Blockbuster Online in-store exchange: epic fail

I was going try out the Blockbuster Online in-store exchange today, but then when I got to the store, I was told that while I can get exchange movies for free, games were "half price" rental instead of free, which I thnk is lame.  By the way, I used the Blockbuster app on iPad, and found that even those out-of-business Blockbuster stores were still on the map.  That means just because you can find a store in the app doesn't mean the store is really available.

So at the end, I decided to cancel the trial subscription.

Closing

Ahhh!  The earring hole on my right ear closed way faster than I expected, which is within just one day!  This is way way faster than most people told me, which is something around weeks to months.  So I had to put in the placeholder stud at night before I go to sleep.  So annoying and troublesome.

Ah, one of my stud earring is missing

I had both of my ears pierced while I was in Hong Kong.  As the place holder of the holes, I got a pair of cheap silver stud earring, and I was wearing them since then.

Fast forward to this morning.  I was taking a shower, thinking about some computer stuff.  Suddenly I felt like something fell off from my body.  I was puzzled for 1 seconds, and then I touched my right ear, and found that the stud earring was gone.  I managed to find the pin side of the stud earring but couldn't found the other side.  After fustrated for 10 minutes or so naked, I gave up.

So now I have the my bare right ear and with the left ear still wearing the silver stud earring.  I heard that pierced hold on ears won't close up until after weeks, but I don't want to take the chance.  So I'll probably try to buy something cheap to "plug the hole" in the meantime, maybe from Ross or Marshall or such.

And come to think of it, I still haven't ordered the earring I saw on Amazon.com months ago, which was the whole reason why I got my ears pierced in the first place.  Maybe I should do it in the coming several days.

PlayStation 3 wouldn't suck if I don't have internet

After having PlayStation 3 for about a week, I found out that every single game I popped into it, there's always online update required.  I am not talking about some 20Mb here and there.  I am talking about hard core 1.3Gb update here and there.  In fact, even some PS3 demos I downloaded required update.  So now I am kind of expected that everytime I pop in a new game the first time, I will not be able to play it until 1 to 2 hours later.  (Did I mention that my home broadband connect is kind of lame?)

Google Doc on iPad: ok with document, lame for spreadsheet

I tried Google doc on iPad as I always like the idea of having one set of document on the cloud all the time. I tried editing some Word document and the experience was not that bad. However, creating and editing spreadsheet was such a painful experience. you have to edit cell content textbox by text box and row by row. Totally lame.

超低B崇拜事件

一件超低B的事情在今天英語崇拜進行的時候發生。某牧師的太太在崇拜兒童音樂演奏的過程當中要求我將台上的Drumset移走。首先，在崇拜過程中做這種動作會影響會眾，況且Drumset並沒有阻礙台上的運作和兒童進出的安全。但因為師母出口，自然要做，結果當然製造出擾人的聲響和情景。

也不想再多說，心裡只有一個結論: 超低B。

20 minutes

I woke up at 5:30 am this morning.  My brain told me that it's about time to get off the bed to do stuff, but my body told me that it's too cold to get off the bed.  The argument between my brain and my my body continue for about 20 minutes until I finally moved my lazy body off the bed.

Cold weather is one of the biggest enemy for me ... in term of being productive.

Notice to self: avoid going to shopping mall these days

I finished band practice and thought of getting something from Target at the nearby shopping mall.  Huge mistake.  The parking lot there was crowded, and people were seemingly ran out of patient.  I heard people honking left and right.  Interestingly, I had NO trouble finding parking space since I was willing to park a bit further away and didn't mind a little bit walking on a relaxing Saturday afternoon.  After I'd done with my shopping at Target, I relaxingly walked to BestBuy to try out Google TV, and found it kind of a joke to me.  I also played a bit GT5, and just as I expected, I didn't like it.

Still want to avoid shopping mall these days because of all those angry angry shoppers.  Glad that I've done with my Christmas shopping already.

So my bluetooth headset adapter is not just a POS

About a year ago, I brought a bluetooth headset adapter (Macsense BlueICE Headset) so that I could turn any regular headphone into a bluetooth headphone.  It was then proven that it was a stupid idea, because the dangling cable of a regular headphone connecting to this bluetooth headset adapter is as messy as directly hooking to the device (be it iPod Touch or mobile phone).  The biggest reason why people use bluetooth headset is to get rid of all the dangling cable, and this adapter does NOT solve the problem.  As the result, I have this adapter left in my closet, classfied under the group "gadgets that sounded cool until I actually use it".

But yesterday I found out a cool way to use this device.  I simply connect this adapter to my home stereo system, and then pair this headset adapter to all my bluetooth capable devices: iPod Touch, Android phone and iPad.  Now, whenever I need to playback something from my device, but want to hear better sound quality than the build-in speaker, I can turn on bluetooth and play to audio thru this headset adapter.  The best part is that there's no dangling cable between my device and the stereo system.

The sound quality was actually pretty good.  In fact, playing PacMan Champion edition on iPod Touch with home stereo system is much better an experience than using the build in speaker.  At last, this used-to-be-POS device has some decent usage.

Rav 4 and battery problem, again?

It was started at 2 am last night.  I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing that it must be the jetlag that caused me to wake up for no good reason.  Suddenly, my obsessive compulsive instinct told myself that I should throw away all the garbage even though garbage pick up was still 2 days away.  That didn't stop me wrapping up all the garbage bags and moved them all to my Rav 4.  I was ready to drive to the nearby dumpster and throw away the garbage.

So I tried to start my car, and the moment I turned the car key, electricity went out.

I told myself: I've seen this before.  The battery connected was losen.

But then I thought, that didn't make sense, since my mechanic already replaced the old negative connector with a new one.  How could the connection being losen again within months?

Nevertheless, I opened the hook, and have a tiny wrench ready.  The negative connector looked dead tight.  But how about the positive connector?  Sure enough, the connection was a bit lose.  So I tighten the screw, and everything was working again.

Still, how come I keep running into this kind of problem?  Anyway, hopefully both battery connectors are tight enough so that the same problem won't happen again (until I change battery next time).

Ah, this is why my next phone won't be an Andriod

Among all the things that I don't like about Andriod, this is probably the top in my list: internal phone storage restriction.  In fact, I hate this so much that unless Google changes this restriction, my next phone will absolutely not be an Android.  I also lost incentive to invest anything on my HTC Desire, including getting 32Gb microSD card for Desire to use.

Here's the deal: by default, all the application are installed in the internal phone storage, and once you used up all the internal phone storage, you cannot install anything anymore.  In fact, your phone may not even function properly without enough free internal phone storage.

So how much effective memory do my new HTC Desire have?  About 120Mb.  To me, this is like having a Porsche but can only drive it within Mong Kok area.

Granted, some new apps allows you to install in microSD card, but you don't know whether you can install it on the microSD until AFTER you installed the app.  The Android marketplace does not give you any indication about whether an app is microSD card install friendly or not.  Also Android is notorious on NOT freeing up all the memory after uninstalling apps. So the more apps you try, the less effective internal memory you have even after you uninstall those apps.  This effectively DISCOURAGE people from trying out new apps.  No wonder the Android marketplace is so inferior compare with the iOS App Store since Android developer knows that they are dealing with customers who don't want to try new apps even when they are free.

So from my on, my workflow on trying out Andriod application is like this:

• Find an app that I may interest in at market place.
• Download the application
• The moment I finish downloading the application, I will try to move the application to microSD card.
• If the application cannot be moved to microSD card, uninstall the application.

And even with this workflow, I have closely monitor how much memory have left (again because of the notorious memory free up problem).  Based on what I read, the sure way of reclaiming all the memory back is by a factory reset, something that I wouldn't do unless I got the My Backup Pro.

Another dead harddisk

I realized that I have yet another dead harddisk on hand when I came back from Hong Kong, arrived home, checked the home server, and found that the drive which used to host downloaded files was not showing up in Windows Explorer.  I leaned toward the hard disk, and heard clicking sound.  Yep, the classic click of death.

It was not such a huge lost since the harddisk is just 40Gb in size, and stored only the temporary downloading files.  As far as I remember, I wasn't downloading anything anyway, so I am good. 

Just for the safe side, I spent some time disassembling the hard disk and make sure the hard disk can never be used (or re-used) again. 

Guess it's about time to shop for another 1Tb harddisk.

That gift card's gone ....

So someone was nice enough to give me a gift card of a steak house last year as a Christmas gift.  I forgot the exact amount by I think it's around US$30.  I didn't use it right away since I wanted to use it with friends, and I didn't encountered a chance that I had a bunch of friends with me and wanted to go to steak house.

Flash-forward to 1 year later, or 1 hour ago to be exact, I was cleaning up the glove compartment of my car, and I realized that the steak house gift card was GONE.  I was first frustrated, and then felt mad, and then confused, and then felt mad again.  Who in the world took my .... oh wait ... did I really left the gift card at the glove compartment?  Or did I leave it at home?  When was the last time I saw it ....

And then it came to the worst part:  I actually FORGOT the name of that steak house.

So I told myslef, when you got a gift card, use it as soon as possible.  Also, I tell myself to get used to the fact that I will keep forgetting stuff, and maybe time to consider tattooing some important information on my body.

First tiny tiny application on HTC Desire (Andriod)

Writing and deploying application to Android is supposed to be easier than doing so on iPhone, but I did experience some problem developing application from Eclipse (on Windows 7) to my new HTC Desire phone.  It turns out that the solution is way easier than I expected.

I started by reading the Android Developers site about setting up device for development.  The article explained that once USB Driver for Windows was being installed, the Eclipse IDE should be able to deploy the application I wrote to my Android device.  However, my phone was not being recognized.  I double checked and found that USB Driver for Windows, REvision 3 was indeed installed.  How come it still doesn't work?

After being fustrated for a while, I finally came across this blog, and found that I need a special USB Driver, and that USB driver came with the HTCSync application. So I went to HTC Support site, find HTC Sync 3.0, downloaded and installed it, and then unplug and replug to phone to the computer.  Sure enough, Eclipse saw the device, and I was able to run my app on my phone.