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!] ...

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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?

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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 ...

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

I just completed a weekend of required acupuncture continuing education. Oof. I never knew that sitting on my behind for 10 hours straight could be so draining, but it is.

There were both Chinese and English tracks, and I took the English track since there were more interesting topics being taught. We are required to take one hour of ethics (where we were privileged to have a professor from Baylor College of Medicine come speak to us), where both students from the Chinese and English tracks were sitting all together.

That was the only class where we were mixed with the Chinese track group, and these are my observations about cell phone etiquette during that one hour.

Good: cell phone is turned off, or is on silent or vibrate mode.
Bad: the cell phone is left on.
Bad: multiple cell phones go off during the class because owners didn't take a hint when people were annoyed by previous offenders.
Bad: a cell phone is left on, and the owner leaves to use the restroom, and then someone calls the phone. Repeatedly.
Worst: a cell phone is left on, rings, and owner answers. LOUDLY.

I would love to be all proud of my people and stuff but ... I'm afraid in the arena of cell phone etiquette, we generally suck. At the temple a couple weeks back, it was packed for Chinese New Year. There were TWO pleas made by the emcee for people to please turn off their cell phones. Yet multiple phones still went off, some even playing polyphonic renditions of rap songs - all in the middle of the temple service. Niiiice. Why do people think they are immune to this? Do they think, "Oh, I'll leave it on, since no one is going to call me"? To the people who need to answer the phone during situations where answering would be disruptive (and there are many), please, it really is very simple: turn your phone to silent or vibrate, take note when someone is calling you, leave the area, then either answer if you are in time or call the person back. What is so hard about this?

Another etiquette faux-pas encountered at the continuing education: I was reminded how much I despise talking to someone (up until now, always a male) who CANNOT MAKE EYE CONTACT (as in, YO, UP HERE, ON MY FACE, YOU FOOL) when talking to me. No, I don't find it flattering that you have your eyes "on the prize" ... especially when there's not much of a prize there to begin with. And if I'm already freaked out by your overtly oozing sleaziness (like I have felt before), I'm not going to be much inclined to give you a hug. Read the body language please and see why I am standing more than an arm's length away with back tensed and all hair on end. Do NOT approach me and make physical contact.

Not sure if other girls feel the same way, since I'm pretty old-school, but this is how I operate.

Hokey dokes. End of rant. Class dismissed.

OMG. Sw33t!

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

[humming] "When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true ... "

This rings true in so many ways. When you visualize, you are subconsciously setting goals, prepping the environment in which to make things happen. Of course you don't just sit around on your tush and wait for things to magically materialize in front of your eyes, but it helps guide you in making decisions, in how you use your time, in making it happen step by step.

I'm always telling my patients about visualization. Be it women trying to get pregnant, be it people with back pain, be it people with emotional issues, we cannot underestimate the power of visualization. Just as we can think ourselves sick, we can think ourselves healthy.

This applies to every situation in life, really. Just as we can think ourselves angry and sad, we can think ourselves happy as well. We can think ourselves stagnant or progressive. We can think our relationships difficult or harmonious. It comes down to that choice. Do you WANT to be there? Remove the doubt, empower yourself, and visualize it.

Why the sudden inspiration for this post? Something just kind of exploded onto the scene that we'd been visualizing for a while now, and I am excited to see the changes in the coming months. Each time something like this happens, it reaffirms for me the power of visualization.

And I'm biting. David Choi is offering 4 free songs for download just today, midnight to midnight PST: That Girl, If You Were Here I'd Be OK, MySpace Dot Com, and the oh-so-sexy Fart.

I had trouble downloading, but there were helpful links in the comments section on his blog.

I decided to donate 99 cents a song.

Thank you, David.

This guy definitely knows how to make online communities work for him. (This post is a case in point, eh?)

You can also hear acoustic live versions of his song on his YouTube page. I've figured out how to keep those songs on repeat by adding songs to a Quicklist (hit the little plus sign in the lower left corner of the video thumbs), and then hitting Play All.

I generally don't accept gifts from patients. But I'll make an exception here. Besides, he IS only three years old. :)

I got a spam e-mail from a spoof americangreetings.com address saying that I'd gotten an e-card. Spam sure has sunken to new depths. I mean sure, spam the hell out of me trying to make an extra buck selling various meds or "through-the-roof" stock, but don't toy with people's emotions, man! Here I was thinkin', "*I* have an admirer?!?!?!? COOL!!!! OHHHHhhhhh ... wait a minute ... it's just a spammer ... fine ... delete ... back to whatever I was doing ... "

Slightly related to V-day, here are pics from the NAAAP Date Auction. Some of those auctionees were really workin' it!

Donnie visited Houston and a bunch of us nerd-herd Dulles Vikings reconnected with him. (I don't think I'm offending anyone because we were pretty consumed with comparing notes and grades, hahah.) I'm pretty impressed with how the nerd-herd turned out - everyone's doin' their thang, and you probably could never guess they were once an uber-nerd. Some of us (ahem) are still nerds ... just can't shake my roots :) [ Donnie discovers drunken karaoke ] [ portraits just cuz ] I have fond memories of riding the school bus to school every day for three years with Donnie and Joe Lee (well, I hated the school bus cuz everyone made fun of me, but that's a story for another day). Those guys are a couple of the smartest dudes I know. It was fun recounting old times. Donnie was able to call out a few stories about me that I had absolutely no recollection of. Hahah, good times.

And I just discovered this guy on YouTube (though he already seems to be a YouTube icon, and for good reason) - David Choi and his original Valentine song. [ link to song on YouTube in case it doesn't show up correctly ] [ David Choi Music on MySpace - I don't usually link to MySpaces but I suppose I'll make an exception here ]

Speaking of YouTube, does anyone feel like after the Google acquisition, they've censored a lot more stuff? Or am I just not in the know? I was doing YouTube "research" on singer Jesse McCartney the other day (yes, my boy band fetish is showing) and a ton of interviews had been removed due to violation.

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.