Canon :)
Accessory Re-purchase	Would have to buy all new accessories (xD picture cards, which ppl report problems with, and new Li-ion batteries) :( (though I'd probably be able to recoup some costs by eBaying some of the old stuff off)	Could re-use all my old SD cards and batteries :)
Fast Startup Time?	Yes! :)	Yes! :)
Ability to Take Pics in Low Light Sans Flash	up to ISO 1600!! :))	up to ISO 800! :)
Movies with Sound?	Yes! :)	Yes! :)
Battery Charging	The battery has to be charged in the camera sitting in the cradle, meaning that there would be times when I wouldn't be able to take pics if I wanted to! :(	Battery has separate charger :)
Continuous Drive Mode (aka Holding down the Button and Having the Camera Keep Taking Pics)	Super slow :( I think it's way slower than advertised!	Reliably fast :)
User Friendliness	Annoying menu interface :(	A menu interface that I'm used to and is relatively easy to navigate through :)
Price (Best Buy, 12/03/06)	$200 :) (lower if you do a pricematch with BestBuy.com)	$250 :| (lower if you do a pricematch with BestBuy.com)
Chances of Finger Blocking Lens	VERY HIGH :(	Very low :)
Final Impulse Buy Excuses	But but but it's PINK! AND SO STYLIN!! And a portion of the proceeds goes to the National Breast Cancer Foundation!!! :)))))	It's reliable! :)

[ dpreview's side-by-side of these cameras ]

Well I took the [PINK!!!!!] Fuji home and took one look at it and had to take it back.

The dealbreaker: there was no tripod socket mount hole thingy. Everyone knows that I'm a dork and I carry my mini-tripod around at all times! :P

So, I went back and exchanged it for the Canon SD600. Function wins again in the end.

The Fujifilm Z3 press release on DPReview states that this is a camera marketed towards ladies (which might explain why the lens is placed all the way to one side - maybe women like to take pics one-handed, and with long nails?). Man, I nearly went for it merely based on its awesome pinkness ... aiyaa ...

Did you know that at BestBuy.com, you can actually shop for cameras BY COLOR? Hahahahah!

... One of my fondest memories of my Canon IXY Digital 50 was while purchasing it in Japan. You can bargain with the employees at the department stores there. That's where Hiroko said to T, "Go find us the employee who looks mentally weakest so we can bargain more easily." She was not satisfied with what T brought back, but it was still okay :)

We just got a new printer. Whenever I am setting up things like this, I install software, plug it in, hook up the USB cable, just like the instructions say. I'm a good girl. I do things step by step, in order, instruction manual in hand, never veering off the path, for fear of screwing something up.

And then there's my dad. He'd just received the printer and asked me if I could come over and install it. Over the phone, I told him he should be able to install the thing himself no problem, as long as he "followed the instructions". I forgot that my dad is a male of the type that is allergic to printed instructions. He attempted something, but aborted his mission along the way. Who knows what he did. Now I have this hulking machine angrily whirring at me, loud as hell, and not printing anything.

The thing that is frustrating me the most is really how tiny the instructions are for what to do with the toner cartridge. "Break off this tab and pull out the tape", "if it's not printing, make sure you've broken off the tab and pulled out the tape". There is a teeny tiny diagram, that looks nothing like my cartridge, trying to illustrate this. I see that parts have already been broken off. I am praying my dad didn't just go to town and break off the wrong parts!

I'm looking in the trash for evidence of his activities. Nothing. Darn it all, today was trash day!

[ sulk sulk sulk ]

Well, at least the power has come back on. I was like, "Oh, let me help set up the printer! Oh, I can't turn it on." "Oh, let me heat up something to eat! Oh wait, I can't." "Oh, let me get the address and directions to that place! Oh, I have no internet." "Oh, the landline phone's ringing! But I have to run downstairs to pick up because that's the only one in the house that isn't a cordless." "Oh, let me blog my frustrations to the world! Oh, I can't ... "

s: What did you use here to protect your camera's LCD screen?
me: Oh, it's just a WriteRight for PDAs that I sliced up and put on there. I'm pretty rough with my cameras.
s: I can see that. (pointing) I mean, you've even got food on your camera!
me: (!!!) I do?!?! OMG hahah I'm so embarrassed! (runs off to wipe noodles off camera)

As s said, rule #1: try not to use your camera as a plate.

From: P. Chen
Subject: order some stuffs
To: Chen Caroline
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 24 Oct 2006 17:40:13.0078 (UTC) FILETIME=[7588A360:01C6F793]

==============

OK. So I proceed to whoop out all my money-saving smarts and online search-savvy and get to work.

Compactflash card, check. Toner, easy enough. "Small disk" - by this my dad means one of those USB flash disk thingies - and sure, there are tons of choices. Fast ones, slow ones, slim ones, fat ones. And then I come across ... CUTE ONES!!! AIEEEEEE!!!


Not sure how I feel about the cuteness level when you actually need to use those critters:


And of course, like anything else I want really badly, you can't seem to get these cute ones in the US (well, I haven't found them yet)!!! POUT!!!

Yeah, if possible, I like to get cute-ified gadgets for my dad. He doesn't complain, rather I think he likes it. It's always funny to hear the word "cute" come out of a guy's mouth, let alone a guy who's almost 60. :)

Today I was messing with a friend's Olympus Stylus 300 whose lens would not retract when it was supposed to, and thus could not properly close / shut down and also would not turn on at all (despite having a full battery pack and a memory card that had no known problems) - I must have been mindlessly fiddling with it for at least 30 minutes while we were chatting.

I was actually just suggesting he get a spiffy new digicam for around $100, when I started frustratedly mashing on the "Quick View / Playback" button a whole buncha times.

And all of a sudden, in astonishment: "WHOA ... it's retracting!! WHOA!!!! Holy !@#$ ..."

Apparently that was the "reset" button??!?!?! (I'm flipping through the instruction manual, and I can't find this in there ... might I have discovered something undocumented?! Can anyone out there confirm if this is across the board for Olympus cams?)

Also by pure fluke I discovered that this Olympus camera uses double-clicking of this very same button for quick playback of images while in shooting mode (this IS documented, but seems uncommon). Hahaha. Weird. I'd never used a digicam that needed double-clicking. Any other cameras out there that do that? Does Olympus still do that?

My friend has dubbed me as having "CPR skillz" meaning "ComPuteR skillz", but perhaps in this case it means me breathing life into his left-for-dead camera.

Yeah. Mashing angrily on buttons. Mad skillz have I. :P

I recently embarked on a project to find an alternative to labelling my slideshow DVDs with regular paper labels, which have been messing up on me and don't play well in my slot-loading disc drive.

My criteria:
1) Not too costly: this eliminated options that would require purchasing of new hardware, such as a Lightscribe burner and media (admittedly cool-looking results, though!).
2) In color (again, eliminating the Lightscribe).

After doing tons of research, the best solution seemed to be:

1) Buy white-top printable discs. (Can be all the way to the hub or not.)

There are plenty of white-top discs out there, and it seems that Taiyo Yuden brand DVD-R discs were best (both most popular and seemingly most reliable). I ended up getting some Ritek Ridata white-top printable DVD-Rs, they seemed to rank up there too. Also, there was much discussion in forums and on ResellerRatings.com as to whether vendors were selling the "real" thing, as opposed to knock-off brand name media. I went with SuperMediaStore.com.

2) Buy an inkjet printer that has a special tray that allows direct printing onto the disc.

Infringes slightly upon criterion #2. Many of Epson's inkjet printers do this; the cheapest was the Epson R220 at about $100, which isn't too too bad, but I already have an inkjet printer (a more than adequate one, too - the Canon Pixma IP6600D - see above), and I don't like to buy stuff when I only have one brand to choose from (not an early adopter!).

So I decided on my next best option (again, after much research):

1) Buy white-top printable discs.

2) Buy thin clear glossy labels, reportedly much thinner than regular labels, thus reducing chances of mess-up by a LOT.

Them labels were a PAIN to apply. Bubbles showed up really easily, I tried doing things I'd read in forums like softening up the plastic with a hairdryer, applying it with a straightedge, etc. Ugh. Not as easy as it seemed. I was getting sick of messing them up again and again.

So! In all the forums I'd read, I remembered reading how Canon Pixma IP6600D printers outside of N. America all had a CD tray for direct on-disc printing. I did some research, and voila! Buy the right tray for your printer, set up the printer with a combination of button-pressing, and start printin' on those discs!

I'm such a geek. I'm "modding" my printer so I can directly print on discs! Hee hee!

After all this research (basically, countless hours on VideoHelp's forums), I always feel like I know way more than I ever really wanted to know. Oh well ... this geeky knowledge will be useful to someone at some point? I sometimes feel like I'm just going to meet a guy one day who'll already know all this stuff and think I'm stupid to have to look all of it up. And will think I'm weird for wanting to know. Oh well, comes with the territory, he'll have to deal with it. :)

So I've been continuing to look for my next cell phone with my desired features and at a reasonable price (on the condition that I renew my contract for 2 years). Well, I finally found the phone of my dreams.

The Samsung t609: has bluetooth, the headset jack is separate from the charging port, and may be the only Samsung phone that CAN access the calendar while talking without interrupting the conversation.

And well, T-Mobile took it off the upgrade program 2 days ago. Curses ...

Just one of the many letdowns these past few days.

Update: Thank you, tmobile.com, for having all the user manuals in one place (under "Support"), and thus being even more complete than that stinky samsung.com website. Thank you for having user manuals with an "Options During a Call" section. Now, thanks to you, I now know that among your current selection of Bluetooth phones, the Samsung t519, t609, t629, and t719 can all access the calendar during a phone call without interrupting the call.

And the search continues ...

Today I learned WAYYY more about RAM than I ever cared to.

A friend in town wanted to upgrade her laptop's RAM. I'd never done it, but my dad's done it, so how hard could it be? Her laptop is a hand-me-down from a relative. We decided we'd take out the existing RAM, bring it to the store, and get help finding the right match.

Time spent trying to find a small screwdriver to unscrew the RAM compartment: > 30 mins
Time spent opening RAM compartment and taking RAM out: < 1 min
Time spent finding a local store with a good deal on RAM: > 15 mins
Time spent driving to stores: > 20 mins
Time spent on phone consulting computer friends about the RAM (thanks EnVaDoR!): > 30 mins
Time spent asking knowledgeable-looking reps what the heck we needed and getting no concrete response: > 1.5 hrs

Final answer: must find a stick of DDR2 PC2-3200 (400MHz) RAM for notebooks, which is not commonly available at most stores, and must be ordered online. Damn those things are expensive.

Hey Samsung! Get a real website and get some real customer service, will ya?

Sigh. In my continuing search for my next cell phone (and I'm willing to be patient), I was hoping to get some info on a particular Samsung phone. So, I headed over to samsung.com, navigated to the phone page, and tried to download the user guide. No such luck, just kept getting an error. I wanted to see the exact layout of the phone (see my requirements here) and so far, only user guides have been able to give me that answer.

My dissatisfaction from the Samsung website stems from:
- navigation in drop-down menus does not contain all phones
- user guide was not available for the phone I was interested in
- was difficult to find an e-mail link to report the problem
- when I finally found some sort of e-mail form, the "submit" button was off the page and the window did not allow for scrolling(!)

Frustrated, I actually picked up the phone and dialed their 1-800 number to try to report these issues. There was no phone menu option to speak about web issues, so I went to "phone sales". A young 20-something dude picked up, and I swear, he might as well have added "you idiot" to the end of each sentence he muttered.

Ah yes. With each brush with sh!tty customer service reps, I do learn a lot, and can try to apply it to my own practice. So I guess I should thank them for these free lessons.

Last but not least, the Engrish is another reason why it's hard to take Samsung's website seriously:

My mom has a cell phone just for emergencies. She doesn't use it much, so she has trouble remembering how to do stuff with it. Today, she asked me yet again how to check her voicemail. Later in the day, I thought I'd check up on her:

Me: Mom, I just wanna make sure that you remember how to check your voicemail.
Mom: Oh okay, when you see the little glasses sign on the screen, you push and hold down the one key, where there's another little glasses sign.
Me [brief pause where I'm figuring out what she's talking about]: ... Oh ... uh ... right! OK, very good!

Some of you know that I performed some minor surgery on my trusty laptop before, upgrading the CD burner to an internal DVD burner. Everything went smoothly, thank goodness. But today is a huge milestone -

The left touchpad button is gimpy now. I have to hit it EXACTLY in the middle or to the left. Hitting it to its right just makes it go in, but something sounds broken, and it doesn't actually select anything. :(

Will have to see if there is a viable minor surgery solution ...

YOU CAN'T DIE ON ME NOW!!! NOT AFTER ALL WE'VE BEEN THROUGH!!! I WON'T LEAVE YOU BEHIND!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!

</end overly dramatic response to situation>

I use Digital Image Mover (DIM) to copy pics from my flash cards to my computer. I have it set to copy the files over while automatically renaming them to be YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS_ihatepink_filename, according to the internal photo info on when it was taken. Well, today it gave me the weirdest error message:

Copying from h:\DCIM\234CANON\IMG_3412.JPG to C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Pictures\1969\12-1969\31Dec1969\1969-12-31_18-00-00_ihatepink_IMG_3412.JPG
ERROR->h:\DCIM\234CANON\IMG_3412.JPG (The system cannot find the path specified)

So basically, something went wiggy and told my computer that the pic on the card was taken on December 31st, 1969, at 6pm.

Must be some Y2K remnant thingy. ;)

Today I learned that Hasbro has made it easy for you to print your own Monopoly money! Who'da thunk? :)

Today's the last day of my billing cycle and it seems that I now have 4 minutes left before going over my monthly allotment. AND it seems that my phone has just been ringing non-stop off the hook ever since 7 am. Doh!

SO: friends, if you must contact me today, do not be offended if I do not pick up. Leave a voice message, I can check it from any phone without using my minutes, thus lessening my overages (what, it's like 50 cents per minute or something? Oof ...). OR you can e-mail me and get a faster response. :) (clarification: I am of course picking up all patient calls!)

Oh, and speaking of cell phones, yesterday I went to a T-Mobile store and played around with the cell phones I was lookin' at in my last post. I was there for a good hour. Well, I discovered another couple functions that I need. I don't know. Neither of them are looking good to me right now. Maybe I'll just wait until I go to Asia later this year and pick a little sumpin' sumpin' up there - they'll have really cute phones there for sure! :)

And it's that time again to renew my contract. T-mobile now gives you more incentive to renew for 2 years  by giving you a bigger discount on a new phone. Though my basicker-than-basic non-cute Nokia 6010 has served me well since my beloved Sony Ericsson t610 got stolen by a fat black woman, I've been shoppin' and comparin'. The phone must:

- have Bluetooth connectivity (my Bluetooth headset is eagerly awaiting "reconnection" with a suitable mate ... )
- have a calendar (I use this for daily scheduling of patients as well as social engagements)
- not be a Motorola (Motorola's user interface is not intuitive to me)
- cost less than $100 after rebates
- be somewhat cute (why do anything if it ain't cute? heehee. J/k. This is a total bonus.)

My finds so far:

The Nokia 6103 vs. the Samsung t509

	Nokia 6103	Samsung t509
Bluetooth?	yes	yes
Calendar?	yes, familiar with setup	yes, unsure of capabilities though
Hello Moto?	no	no
Price	$49.99 after rebates	$49.99 after rebates
Cuteness	not so much	dude, sweet!
Can charge and talk on wired headset simultaneously?	yes	no
Can access calendar while talking?	yes	no
Mobiledia Reviews	here	here
Official Phone Info	here, user guide here	here, user guide here

Do you guys have any experience with either of these phones in these aspects? Any votes?

Updated thoughts: it may sadden you to know that the tie-breaker might lay in the fact that the Nokia has a place to loop a wrist strap through, allowing for customizable cuteness. Dang. I was so hooked on the look of the Samsung though! C'mon Samsung, there's gotta be something that'll make me choose you ... Update to the update: after playing with the phone at the store, it DOES have a wrist strap. :)

More updated thoughts (after going to the store and playing with the phones):
- I need to be able to access and view my calendar WHILE in the midst of a call. The Samsung t509 does not allow access to the calendar while calling; the Nokia 6103 in the store didn't have a SIM card so I couldn't try it out, but my current Nokia 6010 allows me to do so (as did my Sony Ericsson t610 before), and so I would assume they would continue to have this function available.

- I don't NEED this function so much as I would strongly PREFER this function ... I like being able to talk on my phone while charging. I like using whatever method to talk on it that I want, be it by holding the handset to my head (least commonly used), or using a hands-free headset. Both phones have Bluetooth, so I could use a Bluetooth headset to talk while charging, BUT in the event my Bluetooth headset craps out, I wouldn't have the option to plug in a wired headset because the headset SHARES the same plug-in port as the charger. BOOOO. My basicker-than-basic Nokia 6010 allows this, albeit it does not have Bluetooth. I just don't like relying on things that need to be charged and can run out of battery when you most need to use them. Update: just found out through looking through the Nokia 6103 User Manual that you CAN talk and use the wired headset at the same time. The T-Mo rep at that store didn't know what they were talking about, AND refused to show me the retail box when I asked! >:(

Preliminary course of action:
Hold off on the contract renewal and let myself go month to month until some phone really catches my eye and meets my reqs; wait until I go to Asia later this year and get myself something really cool (~drool...).

Love on the internet is never easy to find. But we may have a candidate here, folks!

Yup. It's happening. My friends are starting to have kids.

Annie's sister Stella and I have been plotting Annie's baby shower for the last month and a half, and basically what happened was I did the slideshow and emcee duties, and Stella did everything else. Considering the work load, I got off way easy. :)


If you look carefully, you'll find me in this lil' snippet. :) (WMV, 47secs, 3MB)

Some Factoids

Total DVD Running Time: about 4.25 minutes; the shortest yet
Total Hours Spent: 2-3 wks, in my spare time
Number of Major Revisions: One, while trying to re-organize the story layout. And then millions of minor tweaks to get it juuuuuuuust right.
Number of Pics I Personally Took that Made it In: 5 (woohoo!)
Programs Used:

• Adobe Premiere 6.5 (I finally forced myself to learn how to use the native title tool)
  
• Sonic MyDVD (for authoring to DVD and making a pretty animated menu screen)

Song Used (linked to Amazon, where they have the song clip):

• Love Of My Life - Jim Brickman feat. Michael W. Smith

I just accidentally pressed ctrl-4 ... then I tried ctrl-1, -2, -3 ...

You can switch quickly between the tabs in your Firefox browser with this, ctrl-1 being the first tab (leftmost), ctrl-2 the second tab from the left, and so on. SWEET!!

Yes, I get excited over keyboard shortcuts. I love 'em.

If you don't know what Firefox is ... well, go get it. :) It's basically a replacement for Internet Explorer. I never thought I would dig the tabbed browsing experience, but I am totally a fan now!

OK, so I got pretty good at doing slideshows with Adobe Premiere, but my inner slideshow geek had its way and I wanted to try out different slideshow programs for different projects. I've tried Sony Vegas and Photodex Proshow Gold as well. For now, I've gone back to Premiere.

For the latest slideshow effort for a friend, I have been collaborating with her sister to get the pictures so we can surprise her with the slideshow at her upcoming party. The last words from my friend's sister were: "Oh man, look at her hair! She's SO gonna kill you for putting those pictures in. You GOTTA use these."

Hmm. Haven't done a slideshow yet where my life was at risk. How exciting! :)


Here's a snippet from the slideshow I did for a temple charity event earlier this month (WMV, 1min 30secs, 5.2Mb).

Total DVD Running Time: 5mins 8secs
Total Hours Spent: One month, in my spare time.
Number of Major Revisions: None. But billions of minor tweaks and adjustments.
Programs Used:

• Sony Vegas 5
  
• Sonic MyDVD (for authoring to DVD and making a pretty animated menu screen)

Song Used: a super cool melodical rendition of the Da4 Bei1 Zhou4 (I don't know the proper English translation - literally, "Lots 'n Lots of Compassion Chant").

Several of my friends have switched to more energy-efficient lighting, as electricity costs climb to about 18 cents per kWh. Boooo. Well, I've been reluctant to make the switch, as my impression of fluorescent lighting is that of nasty cold light that takes forever to reach its nasty brightest point.

Well, call me converted, cuz I tried some today, and damn I love these things! They're surprisingly brighter than their regular counterparts and the lighting feels pretty nice. And they're instant on!! That's it! I'm replacing everything in the apartment with these things!

In a previous post, I marvelled at what retouching could do for a photo. So I tried it out for myself.

I couldn't find a decent bikini pic of myself, so I ganked a recently-posted one of sillyvibe. Hope you don't mind, girl! So I went at it, trying to use the cloning tool and healing brush and color adjustments and all that. I was going for fuller lips, glossier hair and skin, an extra ounce or two in the boobs and butt, an ounce or two less in the abs ...

But then I gave up, and realized that the art of retouching is a very personal one, that each should seek their own style, and that I should stop emulating others.

And so, I ended up with a masterpiece that improves upon the pic subtly, yet dramatically. Yes, sillyvibe should be cringing in fear. :) Drum roll please! (Caution: not exactly work safe)

I'm totally just taking this straight from sillyvibe cuz I thought it was SO cool (warning: no nudity, but lots of scantily clad, strategically-covered bodies, so isn't entirely work-safe):

This is the 2nd time one of my lesser-used e-mail accounts has been hacked into by a MySpace member for use to sign up for a MySpace ... space. So, I decided to log in to "my" account to see what the bastard is like. This is one of the thread e-mails he has exchanged with his "homies". (Warning: Colorful language. Parental guidance suggested.)

Today it was 3. On top of my camera stuff, and leftovers from dinner. Heavy!!

It's tough being the family's IT girl. Especially when my only "qualifications" consist of knowing how to do internet searches, being able to read through possibly technical jargon, and being capable of following instructions.

"It should be easy for you, right?" - famous last words uttered by bro

I need to be more organized. I have a useable calendar thingy in my cell phone but ... how do you guys stay organized on a day-to-day basis? I just feel overwhelmed a lot of times. So far, keeping appointments is not a problem, but I feel like I have trouble staying focused on what I need to do. (This article calls it the "interruption-driven lifestyle" ... that is SO me! I have like zero attention span.) I need some way to have a to-do list that will help me be productive and get stuff checked off. On top of all this, I also have a major problem with procrastination ...

Every time I see a handheld organizer / Palm Pilot, I start drooling (partially because of the geek factor), but then I wonder if I'd be better off just upgrading to a better phone with a built-in organizer.

I've never made the switch to MS Outlook. (Yes, still using Eudora.) Does switching to Outlook, with all its syncing capabilities, make overall life organization better?

Or maybe I should just stick with a regular paper agenda? And the ol' keep-a-fire-under-my-butt method?

What works for you?

Yes, I am a fan of hands-free headsets. People who have been passengers in my car are undoubtedly fans of me using hands-free headsets as well.

Courtesy of the 99cent store (begrudgingly) and Logitech (yay for their Flexloop thingy!).

An excuse for posting pictures of myself, really. :)

As promised, a glimpse into the wedding slideshow that I did for a friend's wedding. Again, I couldn't have done it without a and c, mucho muuuucho gracias to them!

Clips from Wedding Slideshow (Windows Media Video, 2mins 11secs, 4MB, low quality)


Some Factoids

Total DVD Running Time: about 10.5 minutes (which in my opinion is OK; longer would tax my short attention span)
Total Hours Spent: err ... I tried to keep track, but eventually gave up
Number of Major Revisions: Two. One, the day before going live. Two, while splicing same-day footage into it for the reception.
Programs Used:

• Adobe Premiere 6.5
• Windows Movie Maker (for titles - haven't yet figured out how to make titles in Premiere; also for grabbing video footage from camcorder)
• Sonic MyDVD (for authoring to DVD and making a pretty animated menu screen)

Songs Used (linked to Amazon, where they have song clips):

• Best of My Love - The Emotions
• What I Like About You - The Romantics
• Linus and Lucy theme - as performed by George Winston (?) [ free download (jazzier version) ]
• Valentine - Martina McBride

Where I Purchased Music for the Slideshow: Sony Connect, 99 cents per track
How I Converted the Proprietary Format Over to Something Usable: HiMD Renderer
Chinese Consultant: my mom
Program Used to Create This Glimpse: Sonic Foundry Videofactory 1.0 (now known as Sony Vegas Movie Studio. I find it ironic that after all the bells and whistles of Premiere, I still come back to Videofactory's easy interface. It's hella old but I love this program.)
Did I Feel Rewarded After Completion of Project? HECK yeah!!!

Wow. A software feature request by lil' ol' me, honored in 56 minutes. Mark me impressed, and a bit stunned.

------------

To: support @ [ nospam ] FastStone.org
From: lil' ol' me
Subject: feature request for Faststone Image Viewer
Date: 12:29AM (PST) 3/29/2006

Hi Andrew,

I'm going thru putting in comments for lots of pics, and I was wondering if it would be possible to have a way to go to the next / previous comment through the keyboard. (If this is already possible then ignore this!) Currently, I type, stop, use mouse (touchpad in my case), aim, click, repeat. I guess optimally I'd like to type the comment, then hit a key or two to go to the next without my fingers having to leave the keyboard. Instinctively I want to hit return or tab then return. Tabbing currently makes the cursor tab over about half an inch, and return currently puts in a carriage return... which are both useful, so not sure how keyboard use could be integrated here.

Thanks!

Caroline :)

------------

Subject: Re: feature request for Faststone Image Viewer
From: "FastStone Soft"
To: "Caroline Chen, L.Ac."
Date: 01:25AM (PST) 3/29/2006

------------

And ... sho' 'nuf ... the hotkeys were added [ screenshot ]. Woo!

Neato! Thanks Andrew!

I feel so special, and useful. :)

Henry just informed me that on his computer running Chinese windows, the dates on my site show up in Chinese, and the calendar labels for Mon - Fri as well. Cool!

Please bear with me and the growing pains as I make the slow transition over to this new blog format and start tweaking with the layout (I really missed the pink!! HAHAHA). If you guys surf around and find any broken links, please let me know. Some of them I can't help (ie. links to non-ihatepink.com pages that no longer exist) but for internal links, I should be able to fix 'em. Much thanks in advance!

Yes, I finally made the wedding slideshow into something about which I can proudly say, "Yep, I made that." It only took oh, over a month since acquiring images from the couple. And most of the good work was done 48 hours before the deadline, after input from a totally non-geek friend. I already had misgivings about the flow of the slideshow (after watching it billions of times I still didn't like it that much - bad sign), but the input really made me think hard about the makings of a good slideshow. So instead of using all of Adobe Premiere's awesome cool effects, I kept it simple. Simple zooms and pans. Nothing fancy. Nothing to detract from the subject matter. The important part was to highlight the stars of the show, the bride and groom, not my technical prowess at Premiere. I lost track of that while working on it. I'm really glad I got back to basics before it was too late! Now I can watch the slideshow a billion times and still like it. That's a good sign. :)

I was also a "photographer" at the wedding. I was too nervous and didn't do too well. Lotsa duds. :( Pics that I'm actually proud of:

Normal group pic

After prompting everyone to go "AHH" :)

This is how Saturday went:

8:00am: Wake up, go to hair salon to take pictures of bride getting hair done
10:00am: Go back to bride's home, take pics of her getting makeup done
12:00pm: Head out to church
12:20pm: Realize that traffic sucks ass, call bride to warn her not to go same route, try to turn around and get where I need to be ... all while working on the slideshow in the car because I'm going 10 mph (yes and this is from the girl who refuses to talk on a cell phone while driving unless I have a hands-free headset! BAD Caroline!)
1:15pm: Finally get to the church, start getting pics and vids of bride and groom getting ready (bride beat me there despite leaving 30 mins after I did)
2:00pm - 2:45pm: Ceremony. c takes short vids from an aisle seat while I shoot stills from the back.
3:00pm - 3:30pm: I go and take group pics after handing off memory card 1 to c so he can start scanning thru it for slideshow candidates.
3:30pm - 5:00pm: c feeds pics and video into laptop; work on slideshow at church
5:00pm - 6:30pm: With c driving my car to the reception, I work on the slideshow in the car. a follows us in her car and experiences a flat tire; a stranger almost immediately helps her get the tire replaced (way faster than AAA or Honda Total Care!); we get back on the road within 15 mins. All this time I keep working while a takes over behind my wheel. I get the slideshow finished in Premiere before I run out of battery life (which sucks on my laptop).
6:30pm - 7:15pm: Export last file out of Premiere, author with Sonic MyDVD, burn.
7:15pm: Showtime!
7:29pm: Last frames of the slideshow play, which includes a shot of the couple's kiss. Some kid loudly proclaims, "Ewwwwww!"
7:30pm: Appreciative applause. Many compliments. I don't know who else, but I saw the groom's father dab at his eyes. I am the woman and c is the man. And we definitely couldn't have done it without a. 3 people seems to be about right for the number of people helping out with putting same-day footage into a slideshow, at least 1 of which needs to be familiar with whatever program you are using. :)

After the slideshow played, despite a 2-second hiccup where frames were dropped (didn't have time to preview and check for it before burning), I was so friggin' happy about it I wanted to like chest-bump someone. But um ... I've never done that before and I'm sure I would've just fallen all over myself in an uncoordinated mess. Plus, I'm a girl, and it's not wise to chest-bump males, especially if they're taken. And no girl in their right mind would chest-bump another girl. That's just gotta be really uncomfortable. So no chest-bump, but there was a high-five. :)

Being the nerd that I am, I have gone back to fix the dropped frames and tweak a few other things that I would have done differently had I had more time to really think about what I was doing. Minor tweaks. Overall, I am still super-satisfied with the product that we were able to churn out on a time crunch!! :))))

I was remarking to a how that if I'd had a boyfriend during the last 2 months, they would have surely split with me by now, being sick of me needing to spend gobs of time on the slideshow and just be sick of the "S" word in general. I think my friends have already had enough as it is. Sorry, guys! You'll all just have to see our kick-azz slideshow and then I think I may finally be able to get it out of my system. :)

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution.

In a fit of rage, I completely overhauled 3 weeks of work in the last 24 hours.

Now I can almost exhale.

Adobe Premiere, oh how I hate thee sometimes!

The fruits of my labor shall be worth it, though. Stay tuned for clips of my work.

The week in summary: Friday, my cell phone was stolen. Saturday, got a new SIM card activated and was back in business with my backup phone. Went to Crome to go clubbing (welcome back, Chris! I had fun but discovered later that other friends had been unfairly snubbed at the door, BOOOOO) and then to Mai's for late-night grub. Recovered from Saturday on Sunday. Monday: did my friends 'n family treatment sessions, and was granted a gourmet meal for me and a friend by Chef Hugh. Tuesday: met a friend's new dog.

And I got real up close and personal with greatness on Wednesday: I got invited to a Project Runway Finale viewing party downtown and just so happened to be standing in front of Chloe and her boyfriend, so I got a chance to chat with her a bit. (OK, keep in mind that I don't watch TV, so I only got barely acquainted with the the show earlier that day via website.) Obligatory "I saw / chatted with / shared breathing space with Chloe" pic here! Thanks Will for the hookup!

Perspective, perspective, it's really all about perspective.

There are so many things I should be thankful for, rather than whining about my sorry self.

I have patients who believe in my abilities to treat them.

It was just my cell phone that was stolen, not my laptop nor cameras nor wallet, plus no one was physically or emotionally traumatized by the incident.

I have friends and fam who I love and who love me and stuff. (Somehow the grammar doesn't sound quite right here ... oh well)

These listed in no particular order.

The week in pictures.

So I've gone and gotten the $19.99 SIM card replacement, and am back in action. Will have to input all of my phone numbers again ... manually ... since there is no bluetooth or infrared on this backup phone. Anyone have a bluetooth / infrared phone they can lend me so I can get the majority of my numbers back on my SIM card again without my fingers falling off? :)

So I've logged into my cell phone account online and am seeing that there HAS been activity on it in the past 18 hours when I haven't been able to find it. Yet, it's not like the person with my cell phone has been making international calls (to my relief) nor extravagant calls at all even (not that it would matter all that much with free nights and weekends anyway). Of the 31 calls, 28 were to the same number, each time 1 minute long, and clumped together in 1 minute increments. I called the number, and it was some hungover sounding black dude. 1 was a 1 minute call to a rather specialized clothing store on Richmond. One call was a 4-minute call to a black dude who, when asked if he remembers any calls from last night, replied, "Girl, I went out last night, so I got alotta calls!" And 1 was a 2-minute call here to the clinic! Which baffles me. Because on our caller ID here, there is no record of such a call.

So basically ... I'm piecing together an interesting picture of who has my phone right now. But the calling pattern is definitely weird (calling someone 8 times in a 20-minute time span).

Sigh.

As you may have noticed (well, you'd have to be color-blind and pretty much blind to not have), I've got a new look goin' on here. Infinite thanks to the infinite patience of my gracious webhost EnVaDoR, with whom I have exchanged at least 20 e-mails back and forth within a 12-hour period regarding "How do I ... ?" and "Why isn't ___ working?" and "Could I possibly ... ?"

New functionality:
- search my retardedededness
- add my azz to yer feedreader
- schnazzy calendar navigation
- neato categories for my ramblings

To do:
- slowly manually copy ye olde stuff into this new format
- git a pink layout all up in here!

Thank you for your patience whilst the site undergoes reconstruction!

Of course, when I need anything, it's hard to find, and ugly.

So I'm looking for a very specific and rarely used USB cable: an A/male to A/male cable*. Fine. I find some. But they're all ugly - coming in your default beige, white, or black. Is it too much for me to want such a cable that lights up? Apparently so - after an hour of stretching the power of Google, I'm giving up.

Yes, I am vain when it comes to my electronics.

*Your typical printer cable is an A/male to B/male, your typical extension cord is an A/male to A/female. Yes, there is an allusion to human anatomy with the male/female labels for these cables.

Stealing a link from Alex King here ... Guy Kawasaki: Effective E-mailing. This is just what I have been storing in the back of my head for the past 10 years (from when e-mail first started to get popular and through all its phases), but I got a few more excellent tips out of this article too.

So I'm not the only anal one out there on this subject. :)

EUREKAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! I HAVE EENTA-NET-UH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-------------

I've finally gotten off my arse and updated my HaTePiNkBLiNk! page with more of my photo albums and my camera info. Hurrah!

(Update 3/14/06: the HaTePiNkBLiNk! page has been replaced by a categories listing, and can be found in the navigation under Categories)

Gotta keep working on my patience.

---------------

My dad's funny. He heard my laptop play the Eudora new mail .wav (which I really love), and he immediately goes, "Hey, can I have that too?" He predominantly uses web mail, and unfortunately, Yahoo Messenger does not have such a pleasant sound built-in. Yes, if I reeeeeeally wanted to, I could make it work (or maybe not), but we settled on a guy singing "Yahooooooooo-oooo!" :) [ more nifty mail call .wavs ]

A recent e-mail:

"nothing much going on here today... wasn't scheduled to work, so i decided to catch up on your blogs instead of watching oprah. :)"

Wow. Elevated in rank on list-of-things-to-do-while-utterly-bored to the level of Oprah. Very flattered I am. :)

----------------

F * I * V * E MORE L O N G, AGONIZING DAYS UNTIL HIGH-SPEED INTERNET!! AUGGHHHHHHH!!!

I've moved into my new apartment! Nothing ultra-posh, but I love it! [ Hugh bringing me late-night tea and chocolate bars ]

I'm really a simple girl. I don't need much to be happy. All I need are my laptop, my camera, a high-speed internet connection, and all related cables to attach the above components to one another. :) (Does total value of components trump the number of components and thus make me high-maintenance? Hmmm ... )

So, in pursuit of a high-speed internet connection (I'm currently on dial-up right now - gasp!) I went to Best Buy to take advantage of the DSL promotion there. The sign-up system was getting hairy on me, so I had to call on one of the Best Buy monkeys to help me out. (I say this with frustration but with some degree of endearment, as I myself was once a Best Buy monkey.)

So, not expecting too much, I hailed one of them down.

He was kinda cute. He was efficient. He actually admitted when he didn't know stuff. He knew what he was talking about when he did open his mouth. He was super patient, waiting around to make sure that I completed my order smoothly for most of the process. He went back to check for the availability of a DSL modem for me - twice - not wanting me to go home empty-handed and thus wasting my time, and finally dug the elusive thing out from somewhere for me.

Did I mention he was cute?

He walked me and my DSL modem up to the front and he checked me out himself. He asked to see my driver's license to verify my credit card info (but was there more to that? hehe). Ensuing dialogue:

Me: Thank you so much for being so patient with this whole thing.
Cute Best Buy Boy: Sure, not a problem! Um, I don't mean to be nosy, but do you know David Chen?
Me: I have an uncle named David Chen ... there's probably a billion David Chens out there, eh?
CBBB: Oh OK, never mind, it's just that there's a David Chen at my school.
Me: (Thinking, "School? Does he mean university, or ... ??" while he patiently explains all the rebate forms to me.) Well, I don't mean to be nosy, but you look really young, yet you seem to know what you're doing around here.
CBBB: Oh, I just turned 18, but I've worked here for a while now.
Me: OK. Well thanks so much, [insert name of CBBB here according to name tag].

Damn. I was exchanging flirtatious banter with an 18-year-old. YARGH!

Damn he was cute though.

I lied. The Longhorn in me forced me to watch the game. And what a game it was.

Excuse me, do you have a minute, Vince?



The National Champion Texas Longhorns. I like the sound of that! Hook 'em Horns!!

PS - loved getting the cell phone msg / call after the game. All Longhorns be merry!

And speaking of beautiful things -



*tremble*

Yes, I get excited easily. C'mon stupid camera people, ship me my camera!!

In writing X'mas cards, I have been cursing my disorganization and not having all the physical addresses for my friends.

Enter the online whitepages. Scary stuff, yo.

With my new speakers (an upgrade to my laptop speakers on a budget!), I am now tuning in to Shoutcast (Digitally Imported's Deep House station, to be exact). Oh how nice it is to have bass. (A neighbor's unsecured wireless internet is definitely contributing to my happiness here too.)

Scored a sweet deal on 'em. After tax and rebates, $15. Thank you, bensbargains.net (again).

Any high-end brand speakers with high-end prices will easily blow these away, but ... for $15, I am super happy. [does the Caroline dance]

-------------

[back from doing the Caroline dance]

I'm having an early Christmas. A friend just dropped some gift cards on me (thank you thank you thank you!!!). Oh man, I am totally blown away. All of them were pretty straight forward, you know, "card has no value until activated by checker" and whatnot, except for the American Express gift card. I pulled that sucker out and there was this whole sheet full o' fine print. It's all good. Will read fine print for money.

I feel so popular. I have 101 friends on my Friendster now. I will admit, one of them I do not know but added when she added me because I was just starting out on Friendster and wallowing in the throes of Friendsterlessness, and one of them is a dog. But I'm friends with the dog. Fo' sho'.

It's pretty interesting to see who knows who, I have to admit. Sometimes I'll just sift around and click away and be amazed at how small the world is. And revel in my false sense of popularity. Hey, leave me alone, I was never one of the popular kids! At least I can be semi-cyber-popular! Well, one thing I will give Friendster credit for, and that is reconnecting me with friends I've lost touch with (and regrettably, there are many, due to my laziness). Friendster has been neat in that if I find someone, I guess I can let them know that although I haven't been good at keeping in touch, I have never forgotten them.

Of course it gets tricky when so many people my age are getting hitched and I can't add them cuz I don't know their new last name.

I know you want to join and add me. JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME JOIN AND ADD ME

Verdana is currently my favorite, most-used font for typing stuff up. I use it on anything I type out for patients, on my brochures, my website.

Prior to being aware of the existence of the Verdana font, I did some research on readable fonts when trying to decide which font to use for publishing stuff. The sans-serif stuff (the stuff without little curly things on the ends) is easiest to read (ie. Arial). The serif stuff somehow takes longer to read - probably cuz there's more "clutter" (ie. Times New Roman). Looking through my list of available Windows fonts, I finally settled on Verdana, and have even switched my default font styles to Verdana in MS Office. (When I like something, I do all I can to submerse myself in it. More of my obsessive-compulsiveness showing through here.)

What's your favorite commonly used font?

Oh my god - tonight, my only "had-to-do" mission was to buy a plane ticket, but it took WAY longer than it should've and with WAY more frustration. So I was having a pretty good time using Yahoo's Farechase finding cheap fares to go to my "big sister's" wedding in SoCal (I felt they had the best search engine interface compared to my usual suspects Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz - and was cheaper too! I wonder how long they can go without charging the $5 "service fee" every other fare comparison service charges?). Hundreds of clicks and typings later I finally click "Purchase this Continental Airlines ticket" ... and then I find out that it's better to use IE6 (I was on Firefox) and the transaction doesn't go through!! Yarrrrgh ... then I switch over to IE6 and input the exact same times and dates into Farechase and have it all down within 5 minutes and ... what the heck ... all the prices go up by $6!! Not much, but what the hell?!

So, being Internet shopping savvy (some call me a cheapass Internet shopaholic, but I like "savvy" better) I instantly hop on over to Continental's website and breathe a sigh of relief cuz the prices are still the same there. And then I go through the whole process AGAIN, clicking and typing, all in IE6, and AGAIN IT FAILS!!! RAHHHHHHH

Fine. I pick up the phone and am forced to talk to a real-live person (my pride in being Internet savvy makes me feel that much MORE savvy doing everything online - c'mon, talking to real live people is SO last year). Thank goodness she was nice and waived the $10 "ticketing fee" since I did try my hardestest to book online. The best part? I found out they have vegetarian snacks! A few years ago, I'd asked about a vegetarian meal on the flight, and some Continental employee very rudely told me that they were no more! That Continental "didn't do special meals" anymore! Maybe snacks and meals are different?

I'd also like to share a car rental comparison website that beats out the rest (I haven't looked on priceline - I'm shying away from that just cuz I don't know how it works anymore, and the last time I used it - when it first came out - you couldn't control your schedule and stuff): Car Rental Express. Dude. Cheeeeeeap. Me likey.

Mission accomplished. Although there were moments when I felt like using my head to bludgeon the computer to pieces, so I had to bring back the gruesome gif here.

So um, am I the only one out there who shops online so much that I have my credit card number (and 3-digit CVV code) and expiration date memorized? Say it ain't so ...

Yo, where my geeksquad at? :) I want to upgrade my notebook's internal CD-RW/DVD drive to an internal DVD/CD writer, and after googling 'til my eyes went googly, I still couldn't find the answers to my questions. It is driving me crazy! Any input from you guys would be appreciated!

Important consideration: I really don't want an external burner on my notebook, because my notebook (an HP Pavilion ze5375us, part of the ze5300 family) is already a monster, weighing in at a hefty 7.25 lbs.

What I've found so far: I've downloaded a free service manual that tells me how to dismantle my beloved 'puter. I apparently have to go in through the keyboard to get to the CD-RW/DVD drive and remove it. I am ready to do it. I'm sure that this thing is so old it's not under warranty anymore anyway.

The manual also says the internal optical drive is "not replaceable" by non-qualified service technicians. I say this is rubbish! C'mon, how hard can it be ...

Elusive information: There is no info anywhere as to what to look for in a drive / notebook to ensure compatibility. There are no authoritative lists.

Initial hypotheses, from the mind of a geek-wannabe: Well, I figured the dimensions of the new drive should be the same as my current drive, and that the interfaces should be the same.

So, I've gotten interested in the Pioneer DVR-K15. My current drive is the Toshiba SD-R2312. Here are the specs that I surmise to be the crucial ones:

spec	Toshiba SD-R2312 (current)	Pioneer DVR-K15 (coveted)
WxHxD	128 x 12.7 x 126.1 mm	128 x 12.7 x 127mm
Interface	ANSI X3T13/D96153 Rev. 18 ATAPI SFF8020i Rev. 2.6 ATAPI SFF8090 Ver. 5 Rev. 1.10	ATAPI ATA-5 (PIO Mode4, Multiword DMA Mode2, Ultra-DMA Mode2)

My burning questions:
1) Is the size difference significant?
2) I have no idea what those interfaces mean. Are they the same? Or totally different?
3) Am I anywhere near being on the right track?

Again, I would be grateful for any input / personal experience!!

I am like, SUCH a nerd. I was so so curious, so I bought their DIY LCD Video Projector guide (I have to wonder how many have forked over the $20 out of pure curiosity as well!). I'll let you all know if / when the project materializes. I only have basic skills at best from junior high shop class, so I wonder if they're sufficient. I *could* just get Home Depot to do all the dirty work, but being the proud little girl that I am (not to mention cheap), the project would be much more fulfilling if I get down in there and put my sweat and [hopefully not] blood into every aspect of the project. (Hmm, I suppose this also shows how I'm a control freak and anal. Ah well.)

The homemade projector ends up looking like a big ugly box. The only things that comfort me is that it'll be functional and relatively inexpensive, and that Hello Kitty stickers CAN be purchased to help remedy the ugly factor.

Randomly bumped into this piece called "Unlucky in Love?" while searching for geeky laptop upgrades. Dammit. It rings so true. I need to stop living in denial.

Just what I need before going to bed.

I dig on staring at the progress bar as things install themselves. You know the Windows automatic installer thingy, where it says, "You may continue working on whatever while your updates are installing, to see details click on this here tray icon" or something to that effect? Well, I HAVE to click it. I can't just sit there and continue on with my merry life and just let it do its thang in the background. I'll click it. Double-click, even triple-click, just to make sure that progress bar pops up. Some programs just show it by default, which is fine by me. And then my eyes kinda glaze over as I start getting mesmerized by its millimeter-by-millimeter progress, as my computer goes crunch, crunch, crunch ...

Yup, I'm anal. Perhaps this is a minor symptom of N.A.D.D.? (I somehow found this by way of Alex King's blog.)

C'mon, there's gotta be other progress-bar-lovers out there! Or at least other computer users with anal-ish tendencies! Um, right?

Here's the latest (and last) "Really Important News"! (Windows Media Video, 1min 47secs, 6.5MB) Actually all the scary stuff happened last night, and I was too chicken to go outside and do any filming, so you'll have to settle for this lame footage.

The storm has passed, and there was no damage except for my neighborhood's power going out. Thank goodness for us, but too bad for the people who got hit and will get hit by Rita ...

And so ... I am over at Eddy's hanging out and leeching off of his electricity and air conditioning and internet connection. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have had a hot dinner, nor a cool place to hang out, nor been able to refrigerate my food, nor been able to complete my Really Important News, which we all know is uh, really important.

Holy batman, look! Some REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS! (Windows Media Video, 1min 10secs, 4MB)

That's right, folks. I have decided to try my hand at journalism, banana-mic and all. I even sang the background music.

In the meantime, winds are really picking up, and it is EERILY DARK outside. [shudder]

I'm going to go make myself some gourmet [vegetarian] Ma Po Tofu for dinner while I still have electricity.

Lily Jr. came to visit me this weekend. I'd had a rough week, so on top of all the support my friends have been giving me, having her come be goofy with me was just what I needed. Thanks, Soopakid! :)

Highlights: chugging boba every day, indulging at Lemongrass Café (had to go give my friend Theo, the manager, as much trouble as possible, hehe), de-romanticking the Waterwall, using the internet connection at the Apple store in the Galleria and not getting kicked out, terrorizing the waiter at The Flying Pig, figuring out Fruit Rollup Tattoos (not really - here's the video! [Windows Media Video, 2min 11secs, 4.2Mb]), and chatting amicably with Eric over lunch about peeing in wetsuits.

Oh, and as promised, the goofy pics of me and my headset are included too. Yargh. I look really ugly with it on. Must reduce use to in-car and when out of sight of other humans.

I love how this pic (courtesy of my dad) captures April's multi-talented-ness: she can smile AND kiss at the same time!



And they lived happily ever after.

------------

Here's another of my side-by-side comparisons (if you missed the others, here they are):



19 yrs later, and not much has changed. Our piano teacher (who led us to piano duet victory when we were but wee ones), now 79 years of age (but SO not looking or acting it!), is still the sweetest lady ever; April is still as skinny as a stick, 100% body mass = brain, and has landed herself a most excellent hubby; I, eh, well, I now have a full-looking set of teeth and know how to occasionally act girly. Both of us are definitely as dorky as ever. Dorks 'r us!

I had the extreme pleasure of being a bridesmaid at April's wedding after 19 [torturous! hehe] years of knowing the bride. I love you, girl! This also means though that there were NOT that many pictures taken because I can't possibly expect my dad to be as freakish as I am, although I'm sure I got this trait from SOMEWHERE ... gotta blame it on sumpin' ... gotta blame it on sumpin' ... blame it on da rain, yeah, yeah ...

EnVaDoR has done it again. Check out his Intel-sponsored computer case-building project. I say "case-building" instead of "case-modding" because he doesn't just slap a plexiglass in the side of his store-bought case. He goes to Home Depot to get his stuff. =) For more of his creations (Toilet PC has got to be my favorite), check 'em out here.

Well, I never thought it'd happen to me, but I have actually gotten sick and tired of sitting in front of the computer all day checking the latest job postings, sending out resumes, dissecting contracts ... and if you know me, I NEVER get sick of sitting in front of the computer. So you know it's bad.

blog! blog! blog! blog! blog! Guess what everybody? I gots a BLOG! (short for WebLog) And you can all leave comments and stuff for me too! pretty cool, eh? Well, this will hopefully help me update faster and leave me more time to er, study or something. Lemme know how you like it! Oh btw, this program doesn't archive comments, so ... DO feel free to sign my guestbook from time to time

OK, now you all know I am not a big fan of the color pink. When I saw this car today, I just felt sorry for the poor Honda ... (I apologize for the ultra-choppy panoramic... I was too lazy to get out of the car to capture this) ... even has pink fuzzy dice ... sigh. If anyone spots a webpg called "I Love Pink", let me know ... hahahh =)
Oh, I finally procured a watch @ 99 Ranch Market (Anaheim) (where that hideous car above was spotted). The little independent watch shop in there has the best selection and price for anyone out there who is also allergic to some metals and doesn't want a metal band. I either have to have pure gold or plastic (totally opposite ends of the price spectrum). =) If anyone wants a cute Casio watch for under $20, lemme know. =)

Wow. Jabra customer service is awesome! I called them up, got an RMA number (didn't even have to be on hold that long), and sent in my crapped out hands-free headset just a wk ago, and I've already got a replacement! I gots myself a new one for like 50 cents shipping and no hassle at all. Mad props. Customer service like this is hard to find these days.

I AM FINALLY BACK ONLINE, BABY! Whew. I feel so ... liberated. After attempting a video capture, I could no longer dial up. I uninstalled all software, reset all settings, Device Mgr showed no exclamation signs, I reinstalled drivers time and time again, reinstalled Windows, took the modem out and put it back again ... I even bought a new modem that STILL didn't work! And after all that, turns out that the problem lay in the SURGE PROTECTOR that my phone lines run thru! I was offline for 3 ENTIRE DAYS ... I feel as if I've been constipated for a long time and have finally managed to let loose a turd. =) Thanks to Pooh for the [unintentionally] colon-rumbling phone call. =)

Pics from my solo trip up to Big Bear to come soon!

Welcome back hm7863! Time to really start causing some trouble! =)

OK that's it. You know when Yahoo starts pulling the freebies on us, we're in trouble. Today I was informed that as of April 24, 2002, they will pull the free POP3 & Mail Forwarding features. I guess my Eudora is no use no mo'. What is UP with that! $20/yr "special intro rate". Man, next thing you know I bet pplz will be charging per email msg sent. Grrrrrrrrr ... well if anyone knows of an email service with FREE POP3 service, lemme know ... cuz I've been using Eudora since the beginning of my Internet experience and have grown rather attached to it ...

I miss you already hm7863! You'd better have mucho fun in Japung!

Here's another free mp3 for you to munch on (2.13MB). It is a dancy track peppered with sound clips from Vday silliness with friends (photos here). If you missed my first & much more original mp3, here are the lyrics and music. Yes, that is me attempting to rap & sing. I apologize in advance for any speaker, eardrum, and psychological damage =)

I am so bummed that my Jabra cell phone headset crapped out! I took the features I liked and were removable - the eargel and the clip - and surgically transplanted them to another headset. =) I really liked the button on mic too tho ... I guess that's what I get for using the 2.5mm jack in lieu of a real ear acu pt finder =)

The worst job on earth - zoo sperm bank employee. "The elephant is the most tricky because of the size of its thing ... sometimes I have to use both my arms to tug on it." Sucks to be him. But hey, it's better than donating your own sperm to make a living ... er, isn't it? =)

BlogAmp is sooooo cool. Now everyone can see what I'm listening (karaoke-ing) to on WinAmp! (see list at left) If I'm online and listening to music on WinAmp at the same time, it almost instantly updates the list everytime I listen to another song. Thanks to Pooh for helping me get thru the setup (the instructions are in Portuguese or something). And congrats to Pooh on his cool new URL (courtesy of our award-winning-computer-case-making friend EnVaDoR) ... yeah yeah ... who's copying who now? ;)

My guestbk is back up and working again! Now PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE (pretty please with a cherry on top) sign it and make me feel special! =) Back to cramming ... brain ... just about ... cooked ... to a very well done consistency ...

OK fine so my guestbk link isn't working. Here's why. I'll let u all know when it's back up cuz I KNOW you all wanna sign it! =)

Yay! I'm over 1000 on my Chinese counter (see below)! Thanks to all my visitors! If you haven't yet, please sign my guestbook! =)

Here's a pic of an ill omen of things to come - one week before my licensing exams and THIS happens. Well, at least my car LOOKS clean in the pic ...

 A random result of Photoshop fiddling. Why? Because i was procrastinating from studying =) and of course because I love my hunnee! hehee. btw, "toque" rhymes with "Luke" except starting with a T, for all you non-Canadians! It's a TOQUE, not a BEANIE! Beanie sounds so stupid! There's a whole online forum on "Why Canadians Say 'Toque'" here - I can't believe it. My post is under the author name "Alotta Fagina". =)

My computer is really getting on my nerves. Can't do anything. Trying to download patches and all that ... argh ...
Congratulations to my girl A.S.S. (her real initials, hehe) =) 5 years of struggling against parents and peers and cultural taboos culminating in 1 fairy-tale-like marriage proposal ... all because of this thang called love. Annie, you're my inspiration.

After Nov. 6, "to reduce the costs associated with credit card processing, the ability to receive credit card funded payments will become a feature reserved for Premier and Business accounts" on PayPal. BOO!!!

Today is a landmark in web development history - Pooh updated his webpage! (It's been 2 years and 3 months since he last did anything to it.) It's still in development, but the exoskeleton looks ready. =)

eMarker.com was a really good service ... but it's goin' down permanently Sept. 30, 2001. If you bought one of those gadgets, go to their website to find out how you can get a $25 refund for those doohickeys.

Grr ... Netzero just issued an e-mail to all users saying that the number of free hrs per month will now be reduced from 40 to 10 ... and there's no way around it (ie. can't keep creating multiple user IDs) ... free ISPs are dying fast =( Noooooooooo!!!

Ooh ooh ooh just got my Sony Clie PEG-S320 handheld in the mail a couple of days ago. But my darned midterms are keeping me from really playing with the thing. My bf e-mailed me PacMan for the Palm tho (he knows I'm a PacMan freak), so I HAD to at least figure out how to sync PacMan on there. =) Welps, better get back to studying.
NEW! Fresh IHatePink content is now featured on my homeboy's site http://www.AhBoga.com!!! Chekitowwt! Yowza! =)

Just finished a grueling 2-day seminar on auriculotherapy (ear acupuncture and/or ear seeds) and friend Mira, who also attended the seminar, gave an equally grueling set of ear seeds. All I have to say is MY EARS HURT!!! and that this pain had better be worth it!! I'm doing the weight gain protocol (thought I'd try it since I am disgustingly underweight) as well as something for my left shoulder (not sure how that happened, since I'm a righty). At least I wasn't that brave woman who went up in front of the class as a demo only for the master to announce to everyone 1) she was currently on her period, and 2) she had "mild" hemorrhoids. How embarrassing. =P Here's a list of words that the speaker said that I so cleverly deciphered. =)

Today the kitty (Naomi) managed to get into the house and found me in my room! (I didn't even notice her until I felt something furry brush against my calves! hehe) KittyCam updated =)
Today I finally solved my allergic reaction to the cool new shades I got in Houston. Croakies! (sad how the official Croakies homepage isn't even ready)

The beginnings of a cheapskate page =)

I found yet another good deal, and instead of submitting it to other good deals sites, I decided to start up my own. People are always asking me about where to get stuff for cheap/free. Check out my fledgling page and please lemme know when you find a good deal so I can post it up!

What happens when people are bored? They might occasionally type their cousin's name into the Yahoo/Google search engine. Thanks Min for showing me the way to true procrastination! =)
I found this old page I made back in 1999 in collaboration with Pooh and am posting it up since I did put a bit of effort into it (major understatement!). =) It was a surprise birthday present for our friend Peter. To Peter: I'd link your page up on it but I can't find your URL, e-mail it to me if you see this! And thanks for giving me the opportunity to learn how to make moving gifs at your expense =)

Sigh. Didn't make the first cut of the Pro-Voice competition. Ah well. No biggie =) Here's a free mp3 for you (a rarity these days since the demise of Napster, hehe) of the song - have a listen at my very first attempt at being a singer/songwriter/producer. If anything, this boosts my confidence in my ability to do whatever I put my mind to, and actually inspires me to write more. Now if I could only study with the same fervor ... =P Need help figuring out the meaning behind the group name? Ask your friendly neighborhood Chinese person =)

Sup yo. Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there, including my own. Since I finished my midterms yesterday, I went to San Diego today to chill out and check out a table tennis tournament. As soon as I got there, this guy looked at me and goes, "Hey Whitney!" all smiling and waving and the such. I was thoroughly confused, looked behind me to see if there were any females there, looked back, and went up to the guy to confirm that it was me he was waving at. Upon finding out my real identity, he exclaims, "You look EXACTLY like Whitney Ping!" Several others confirmed his viewpoint. Evidently she is a 16-yr-old in San Francisco who has a rating of over 2000 (which is really good, for all those not familiar with the sport ... you can check out http://www.usatt.org for more info and can search for her name and stuff). Well, take a look here and judge for yourself. (git your own poll tool thingy here)

A desktop background I made for my ex-roommate Alan. It was his birthday on Nov. 16th. Happy birthday Alanita! I luv yoo =P~~ This is not an original creation (see what he did to me back in the day), but I wanted to make him smile. Oh btw, this is somewhat X-rated material, so uh, yeah, take all them necessary precautions. =)

I realize that in an attempt to correct the spelling error in the "The Millennium Edition" graphic above, I still managed to mispell it again. I'm a retard!
Hmm. Check out the ugly girl named Caroline here, and please vote for her. And tell your friends to vote for her. I've gotten a variety of comments about it, which I address here. =)