Random Brain Dump

There’s a new worldwide poll going on right now for voting the modern 7 wonders of the world from a list of 21 sites. So very cool. Go vote!

I have yet to visit any of the 21 candidate sites, that sucks! Sigh… 🙁

When it comes to computer, I’m really finicky about little things. I do a lot of tweaks to get my computer works just the way I like it. Take the keyboard for example, I do a lot of key remapping. IT guys always think my machine is busted when Ctrl-Alt Delete combo doesn’t bring up the Windows logon dialog (I swap Capslock & Ctrl keys). IT guys don’t like me.

We use Putty here a alot @ Yahoo to logon to BSD development machines and it bugs me that the right Alt key doesn’t work as a Meta key. This is due to the fact Putty is a British app and those funny Brits use a different keyboard layout that maps the key to AltGr. Enough users complained such that this little gripe became a wish list feature.

Rather than waiting for the feature, I found a simple workaround with a nifty little open-source app. called Auto Hot Key. It enables macros & key remapping.
In this case, the workaround is to simply map the right Alt key to the left Alt key with the following entry in the script:

RAlt::LAlt

Like most open source products, the GUI is lacking and requires editing scripts. Usability aside, it’s pretty powerful though and is worthwhile checking it out.

Last several years, I got into a habit of upgrading my computer during the holiday season. The holiday season seems timely for such thing, and good prices on parts are plentiful. I look forward to it each year. Last year was an exception, I didn’t do it for some reason I don’t remember.

With Windows Vista coming in February, I definitely will do it this time. Since my nephew Andre wanted a computer of his own, it’ll be a full system build instead of just an upgrade. With Intel’s new dual core chips being all the rage, I expect to see a significant boost in performance this year. I don’t expect having to spend a lot of time researching for parts, thanks to [H]ardOCP’s new 2006 holiday PC build guide. Good content and very timely for me. Check it out…

This video is of a giggling baby is so cute, his laughter is so infectious– definitely a watch when you’re having a bad day…

Last year, I wrote about a funny routine by David Armand to Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn. Here’s a same routine but with the singer herself. She even joined in the routine toward the end, proving that she’s got a sense of humor and ultra-cool.

Funny stuff!

Suzanne got her hair permed this past weekend. When she got home, the kids took notice immediately. Allison wanted to touch her mommy’s hair and since it was lavishly hair-sprayed, she said “your new hair is crunchy.” Earlier this evening, after she again commented on her mommy’s crunchy hair, Suzanne corrected her that her hair is wavy, not crunchy. Allison paused and then wave her hand and said “you mean your hair likes to say bye bye like this?”

…to our commie.

<rant>

When our 5 years old projection TV went kaput last December, we got it fixed by a local TV repairman. Recently, the Sony unit decided to get creative and started rendering the picture all in hue of blue or sometime of green. Other times, it’d paint several long red arches across the entire screen. And once it is on long enough, the unit would decide that some napping is in order by flickering a few red flashes and turns itself off. The darn thing is starting to develop a mind of its own. But I digress, this entry is about the Commie!

Anyway, I decided to cancel our subscription to Comcast HD cable TV a few weeks back. I mean what’s the point, when my HD shows are in monochrome! 🙂 While we’re watching analog TV now, it does feel great not living under the control of The Commie. I had discovered that some users began to call the Comcast DVR, The Commie– appropriately I thought.

You see, the Commie sucks. In fact, it really really really sucks! There had been many occasion that I came close to throwing its ass out of my window. I’m not exaggerating. The darn thing infuriates me! I’ve never had a worse user experience with an electronic gadget in my entire life.

Here are some of things that bug me:

1. Slow as a 2000 years old tortoise. You change the channel or clicking any of the button on the remote, you wait for a delayed response. Unbelievably annoying.
2. Search sucks. It seems I’d have to “type” a lot to search for anything. Entering a letter is a pain since you scroll through the entire alpha bets, one letter at a time. Hello? These Commies are built by Motorolla, couldn’t these geniuses learned a thing or two from the phone engineers in terms of keypad input?
3. Long boot time. Whenever unit is unplugged, it means we’d have to wait for a few minutes before rebooting completes. It’s worse than my 2 years old Windows desktop PC.
4. Crashes and freezes. The unit would sometime crashes or freezes– fixing it requires you to unplug it, which leads the problem above: long boot time. Argh!
5. Unresponsive. Often, I have no idea how to get the sucker to respond to me. Not infrequently, it would freeze, but not really! :0 This happens a lot. I’d press Channel Up and nothing happens because the unit freezes up, so you press the button again, again, again… but nothing happens, until the Commie wakes itself up and executes the last 12 commands queued up. It ends up jumping 12 channels. As I noted, this happens a lot with my unit. I had to deal with this almost everyday. One minute, it’s unresponsive and the next minute, it runs 10+ commands. This is the most horribly infuriating thing about The Commie.
6. Stupid warnings. Some of the warning messages are so brain dead. For example, if my unit is low on empty space, it’d warn that “Your unit is low space: 10%”. Why tell my percentage? I’d have to do some math to figure out that means I have 8 hours of recording left. Give me a break! Why not just say that!
7. Dumb UI. Too many instances, but I’ll point out just an example. The unit has 2 tuners which the unit makes them too painfully obvious. The user has to aware which tuner he’s using. If I starts a recording and then attempting to change the channel, it wouldn’t let me. I’d have to hit a button on the remote to swap to the other tuner. Why doesn’t it switch the tuner automatically? Why require the user to be so aware of which tuner he’s using.
8. Repeats. Even though I specified no repeat, my unit kept recording repeated shows; we’d have 6 recording of the same South Park episodes each week. Wassup w/ that?

The Commie was crap. It’s the Fidel Castro of DVRs. These Commies are bad for TV experience, bad for your blood level, bad for your psychological health & sanity. The Commie can shorten your life span. I can’t believe Comcast is pushing thousands of these crappy units out to their customers.

I have acted: out with The Commie! Let freedom rings again in our living room…

</rant>

It’s only my 4th day as a new employee @ Yahoo and our team already launched a major site today: Yahoo! Food! What’d they do w/out me… 😉

It’s a very cool site, everything food-related: recipes from the likes of Martha Stewart’s prison, I mean kitchen, local restaurant reviews, articles & how-to videos. Just in time for your demanding family, this coming holiday season.

Last nite, the girls discovered one of the beta fish had died. After Suzanne helped the kids flushed the fish down the toilet and after saying goodbye, Katelyn just cried her heart out. I haven’t seen her cry this uncontrollably often: “Daddy, fhe fish is gone! we flushed him down the toilet and now he’s gone… I want him to come back.” After calming her down and telling her that her fish won’t come back again, she became distraught that we flush him down the toilet. She didn’t like the idea her fish will be among the you-know-what. Allison was distraught as well, but not nearly as Katelyn’s display. I tried to draw a lesson for the kids and told them that they’ll have to take good care of the remaining fish. Hopefully, it wasn’t too much of a guilt trip on the girls.

I guess the parents also learned a lesson: we’ll have to bury the next fish instead of flushing.

PBS aired a captivating Nova episode last nite called “Monster of The Milky Way” (aptly named for Halloween). It details astronomers on the hunt for a monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy. Furthermore it was discovered that at the center of every single galaxy is a super massive black hole. These black holes turn galaxies into collosal cannibals as they “eat” up each other in this heavenly dance. As a result, the bigger galaxies will continue to grow fatter and the smaller galaxies will wither away as they get eatened up. Survival of the fittest at an astronomical scale!

Fascinating…