Today, I received my sleek new Dell Inspiron laptop. I’m quite excited about it overall. It’s got a sexy Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a pretty screen, all the quirky little things I need like S-Video outputs and firewire, extra USB ports for my massive number of peripherals, and I’m overall quite happy.
With the hardware. The software, however, is another story.
First, Windows Vista is probably one of the more horrific things I’ve had to deal with in recent memory. First, you do not make an operating system better/more efficient by asking me MORE questions when I do something. It reminds me of something I read that was sent from my employer recently: if there is some tedious task, find a way to automate it instead of doing it yourself. Why, then, must I confirm every single thing I do in Vista? Yes, I really want to uninstall AOL Internet Offer. Yes, I really do want to run that program…I clicked on it, didn’t I?
Gah. That takes me to another thing. Not only does it ask for my confirmation for every other action, it does the asking needlessly slowly. Microsoft, just so you know, I did not buy a faster system so you could use up more of my system resources. I was hoping maybe, oh, I don’t know, I could actually…go faster? Vista is one of the biggest system hogs ever, so even though my Dell is immensely faster than my 3 year old Thinkpad, dumb stuff like uninstalling the stupid pack-ins takes much longer than it should.
(Okay, just now, I clicked on a button to change Windows features, and it asked for my permission. Vista is like the dog that doesn’t recognize it’s own tail so he decides to chase it. In fact, the little swirling loader icon looks just like that.)
Anyway, I’m going to install Command&Conquer 3 tonight. It better run like a dream, or heads will roll.
I always really liked the gods from the good old days. Apparently, it’s because I’m one of them:
Every once in a while, I feel the need to give the world an update on my life. For one thing, I know how hard it is for friends to stay in contact when they’re traveling all over the world to vastly different places, and although some people say that it’s disingenuous to just pick up with somebody as if you’ve been talking to them every day, I think it’s just fine, and even quite touching. (However, this is not the same as meeting somebody with whom you were never close friends, who then acts as if you were bosom buddies.)
Such genuine acts of friendship transport you back to an earlier time in your life. If you want to talk about time-traveling, you don’t have to watch Star Trek or Back to the Future, just send an e-mail or letter to a friend with whom you haven’t spoken for a few months or years. If the connection is rekindled, you will experience a powerful time-defying moment.
But anyway, all that really is just a preface to say, “it’s okay if my friends keep tabs on me in a medium such as a blog or facebook.” That anybody wants to keep up with me at all is a sweet gesture, and in the past week or two, friends from all about have come out of the woodwork (spurred on no doubt by summer’s approach) to ask me how I am doing and also to tell me about their own adventures. Those who want the juicy details can read on, and those who want even more can e-mail me anytime (dochuyen84@gmail.com).
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This past Saturday, my dad, grandpa, and I took a short trip up to Salem, Virginia, about 20 minutes or so from Blacksburg/Virginia Tech, to check out their 9th Annual Blue Ridge Kite Festival. Many V. Tech students and families were there as well, no doubt to get a few brief moments in the sun and forget the dark tragedy of this past week.
The place was bustling with energy and youth, and although the wind was neither strong nor consistent, a few good breezes lifted the dozens of kites up into the air in a gorgeous spectacle that made the two and a half hour drive completely worth it.
My dad’s reason for going was to take pictures, and I don’t really think that anything I could say we will quite as well as seeing the pictures themselves, so take a look see!
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| (Click the images for larger versions) |
…otherwise, your eyes will bleed. Really.
Anyway, I’ve been reading up on closures: http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html
And it’s so painful. So painful that I thought I’d share it with you all.
When Americans hear pop music from other countries, the tendency is to immediately assume that they are some kind of bad rip-off of the American originals. Now, barring the fact that often enough the originals are uninteresting pieces of fluff themselves, the argument does have at least some merit. In Asia, it seems like every major country has gone through a temporary period directly imitating Western culture before settling on a distinct identity of its own.
Part of that identity-building comes at the interface of ancient cultures and customs versus what is cool and modern. For many in the older generations, this is less of an interface and more of an insurmountable impasse, but for many of those growing up and making music today, there is a strong desire to retain cultural identity while keeping one’s hipness. The examples that will soon follow I think demonstrate that this goal is indeed achievable.
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Hey folks,
Sorry I haven’t been around much. Working through some web-dev contracts and my music schedule has been a time-killer. Oh, and Monday was my birthday, which I spent teaching the MCAT. For now, as I get my life together, you can enjoy this:
They’re “toygers,” housecats bred to look as much like a tiger as possible, and I need one. Right now. I don’t really care that I’m allergic to cats, because those things are adorable. (The ABC News article)
On another note, there’s a Finnish politician who has translated his entire website into…Klingon. Yes. Those Klingons. From Star Trek. Worf the guy with the mutant turtle attached to his forehead. Check it out here.
And by horse, I mean a beautiful woman. And by mouth, I mean ass. See, Beyonce and Shakira just got together to make a video for the song “Beautiful Liar,” and they’re really doin’ the damn thing in it. The music video is hot, it’s sexy, and it crosses genres in a fun way. The song isn’t particular deep or creative, but if that’s what you’re looking for, you might as well go to the strip club and find a chess partner. Don’t take yourself so seriously and you’ll have a good time.
I’m sure you need some visual stimulation before I continue, so without further ado…
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Well, after blazing through some Javascript code for the folks over at the U.N. (yes, that’s the real United Nations), I’m thoroughly pooped. I don’t even really know why I did it, except as a favor for Ramit (PBwiki VP and the guy who does I will teach you to be rich, probably the only finance-related blog I will ever read because I hate thinking about money). I suppose it helps my resume, but then I begin to question the necessity of me padding my tech resume when my choices of career paths at the moment seem to be either 1) poor musician or 2) stressed-out doctor.
Anyway, something I’ve been thinking about lately is how the hell people blog professionally. There are a lot of tip sites out there by people who have “made it” (a few of them are in my blogroll if you’re interested) and are apparently raking in substantial incomes simply from amassing a giant readership and selling adspace, but that’s still way beyond me. It’s baffling (and sorta makes me jealous)…
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I check my blog’s statistics pretty frequently to see how things are going, which of my posts get read the most, what kind of things I need to do better, etc. You may wonder why I care quite so much about such things, but I always have a bit of a need to be successful at ventures like this, and the most tangible measure of that success is knowing how many people read my blog. Heck, there are at least three people who like me enough to subscribe to my RSS feed (I suppose they could be something like the Technorati/Google bots, and come to think of it, that’s most likely, but let me keep my illusion for a little while longer).
Anyway, to make a longer story short, one of the most interesting statistics to follow is the Google search terms that lead somebody to my blog. One of today’s entries was particularly surprising.
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