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2007-02-26

 

Long Time No Blog

Yeah, I know. It's been like forever. I do have a laundry list of "events," if you will, to blog about, just that I am a bit overloaded right now and can't quite get the time to put them down, at least sarcastically, so I would rather hold than to write them down plainly.

Why am I so busy? Let me give you a hint. I am working on a pretty independent module of a project. The beta version is due at the end of the month. I'm actually not sure if "beta" is a correct nomenclature for this release, since it is so much different from the "alpha" version we released at the end of last month. For starters, due to the radical difference in requirements and features, 70% of my module has been rewritten from scratch. I can only hope that the "final" version, to be due in another month, would at the contains some code in the alpha release... but I digressed.

One example to show my pain: While still shooting for the deadline in two days, I am still waiting for a core data structure that my module would heavily rely on to be finished. Even if I had the data structure now, I still wouldn't be sure if I could integrate and test my part before the deadline. Welcome to real-world software development.

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2007-02-15

 

Banana Protector (?)

Ever wanted to bring a banana with you but decided not to for fear of bruising and squashing? Ever imagined some kind of protective measures you can take for your favorite fruit to make them more portable? Well, you're (surprisingly) not alone.

I was reading the forums in FatWallet when I found out a post about the product you long for. Actually two of them. Check out Banana Bunker and Banana Guard. I'm not going to use one, however, as it gives you way too much area for imaginations...

2007-02-13

 

My Bag of Crap

I just received a package from one of my favorite retailers, Woot. For those who don't know, Woot is a special kind of online store that sells one kind of item per day and changes the item every day. The items are usually good deals, but that is usually shadowed by the ingenious writing for the item description. Once a while, there would be an item called "bag of crap," where they sell some cheap, unknown items but occasionally include something expensive. A coupon months back, they even included Nintendo Wii. It is this mysterious nature that makes it so exciting and usually sell out within minutes.

I finally managed to buy my first bag of crap two weeks ago, and it has just arrived. It turns out to include a refurbished portable CD player, a (video) camera bag, two cute little doggie keychains, and two gel ink pen. See a thousand words below. Do you think $3 + $5 shipping is a good deal for these crap?

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2007-02-12

 

Worst. Game. Ever.

Reviewing games seems to be a kind of ideal job, where the daily activities seems to include having fun with the latest games for the good ones and writing sarcastic remarks for the bad ones. But, like any other "ideal" jobs, they seem to be so great only because we don't always get to see the down sides of their work.

Random browsing brought me to a review of a game that many say is the worst game ever: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Reading the review would give you an impression of the helplessness of game reviewers, but you have to actually seeing how poor they are in a review video. I couldn't help but laughed for 3 straight minutes...

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2007-02-09

 

RSA 2007

Tuesday was a very long day, and I haven't fully recover from it yet. For the trip to RSA in San Francisco, I needed to wake up at 5am to catch my plane at 7. I could have gone earlier at 6am to catch Bill Gates talk, but honestly who cares what Billy boy has to say anyway?

The focus of the trip was the Expo, seeing what companies have been doing lately. Of course, bearing a name tag of the company, people's reactions are pretty extreme. Some seems to be more interested in the potential of being bought by us; some are just nerds trying to show off their technologies; but most of them are just like "You're my competitor! Get lost!" I couldn't complain much, since the trip comes with free good meals (not graduate students' kind of free meals). On top of that I got plenty of freebies.

But the best part? Going to and from the San Francisco airport (SFO). Since the number of people going would require multiple cabs, we got car service. Not just normal car service, but a limo car service. Not just some random limos, but some roomy limos that can sit six people comfortably in a U-shape. It was a really wonder experience.

But the worst part? A typical problem people encounter flying at SFO is that it is often foggy and planes are easily delayed. That didn't happen to me. But who could imagine that it was our very dry Los Angeles airport (LAX) that was foggy and caused delay on the return trip. Some of us have already boarded the flight by the time they announced. This means somehow they can tell that LAX would be foggy in 2 hours, but not soon enough to tell us before we board.

Delaying from 8:30pm to 10pm would cause me to arrive home at midnight. So we figured we could fly to Burbank airport (BUR) instead and have a colleague's wife drive us to back to Los Angeles airport to pick up our cars and still save half an hour. Just as we were about to board the Burbank flight, all of a suddenly they decided that LAX is clear enough. We felt we were keep changing flights. Well, perhaps it wasn't that bad; at least I was able to arrive home at 11:30pm, just some 18 hours after I left home...

(For those of you in Bay Area, I didn't find time to catch up with you since this was only a 1-day trip.)

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2007-02-05

 

Pizzeria Mozza

My sister is coming to visit me in the coming weekend. Obsessed with food, of course the biggest goal for her visit is to enjoy the food in L.A. One place she particularly wants to go is Pizzeria Mozza. Opened by famous chef Nancy Silverton partnered with Iron Chef America Mario Batali, it sounds delicious already without actually going.

Of course, for a famous restaurant like this, it is hard to get a table. I tried to make a reservation last week, only to be told that the available times for either day in the weekend is either 4:30pm or 11pm (are they still considered dinner?). Later, when I called again trying to make a reservation for lunch, I was told that the earliest would be 11pm (what the heck?).

Both times, the callee emphasized strongly that I need to make reservation a month in advance. I guess my sister needs to postpone the plan until her next visit...

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