log 517

after 12 full hours of battle with the dust bunnies, I finally won. My study, bathroom, bedroom are finally clean. Sparkly clean. Why do that all of a sudden? Actually I have this habbit of cleaning everything after a long period of neglate. With the whole busy school semesters, I kinda left everything in a mess. Feels so good now that everything is cleaned.

Oh another reason I started clean was that I bought a monitor stand. The space between the desk and wall was too tight, so I had to move the whole tv with the stand and all the cd/dvds just to install it. And well….hell, I will be moving all those things around, I might just clean the whole place out. Took everything apart, piece by piece. I moved everything in the master bedroom, and you know what? The amount of equipment I have makes my study more like a computer lab. I also re-wired the room today. I’ve been meaning to move the centre speaker with the whole unit to face the 21″ gateway mon for the longest time, that is the monitor I use most for media viewing.

Anyway, if you thought 1440×900 was roomie, try turning it 90 degrees and you will see what I see now. It’s like having a A3 size paper in front of you, way cool. Too bad the monitor stand is a bit too stiff to rotate. Oh well…it’s a good temp solution,….though if I had gone with standard stand instead of a desk side mount, installing would be so much easier. A desk side mount however has its advantages, such that you can run crap loads of cables under the monitor. : )

After the 12 hour cleaning marathon, I really felt like going out for some food, though I don’t beliece any of my friends would be interested in heading out after midnight to watch me eat. I settled for cereal. The whole day, I only had one meal and this bowl of cereal. It’s time to drop some pounds. I’ve already started my morning routine of 50 curl ups. I can’t stand being fat,….just this Sat, I had the hardest time picking out something from the closet that would make me look decent.

For your grottiest pleasure, here’s a list of “work time snack” which I ate during the last 3 weeks of the semester.

2x nori maki (wasabi flavour)
3x pringles
6x bottles of coca cola
2x bag of dark chocolate biscuits
half box of pot of gold (I was desperate, chocolate was one of the few things that kept me working)
1x bar of milk chocolate

Now you see why I got fat? Normally, I only have 2 meals a day and snack is not a word in my dictionary. I will be joining a gym very soon.

finished my last exam today. Wasn’t particularly difficult. Actually, it’s the best exam I feel I’ve done of the 4. After the exam, I went straight to j-town to get my hair cut. It’s been way too long since I last went there. Taro-san hired a new help. With his schedule booked full today, he offer the service of Katsu-san. The results were quite good. (photos to follow later, if I feel like taking it.)

last exam today at 11:30. not quite prepared as I not really sure what I could do to prepare.  Anyway, I’ve been pushing myself to the max this week, passed out after dinner (didn’t get any sleep last night, was studying and finishing the last assignment). I kinda just left the dishes where it was. I woke up around midnight. Went downstairs to get something to drink. The dishes are still where I left them, and added were stuff my sis used….ar thanks sis for your "support" in this busy week of mine. …so anyway, cleaned up the stuff, got my coffee and coke and headed back upstairs.  My sis has been leaving her stuff inthe sink unwashed for a while now….it just seems wrong as mother taught us better than to leave things around, I clean up after myself after every meal (unless I go unconscious).

Anyway, beside not getting any sleep, today’s additional task took a bit out of me too. Stupid inkject printer decided to be out of ink….just before my last open book exam when I need to do a lot of print outs. Damn ink cost $70 for a 2 pack, and $40 for single. So I decide to say fuck it, if I bought another it’ll be the 5th, the cost is just unjustified.  This is why I had to buy a new printer today. So after the VBA exam on thursday, I headed to the local shops to compare prices. I wasn’t too picky, I simply want something that can print and that’s it. I ended up getting a laser printer that cost around $99. The good thing, finally, a printer that auto feeds without worrying about paper jam. The stupid old print always jams when I put a stack of paper in, so I had to hand feed it page by page,…so very lame.  The new laser printer is rather simple, it’s just a printer and nothing else. It would be cooler if I got a 4 in 1 that has fax. (I like to use fax to annoy telemarketers, give them an ear full of noise) Anyhow, with the new printer, I obviously had to tidy up the war room a bit to make space for it. My study looks rather tidied now, and all the clean up is what made this afternoon so tiring.   

Something I hate about the printer is the setup procedure. You have to start the driver installation half way, plug the usb in, then let it continue, how stupid is that? It totally doesn’t make sense. The correct procedure for any hardware device should be.
1. Plug it in
2. windows can’t find the driver
3. shove the driver cd in
4. installation done

That’s how every hardware should be handled! Take note manufacturers(especially brother brand) Your stupid installation guide on the cd is pretty useless, that animation is crap, it’s too smaller on screen to actually describe any details. ….how should it be then?  See the 4 steps I just wrote above.

The sales service at the local CanadaComputer has gone back to it’s crapiness. The salesboy doesn’t know crap about the product. When I ask him what kind of paper does the printer use, he said "what do you mean? any paper will do, paper is paper".  Man…how god damn ignorant. If you have even a slight knowledge about printing, you know the type of paper makes a lot of difference. This is probably the kind of guy who will tell you to get DDR2 when your system only supports DDR.  Stupid little punk. He should get his hair fixed too, you are at work, gotta look professional.

no, not the steve variety. I’m talking about the kind where you work your ass off and get paid by the end of the month.

Was just looking at jobsdb.com.  It’s a hk based job search site. Man….there’re so many J2EE related jobs over there. I’m so freaking tempted. And to my surprise, I actually found a few PL/SQL and Oracle forms jobs. That’d be totally sweet, having a job to do those stuff. If you don’t already know, those tasks are so easy, I don’t even know if you can consider them software development. If I ever work in HK again, I would kick so much ass.

Why the heck am I looking at jobs? Well I’m pretty close to getting my diploma (a slight complication might set me back 4 months) Anyway, it is about time for me to be looking into it. I very much think I will head towards anything J2EE. It would somewhat get me out of the web front-end business and into something more finance oriented. Though no high hopes. The last time I study about business and finance was in high school and I must have sleept through more than half the classes. From memory, that teacher showed thousands of charts and diagrams of how to relate the supply and demand concept. For fucks sake, I got it on the first day, move on already. Of course he didn’t, it bored me out of my mind.

Anyway, afterwards, I decided to check out the saladking.com site. (I am the creator of its first incarnation) I’m so disappointed at the result of new design. I just can’t believe how shitty it is. I don’t feel bad for letting it happen, as I have an insane amount of school related work, so I can’t be bothered to design/program a new site for them but that site just doesn’t do the restaurant justice. The whole implementation from colour scheme to layout is all wrong wrong wrong. I will go into details about it later with screen caps. One of the worst crime was an un-edited photo. I don’t care if you got a pro to take the photo, when it’s on screen, it needs to be colour/contrast corrected. I hate the current design so much, I might just give them a freeby and totally fix everything.

while taking a rest from studying for the exams and finishing my last assignment, I went on youtube to find some old music I really like. Today I found Denki Groove.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afs0-eExHlg

It’s the techno / eletronic type of music, not exactly something I usually listen to. Really like that track 虹. It was featured in the Eureka Seven anime soundtrack. There’s a live version on youtube that had a lady singing female vocal portion of the track. The other version uses a pre-recorded, with some effects added to sound computerized. Not quite sure which I like better, as they both have their flaws. Anyhow, back to work.

you heard right, first one, today, 7.5 hours from now.
I hope I wake up in time.  ~_~

wow…5:11am, the sun haven’t even raised yet. Guess I finish my work early today. With the crazy hours I’ve been pulling, this is early. …better get some sleep….Friday will be the start of my exams.

I went to see the student co-ordinator the other day. I was somewhat worried about what I should do. I didn’t register for another sem nor did I apply for graduation. The reason being, I thought I was a credit short (elective) for completing the program. After a more thorough look, I actually do have enough (if I manage to make it through all the current courses).  I guess that’s good news. But it actually put even more pressure on me to get things done.

Oh I made the most tasty treat tonight. Pan fried eggplants. Just cut the eggplants in 5mm slices, add a bit of grill eel sauce(available in J-town) and throw them in the pan till they start to brown. It’s somewhat like a dish you can find in chinese morning tea, but less oily and no meat.  Of all vegies, I do like eggpplant the most.

weehad been working like a mad man these pasts days(weeks), so after today’s disappointing class(where I didn’t get to present my assignment after all that hardwork), I decided I can have the rest of the day off. No assignments, no nothing, just rest and what not.

So what did I go and do? I end up dragging ou tthe old monitor (support 1600×1200) to fiddle with dual boot’s linux partition. Remeber that resolution problem I have, where I can’t even get into the system to change the config? Well I fixed it. It’s finally displaying at 1440×900.  Took me a while, first it was forgetting the login password, then it was not knowing knoppix need a total restart(not just restart session) for the config file to take effect. All in all, I’m pretty pround that I’m finally linux literate. Now if only I can get it to do dual view…..

had a very very early dinner today, 4pm, ha ha. Basically, I’m just tired of cooking every night, so I decided to go and have a meal after my classes today. I was the only patron there. It didn’t bother me at all, I actually rather enjoyed it. I finally have time to take in the very pleasing interior design of the place. Had a phad tai and an iced coffee, bother were nice.  While dining, I over heard the conversation of the waitresses about how they wouldn’t want to work downtown. Everything eventually lead to the point that the bad traffic is the only thing keeping them from working DT. I wonder if I will feel the same….

Anyhow, when I got home, I decided to park back-in. Honestly, in a 2 car garage where the other spot is always filled, I rarely have a chance to park back-in. Though I always fancy the idea of getting in the car and drive out without having to change to reverse gear. I might just do this till my sis gets back from her trip. Heh heh, because her car isn’t in the garage, I now park dead centre with lots of room on both sides. Under normal situations, I always find myself parking front-in from a left turn. I just like to be able to see how far apart I am from the next car.

Oh here’s an interesting blog entry about decision making. http://roux.vox.com/library/post/what-do-your-sticks-say-about-you.html

If you are wondering about how my mind works.
1. I pick which ever that is most accessible and clean
2. I pick the second of the matching color (it’s only logical to do so, in order to pair the first with a second that’s identical)
3. typical Chinese sanitation technique, tea in bowl, dip napkin in bowl of tea, wipe chop sticks with napkin, ask the staff for a new bowl. …no I don’t do this much, since "most" places I go to in TO are relatively sanitize….relatively….