Tiny

After all these years I couldn't find a single gadget that satisfy all my need. Since no single one works, I need to make sure that each one of them are reasonably tiny so that I can carry multiple of them.

verbal communication skill

I really should go out more often, and I realized that even when it's my day off I will stay at home most of my time. In addition to not having enough exposure to sunlight, it also hurt my communication skill as I didn't get much opportunity to practice expressing my idea and intention. I also become lack of patient, and slowly become much less a good listener that I used to be. Although the time I spent at home equipped with skills to communicate with videos and graphics, yet I paid the price by sacrifice my verbal communication skill.

Good to have bad times

Maybe it's a good thing that every once in a while I experienced something that wasn't quite OK, and thus reminded me that I will not stay in the current situation forever. I enjoy a pretty routine life so that I myself can inject excitement and changes by myself. So in that sense I am a control freak. I hope that everything is in my way.

There's several problems with that attitude. To say the least, the world simply does not work in that way. There's always surprise, ups and downs, enjoyment and hardship. All these come when I am least expected.,

And then there's problems on whether I can make the right choice. Granted I am not as impulsive as I used to be when I was a teen. Still I architect my life in the way that I can crave my impulsive decision process. For instance, I have a iPod filled with thousands of music in huge spectrum of styles. That ways no matter what mood I am at I can always find the kind of audio entertainment I like at any moment. The same for games in my Nintendo DS, video in my Pocket PC, comics and books and tutorial and such in my laptop computer, and not to mention the terabyte of content I have on my desktop computer, all of satisfy my crave of learning and enjoyment, in my time, in my way.

Personally I don't see that attitude a crime. It's just that I need some reality check only in a while, and thus that hardship I had at work not longer being exist merely "bad time", but instead a nice reminder about nature of life.

Honeymoon over at work

I am starting to have some frustrated moment at work, which is great because that reminds me not to get too attached at work stuff. I used to work like I am not coming back to work tomorrow, and I shall continue working like that, at least emotionally.

End of WiFi fun at work

My boss found out that have a WiFi router running on my cubical, and asked me to remove it before the security people come by and kill me. So I did just that.

On the bright side, I wasn't really using the WiFi connection much at all. I actually find it kind of a waste to have it running in the office somehow. I also successfully proven that the connection is great enough for far away distance, which is awesome.

In addition, now I have one more excuse to NOT buy WiFi enable device since I have one less place to use such device. Plus I can use this WiFi router at home and enable my Pocket PC to be my Internet device (the other WiFi router at home doesn't work with my Pocket PC somehow).

ic, ok, haha, lol

If you receive a lot of "ic", "ok", "haha" and "lol" on IM, that means you should shutdown since the person you talk to is trying to tell you that "I am trying to politic but I don't want to continue the conversation."

Prove me wrong.

Rival

I must be very tired last night, as I slept very early last night, and I slept very deep. And everytime I sleep deeply, I have dreams. Last night I had a long dream with several segments, including:

• Loss in an anonymous city and couldn't get home.
• Have rivals (some nasty teachers and mean students) in a music school. And the school was kind of like Hodwart in Harry Potter.
• ..... probably something else but I already forgot.

Another great thing about deeply slept is that I will always wake up early. It's 6:30 a.m. now, I shall start some 3D graphic study.

太極

今天的天氣好得很。暖和的太陽伴著微風，很清爽。我還要怪自己穿得太多。
我要好好的從新學習呼吸和寫字。也許你會覺得奇怪，為甚麼這些生理的自然基本動作和技能也要學。我會呼吸和寫字，但做得不好，質素不高，正因這些都是生活的基本動作，令我的健康和作息都不能達至最好狀態。

就拿呼吸來說。我有個不好的習慣，每當我感到不安，心情緊張，我便會不自覺地停止呼吸，直到自己的身體也受不了，才自然到吸一口氣。這種習慣令我有輕微哮喘，也令我的工作質素欠佳。

至於寫字的問題，是當我多使用電子手帳手寫中文輸入後才發現的。我發覺我寫字的力度過大，令我寫作一段短時間便已經慼到疲倦，連帶我的左手也因為同時承受手帳的重量和右手寫子的力度而感到疲倦。

我忽然想，不曉得學太極對我有沒有幫助？

P.S.: It turns out that the weather was nice only to a point. Once it reaches the afternoon, the temperature was high and hot like summer.

Lost

Something stupid happen to me: I was lost in parking lot of the Galleria shopping mall for 20 minutes, trying to find my way to my car. I used the alarm on my car as the indicator, and search around based on the sound of the response alarm I heard from my car, but it was such a painful experience. I finally got to my car and found out that I was totally searching the wrong floor. Another sign that I am suck at direction.

Hair cut

I had a haircut today. At first I was thinking of just cutting a little bit here and there myself until I realized that I really didn't know what I was doing.

BTW, the wallet my dance teacher gave me as a gift one year ago started falling apart, so I have to move my stuff to my old wallet.

Nothing much other than that.

My back pain

It's pretty obvious that I was my own fault that caused the back pain I am having now.

It was a cold Friday morning, with temperature at 37F, and I was rushing to go to work as I woke up late that morning. I was carrying a huge backpack with about 12 pounds of stuff including laptops, gadgets and so on. And then I saw that I need to bend down to do something with my shoes.

I should first remind you a few things:

• I take ballet class every week. So my body is not like ultra week.
• I am very much afraid of cold, and the response time of the reflex on my body dramatically increase until cold weather.

So I took the risk by just bend down, thinking that it's not big deal. And BANG, I felt ultra pain at my lower back.

I survived reaching office, and I was totally in pain and couldn't even stand up straight. I had to use my office chair, which has wheels on it, to get me from place to place in the office. There were a few times which I just to stand up straight to do something simple like going to the restroom or reheating my lunch. There was a point which I felt so painful that I had to fell on the fall and crawling to move forward.

I planned on leaving earlier, as a lot of colleagues told me to, but I couldn't get my code complete. Finally at 4:30 pm, I decided to rollback all my code change so that I didn't have to leave anything undone on our version control and leave the office. (I did have a copy saved on my machine before I rolled back.)

Now the challenge became how I could get to my car while carrying a 12 pounds backpack. I meant, I couldn't even stand up straight, let alone carry this crazy back of gadget. That's where my manager Jon came in to the rescue. He left the office with me so that so I need to carry was a thick coat. And even then there were a few times when I found it so painful that I had to stop and rest a bit. Finally I reached to my car, and I drove him to his car as an act of appreciation and also showed him that I would be fine driving home myself.

However, I didn't really head home. Instead I drove to church as I had a 6:00 pm band practice for the Sunday service this coming Sunday. It was fine as I was still able to play drum set. But of course most people around realized that I was not in good shape as I walked in a very strange way.

So after all that, I drove to buy some dinner through drive-through, brought Advil and Icy Hot from CVS and then headed home. I finished the dinner, took 2 Advil pills, put on some Icy Hot and went to sleep.

To my surprise, I felt much better this morning. It will probably still take a few days before I can completely recover from the back pain, but at least I can now walk with my body straight, which is 10 times better than what I was yesterday. I really don't know which one being the critical factor of the ease of my pain: Advil, Icy Hot or a good night sleep. But I will definitely take all three of them next them I experience the same pain. And based on the people around me kept telling me yesterday, the pain will come again in future years. Sigh.

Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite Electronic Drum Kit

I got my new electronic drum set last night, and it's fun to play and practice with, and well worth the US$799 price tag.

The drum set, Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite Electronic Drum Kit, is the low end model of V-Drum family. Yet, it does basically everything I need. In fact, one of the drum sound module has double bass drum setup, so now I can practice double bass drum at home.

Being a low end model, this set has some short coming, for instance, the sound setting is very limited. There's no cymbal canceling when snapping the edge of the plastic cymbal. There's no rim for you to play rim or rim short. The arrangement of the instruments are also limit.

But the compact size is a perfect for those who live in apartment, and all arms and hardwares are strongly build.

So, so far, for the first day, I am loving it.