Spent an hour messing with gadgets at Best Buy

I spent an hour at BestBuy trying out various gadgets. Overall, I was disappointed by almost all of them, which is great because there's less temptation on spending.

First I tried the Toshiba Netbook. I generally like the look, but when I tried to use Notepad to type some sentences, I found that for some reason the cursor will just to strange place with no apparent reason. I tried closing all the apps but I still got the same problem. Finally I just gave up. One less Netbook in my candidate less.

Then I tried the HP TouchSmart TX2. This is a multitouch (2 points detected) tablet PC at US$900 price point, which sounds great until you realize that:

• The vertical viewable angle is not good at all
• Digitizer driver doesn't support WinTab, meaning that it won't work with a lot of drawing applications like Photoshop.
• There's some serious heat issue.
• The machine has a very flimsy feel.

On the bright side, Touch feature seems to work pretty OK. I can do zoom and scroll using flick gesture on regular Windows application. Using 2 finger gesture to zoom on a web page is pretty cool. STill, I will wait for more dev support before I spend money on a multiTouch device.

Next disappointment: Archos 5. The biggest problem of this device is the sluggish performance. It makes me put a lot of doubt on Android device now. My iPod Touch gives me way better user experience. So until some better device coming out with better user interface, I stick with my iPod Touch.

Then I tried a Shure overear headphone. It's just not that good. Too bad I forgot the model name.

So there you go. All product bashing :-E

Forget it, Gateway!

I was very close from getting the netbook from Gateway, until I realized from Wikipedia that Gateway is actually Acer, and instantly I was like, no freaking way. My experience with Acer computer was worse than terrible. And I promised myself I will never buy another Acer computer in my entire life.

"They don't like me"

This is second time I gave a ride to Stephen and Chris, and after chatting with him these last 2 times, I was shocked to find out how much we are alike.

Stephen is a pianist at school I took ballet class from. We actually didn't talk much back when he was playing piano for our class. In fact, I tried initiate conversation with him twice, and didn't get much response from him. Since then I said hi to him a few times, and that was pretty much it. The longest conversation I had with him was when I told him how much I appreicate his piano improvisation. He said "thank you", and that was pretty much it.

And so the 2 years passed.

Then, last Tuesday, I left the ballet with a bit of melancholy, thinking how little improvement I did in the last 1 year, still puzzled about my teacher seemingly avoid chatting with me before and after class (did I do something wrong, accidentally offended her, or maybe I am too boring to chat with, or maybe I am physically stink ...), and then, once again, remind myself to accept the fact that "you are suck at deal with people".

As I was about to leave the building, I saw Stephen chatted with teenagers, seemed like trying to sort something out. He saw me, and asked, "excuse me, where do you live?"

"Sharpstown area. Need a ride?" I replied without thinking twice.

And so I gave him and his friend Chris (he's the security guard at the school) a ride home. Surprised, he was very talkative all the way while I was driving. I made a few comments here and there, but mostly I was just encouraging him to say more.

"Thank you so very much" he said when he got out of the car near the place he lived at. I smiled and waved goodbye, and then I added, "by the way, let me know if you need a ride again next week."

I meant it when I said it. But then I didn't actually think that he and his friend will need a ride again.

So I was slightly surprised when Chris came to the changing room tonight after the class and asked, "do you mind giving us a ride?" No problem, I replied.

Once again, Stephen was very talkative. But unlike last time, which we were mainly talking about politics, this time he talked about himself.

"They don't like me", he said. "Don't get me wrong. The people at the office are nice people. But somehow, they just don't like me ... except when they need me."

I tried to comfort him, and even promised to give him a Christmas gift, something that he didn't get from the parents of the students year after year seeing other teachers and office staff getting all kinds of gifts from those parents. Somehow, though, I saw myself through him. Like him, I feel like most people like my talent, the stuff I made and the service I can provide instead of me as a person. Like him, I constantly remind myself that "I don't care what the fuck the other thinks about me the odd people"and most of the time we successfully convinced ourselves that we are a-ok, until one day we found someone who's as odd as we are, and then we sharing again and again about how much we don't care about the others.

P.S. my friend just old me about her drunken experience. And I was just thinking, reading what I just wrote, it shows how I can behave like drunken without actually drinking.

Genes

Being with my mom for several weeks makes me realize one thing: we are so much alike. Seeing her I found a lot of traces of myself, for better or for worse.

SongBird does not support iPod Touch

Yes, it's mentioned here, and here. Damn you Apple.

Say Hello to SongBird Portable

After finding out that iLyrics, a iTune plug in that automatically retrieve lyrics and store in ID3 Tag, doesn't work anymore (the API they relied on was blocked), I had to look around for an alternative. Well, I found it. It's called SongBird Portable with Lyrics Master.

Other than the fact that the Lyrics Master requires me to listen to the song in order to get the lyrics (it's supposed to support batch retrieve, but I tried many times and couldn't made it work), the software work as I expected. However, I got trouble running it while iTune is also running. Seems like they hate each other. Also iTune import and Manage Media feature are a bit messy. So now when I add file to SongBird, I leave them pointing to the original file, which is actually good as I want the ID3 Lyrics tag of the orginal file being update.

Also, for some interesting reason, music sounds better playing from SongBird than playing from KMPlayer. Maybe some equalizer turned on by feature.

Interesting thing about the prepaid phone card

Finally got my mom's phone activated. If everything looks OK, I will inject $50 in the prepaid card so that mom can call me whenever she needed.

I used a T-Mobile Prepaid phone card. While the cost seems reasonable for a new phone number (just $6) with 10 minutes, it REQUIRED a TMobile phone. I realized it when I tried to use the serial number of my Moto E398, which I brought and used when I was in Hong Kong, and the registration failed. However, after I entered my TMobile Nokia 5300 serial number, the activation was completed. Of course, I did do some research online before I did that as I definitely don't want the new SIM card hijack my Nokia phone. It turns out that the serial number is just used for verification and support. It does not affect the regular calling.

So now the new SIM card is in the Moto E398 (a non TMobile phone) and my original one is in my Nokia 5300 (TMobile phone but already unlocked before my last Hong Kong trip). So far so good.

Changing plan

I did a bit role play to simulate what happen after mom comes, and realized that I can't sleep in the closet. The closet is right next to the restroom, and I know that mom needs to access the restroom frequently. If I sleep in the closet then I have to close to door when mom use the restroom, causing me to suffocate to death. Death is fine, but not this way.

So I am rearranging my stuff once again.

And ... done.

Prepare computers for mom to use

I spent some time to set up my laptop computer so that my mom can use it anywhere she wants in the house during her one month staying. I set up an account for her, change the user interface so that everything is display in big Traditional Chinese characters, and then have a Traditional Chinese version of portable Firefox set up with her email account and some Chinese newspaper web site so that she can access them at ease. I also installed Ad Block Plus and NoScript in order to minimize her possibility of getting virus or spyware attact. And for the worst case scenario, I have the boot partition backup so that I can wipe the whole machine up and restore the system at ease.

However, I also realize that when I am not at home, my mom may enjoy using my desktop computer with a 24 inch and 20 inch monitor instead of looking at the 13 inch laptop screen. Problem is that there's a lot of important information that I stored on my desktop, and I don't know my mom to have them accidentally wipeout.

And that was the time when I realized that the Group Policy mechanism provided by Windows 7 does not give me an option to hide and block certain drive for certain specific user. Luckily, there is still a way to prevent my mom from accidentally messing things up. All I need to do is select property of each drive. Under the Security tab, I put in my mom's user name, and then deny her access on that drive.

Making spare keys

To prepare for my mom's arrival, I am trying to get her a set of spare key so that she can, in case she decided to for whatever reason, leave home and back without me around.

I tried Fesita supermarket first, but the lady there told me that they didn't have one of the 2 keys that I tried to make. So I went to the Home Depot at the cross section of Bellair and Belway 8, and got the same response. However, this time I went ahead and get one of the key replicated.

The keymaker at Home Depot told me that I can try checking out a Locksmith. He mentioned something like there's one on Westheimer, but I couldn't find it on Google. I did, though, found one more near by called Lockbusters Incorporated. 8341 Southwest Fwy, Houston, TX 77074 , (281) 561-0060. So I may give that a try this weekend.