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2006-02-28

 

Department Spam

If you are a member of our CS department, you would definitely notice that we have a newly promoted department coordinator. On an average day, we receive about 10 rebroadcast emails from her, mostly about events no one cares about, like a talk in the History department. Worse, there are also reminders about events that no one cares about. It starts making me ignoring her mails now, which turns out causing me to miss some interesting events, just like spams occasionally causing me to delete useful emails.

The most disgusting part, however, is the reminders. It is like saying to my face several times a day that I am incapable of organizing my life, and need someone to tell me what I'm supposed to do. Just like spams, asking me to buy enlargement pills or degrees that I don't want.

Ironically, I'm writing this blog while literally eating SPAM.

2006-02-26

 

Web Application: Start Page (News Aggregator)

Here comes a second one: a news aggregator that can function well as a start page. This would be the only way to keep track of the overwhelming number of sites I read reguarly.

I have never been a fan of those news readers, because I want one page that quickly shows everything. So I don't use standalone like SharpReader, part of other programs like Thunderbird, Firefox extension like Sage, or even web pages like Blogline or Google Reader, as they are way too slow to navigate. I have used Google Ig for a while, but it lacks basic features like TODO list and notes (unless you spend time and effort to investigate adding third-party stuff). It has the problem of rolling back to an old version of news. Also, it is still not fast enough.

But I've finally found one that is fast enough for me. Welcome to my new start page (as long as you don't hate the French), NetVibes. Not only it is much faster to use than all the above, it also comes with all the necessary handy tools, like integration with Gmail, TODO list, and notes. After subscribing my private version of my 30 Boxes calendar, I finally have everything I need in one page.

2006-02-25

 

Web Application: Calendar

I want to talk about two web applications I've recently used and loved. First one is web calendar.

I have always wanted to use a calendar software to keep me organized. A natural choice for me would be Mozilla Calendar, for my support to their other products. However, synchronization would become a pain, particularly when I don't want to setup a webdav server just for that. Why Google still does not offer this service? While there is one provided by Rice, I don't have an account there and have been too lazy to find it out so that I can use it for a few months before graduating.

So I searched. The best in the market is definitely 30 Boxes. It has convenience and lightening fast interface. Good integration with other services. You can even check my public calendar here. Or even as news feed. (Shoot, I'm letting you know about my lack of life.) More important, it has a text box for typing events, like "security group meeting wednesday 2-3pm repeat weekly," making adding events unbelievably fast. Check it out. While you're there, add me as a buddy and plan events with me.

This service is not without its problem, though. As a start, repeated events would appear out of order in a given day. What bugs me is that while this is a known problem, the developers there couldn't care less and went back to code some "cooler features." But I guess you can't ask too much from a free service.

Besides 30boxes, I have also tried another popular choice, CalendarHub. But it is way slower as an interactive application and lacks the text box feature. To me, speed is the top priority.

2006-02-23

 

Once Upon a Time

The other day, I was asked to tell a story. Never a storyteller, and with nothing in mind, I told the following story in Cantonese (English translation below).
從前,有條友,夠聽話,做特首。佢有勇氣,所以佢繼續留低。後來,佢腳痛,於是做左國家領導人。
Once upon a time, there was this docile guy who was the Chief Executive. He had courage, so he chose to continue to stay. Later, he had a leg ache. So he became one of the leaders of the country.
I know, nothing is funny if it has to be explained. But just in case you have no idea but still want to know what this means, I'm talking about this guy, and his famous quote when being asked whether he was going to step down, "it is easy to just leave, but it takes courage to stay," not too long before his resignation.

2006-02-22

 

Thuy Nguyen

Who is Thuy Nguyen? I have no idea. I wouldn't care if I were not receiving snailmails for her for the last couple of weeks. Somehow someone considered she moved into my apartment, which I have been occupying for the last few years, and put that information in some database. I have received a lot of mails for her, many of them from AE. But it's getting worst. Yesterday, I got a Vietnamese magazine, which the subscription has been "sponsored" by SBCAT&T. Obligatory quote: "Your junk mails. Delivered."

2006-02-21

 

Miraculous Request

After not hearing anything about my job applications for a long while, and with my mind partially set to take the offer I'm still keeping, I have just received an unbelievable request for recommendation letters. It is unbelievable and miraculous because it is from a top university in Jersey, one that I thought I would have no chance to pass through the first scan. Granted, I still probably have no chance of getting an interview invitation, it still made me pleasantly surprised for a while.

2006-02-19

 

Grocery Shopping

Each weekend, for grocery shopping, I usually go to HEB for non-Chinese food and then Viethoa for Chinese food, both near the intersection of Beltway 8 and Beechnut.

In HEB, they seem to be starting this annoying practice of promoting their weekly sales item at the cashier. When the cashier asked me whether I would be interested, a lady, seemingly to be the manager, showed up from nowhere and censure the cashier (since I already have the product on sale waiting to be scanned). Then she walked all the way to the cashier to show her how she is first supposed to greet me before asking sales question, and demonstrated by asking me how I was doing. Twice.

Then in Viethoa, they usually need to check ID before accepting credit card payments. The cashier speaks English with a Vietnamese accent. When I showed her my ID and my credit card, she expressed little interest and gave me back both cards. So I said, in Cantonese, "Oh, she's too lazy to check my ID." Guess what? Yeah, the cashier replied in Cantonese, "you're buying stuff, not stealing stuff, so we don't need to check."

Apart from the amusing logic behind her reply, the story tells us to always assume Vietnamese-looking people speak Cantonese, as there had been a lot of Chinese people emigrated to Vietnam and then re-emigrated to the US.

2006-02-18

 

Sucky Apartment

If one needs reasons to graduate from a miserable PhD student life, look no further.

As a poor graduate student, I live in an old, cheap apartment close to campus. To make sure I can enjoy air-conditioning with a peace of mind during the insanely hot summers and not too cold winters, I chose an apartment that has electricity paid for, despite the many disadvantages living here, like the damn cat and the fact that we might have video camera in the apartments and everywhere else.

But with the idea of free electricity that sounds so communism, you know it is not going to work out nicely. In the winter, when everyone turns up their heat, some selfish neighbors keep their windows wide open, probably to get "fresh" air, wasting a lot of energy.

To deal with the ever-growing electric bill, my apartment figured a solution: Limit heat to 75 degrees (or 24 degrees Celsius). While 75 degree is a pretty good number in theory, the actual temperature indoors is much lower than that, making it easy to become sick in the colder nights.

And this also happens to hot water. Once in a while, the water is not hot enough for a shower, even if I use only hot water.

To undo the harm, maybe I should just grab an electric heater and use even more electricity. After all, the apartment is too cheap to install per-unit electricity meters...

2006-02-15

 

Check for Europe Trip

This check finally arrives, two and a half month after the conference has ended. I can't really complain it being slow, since I didn't submit the documents until mid January, and I was too sick to go back to campus to check my mail until yesterday.

Anyway, it is a nifty sum of over $2,200! It is even higher than the amount I have requested; probably due to an increased mileage rate for driving. On the flip side, it also tells how much money I have paid in advance. I could have charged most of it to the departmental credit card, but I hate doing that either. If you consider the 4.75% APY INGDirect is giving, that almost amounts to $22 interest.

I guess it is actually a good thing that I don't get to go to Spain. I won't have this problem again in two months.

2006-02-12

 

Homepage Visitor

In case you still don't know, I do track on visitors to my real homepage and this blog. Once a while, I can see something interesting from there.

Like this time, I see a visitor from a company that has its name similar to an acidity measurement scale. There is no "referrer" to the link, so it looks like someone typed my homepage URL in their browser. Not totally surprising, given that I have applied for a research position there that has a job description that seems to be completely matching my research. Anyway, what's scary is that it seems to be from a Netscape 3 browser. To contrast, out of the over 1,500 unique visits to my homepage, only 7 of them are from Netscape 3, while 5 from Netscape 4...

It may not be not what it looks, after all. Their reported operating system is "others." So it is possible that someone is behind some privacy proxies, like Privoxy, and hide their user-agent (i.e., browser type). But another scary possibility would be the fact that since this company also has its own brand of Unix...

2006-02-11

 

LCD Dartboard II

Ok, another chance for you. The guy that expressed interest, you ought to buy one this time. Amazon is again selling the LCD Dartboard for less than $10. Act fast!

2006-02-10

 

Generating Traffic

I just found that there is an easy way to generate traffic to this blog. This is by simplying putting a link to popular blogs, say, Google blog (no link this time, don't want to cheat for traffic), as I did last time. Because of the back link in Google blog, I have over 50 new visitors over the last two days. Imagine if I put a link to each and every popular blog that has a "links to this post" feature...

Of course, this is not going to bring me extra revenue, as none of those new visitors has clicked my ads...

2006-02-08

 

Gmail Chat

Since their announcement of rolling out Google Talk into Gmail, I have been anxiously relogging my Gmail account every few hours to see if I can use this feature yet. No luck, so far. However, I noticed that some people uses Gmail less frequently already has this feature in the account. It's so unfair!

But once it really appears in my account, there would probably be some issues. Like should I keep opening Trillian or Adium, just for ICQ/YahooIM? Or should I remove the Google Talk account from those programs? Why doesn't everyone switched to Jabber-compatible IMs already?

And what bothers me more is what if I have multiple Gmail pages loaded in different machine/browsers? Would I not be able to see the messages until I swap back to the right window? That would really suck.

2006-02-07

 

No Updates

I didn't update this blog for the last few days, because I was sicked badly. I could barely stay awake, not to mention walking around.

If you feel sorry for me, don't; instead, just go to my Amazon wishlist and buy me something...

2006-02-03

 

Ads

Almost 1.5 years since their IPO, selling ads is still the only income source for Google to feed their thousands of PhDs and shareholders. Still, having the stock price quadrupled, you would think that they must've been doing a great job at this.

Think again.

Google's selling point is supposed to provide you with relevant ads. This seems to be one of the more important ways to cash in for Gmail (well, other than trying to squeeze out every last bit of information from you for more ads in the future).

Sounds perfect, as long as the ads are really relevant.

The other day, I was writing an email to congratulate the lucky guy who gets to go to Spain (among a few other countries he'd be visiting in Europe) and asking him to have all the fun that I won't have. I spotted an ad asking if I had late or missed periods, and kindly offered me some help. Yes, I did miss all the periods since my birth, but no thanks, I don't think any help would be necessary in that department.

Speaking of ads, I have been receiving scam snailmails telling me that I have won a BMW or $40,000. If these things could be true, I'd already have a BMW and a Mercedes.

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