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2007-01-31

 

Korean Restaurant

I went to a Korean restaurant Chilbo Myunok, after seeing Chinese commercials in LA18, the local Asian TV channel. Having Chinese commercials, I supposed that they are a friendly place to non-Koreans.

Everyone there, except for valet parking and busboys, is Korean. They greet you at the door in Korean, and waitress talks to you in Korean, and she doesn't speak English too well. The food was pretty good, no complain here, but I got an interesting experience at the end.

I ordered too much and couldn't finish the cold noodle. While tasted okay, it was a bit too spicy for my liking. I figured I would take it home and eat it the next day, maybe with plenty of soda. So I asked the waitress for a to-go box. She said no. Shocked, I thought there was some misunderstanding. So I asked again, and she said no again. However, she didn't seem to be able to further elaborate other than saying "you can't take that out."

Then another waiter came by to help. His English was better, telling me about some "special ingredient." It took me a while, but at the end I realized that the noodle was prepared with a secret ingredient and so they do not allow it to-go.

The whole thing was so dumb. If I were to find out their secret ingredient, wouldn't I just bring a small container and secretly put some sauce in it? After all, the restaurant is understaffed and it took forever to get the attention of a waitress...

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2007-01-27

 

EZ-Scam

I went to EZ Lube to change oil for my car. The main reason is that I got a coupon from them to have it done for less than $20, and this even includes a car wash. Given that it is a sufficiently large chain, what do I have to loss anyway? Turns out they, at least for some stores, have questionable business practice.

The first sign is that after I turned over my car and they gave me a bill, they didn't want me to go inside right away to pay; instead, they wanted me to stick around, just as if they knew there would be more to be added to the bill. Then he started to tell me how many problems there are in my car. The air filter is dirty (what else can you expect from the most polluted city in US?). My car is low in window-cleaning fluid (it used to be free when I was in Houston). Even my automatic transmission needs adding fluid (I just had a road trip checkup before coming to LA).

I can understand the practice of sending out coupons to attract new customers. But this should come with an excellent service quality to retain customers, not as avenue to scam new suckers.

2007-01-26

 

My Retirement Taken Care of by... Amazon?

To my surprise, I just received a mail from Vanguard. It tells me how I could enroll my 401(k) plan, the retirement plan here in US. The weirdness comes from the fact that I have already enrolled my 401(k) with Charles Schwab, the provider of my company. Vanguard is actually the provider for Amazon, and somehow they thinks I'm still working here, even though I finished my internship 17 months ago and I declined their full-time job offer some 15 months ago, and I have never participated in their 401(k) during my internship.

What I don't understand, though, is how come their payroll department does not make the same mistake and keeps paying me...

2007-01-21

 

Humidifier

I bought a humidifier, something I would never have imagined getting in Houston. While I consider the dry weather tolerable here in L.A., the constant static stocks are a bit too much. On a typical day, I would have around 5 of them, mostly from doorknobs and switches.

What can I say about the humidifier? It works. On top of that, it is a funny looking little device that spits out mist. But the down side is that I now need to remember to refill water twice a day... not exactly the kind of extra duty I long for.

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2007-01-17

 

Brilliant!

How else can you describe United Airlines? I canceled my flight to San Francisco two days ago and still got a reminder from them today for online check-in. Why would my company want to do business with them?

 

I Hate Meetings

I counted. Yesterday, I had spent a record-breaking 5 hours in meetings. That left me with little productivity, if you consider writing 2 lines of code and reading 1 page document productivity at all. This is a bad time, since I should be reviewing an important report soon to be released to public. I also developed a backache yesterday, probably due to sitting uncomfortably in all the meetings. No, this must not be because I served the tennis ball too hard in WiiSports...

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2007-01-12

 

Rice Cooker Deal

Yet another episode of the greatest deals got by twngan.

Lazy daily-rice-eating people like me needs rice cookers. The best one available to date is probably Sanyo ECJ-F50S, which is great for also soups, stews, or steaming. Not surprisingly, a few issues back Wired Magazine gave it a 9/10 score (scroll down to see). Pricey though, isn't it? With a list price of $140-160, you could easily get multiple kitchen appliances to perform multiple tasks.

So how cheap can I get it to be? Well, I placed an order when it was $129.12, and applied a $25 off $125 code (which is CLEAROUT for this month) to bring it down to $104.12. I used my 25% certificate I got from American Express Wishlist, reducing it to $78.09. Then I noticed the price dropped to $111.13, so I requested for a refund of $17.99 (they don't count certificates when computing refunds), making it at the end only $60! You can't beat this price!

Of course, this deal is not meant to be repeatable by you... Sorry!

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2007-01-10

 

Damn Time Warner

Now that I have got my PS2 and Wii, apart from exhausting myself from swinging my arms playing tennis and bowling on Wii, I'm thinking about improving its quality on my 32" LCD TV. This process is a bit demanding; even the connection to TV has lingos like HDMI, component, composite, and SVideo. I did research a little bit on TV quality before buying my current TV, and I knew that I want it to support 1080p, although realistically I got myself only one that supports 1080i. A little research reveals that I want to use component cables, but the only component input on my TV is already connected to the cable box.

My cable subscription is digital through Time Warner. I have a few channels in high definition, but the quality on the rest channels are pretty bad. I thought it is because my TV now is much bigger than before, so the bad quality is just due to scaling. Checking about these cables and inputs makes me wonder, am I really getting the best performance I could from the cable service?

You can tell from the title that I weren't. Turns out the cable box supports 480i, 480p, 720i, 720p, and 1080i. With my TV I should use 1080i (or enable all the video modes for the cable box to choose), but my cable guy didn't bother to set and just left it to default with only 480i enabled. Setting it properly made the picture so freakingly much better. This also means I have been paying 4 months of cable service without really utilizing it! How could that guy be so lazy and not to set it for me? Why did I trust him and not bothered to check?

Anyway, my research reveals that I need to get component cables for PS2 and Wii. Or better yet, get this multi-console cable from Play-Asia, which can connect PS2/3, Wii, and Xbox to the same input at the same time. Since I don't have enough inputs on my TV, I also got this box that takes at most 3 component connections, a very low-cost option. The only down side is that they ship from Hong Kong, so it might takes a while for the cables to get to US.

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2007-01-07

 

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You heard me right, I finally got my Wii!!!!

I have been tracking Wii's on forums like WiiLoaded.com for a while, but didn't really bother to camp for a few hours just because of some rumors. Then someone mentioned that iTrackr provides pretty accurate updates on availability, particularly for Target. Last night, I found out that it mentioned three of the Targets had Wii's in store, so I went to the one in West Hollywood in the early morning, and Bingo!

I still can't believe it. I played WiiSports for the whole afternoon, and it was as much fun as I have expected, with pleasant surprises (the controller, Wiimote, has vibration and produces sound effects) that ignorant me didn't know. I am so exhausted playing with it now, but man, it was really fun exercise.

I am one very happy boy. Just don't ask me about my dissertation...

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2007-01-06

 

San Diego Trip

Last weekend, during the New Year break, I went to San Diego. The major destinations are San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park. They are actually designed with different mindset. If you care about seeing animals (especially pandas), then the zoo allows you to quickly seeing a lot. But you would have to accept that the fact that the animals are confined in small areas. On the other hand, the wild animal park looks more like a wild area, where you see animals in closer to their actual habitat.

Of course, being a proud deal hunter, I don't pay retail price. A good place to look for discounts in these places is MouseSavers.com, which currently featuring $8 off coupons for both places, saving you $16 per person combined.

Apart from them, I also visited the famous La Jolla Beach. Just look at this handsome guy...


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