Vista and Newegg's bias

I was surprised to find that Newegg user reviews of Windows Vista did not give Vista less than a four star. So I went to Amazon, knowing there are usually far more reviews of a product, and not surprisingly finding Vista Ultimate at a pathetic 2 stars.

The Amazon poll is as polarized as it can be - defying normal distribution appears to foreshadow Vista's abnormality. One extreme is Vista = shot yourself. I am not identifying with this group as now because my new Dell laptop came with XP installed per my request, and Vista Enterprise is a space-filler on my hard drive. I sympathize with those who are forced to use Vista on their new laptop. I had the same exasperating experience with the OS before switching to another Dell.

The other extreme is Vista = new functions + pretty interface. Please. After reading the first 5 stars Vista review, I was willing to bet that this reviewer must be working at MS advertisement department.

VIsta parody

I am still very surprised at the number of Vista parodies on the web. Type "parody vista" in youtube will produce great comedies (my favorite was BlimpTV's) and informative talks (by Chris Pirillo). In comparison, the number of parody on XP is very negligible, and they are not funny. Parodies on Leopard OS and Ubuntu are almost non-existent.

I think this is the only aspect about Vista that I can thank MS for. Using MS Office 2007 today made me loss 2 hours of data.

Beyond the stretch of this sky

Types of Friends

I thought I like Phillip's website, but after reading his entries on "types of friends", I decided that we experienced friends in different way...

• Type-1 friends - These are your closest friends in life. To determine whether someone is a Type-1 friend, think about whether you would have a great time eating dinner together with him/her alone on a semi-regular basis and chatting one-on-one for at least 2 hours or even longer. Notice that to be Type-1 friends with somebody, you don't need to be their soul-mate, BFF (best friends forever!), or a childhood friend who goes way back ... there just needs to be some compatibility and rapport where both people enjoy each other's company and can share genuine laughs (I don't mean the occasional humorous 'hehe', I mean true LOLs, where you're literally laughing out so loud that it hurts). Being with your Type-1 friends can be both fun and emotionally fulfilling, and can make you feel happy to be alive. I haven't done any experiments, but I hypothesize that most people (no matter how sociable) have no more than four Type-1 friends.

This is true for too many people I had during my first year at EC. Just about so many people in my hall, those I met during orientations, and other occasions meet this criteria. I constantly held conversation with folks for more than 3 hours. The longest one I held is about 7-8 hours, though not the most enjoyable I had! But I definitely had more than 3 hour conversations than once every week... it always pain me whenever I think about these people, of how far away I am, right now, away from them... both in space and in time I feel so many times that I am forever separated from them.

I think the biggest reason that I lost them is that I never trusted anyone ... until I fell very much in love with the people when I was a frosh. I never experienced what it is like to have a family, to have someone you don't have to pretend to be happy or strong in front of, and most important, of trust, until my stay at EC.

There's someone important I met. I think he's quite sharp - I didn't know how he could have known, why I am currently so far from a future I planned before I gone to mit, during the short six days at Leadershape. At any rate, he stated explicitly what I had suspected all along of why, what I did was so suicidal, yet I could feel nothing - (that's what I am mad most about myself, I don't even feel regret or remorse about the loves I lost) - , basically boils down to TRUST.

I just saw something interesting - "Elephant Dream".

It appears not be a popular short film among the slashdoters. For those who had ever worked and succeeded in a competitive, guideless environment for a period of time, the following would be eerily familiar:

"Emo - a short for "emotion" represents the feeling (right brain) activities. Proog is the logical, thinking angle - his actions have (up to now) created most of the structure around them (much as the NT types have structured the real world as logical-only wins). There is distinct symbolism throughout that the two exist within a "machine" that resembles many features of what it might look like inside someone's head. Both characters create the machine around them. Proog keeps referring to left and right - the sides of the brain. Proog is desperately trying to convince the young, emerging emotional side that the world he has created is "safe" but all evidence shows us it's not at all safe. Emo seems like he's been abused, kept down by Proog.

Proog is scared of what Emo has and can do. Proog is simultaneously trying to control what Emo sees and what he believes, but also has distinct interest. Emo shows us that he has far more power than Proog to "create" the world they are in, and Proog swiftly knocks him out again."

drDugan (219551)

The wonder of Adobe

I'm definitely not techy.

After using adobe for more than 5 years, I suddenly discovered just today that you can easily print html pages using adobe printer! This could have made my life so much easier! What I used to do is copy and paste everything on a webpage to MS word (since word appear to read everything), and then convert word into adobe. The only other application I ever used to print pdf directly using adobe printer is Mathematica.

I hope such tricks would come to me a bit more often - to only make my life easier.

Optimal number of programs

Nowaday I bought a new computer. The first thing I did was partitioning the hard drive for Kbuntu, XP, and Vista installation. So far this is my average time spent on each of them:

Kbuntu : 1% - still yet to put basic stuff in ... wireless, printing, etc. All that is on there right now is wine. Also, I need to have Beryl if I ever want to spend time with the os extensively ;)

XP : 90% - I upgraded from Home to Pro, using slipstream and a wonderful freeware called Autostreamer

Vist : trouble after trouble. I intended to use it at work place, but sometimes network wouldn't connect while working perfectly in XP. Also I hated the interface. I rather learn to use Leopard given a choice.

Now thinking that MS is forcing all educational institutes and companies to use Vista, I probably would really buy a Mac for my next laptop.

About this picture

The blog title picture gives me the peace of a 4E girl in EECS whom I really really loved to meet ... unfortunately I didn't go to college early enough. I think she was the class of 2003, and graduated before I was able to had any chance of meeting her.

She used to keep a website that made my heart throbbed once - Once she said that her adviser asked her, if she is happy. I would died to hear that.

Music bringing back memories

The earliest childhood memory that I had of myself, is seeing me, a wordless kid - I guess I wasn't even 2 or 3, holding a paint brush drawing bamboo trees, grass, etc. My parents were horribly disappointed at my hobby because I never liked to tough that expensive piano they bought for me and planned to have me learned it before I was born.

Now, age 23, listening to music by Blackstreet Boys, brings back my most cherished memories of high school and the first year of my college. Strangely, I always thought and frequently convinced myself that there was nothing more important in the world to me than studying physics. My most cherished memories are of crushes, loves, and friends from high school and early college years.

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