Archive for August, 2007
August 31st, 2007 by cybrpunk
Today was extremely unproductive. I have two days left to get all the budgets done and made no progress at all today. I was supposd to go in tomorrow and redo the network in the office but that got cancelled due to another “client emergency” that was more important. Just like the last time it was cancelled.
At least there was a good dinner waiting for me when I got home. I love my wife.
Still transferring crap. Wonder if it’s too late to switch careers?
August 31st, 2007 by cybrpunk
So it’s the end of August. Hrmmm….
Did anyone happen to notice the pretty colored and randomized header on the site? They’ve been there for about a week or so. I think they is preee-teeee. Yay for Photoshop painting! OK, so I’m trying out a new logo instead.
Before I left the States, I (with help) ripped my entire CD collection to mp3 before putting the CDs into storage for who knows how many years. That was the original reason for purchasing the 500GB external drive actually. As of this morning, I have a little over half the full CD rips salvaged to the temporary replacement drive. That’s over 400 albums. A little under 380 to transfer when I left. I actually didn’t realize I had that many on that drive. It’s a good thing I didn’t rip my DVD collection too….
My weekend project has been rescheduled to tomorrow (Saturday) so I will be working most of the day. No big deal though. I’ll take another day off for compensation and use it for us to go to Beijing or Tokyo or someplace like that for a long weekend.
I’ve been working on budgets for all the Asia-Pacific offices for the past few weeks. They’re actually really easy to do. The hard part is getting the necessary information from each office. That’s what takes so long.
Oh, and me and the wife went to Sham Shui Po again to visit the Golden Centre (which is a local computer/video game mall) last weekend. We both got new 4GB USB flash drives. Ya know… because we needed them. Mostly. Her’s has an orange kitty on it. You can see it here.
Supposed to be included in a podcast this weekend too. That should be fun. More details to follow on that if it works out.
Oh and I’m planning a new fun audience participation project. It involves… stuff. Watch for details next month. I think it will be fun.
August 30th, 2007 by cybrpunk
The fight with the dying external hard drive continues. I have been able to salvage quite a bit so far, but the CRC errors seem to be happening more and more frequently.
In addition the drive has started doing other odd things. Sometimes I can browse the file structure but if I try and copy or open any actual files, it tells me the drive cannot be found. That was a trip. This morning the drive started making a faint clicking noise. New noises are never a good thing when it comes to hard drives. Never. Never Ever. Other times, it just seems to stop accessing completely and I have to unplug the power. The drive is fubar. It’s just a matter of time.
Of course the icing on the cake is that the drive was purchased in the States which means my warranty is only valid in the States. So unless I feel like coughing up for some serious shipping costs, I’m probably better off just buying a new one here.
And to think I bought that thing to keep the hassles to a minimum….
August 29th, 2007 by cybrpunk
The headline says it all…
Bush to ask Congress for extra 50 bln usd for Iraq - report
But for those of you too jaded or lazy to read that article, let me share the two most important quotes from the above:
“If approved, the bid would bring US spending on the Iraq war to more than three billion dollars per week.”
“The 50 bln usd would be in addition to the 460 bln in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and 147 bln usd in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
So… I’m still wondering why no one has figured out a way to get this idiot out of the White House yet. And the political community is actually acting surprised that this is the first time in history that candidates have started campaining and debating this far in advance of an election. Maybe its because its really that important that Bush is removed from the White House one way or another.
August 28th, 2007 by cybrpunk
I hate computers. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that recently. I really hate computers. Yeah, it’s my job/career/way-of-bringing-home-the-bacon, but I got to a point a few years ago where they just piss me off.
This might have started around the same time I lost my data drive a few years ago. With that one crashed hard drive I lost over seven years of data. Pictures, movies, music, games, saved game files, resumes, other important documents, etc. It was bad. And of course being a typical IT person, I never backed anything up because I’m too cheap to buy an overpriced tape solution that I would rarely use. So I went to my close friends that I regularly shared data with.
This is the point where I knew that not only did my computer hate me first, but all computers as a whole hated me. Or maybe they just hate people.
Continue reading ‘Hard drives and me…’
August 27th, 2007 by cybrpunk
Because 100 facts in 100 days is just a little too ambitious and repetitive for my tastes.
Fact #1
I have much better things to do with my time than bore everyone with 100 facts about myself. Besides, when I become rich and famous some day… those things will come back to bite me in the ass by all the trash magazines. Fact. Think about that next time you tell the world your dirty little secrets.
Here’s another tip too: Beware of gifts left on your desk over the weekend. Especially when your office isn’t open on the weekends and you don’t recognize the name on the post-it note attached to the gift. It could be Al-Queda. I hear they are into that sort of thing.
Be alert. The world needs more lerts.
August 25th, 2007 by cybrpunk
This shark was looking all over for a way to open up the clear tubes to get to the tasty humans. Taken at Ocean Park.
August 24th, 2007 by cybrpunk
A picture of Wan Chai and the convention center from a boat in the middle of Hong Kong harbor.
August 23rd, 2007 by cybrpunk
For the past couple of days two of our big bosses are in Hong Kong visiting and attending meetings and such. Being the nice guys that they are, they invited the entire office out to lunch at a fancy / expensive dim sum restaurant yesterday at City Hall. We had two huge tables full of people. We ordered dim sum from the ladies pushing the funny little trolleys around and they would hand us baskets of yummy goodness. It was fun and the food was really good. OK, so that’s the location.
Now for the setup. A week or so ago, a friend and co-worker showed me a pair of tiny red shoes with funny stitched tiger faces on the toes and little whiskers that stuck out. She said that they were called “tiger shoes” and she had a friend send her the pair from the mainland. She told me it was very traditional and nice to get a baby a pair of tiger shoes. They were cute but odd looking. So the other day I pass by a store that seemingly has two names (Goods of Desire and Delay No More are both displayed in huge letters) and carries lots of odd clothes and accessories. I notice in their display window that they have adult size tiger shoes. How cool is that? And then I forgot about it.
Continue reading ‘Hong Kong Tales: Embarrased at lunch’
August 21st, 2007 by cybrpunk
A friend of ours was really nice on Sunday and showed us around two new areas of Hong Kong (to us) that we hadn’t seen before. We explored the athletic/sports area and a mall called Trendy (or something like that) in Mong Kok and the computer/game mall in Sham Shui Po with our friendly guide. Both areas are very crowded on Sundays and when we go back, it will definitely be on another day of the week.
When leaving a mall where every store was phone stores (seriously) we saw a shop that had an iPhone box. So we stopped in and asked about it since they aren’t available here through normal channels yet. The price was laughable. OK maybe that is the wrong word. Perhaps hysterical would be better.
They wanted 12,000 Hong Kong dollars for the phone itself. That would be approximately $1538.46 in US dollars. Just for the phone. Now for the kicker: they wanted an additional 5,000 HK dollars to unlock the phone for use with the local mobile service providers. That another $641 US dollars. So to get an iPhone in Hong Kong it would cost approximately $2,180 US dollars. Yeah. That’s insane.
And that doesn’t even include service.
So yes, you can get a new Apple iPhone here in Hong Kong but you better be able to wipe your ass with money if you are going to be able to afford one.
