OK. In order to avoid having tons of Mr. Thumbheads screeching at you all at once, I'm succumbing to YouTube for playback here. But you may download my lovely file here if you wish. (WMV, 4.3 MB, 1min 10secs)

And I KNOW you didn't miss Days One and Two. :)

Heading out to a "company" party, so I'm posting this a little earlier today. Seems like this weekend is an unofficial national company party weekend. :P

(download the WMV, 2.8MB, 44 secs)

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Hey, geek feedback question: are the videos starting automatically when you load up your page? Cuz I don't want them to. I tried to turn "Autostart" off so I can post multiple videos on here without having them all come up screeching, "ON THE NTH DAY OF XMAS MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO MEEEEE!!!!" in nonharmonious rounds. Somehow I don't think that would go over well with co-workers of my working readers ... er, I don't think it could benefit anyone, really. Autostart was successfully suppressed in my FireFox 2 and IE 6, and I'm on WinXP Home. Please post your OS and browser version and let me know!

Just doing my part to prevent deafness and tinnitus (aka ringing in the ears) before you all come running to me for acupuncture treatment. :)

Update: succumbing to YouTube here.

(or download the WMV here, 50 secs, 3.3 MB)

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Now for some real holiday goodness:

Me: Your mom told me she was renewing her vows after 50 years of marriage, and that you kids were footing the bill for everything! How sweet and generous of you guys!
Daughter: Oh, it's really very little compared to how much they've given us.
Me: *Snif!*

Stuff like this truly warms me from the inside out.

Update: Succumbing to YouTube here.

T: "Ma, are you proud and/or happy to be my mum?"
T's Mum: "Yes, dear! I am! And I hope that in all of my future lives, I can continue to be your mum."
Me (to myself): "Aww snif!"
T: "Awww. But but but ... what if I end up being a dog?"
T's Mum: "Then I hope that I can be your doggy mum."
T: "Awwwww. But but but ... what if I end up being a pine tree?"
T's Mum: "Then I hope that I can be a pine tree first, years ahead of you, so I can drop the pine cone that will become you and have you grow up right next to me, under my branches, so I can shade and protect you."
Me (and I'm sure I was not alone): "*AWWW SNIF!!!!!!*"

T, 2 months ago, holding strong despite her body's protests.

T, 2 days ago, with her rightfully proud and loving mum, as she tells us of the above dialogue between them.

Welcome back, T.

1. When someone says something that is just totally ridiculous because they are clearly underinformed and thus making incorrect basic assumptions, but doesn't let you debate with them or explain anything at all, just repeating the same blatant BS over and over to you, and then swings a "I was once a Mensa* editor for xx years" at you like that means anything. Yeah, he's probably really smart, but that doesn't mean he knows EVERYTHING and is right about EVERYTHING ...
   
2. When you're hanging out with friends and a guy amongst them whom you hardly know takes excessive pictures of you thinking you're not looking. You already get the vibe that he's a closet perv, and during the course of hanging out you see him blatantly taking pictures of another dude's girlfriend's cleavage hoping that people are too drunk to notice. He continues to snap picture after picture of you ...**
   

* Before I knew what Mensa was, and heard the word, I thought, "What a dumb name for a club. It sounds like 'menses'. Geez."
** I was so creeped out I didn't even WANT to take ANY pictures all night. Ew.

I'm renewing my vehicle registration online. Here's a rundown of the fees:

WINDSHIELD STICKER      58.50
REG FEE-DPS     1.00
REFLECTORIZATION FEE     0.30
CNTY ROAD BRIDGE ADD-ON FEE     10.00
AUTOMATION FEE (LARGE CNTY)     1.00
MAIL IN FEE     1.00
SERVICE FEE (NON-REFUNDABLE)     2.00

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I mean I think I understand all the fees. But a "Reflectorization Fee" for 30 cents?

I'm imagining someone spraying down the sticker for 1 second with something called "reflectorizer" ...

My neighbors have gotten into the spirit of things:
Some random Engrish to fatten you up:
I like the tapioca at Tapioca House and Star Snow Ice better.

There is the rare occasion in which someone (always male) walks into our clinic and promptly walks back out before I can talk to him. I've learned that these are people who are seeking the services of our neighbors next door at the "spa" and have accidentally stepped into the wrong place.

Today I had one come in, realize he was in the wrong place, but try to cover it up (of course I didn't realize it until afterwards):

Me: Hi, can I help you?
Spa customer: Uhhh ... is this a clinic?
Me: Yes, it is.
SC: Ummm ... what kind of clinic is this?
Me: It's an acupuncture clinic.
SC: Errr ... what's ... acupuncture?
Me: Oh, it's a natural method of healing where we use very fine needles on the body.
SC: Is ... it ... therapy?
Me (slightly confused, but whatever): Physical therapy? Yes it is.
SC: Let me get a business card.

Patient leaves, and makes a beeline for next door. (I can always tell when they have customers because you have to ring the doorbell before they let you in, and the doorbell chime is really loud and sounds like the clock has happened upon the hour, identical to the clock tower's song at UT Austin.)

It seems weird to me that a dude who has the guts to go to a "spa" in broad daylight can at the same time be ashamed and embarrassed to have inadvertently stumbled into the wrong establishment. But what do I know.

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 :)