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!!

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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.

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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!! :)

The other night I saw this vehicle while driving home.

I mean, I KNOW "everything is bigger in Texas", but the mpg on that monster is probably tiny. Compare the height of this thing to the car beside it, which I think is an SUV ...

Also, the other day at my friendly neighborhood King Dollar store, I saw this:

They even had one for kids to thug out in. For just a buck!

Ah, 2 things I could've used in my rap video. :) Voting ends 11:59:59pm PT April 8th, 1.5 days left!

Fellow acupuncturist brethren - holla back if you knew that Huo Xiang is only supposed to be cooked around 10-20 mins, and thus Huo Xiang Zheng Qi San, if done in decoction form, is only supposed to be decocted for no more than 20 mins.

Be honest now. :)

First off, thanks for all the encouraging feedback re: my YouTube contest video entry. Glad lots of you have been getting a chuckle out of it. :)

I've been sending out clarification e-mails today about the voting, saying that basically:

HOW TO VOTE (3/31/07 - 4/08/07): YOU MUST CREATE A YOUTUBE ACCOUNT TO VOTE. ONLY after you see the confirmation message "Thank You for Voting! (Please note we only count your first vote for each video)" does that mean you successfully voted!

After logging in with your username and password, make sure you go to http://www.youtube.com/contest/TheTaxRap?goto=287 to vote or search for entry #287.

I didn't realize how confusing it was until I met up with friends I consider Internet savvy this weekend. Then I went back and took a look and indeed, it was confusing even for me!

If you were not too embarrassed to tell your friends about the video / post to your blog / forums, could you pass this along to them / link back here? Thanks! :)

If you have any troubles with this, comment here, and I (or some other helpful iHaTePiNkian) can walk you through it.

Thanks again for taking the time to vote and telling your friends to vote!

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. :)

In the tunnel connecting the two buildings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

After that last one where I stepped off the beaten path and into the warp zone, I got yelled at by security. Just can't take me anywhere! :)

We checked out the Masterpieces of French Painting 1800-1920 exhibit (the only American venue for this exhibit). I didn't think I would be cultured enough to enjoy it, but I really got into it. :) They have some of the images online, but there were many, many more there on display, and the accompanying audio gave a little more in-depth information about some of the paintings, such as how Van Gogh painted Cypresses whilst staying at a mental institute, and that he'd tried to commit suicide by eating his own paint, and thus was not allowed to paint for awhile. My fave was Joan of Arc, striking a deep chord of sadness within me. My least faves: some Modigliani pieces near the end of the exhibit (closer to the 1920s period) where the women looked distorted, one of them to the point of looking like she had a goiter growing on her neck ... ahem yes, anyways! Overall, it blew my mind to see the paintings up close and see the individual brush strokes of color that when viewed from afar came together as a coherent, realistic image. Man, if only I'd seen an exhibit like this during my art history class. I would have enjoyed that class a WHOLE lot more!

Oh, then I made Chi-Wei pose under this sign:

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

Screaming. Inwardly.

Have you ever been so tired that you have no brain? That time for me is now. Good night.

My friend Will did an AIDS walk with the Lot 8 For Life team (Chloe Dao's boutique, winner of Project Runway 2) and is getting close to reaching his personal fundraising goal. Drop a few cents in his bucket here.

And hey, they borrowed my name. :)

Update: just $40 more and Will will reach his goal! Will Will have the willpower to will ... hahaha ok I'll stop. Hi Will! :)

Update: Just $15 mo' dollaz to reach Will's goal! We kan doo eeeeet!!!

Update: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!! :)

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! :)