I only ventured out to a coin-operated car wash the other day for the first time in my whole entire life, as Thi wanted to wash her car and we ended up doing my car in the process too.

Dude, I haven't laughed that hard in a while! And I probably shouldn't have massaged in the blue conditioner by hand - that stuff is hard to wash off! While seeing patients later, I was hoping no one wouldn't notice the bluish tinge to my hands ...

Funky cloud patterns, presumably left over by the nonstop raining this past weekend.

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

For anyone who might be going to Houston Hobby Airport before the rain evaporates - enter and exit the airport via Broadway. Other routes are FLOODED!

Video I took tonight, with chatter by Chef Hugh and cackling by me, plus footage of my car posing as a boat:

Who knew that a flooded street would look so pretty? (Note: Do not attempt taking pics / vids under such conditions unless you have a friend present to steer you back on track, hehe)

I've always been more a messy person, but when I'm in a rut, my apartment's disorder also increases proportionally, if not exponentially. Yup, got lots to clean up here.

'Tis all good though; having some Hot 'n Sour Soup for the Soul ALWAYS soothes my nerves. :) Love ya, Petah!

And while we're on the topic of being in a rut, this put a smile on my face:

Part of the Blogosphere HugMeDay effort. (Saw it here.) :)

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.

... because I like to mess with him when his mommy's not around. :)

I saw Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna ("Never Say Goodbye") this weekend with my Indian connection. (No, I won't even pretend to know how to pronounce that; I purchased tickets by pointing at the poster and asking, "Is that the latest Shahrukh Khan movie about the extramarital affair? Three please!")

It's 3.5 hours long, including a short 5-minute intermission. But man, I loved it. I am totally taken by the Bollywood song-and-dance thing. So far there has only been one Bollywood movie that I didn't like.

All the actors and actresses in the movie are hella fine. Shahrukh Khan is the classic hottie; Preity Zinta is, well, really pretty (SRK and PZ are in the pic to the right); as is Rani Mukherji (girl at left). Twists in the plot all the way until the end. Made me sad and pensive afterwards because it made me think about love, even though the movie's thesis seems to be that true love conquers all. Argh ...

Oh, and if you plan on seeing it, don't read the Wikipedia entry for the movie - it gives it all away. (Does writing this make you want to read the Wikipedia entry? Heh)

Side note: I forgot to say how I usually resist going to movies with friends, since with what precious time we have, no actual bonding / catching up occurs. (On the other hand, watching rented movies at home is awesome since you can be as loud as you want, eat whatever, etc.) But I'll make an exception for Bollywood movies. Not only did I enjoy the movie immensely, especially bonding was our unanimous hissing at the kids to hush up. Not that I needed to hear the movie (I was reading the subtitles) but c'mon - the dude and the chick are about to kiss and make sweet passionate love - and there are kids running around and screaming their heads off. Parents, either get yourselves a babysitter, or get your kids to shut the bleep up!

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: