Ballet terms

I really should start remembering those ballet terms so that I have less problem remembering those combinations . I spent most of my time recalling what I need to do instead of doing the combination. The instructor Grace today was definitely easier than Naomi. So I should had even less excuse to complain about the difficulty.

My question was, what was the best source to find the mekong of all these terms?

And then I got home, and I found that I have several of those book all describing ballet terms. That's when I realized that I had that need ... like ... 10 years ago. And sadly, after these 10 years, I still haven't mastered these terms.

Dream about elevator

It was some odd dreams I had last night again. This time is mainly about me moving up and down in a building using cage-like elevator (those that can easily found in industrial building). Strangely that building didn't seem like an industrial building, for there was big restaurant, shopping area and something like that. But then it also had warehouse area, and some dark gloomy floor that you may be familiar from horror movies.

Nothing terribly happened in the dream, but I was feeling very uncomfortable throughout the whole process.

Hurt my lower back in a strange way

I was slightly hurt my lower back yesterday while I was bending down drying to tide a knock on the garbage bag. After a night a sleep, it feels like I am getting better now. It's still strange to find me hurting myself with such a way.

Say no to Kraft Handi-Snacks Sugar Free Pudding

I brought some Kraft Handi-Snacks Sugar Free Pudding back in the post Hurricane Ike days. I tried, and I told myself I will never buy this product again.

First it has no FAT, which is something I want. Second, it taste plain. Like ... VERY PLAIN. Third it has low nutrition value.

So, nope, never will I buy it.

won't bow down to AT&T

I am at FortBend Community Church waiting for New Heart performance to start. While I am waiting , I used my iPod Touch to see if I could pick up any Wifi signal . To my surprise, I found two Wifi connection. One marked as Private with password protection, while the other one was named Public. I gave the public one a try and found that I could see a login page while I was outside the hall. After I walked inside, the signal was still strong, but I couldn't see the login page again.

The more I used my iPod Touch, the more I hope that I could have Wimax or 3G access. But no, I won't bow down to AT&T.

Still need all 3 of my MP3 players

用了ipod touch 一個星期，我發現這部 gadget 新成員沒法取代 my 其他兩部mp3 player. iPod Touch has huge advantage on video playback, but it doesn't have my iPod Classic's huge 80Gb capacity. On the other hand, iPod Classic touch forced me to use iTune on ONE particular machine, which makes my iRiver 140 more appealing comparatively as I can put in content in the player wherever and whenever I feel like it. As a result, I have all 3 mp3 players in my bag.

It would be a problem if I were in Hong Kong. Luckily, I live in US, which I drive everywhere I go. Thus, I can leave my stuff in my car when I find my bag to heavy to carry around. My 1997 Rav4 doesn't look sexy anymore these days, plus I never wash my car, so it doesn't good from the outside (although I keep my car very clean inside). Plus there's no fancy stereo system in my except the cassette tape. So no thieve will realize that there are so many electonic gadget in my glove compartment.

During my trip in HK, though, I'll properly just carry iPod Touch around. iPod Touch with my wallet and my Nokia 5300 mobile phone should be enough to keep me productive, inform and in touch everywhere I go.

Blogging on iPod touch

Somehow, when I use ipod Touch 寫 blog, 我傾向用中文而不用慣常用的英文來書寫，因為ipod touch 的中文手寫輸入比英文的virtual keyboard 好用得多。

Watched Saturday Night Live, live

It's really been a while since the last time I watch Saturday Night Live live on television. Partly that's because I was in Hong Kong since 2001 up until 2007, but it's also because I don't watch TV ever since. I consume content from the web, from podcast, YouTube, Hulu.com, iTune and torrent sites.

Watching live TV becomes such a strange idea to me. In fact, the TV converter box (to convert off the air digital broadcasting signal to analog signal) that I brought using the government handed out coupon was not being used for more than 3 times since I set it up. I just can't stand being forced to watch video content at a certain specific time anymore. Instead, I am used to watch content whenever I feel like it on my 24 inch computer widescreen monitor, in whatever order I feel like, and skip whatever portion I want to.

Last night, though, after I came back from seeing a ballet perfromance and getting ready to have dinner, I overheard my roommate watching Saturday Night Live. So I talked to myself, hey, maybe I'll give live TV a try. So I did.

The result is that I probably won't do it again.

It takes much longer time to watch the show. Instead of being able to skip sketch that didn't interested me, or commerical that was boring, I have to sit through that one and a half hour. When I watched a downloaded version of the show, it took me less than 30 minutes to finish it.

On the plus side, some commercials are fun.

But the bottomline is, TV networks, you guys really need to work with the web, work with sites like Hulu.com or iTune or YouTube, and get with the Internet delivery mechanism. Otherwise, the next generation will leave you behind. Don't make the mistake music industry made.

Oh, one more thing, ***k RIAA.

After Tuesday's Ballet Class ...

Remember yesterday I was late to the class because I got stuck in the traffic and thus late for class for 20 minutes? Today I left office 25 minutes earlier, but because the traffic was "back to normal", I as the result arrived classroom 30 minute earlier than I used to be.

Oh I guess I'll just do a little bit blogging (like now) and then a little bit sketching.

One thing I really need to improve with my sketching is that my beginning of a lot my strokes are too heavy. I call them "butt head". So I need to train myself to ease in when I create a stroke.

Get rid of junk mail in Outlook

I wasn't filtering my office Outlook email until today. I was totally fed up with those annoying email, and adding filter gives my sanity back.

By the way, I was doing push up, practicing guitar, converting a wma file into mp3 and set up customize pen in Manga Studio all done in the morning. Good use of time.

Some sort of nightmare again

This time I forgot pretty much most of detail about the nightmare I had last night. I knew it involved accepting helping someone doing something by meeting another one, and then it saw roaches. I guess that's enough to indicate that it's nightmare.

night

I wasn't too happy today.

All mess started when I leave office at 6 p.m. heading to a ballet class. Usually if I leave at 6 p.m. I will be able to arrive at Houston Ballet Academy at around 6:40 p.m., giving me enough time to change clothes and warm up. But due to whatever reason (tens of still broken traffic light is Houston area I guess), it took more than one hour to get to my destination. By the time I arrived the class, it's 7:20 p.m. I missed 20 minutes of the class.

Actually, I was not intended to take the Monday intermediate class. I knew I was not up to that level yet. But since there was no class last week due to Hurricane Ike, so I thought instead of wasting a class I brought, I just take the intermediate class instead.

Turns out it was a pretty bad idea.

The class was taught by a lady I've never took her class before, and while she danced very well, and I sort of understand the combination, my mind wasn't bright enough to remember all the combination, not to mention my body. As a result, it was like a mess. I guess the teacher also realized that, and didn't even dare to correct anything I did. It was a total disaster to me.

After a class I was chatting with the man who was in the same class and wonder if there's any other place to learn ballet, as I am seriously trying to find something between beginner and intermediate. He suggested me to give HopeStone and West University Dance Center. So I think I'll give them a try to see if I can find a class that fit my level.

And then I went to Alice's place to feed her cats and water her plants. The garden hose was leaking like crazy. BY the time I finished watering her plants my right arms were all wet.

Later I found out that some cats left some vomit stuff at the enter of the kitchen. So I had to clean them up before I could put cat food in bowls and clean cat toilet.

Afterthen I had to go to KCF to by dinner, and went supermarket to buy TV dinner for my lunch. By the time I got home, it's 10:45 p.m. already. And I still need to do laundry so that I have danceware to wear tomorrow.

So that's pretty much my night.

Let me suck in my KFC dinner now.

My Inking exercise

I still need to practice more inking with G pen (used in Japanese manag), so here it goes:

Lines seems to monotonic, and I should do a pencil sketch on the over all shape before inking.

Very strange nightmare

I was supposed to be just taking a nap after a full lunch, but ended by slept for 3 hours.

The dream involved several segments, and they all involved wired stuff. At first I way rushing to some place with Bill Gates because he was late, and then the scene changed to my being chased by a gang of people and I knew that I was a undercover cop or some sort. A bunch of cops were killed (or "eliminated" in movie style) by "someone or something" while I was running to the top floor. There I met a very pretty blond hair girl which I knew that she's evil ( ... how did I know?) And eventually I woke up.

Yes, it definitely feels like a B movie, like a bunch of action movie plots cramp together....

................

Let me practice playing guitar now ....

So this is "The Big Bang Theory"

I didn't realize this existence of this TV show "The Big Bang Theory" until a few days ago I watched a little bit of it, and thought "heck, this seems like a nice geek sitcom".

So now I am watching the first episode, and boy it is fun. Given it's extremely stereotypical about pretty much everything about geek and nerd, but it's an enjoyable show... at least for the first episode.

On an totally different issue: finally found a Chinatown supermarket that sells lunchbox. It's the Golden Supermarket. Awesome. Finally I am have to rely solely on instant noodle or Jack N The Box for dinning.

First issus of my Wired magazine subscription just came

When I heard the mail man dropping mails into the mail slot at the first door, I had a strange feeling that I knew the first issue of my Wired magazine subscription (a one year free subscription from the Coke Reward points I accumulated) just came. And when I went to the front and check, indeed it came.



The most interesting about this issue is that it comes with a blue-ray disc with a web movie called Coma. No way I will buy a BlueRay player just for watching this content, but with Little Big Planet coming and more and more reason to get a PS3 ... you'll never know ...

Dream, again ....

I forgot how it was started in the beginning for my dream I had last night, but so far as I remember, it started with me being in Hong Kong with my mom and elder brother. Mom seemed to be pretty worry about getting something done, while I was concerning about getting some legal documentation (something like passport and such) done.

In the meantime, my elder brother wanted to buy some electronic gadget, so he went to the store. Somehow I went to the store too just to look for him, and found that he was frustrated by the poor quality of the gadget. (I forgot if he refunded it or not.) I then headed over to the get my legal document done.

I walked and saw my friend Daniel Yeh with a foreign lady (an Indian lady properly). I asked Daniel Yeh for direction, but that Indian lady kept speaking at the back, saying something like "you probably couldn't make it for it's too hard to find" or something that.

I went ahead and expected the bus station, something like No.401, would be pretty hard to find. But it wasn't. The notice on the board at the bus station sinked my heart, though. It said "401, route changed as following". So now started to wonder if the 401 bus could to the right destination. But that this exact moment, a 401 bus came. I thought for a very short moment, and then jumped into the bus.

The bus had a lot of people, but not really overcrowded. While I was trying to find my wallet to pay bus fee, I realized that I had a lot of gadgets in my bag, and I unconciously checked whether thse items are intact. At least I remembered that I had my wallet and my iRiver MP3 player clipping at the side of my belt. I pulled out a $20 note as I remembered that the bus fee indicated at the payment box was $20. But by the time I was about the put the $20 note in, I saw that the amount changed to something like $35. I continued putting $20 in, thinking that it's probably because each sub-section of the route charges different among. The driver grabbed all the money at stuck at the top of the payment box (wait, how could he/her grabbed those notes while he/she was still driving?) and count, and finally said "thank" while shuffled all the dollar bills to the bottom of the cash box. So I assumed that he/she was OK with the amount I paid.

It seems to take a lot time to get to the destionation, and I woke up while I was still in the bus....

Nothing spectectular in my dream this time.

Gasoline, yes. Chinatown lunchbox, no.

As of Thursday night, a lot of gas station has power restored.  However, all the big Chinatown supermarket still doesn't have their power stored.  I am strongly affected because I went there to buy reasonably priced lunchbox all the time.  I haven't checked Jack N The Box or KFC though.

On the other hand, Galleria was opened and was very busy.  There were tons of people in the Apple store, and all the stores are wide open.

OK, I am getting iPod Touch 2nd generation

I went to Apple store today to try out the new iPod Nano and new iPod Touch.  After spending an hour to try out both products, I have to say that both are excellent products, and I am so ready to pay up the US$299 to get the 16Gb iPod Touch.

First, I tried iPad Nano (forgot the generation number, 4th perhaps).  It's tiny, very easy to grab.  The screen was great.  Click is responsive and easy to use.  The album flow's reponsiveness was SO MUCH BETTER than my last experience with the previous fat iPod nano.  The shake-to-shuffle feature worked great, which makes me hoping that Apple can implement it on iPod Touch (it's not implemented on Touch).  If I want an mp3 player that I can simply stuff in my wallet, I will pick nano.

But then I was eyeing on something with bigger screen and with PDA capability.  So I went ahead and tried iPod Touch 2nd gen.

Volume button worked as expected.  Build in speaker didn't sound as good as I expected, but I can live with that.  The shape is good.  Weight is just about right.  Everything I liked about iPod Touch was there.

But one thing really caught my attention: the Traditional Chinese handwriting input.  The firmware 2.1 really fixed the slugglish Chinese Handwriting input problem.  I tried using it to write some Chinese notes, and found the input very usable.  I am so glad that I can finally ditch my DELL x50v and use an iPod Touch as my PDA plus MP3 player.

The reason why I didn't buy Touch right at the Apple store that I can skip paying tax by buying iPod Touch from Amazon.com.  I also gain some points by buying stuff using Amazon credit card.  So it's win win to me.

$16 lunch/dinner from China town

I have to admit that I don't have patient. So when I was waiting at the "HK Dim Sum" store for almost 15+ minutes to have my to-go food done, I already decided not to come to this resturant ever again. Let me clearify that there's nothing particularly wrong with the resturant regarding to taking 15+ minutes to get my food done. It's just that their delivery doesn't meet my expectation. That's all.

But then I thought, hey maybe the food was good, and that maybe after I tasted it, all would be forgiven. Right? So finally my food was done. It was a box of steam siu mai, a box of steam shrimp roll, and a box of seafood fry noddle, costing me $16 over all. A bit expansive from my point of view, but I thought, heck, I only go to Chinatown resturant only 3 to 4 times per year, so, what the heck.

I finished the box of steam siu mai I was still driving. They tasted nice. After all the store is supposed to be specialize on Dim Sum. So it makes sense that they tasted OK.

And then when I get home, I tried that box of fried seafood noodle.

Not so good I have to say. It tasted like they put too much MSG In it. And by browsing around the ingredients they put in, 3 words popped up in my head: high profit margin.

Nevertheless, because I was so utterly hungry, I finished the whole box anyway.

I still haven't tried the steam shrimp roll yet. We'll see. We'll see.

So that's how it ends, "20th Century Boys"

Finally I finished "20th Century Boys" and "21st Century Boys".

With the scope so huge and so complex, it isn't be surprising that the final ending of the Japanese comics "20th Century Boys", dubbed as "21 Century Boys" wasn't very satisfactory. On the bright side, the author finally sort resolved most of the plots in the story. However, compare with another long story Harry Potter, it seems like the plot of 20th Century Boys wasn't as well planned.

But then, a complete ending is better than a lose ending.

Philip 66

今天前往老人公寓做義工，在前往的途中看到 Philip 66 的油站有人排隊，連忙在回程時加入輪候的行列。耐心的等待了大半小時，終於入滿了汽油，這未來的個多星期有著落了。

現在我正在等待送食物到老人中心的貨車來。涼風吹來，十分舒服。因為家裡有了電力，回家後可以準備一點熱的東西來吃，但是家裡的食物都是乾糧...

Power is back at my home

That's exactly why I am replying email and posting blog now :-D .

Here's what I ate for the last 3 days.

Finally a real dinner

8:59 pm. It's so nice to see my laptop got charged, so nice to see that Alice's place is fine and dandy, and so nice to have a real dinner.

I wasn't feeling well when I woke up this morning, mostly because of the breezing temperature. It's a bit too chilling to me. I stayed in bed until 10 am. Our Manager Eric sent us a manage about shooting for getting back to work on Thursday, but that still dependent of the power supply. Personally I can't wait getting back to work.

Then I had another Instant Soup as lunch. The instant Soup tasted nice when I first had it on Saturday noon, but by Monday noon, I already started feeling sick of it. Still, I forced myself to finish it, with a banana and an apple.

I continue my sketching study after lunch, and practiced guitar on and off. Somehow I didn't feel like I had enough energy. I felt like my head was a bit aching.

To ease my pain, I read Rumiko's comics "Mermaid Forest". I couldn't believe that I almost forgot the story. Plus this time I read it from a learning perspective, trying to see how she defined the layout of each scene, how she set up each character.

Then Alice called. She got electricity, and she suggested me to get to her place to charge up devices, plus she has a computer that has some problem. So I went there fixing her computer while charging my stuff. A phone call came. Emily and Roy asked for some help of distributing food at the senior center. But by the time Alice and I got there, they already finished the job, I told them that I would come to help tomorrow, and maybe the day after if I can find gas pump to fill up my car.

Alice was told my a friend that there's one Chinatown restaurant opened, so we went there to have our dinner. After have so many days of jams, banana and canned instant soap, this dinner tasted much better than delicious, no to mention that shrimp is always my favorite dish.

We ordered some dishes for to-go and brought then to Emily's place. Like us, they enjoyed some real dinner with rice and chicken. At the same time I had great time playing with their dog Penny. He's such a cute and sweet puppy, so eager for attention.

By the time I got back to Alice place it's 8:40 already. So I rushed back home because the 9 o'clock curfew started. I arrived home at 8:50 pm.

And so here I am, have my laptop fully charged. Maybe I should go to Alice's place to send some emails and charge my devices again. We'll see.

In the meantime let me play some guitar in the dark.

Gun shots

I still remember that I heard a few gun shots last night. But that's pretty much it. I was listening to Harry Potter 7 audio book and stopped at the spot when the trio finally got the final .... errr... don't want to spoil the story. All I know is that there's 3 hours to go until the end of the story. The battery in my iPod is still holding up pretty well. Based on the way I use it, I should still have 3 to 4 days of battery left. Hopefully either my home or my workplace should have power back. This is one of the rare occasion when I am eager to get back to work.

Last night was pretty painful. I have to admit that I didn't eat enough last night. It's not that I have no food at home at all, but I won't feel full unless I have some starch in my stomach with something moisture. The instant noodle I had last night was fine. But I only had one bag with wasn't enough to keep me full.

So this morning I woke up at about 9 a.m., feeling pretty fuzzy.

On the upside, the water pressure seems to be back to normal now. That means I can take a nice cold shower. I am so glad that I washed all my clothes before the hurricane came. I should enough clothes to change for the coming 1 week.

At about 10 a.m., I decided to cruse around the nearby area with my Rav 4. The temperature was pretty OK, and I heard from the radio that we will have this kind of temperature for he coming several days, which is such a blessing.

Remember I original thought of bringing my camera with me? Well, I didn't have mood to take a lot of photos so I didn't. And it was proven that there's not much dramatic scenes to take. The only worthy photo shot was the fallen down of the Ding Ho sign, which cut off the traffic of a segment on Belairre street.

I couldn't find any gas pump that has gas, which to me is not such a big deal knowing that my car still have gas allowing me to go in and out everyday for a week. Plus I will stay at home at much as possible anyway. The problem may come when I need to get back to work, but I have confident that the workplace won't reopen until gas and electricity are fully available through out the city.

Then I heard from the radio that HEB was opening. That was awesome. Besides the fact that I want to stock up some food, I also wanted to see the scene, like trying to see what the effect was around the neiborhood. So I headed towards HEB.

I cursed along highway 59 between Belairre and Beechnut. There was some flooded area on the road, but with high base and bigger wheel than regular sedan , my Rav4 could handle all of them pretty well. Once again, I enjoy my Rav4, and will probably get another once my current one broke down, which I think would take 6 to 7 years.

The only place that has hot food available was a Popeye Fired Chicken on Beechnut, and there's a long line on drive though, and I was not interest in waste my gas to wait for just a few bites of fried chicken.

I finally arrived HEB. There's a line formed as expected, but not way too bad. So got on the line, got in, and got some food and, most importantly, some water. To get some time that's slightly more tasty than biscuit, I got a few cans of instant eatable soup. It actually tasted nice. Well, any thing tasted nice when you have nothing else to eat. I also went to a Chinese town super market and get more of those instant noddle. I am good for 3 more days. And I shop for food again 2 days later anyway. By the way, the supply of food in HEB seems pretty abundant, and I am not concerning at all. I want to stock up, but I don't want to stock up way too much.

Other than that, everything seems pretty quite and peaceful. I will spend this afternoon reading some books about drawing comics. I brought those books for years and never got a chance to read them because there was way too many media for me to consume on my computer. This is a great time for me to read up those books.

OK, let me suck in more cold soup.

Instant Soup

Just finished the so called dinner. Instant Soup meal without warming doesn't taste as nice as it should be, but at least it fill my stomach. And this is my only way of getting some meat in my body. I am feeling pretty OK now. At least I am not feeling hungry. And if I do, there's a cup od puddling, a banana, and an apple on my desk waiting for me to consume.

Breezing wind is blowing into my room. The temperature is just right, and I am looking forward to have a very comfortable sleeping tonight. So far I was pretty productive today. I cleaned up the refrigerator so that nothing is left besides stuff that can withhold under room temperature. I practiced some drum set with my electronic drum set without the power. I read the book about drawing manga and practiced while I was reading. I also practice some guitar, learning about acoustic fingering on playing melody. And most importantly, I went to supermarket to get food and get a feel about the surrounding.

These last two days without energy is such an unique experience. It felt like several weeks has been passed. And the fact that I continue finding important things to do, to learn and to be entertained proving that there more than computer, video game, and Internet in this life. I wouldn't say I am willing to give up my cyberspace in order to have a more "simply life", but at least I don't rely on it. I can control myself, I have ability to continue a fruitful, creative and enjoying life without computer. I know I am not an addict.

I still don't know if I need to go to work tomorrow. Personally, I want to, for it would be nice to be able to charge my mobile phone so that I can communicate, charge my iRiver so that I have a radio, charge my NDS so that I have entertainment, and charge my laptop so that I can document this whole process.

Battery indicates with I have 70 percent battery life left, but at the same time it says 5:49 hour. Amazing. This laptop really holding up much longer than I expected. But then , how much battery can Notepad2 consume anyway.

Let me get back to Harry Potter 7. 2 hours left, and I am looking forward to finish to book tonight. I am very excited.

No Sunday service tomorrow

I heard someone playing flute in the nearby neighborhood. This is pretty awesome. When people don't have TV to watch, video games to play, and Internet to surf, they go back to the very basic kind of entertainment: playing acoustic musical instrument. Maybe this Hurricane Ike is not a total bad idea after all.

I used a cup of water to moisten a bag a instant noodle, and just ate it. It wasn't too bad. When you have nothing better to eat, instant noddle doesn't taste as terrible as you may thought.

I need to conserve the energy of my iRiver player (act as my radio) my phone and my laptop because no one knows how long it will take to get back the electricity. At least I have to perserve enough to get though tomorrow (Sunday). If business buildings have energy recovered, at least I have food and water in the office. And I am charge everything in the office. So honestly, I am more concern about whether we have a normal work day on Monday or not.

Personally, I won't hold my breathe on that.

Battery of my NDS finally died after playing it for totally 3 to 4 hours. Now I have the Gameboy advance battery in my DS now. Gotta save them for tomorrow though, for there's a long day tomorrow that I have to pass.

Tomorrow's Sunday service will be canceled, which is something I expected. After all, without water and electricity, people will come to church with stinking smell, which no one will enjoy.

So looks like I only have my guitar and my iPod to entertain me tonight. Harry Potter 7 here we go again.

Stopped at 6:00:06

3:18 pm on Saturday now. I spent the last 2 hours listening to Harry Potter 7 audio book. Actually I was just re-catching up to the place I stopped when I arrived Houston from Dallas after AnimeFest. I lost the bookmark point, plus I wanted to re-listen in order to catch the detail again.

I will probably listen to it again later today to reach later chapters. After all, there's nothing else better for me to do anyway. Without electricity, there's not much stuff I can do. Water is also at extremely limit supply, and no one knows when the electricity and water supply can be back. In fact, I don't even know if there's any shortage of gas too. Thus, going places could also be a challenge. At least, though, I am safe.

Let me listen to the FM radio again and see if there's any new report on the situation.

Very minor flood near my home

MYST

12:24 pm. Noon. Water starts to running low at our place, and I just found out that the damn sink wasn't able to hold any water at all. Stupid, for I should have brought a few buckets to hold water for cleaning hands. Nevertheless, I grabbed a waste basket in my sleeping room and use it to hold water in case I don't have any water to wash my hands.

I spent about 2 hours playing MYST on my Nintendo DS. The experience was kind of lame partly because MYST's user interface is pretty outdated judged by today's standard. In addition, the user interface on the DS is kind of confusing, and then tiny screen didn't help much neither. I, however, was enjoying reading the stories written in the room in one of the room. I think these stories are very critical to during the exploration process. Unfortunately the exploring itself was pretty lame.

During the process I also realize how lame the battery life my classic Nintendo DS console is. When I started playing the console still shows green on the battery indicator light. After 2 hours, I saw red. I'll try keep pushing and see how much battery juice I can squeeze after red. And then I'll try doing exactly the same thing with the Gameboy Advance battery.

Time to eat some try food. Gee, I wonder when they will fixed the electricity.

Saturday morning after Hurricane Ike

Last night was a night worse than what I expected. For instance, I didn't get a good night sleep at all. The horrible wind blowing sound, the banging of wooden door, and then fear that may be, just may be, that the house I was in is not solidly made enough to uphold this hurricane Ike, all the things kept me from sleeping.

The electricity started going on and off from last midnight at 12 a.m. and eventually went out at 1 am. As of now, the electricity was not up yet. I, though, knew this would happen, and had all my communication gear charged by. So I should have enough electricity for my gear to sustain for a day. That includes my Tablet PC which I am using now, my PDA, my iRiver mp3 player which also act as a FM Radio for listening to emergency radio broadcast, my mobile phone, and Nintendo DS, my Gameboy Advantage (for the battery inside it for used by NDS just in case). For these stuff should keep me occupied for a day.

But I think my best entertainment would be my acoustics guitar. I should have play it and practice with it now, and now it's the time to make up all the time that promise to practice with it but never did.

In fact I did practiced guitar for an hour and a half this morning, and will do it again later today.

I am some dry food to sustain my life for a day. That's not an issue at all. I was, though, regarded that I didn't buy a little portable gas oven so that I can cook some warm noodle. Oh well, you learned.

I looked outside and found that the road was flooded with water. It will probably take sometime to clear the flood out. Nevertheless it doesn't seem like impossible to drive. In fact, maybe a while later I will take some time to walk or drive around to take some photos to put in my blog.

You know, at first I was a bit regret about having a 8 cell battery on my tablet PC because it dramatically increase the weight of this tablet, but now under this emergency siutation, I am thankful for the long battery life it provides me. By the way, ever since I restore the XP OS on my laptop, and consciously keeping installation app to minimum, the heat emit problem of my Lenovo X60T seems to be resolved. At least I can actually put the laptop on my laptop and all it does it giving me lure warm heat. Also I realized that there wasn't much meaningless disk activity going on, which is good.


It's 10 a.m. now and it seems to be less windy then it was a few hours ago. Seems like the hurricane is finally moving away.

OK, let me check around see how far I can drive by noon.

I had some nightmare last night, like being driven around in a taxi by some strange guy, house starts leaking, and so on.

Even without air conditioning, the temperature in the house seem comfortable. I did, though, opened the window in my room to get some fresh air in.

More later.

Surreal

It feels very strange that everyone around me treat the Hurricane Ike like the end of the world. Even the people in the Houston recycle mailing list that I subscribed to started suggesting each other steps to take to prepare for the hurricane , like taking photos of their properties and such.

And then I have friends who talk about leave the city to avoid the hurricane.

............. I was like ... what?

MTV Video award 2008: that's why I stopped watching MTV

I spent 5 minutes to glance through the 2008 MTV Music Award, and I was glad that didn't spend the full time span to watch it. This is one of the crappiest MTV Music Award show ever. With flood load of ads, artist that are not relevant to the music world, and worst of all, uninspiring graphic and video design (which is supposed to be the best reason to watch a MTV Music Award show), this piece or garbage is a big waste of time.

Can't bash it enough.

Certain TV shows I shouldn't watch when I am down

There are certain TV Shows that I avoid when I am feeling down, like these days. For instance, I can't watch Curb Your Enthusiasm when I am depress. I find those scenarios in the show too close to home, reminding me all the mean, cold, cruel m**her**cker surrounding me. Seeing the show won't make me happy, but instead making me either angrier, more depress or more anti-social. The show gives me more excuse to isolate myself from the rest of the world.

On the other hand, British comedy like Spaced seems more of my choice. The show is geeky, not as close to home, yet interesting.

In fact I am watching it now.

Sigh a night wasted

I am trying to think about what I did last night. I had tons of work to do yesterday at work so I was ultra tired when I get home at about 7 pm. But what exactly I did last night...

• Played Mario 64 on PC
• Reserach on Taiwan touring location
• Watched some video podcast
  

........ DARN IT. That what IT!? Next time when I am tired I should go ahead and sleep instead. At least when I wake up I would have more energy to do something useful than ... all these .. urge ..... >:-E

Hurricane and meeting

One thing I love about my current workplace is that no matter how important the deadline and meeting are, there's always room for rearrangement and reschedule. For instance, a big time demonstration today was canceled because of Hurricane Ike. I kind of feel like a kid celebrating a school day off because of hurricane coming.

My Tablet and my daily life

I always hope that I can simply integrate my Tablet PC in my daily so that I Can totally replace pen and paper. So far it's doing OK, but not good enough. For instance, pen support on Word 2007 allows me to make comment on a deployment document and then showed to my boss yesterday. So that was a plus. However, when I tried to scroll that document with ink on it, the page scroll speed was so slow that it was beyond frustrating. That shows that there's still a lot to improve on real life usage with ink.

And because of the booming NetBook, I don't think there will be much improvement on Tablet PC as most of the resource within and outside Microsoft would be driven away by other profitable projects instead of on Tablet PC. To me that's such a shame because Tablet PC, when implemented properly, can dramatically improve productivity and also enhance people's life. In fact, I wouldn't do as many sketches to practice my drawing if I don't have a Tablet PC.

Also, ever since I use Sleep Mode when closing the lid, I found myself using Tablet PC more often as Sleep mode shorten the bootup time, and it allows me to use the Tablet really as a LAPTOP device even with the heat generation because each of my use is such a short time period and there's not too much heat generated within the period. Sleep mode encourages me to close to lid more often, kind of encourage me to use the device on and off without having the Tablet left on all the time.

By the way, I was wondering, is there any tool that allows me to blog offline, and then have my blogs automatically uploaded to my blog hosting site once I have my Net connection back? Any comment?

Creative and depress

For some reason, my creative juice floods my brain when I am feeling like depressing, like now.

For a long time I was struggling about writing 2 stories. I wrote a lot of fragment on those two stories, so I actually have enough material to start turning those story fragment into fiction, comics, scripts or something concrete. The problem? Those two stories are too huge is scope. As the result, I never started it.

After being depressed by some minor stuff happened in the dance class, some idea suddenly popped in my brain. And I found a way to actually combine the two story together, and then release it in small chunk (like a 16 page comics) each time, and people can still enjoy the story no matter which chapter they start reading.

I am writing the script now, and then start sketching the comic. Hopefully I will have something done within 3 weeks.

One thing for sure: the story is gonna be controversial.

Hmmm ... new iPod Touch ....

Still struggling about whether I should get an iPod Touch. It pretty much does what I expect it to do now, except the lame Chinese Handwriting input. As media player, I think it does the job pretty well. As a PDA though it's just not as handy without a nice physical keyboard or handwriting recognition. Better battery life is nice, though.

will

When I saw all the photos of my colleague posted on the wall of her cubical, showcasing her daughter dressing up with belly dance costume, like the miniature version of my colleague, I realized how eager we always tried to impose our will on our offspring.

Say no to iPhone 3G

I just went to Apple Store and tried out iPhone 3G. I am so glad that I didn't get it because otherwise I would be very pissed. iPhone 3G, or firmware 2.0 to be specific, failed me on a super major area: Chinese handwriting recognition. The speed and performance of firmware 2.0 was just terrible. It's impossible to write notes in Chinese with that kind of recognition ability. If I brought the phone or iPod Touch I would be totally ranting day after day after day. Thank You Apple store for allowing me to try the phone before I , errr, refund it.

In that sense, my Pocket PC does a much better job on handwriting recognition both in English and in Chinese. That's why I have such a love hate relationship with this PDA.

Messy Dining Life

If I am not forced to dine, or do it in a routine fashion, then a lot of times I will late or even skip a dining. I know that's not good, but :-m

The Office

I finally finished watching last season's the Office. Now I am so ready for the new season start.

Company blocking Facebook

That's right. The company I work with blocked Facebook so that employees can't access Facebook at work. I am not a big fan of Facebook so that doesn't affect me too much. It's still lame though.

Rock Bank

Yesterday was the first time I play Rock Band (a video game on XBox 360), excluding those several times I tried it at megastores like BestBuy. I was at my friend's place, and his son has the full instrument set. So we played, and man it was SOOOOOOOOo much fun. No wonder the game is such a big hit. But I would say that the game will definitely be less fun if I played it by myself instead of with friends.