Aspertamnesiac

Why is the internet so broken?

2007-07-29T07:40:12Z

I'm trying to shop for car insurance. Why are all these websites broken at the same time? I don't just mean "don't work on one browser and one OS", but completely inaccessible by any means.

Maybe it's just me (every company I've worked for has aimed for a 99.999% uptime for at least their main page *) but being 2007 and all, I expect better.

Geico

Farmers

MetLife

(the worst of all ... refuses to work on opera and even firefox)

Finally, I found one that works: esurance. I'm reading reviews now to see if they're any good, but they probably have my business.

EDIT: OK. I take that back. http://www.amazon.com/ is now

, although it spring back to life by the time I updated this post.

I should move to the East Coast

2007-07-08T09:19:07Z

Here's why:

San Francisco once again

2007-07-02T08:47:44Z

My friend got me thinking about moving to SF once again. I looked at a few apartments and as I expected, anything I like is upwards of $1500/person.

Meanwhile, I had a great idea. Why not just rent a crashpad in the city? So, I've been looking at craigslist listings for cheapo rooms (all I ask is that it be a real bedroom, and not a rented out living room) and I found a few under $550/month. I think I am going to try a place out for a few months. Yay for two apartments! I get to enjoy the best of both worlds, while sticking to approximately the same total budget I think I'd have with a livable permanent place in SF. I'm really excited to do this and if I want, I can do it right away starting this month. Being a guy, I can pretty much live out of my laptop bag with a couple of clean tee shirts and underwear in it.

Some current ads that caught my eye:

$375 One bedroom (mission district)

Hello!
I have a small bedroom on the second-story of a home in the Mission. The bathroom and kitchen is shared with two awesome folks: 24 yr.old male and a 23 yr. old female. I want to sublet the space until January 2008. The rent is cheap only $375, utilities are shared between roommates.

*If anyone is interested we also have a larger room for $500.*

The house is located on Florida & 22nd street near mission/24th street Bart Station, BUS 14, 49, 9, 27, 12, 48, and not far from grocery store, the culture center, downtown and nightlife.

$390 Small Furnished room in Mission/Bernal for 1 month (7/1-8/1) (mission district)

I have one very small furnished (twin bed) room for rent in Mission/Bernal Heights area for one month only, from July 1st to August 1st. Nice house, three rooms, the other roomates are two mellow females in their 20's who are hardly ever home but when they are they are super sweet. The house is near the 14, 49, and one block away from the J-Line. Near 30th and Mission right below Bernal Hill. I am out of town for the month but can arrange to show you the room. no deposit, no nothing, just 390, hopefully you are a nice, considerate, personal space respecting individual.

24 kingston at Mission google map yahoo map

$510 Cozy room near North Beach (north beach / telegraph hill)

The room is 12x7 with 10' cielings and indirect light. No alchohol or hard drugs allowed in house.Share with two flat mates one 32yo male electrician, musician, photographer and a 60 yo writer and musician.This is a smoking household.

The American Ways

2007-06-14T10:50:02Z

I can't decide who embarrassed themselves more, but what a jerk and what a fool!
http://www.betterloverseminar.com/desi_wife_catches_husband.php

JUST LISTEN TO IT. ALL THE WAY TO THE END. It's about an Indian wife who catches her husband cheating on radio. And it doesn't end there.

All I have to say is,
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg
omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg

I'm shipped in from Boston

2007-06-14T04:04:30Z

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far)

Northeast New England

The kind of accent they have in Boston. There is more to it than just r's.

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

A truck truck :)

2007-06-10T10:58:31Z

This article: How Many Trucks Can You Transport at Once?!?! reminded me of this hilarious simpsons clip:

Installing Flash Player 9 on a Mac

2007-05-31T06:29:11Z

I hereby crown thee the WORLD'S WORST INSTALLER.

I left this feedback on the help page for the mac installer for flash player that claims to help with the problem with "Error "creating file: 1008:5, -5000 Access Denied Error"

YOU BASTARDS. YOU FORGOT THUNDERBIRD.APP. [Part 1/2]

First, why doesn't this stupid installer ask for the sudo password unlike all others and then run as root?

Next, why won't it tell me which file it's having trouble with when it prints "access denied"? Would it kill you to do that?

YOU BASTARDS. YOU FORGOT THUNDERBIRD.APP. [Part 2/2]

Finally,howcome youconveniently forgottomentionThunderbird.app!?
A mailappTHATIDONTEVENUSE. Whycanttheinstallfail gracefully?

Youmademeusektraceand thenweedthrough megsofstrings.IHATEYOU.

Youreallysuck.Andwhythis300 characterfeedbacklimit?

For anyone else who finds this rant, this is what I had to use to install flash player 9:

$ sudo chown -R $USER /Applications/{Opera,Camino,Fire*,Thunderbird}.app /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins
Run the flash installer
$ sudo chown -R root /Applications/{Opera,Camino,Fire*,Thunderbird}.app /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins

OK, now I can finally use the god-awesome google maps street to figure out what the outside of the Eureka Theatre looks like.

Spiderman 3, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead

2007-05-06T09:03:04Z

I saw Spiderman 3 yesterday on opening night (free tickets!). Yeah, the reviews have been miserable all over the internets, but I loved it! So what if every bit of the plot was completely predictable?
This movie is also being dubbed in Bhojpuri (Indian hillbilly-speak, so to say)!

Dawn of the Dead, was every bit as good as it was supposed to be. I saw this movie alone, so I could enjoy watching Shaun of the Dead and then, Hot Fuzz. Besides the story-line, I loved the cinematography. Nothing like a zombie movie shot in broad daylight. Blood looks best in the sun :)

I watched Shaun of the Dead with a friend (who thought he had seen DotD, so only joined me later). Absolutely hilarious. "You got red on you".

Evening out in SF

2007-04-30T11:04:10Z

Drove a lot today. Plans were to drive straight to SF from Walnut Creek, where I spent the night, but I ended up having to drive home to Sunnyvale first (because of the bay bridge collapse scare, although it wasn't going to affect me, but mostly because the lousy handyman broke the water supply in my parents' house).

The drive to SF was lovely in 75-degree top-down weather (down from the 90 degree heat I drove through yesterday) but it became 53-degree chilly as we drove through clouds into the city.

Thanks to luckymonk3y, I decided to take Yelp seriously and picked a restaurant based on its reviews. Lahore Karahi was a hit with both my friends! After I dragged them both up 6 city blocks from Union Square, the shall we say - modest - appearance of the exterior and the lack of customers almost made me scream out "stupid yelp!". But how can 143 people be wrong? And indeed, the food was awesome. Great looking fluffy nans. No white-boy spice-levels for my spice-loving caucasian homies. Great tasting stuff. Great pricing ($6 entrees!). Funny waiter. I'll maybe yelp out a detailed review myself. Too bad we had to rush out to catch the show, or else I would have had their Rass Malai for dessert.

The highlight of the evening - the fire dance by the Temple of Poi troops in Union Square was awesome, just like last year. I'll post pictures later and upload a couple videos on youtube.

Post-event munchies at Segafredo Zanetti: I had a dark chocolate-raspberry cake and a latte. Decent, I guess, but certainly doesn't compare to Coupa Cafe.

To the car wash again

2007-04-28T23:23:20Z

Got my car detailed again at AJ (so let it rain now!). Looks like many other loveli-er cars came out to play in the sun today (that's a Viper GTS (!!) and the regular F430 and Gallardo).

I have sap on my car :-\ It must have been on it for a couple of months now, I think, and now it's hard to get it off. I wish I had seen it before driving back home. The Internet describes a whole lot of black magic for sap removal.

The abomination that is the Indian moral police

2007-04-28T22:31:22Z

This is hardly the first incident of its kind. I'm going to try and list as many as I can remember.

Avnish Bajaj, the head of ebay's Indian subsidiary "Baazee.com" (now "ebay.in") flies to India to help law-enforcers resolve a scandal with people selling copies of home-made amateur porn. As soon as he lands, he is arrested and thrown in jail and accused of peddling porn.
Young female tennis player Sania Mirza becomes the first Indian to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam and some bird-brained Islamist group declares fatwa on her because her sport attire was too revealing leaving "nothing to the imagination" of those self-admittedly unimaginative Islamic nuts. Yet, I think it would be interesting to see some Speedo sport-Burqas.
Khushboo, a south-Indian actress makes comments advocating safe-sex in an interview to a magazine adding that the expectation of virginity were unrealistic. Outrage follows (omg, how dare she admit the possibility of sex!) She eventually has to go underground for fear of her physical safety.
The video above apparently showed two 17-year old high-schoolers having sex and was being sold by a 23 old IIT student. The clip was massively distributed over MMS even before it was put up for sale. Now the shocked - an arrest warrant was issued for one of the under-age "actors" in the video.
Anara Gupta wins the Miss Jammu beauty pageant. Later, a pornographic video shows up somewhere showing a woman somewhat resembling her. Gupta, her mother and three brothers get arrested for being involved in the production of porn.
Holding hands in public is enough for a controversy. A teenage girl walking with three guy-friends out on the famous Marine Drive in Bombay is held up by a police constable, Sunil More. He scares the boys away and takes her inside the police station, where he promptly rapes her. I have often heard of rapes being justified on the lines of "her attire/behavior was too provocative and she was asking for it"

Some hypothesize that all this has something to do with the sudden improvement in the economic conditions in the last decade or so. Some say it has purely political undertones (organizations like the RSS trying to win popularity by making a big show of their efforts to preserve the oh-so-wonderful culture).

Am I a sucker for designer furniture?

2007-04-18T21:44:05Z

I am in love with with this Vitra Amoebe chair. It's the most comfortable chair I have ever tried for laptop use (no arms, soft but heavy back, raised thigh support, low to the ground so I can use the floor as my side-table) and just the right size for my bedroom.

I have been looking for just such a chair so I can stop sitting up on my bed while working on my laptop.

Too bad it costs more than $1400 :-(

Good news, bad news ...

2007-04-16T20:22:46Z

Bad news: I didn't finish taxes (paying estimated taxes) before leaving for NYC

Good news: my estimated tax vouchers are printed and with me along with my checkbook

Bad news: I have exactly one check left and two estimated taxes to pay (Fed and Cal)

Good news: They both have online payments.

Bad news: The first one I checked, Fed, takes 15 days for "enrollment". The deadline is tomorrow :-(

Good news: CA FTB is fully online and instant enrollment. So I could use that last check for Fed.

Bad news: I don't have change, so I paid a whole dollar for my 39 cent stamp. (ok, maybe its not that bad :)

Good news: Finally done with IRS deadlines. Phew.

Airfoil

2007-04-09T06:34:20Z

As a reward for finally finishing my taxes, I bought a cute piece of software: Airfoil. With a such a beautiful UI, how could I resist?

All this software really does is allow any individual application's sound (or even all system sounds) go to Airtunes. This means, I can listen to Pandora on my new Bose speakers.

Musicals

2007-03-26T10:39:59Z

I can't say I'm much of a Beatles fan (mostly because I haven't taken the time to listen to their albums), but there are some songs that are hard to not like.

I saw the trailer for Across the Universe at the theatre on Saturday. I absolutely loved the remake of Hey Jude. This is one musical I will not want to miss.

Of biking and Pink Floyd

2007-03-23T07:42:43Z

I biked to work today.

The last time I biked was in Golden Gate park in SF with luckymonk3y. Before that, the last I biked was in 1996, I think. I was severely out of shape.

On top of that, I was riding this spare mountain bike that belongs to my roommate. A heavy mountain bike isn't exactly great for commuting to work for someone who is out of shape. The seat and the completely non-ergonomic frame (for my body shape) put me in a lot of pain.

That said, I was happy I did something for the environment. I actually feel bad driving my car to work tomorrow.

Biking to work meant that I had to leave my macbook at home, which also meant leaving all my music at home. I could have remembered to unplug the ipod out of my car. When it comes to music, I often get obsessed with one single album, band or song. At the moment, I have Pink Floyd's "Division Bell" stuck in my head. I had owned this album for a year, but hadn't discovered how great it was until a few weeks ago. My co-worker wasn't kidding when he said it was Pink Floyd's best work. Nothing's better than coming home tired after a workout and showering and unwinding with music you're in love with.

Catching up ... cars, hardware, phones, poker and sandwiches

2007-03-22T09:07:09Z

Last couple of weeks have continued to be busy at work.

I got my car back from BMW. They had to replace the navigation computer. If I were paying out of my pocket, I would have been pissed because the only problem was that it wasn't receiving the GPS signals properly. I don't know whether to be relieved that all these repairs are happening just before my warranty expires, or if I should be very very afraid. Well, at least I have the new software that shows maps in 3-D perspective, yay (although, I still maintain that BMW puts awful awful software in their cars). On a related note, I'm so in love with the new M3, recently revealed in a concept form at Geneva. I need to put down reasons why I shouldn't lease one. Well, I do have about a year and half or before it becomes available at MSRP.

I spent last weekend visiting the parents. Pretty much all my time was spent in picking up garage cabinets from OSH in a rented U-Haul pick-up and assembling all three of them. I tell you, attaching doors to cabinets is harder than it seems, especially when they are taller than you. I lust after electric screwdrivers with adjustable speed and torque clutches.

Talking about lust, I finally decided to get rid of my old phone (a monstrosity that is the Nokia 3650) for a shiny new one. My criteria were small size, sliding form-factor, Nokia or Siemens/BenQ (I don't trust anyone else's UI), quad-band or at least 850 MHz support so I can stick with Cingular or roam on to their network, google apps compatible, a reasonably-priced data plan. The very new Nokia 5300 with T-Mobile's service fit this bill. I was skeptical about T-Mobile's service in the Bay Area, but decided to take my chances. Overall I'm very happy with the purchase.

What turned out great:

the phone works great as expected
I get to keep my old phone number
the sign-up process was unbelievably smooth - I walked out with a working phone in about an hour and the store offered to move my data and mail in my rebate form and gave me a free car charger and I don't even have to call Cingular to cancel the old plan
the huge 1 GB micro-SD memory chip, which is hot-swappable
the stereo headphones with built-in mic and a mystery button (skip song?)
the $5.99 unlimited data plan
I could unlock my 3650 myself (didn't realize at first that the p and w codes are just repeated keypresses of the * key) so it makes a great backup phone with the T-Mobile SIM.
the basic phone functions are very well done (ring profiles, call log)
it has a built-in FM tuner! (now it makes me wish it had HD-Radio)
The radio application is a little funny. Unlike the music player, it refuses to run without a headphone attached even though it lets you use the phone's loudspeaker. The lovely error message that pops up reads "Connect an enhancement". In nokia-speak "an enhancement" really means the wired headphone. I later discovered that besides the silly message, this is not a bug - the radio needs the headphone because the wire serves as the antenna.

What didn't:

no basic ring tones! I had to copy some over from my old phone. I just want my phone to go ring-ring and not bring in the whole orchestra
T-Mobile has disabled network access permissions for applications, so Google Maps etc. don't work. The phone is so new that there is no generic firmware available from Nokia that I can use to "debrand" the T-Mobile customizations. The forums at howardforums.com have been very useful. I may send my phone over to iunlock.com to have it flashed.
it sucks that the S40 OS on this phone is a step down from the Symbian-based S60 on my 3650. The main feature I miss is multi-tasking (why should I have to close my browser if I want to quickly check my call log?)
small phones don't have enough buttons, but I guess I'll get used to the lack of a dedicated mark and delete key
a better camera (2MP+) and a flash would have been nice, so I could at least rely on it for taking candid shots
the build is a little flimsy. it's a very light phone in an all-plastic case and the sliding mechanism has some play in the closed position
no 3G or 802.11x, so internet apps run slooow
I've already seen the applications, and even the OS, crash

While I had took Monday off to recuperate from the stressful week and tiresome weekend, I discovered my new favorite sandwich: the "To Kill a Mockingbird" on sweet roll at Lou Lou's, a small nearby deli. I got to enjoy it again today when I was too late to get to work before the cafe closed.

Monday evening, I found myself sitting at a poker table full of Russians (Misha, Ilya, Rob, Zhenya, Jeff, Oleg but no Teddy KGB) . They took my money, but it was still all good fun.

Movies

2007-03-05T07:42:22Z

I finally made some progress on my netflix pile-up this weekend.

I watched A Walk To Remember, which I've had since early December on JZ's recommendation. Mandy Moore has this awful cheap stupid look that I hate. Beyond that, it was a tragedy and just what I'd been looking for (in December).

I watched Poseidon today, after plans to go watch Music and Lyrics were cancelled by my can't-ever-keep-a-promise-to-see-you friend. I expected it to be yet another Titanic (the premise is a sinking cruise ship) and it was pretty much that except crappier and very predictable. I want to see kids in movies dying for a change! The movie was a bit too predictable and just like Rang De Basanti, I disliked how they tried to portray unplanned stubborn rebellious disobedience as bravery. If you were the mother of a child stuck on a ship in trouble, would you try to follow the ship staff's organized instructions for evacuation or would you take your child and follow the plans of one random passenger with his deranged ideas of a solo getaway? My only thoughts at the end were "how did those fools get so lucky?!".

Yay Monday's off!

2007-02-20T10:59:34Z

It's good to have President's Day off. I drove back home last night from my parents' place. Top down in about 45 degree weather. It got a little chilly when I went through some 38 degree zones hehe. I discovered that if I set cruise control to 67 and leave it in 6th gear, I can get about 28 miles per gallon (compared to the 18 mpg I get when I drive like a race car yaya).

I stayed up late last night watching Heroes, Psych, Simpsons and ugh "The Naked Mile".

So, all I did today was wake up late, attempt to play tennis but that didn't work out, just hang out, play pool, Wii sports, have yummy Thai food for dinner, play Diablo 2 and watch more recorded TV.

I wish I were in Russia or Australia right now!

The pain of electronics shopping. Episode 1: Camera

2007-02-19T11:37:57Z

I'm trying to buy a new camera.

Maybe I'm too picky, or perhaps the problem is that there is too much to choose from and too much knowledge available beforehand, but I just can't find anything that meets my criteria!

	ultra compact form factor	6+ megapixels	no major noise problem	aperture and shutter priority	wide angle (28mm)	4x optical zoom or better	image stabilization	under $400
Lumix LX2	yes	yes	NO	yes	yes	yes	yes	barely
Samsung NV10	yes	yes	yes	yes	NO	almost	NO	yes
Canon A710	NO	yes	yes	yes	NO	yes	yes	yes
Canon SD 800 IS	yes	yes	so-so	NO :-(	yes	yes	yes	yes
Canon G7	NO	yes	yes	yes	NO	yes	yes	NO
Casio Exilim EX-Z1050	yes!	yes	bleh	NO, I think	NO	almost	NO	yes

More candidates to come. Suggest some!

Tennis

2007-02-05T06:50:45Z

I played tennis after a long time again on Saturday with Colin and David. This was followed by Wii Sports, Mario 64, Thai curry and noodles, more Wii and video game speed run viewings.

USA

2007-01-24T10:24:25Z

My parents are now officially citizens of the United States of America. They just took the oath today. I've been so lazy to mail my own application that now I have to redo it because my answer to the question "are your parents citizens?" is now wrong. A dopey PDF reader wouldn't let me edit a saved file.

Valrhona

2007-01-23T11:24:06Z

On mehinda's suggestion, I bought a few ounces of Valrhona (which they consistently misspell) and Mayan cocoa. They arrived today from Seattle, 4 days (including the weekend) after I ordered them. This company prefers to do their business the old fashioned way, which means right after you enter your mailing address, they proceed to mail you your goods with an invoice. Not having to enter my credit card online shocked me for a couple of reasons - I had still not mentally confirmed my order and was waiting to do that at the final step of the checkout and I had no idea what their shipping charges were. They turned out to be $7 as I found out today in my invoice.

Both of my cube-mates were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this fancy cocoa. Part of the reason was the recent disappearance of Swiss Miss instant hot cocoa mix from the nearby kitchen, leaving us with slightly limited choices for hot beverages. David and I had half a cup each of the Valrhona in whole milk and with white sugar. We decided to use the microwave instead of the steamer to avoid frothing and saturated with milk with the cocoa. The end result was something very pleasant ... thick, creamy and aromatic. It reminded me of chantico. We had to add more sugar to make up for the rich cocoa flavor. The added sugar makes it lose some of its characteristic cocoa flavor, and I'm still undecided if I prefer it bitter or sweet.
Oddly, this also worked as an appetizer on my stomach.

I feel a strong urge to spike this with some good liqueur. I'm thinking Kahlúa, Baileys Irish Cream, dark rum or brandy. I wonder if Godiva liqueur would suit this as well?

Would any kind of truffles go well with these?

My MacBook almost died

2007-01-19T10:48:10Z

Most things about my MacBook Pro are wonderful. FileVault ain't one of them.

My MacBook is work-issued, so we are required to use encrypted home directories which are managed by Mac OS X's FileVault feature. This is nothing a big hack. Instead of filesystem-level encryption, it works by making a huge "sparseimage" file and mounting it as your home directory. To recover space from file fragmentation, it prompts you to compact this image when you log out. I usually choose to skip the step, because I have never really deleted a lot of data so I don't have a lot of wasted space.

For some reason, I decided to choose "continue" last night on my way to rebooting the mac. With my 21G of music, and months since the last compaction, this took its time. I left it running all night long. Either the mac fell asleep or it hadn't finished by this morning when I closed it (which puts it to sleep) and put it in my bag. When I turned it up later this evening, I was shocked and surprised to see the filevault progress bar still on my screen. It took 30 more minutes to finish. Things seemed fine and I could log in. Then all of a sudden, the cutesy multilingual kernel panic message appeared. OK, so I've seen this before, no big deal, I'll reboot. Well, guess what, after the reboot I could no longer log in.

I didn't have any other administrator account handy (and I didn't try using sudo from the guest account), so I walked over to the 24-hour tech support at work. We spent 25 minutes copying the 25GB sparseimage file so we could experiment with disk utility's "restore" function and have a backup handy. The file copy ended with an error message (too large) ... eek! I have no idea why I saw that message as I certainly wasn't out of disk space. Anyway, the copy seemed to have succeeded despite that spurious message. Disk Utility corrected a whole bunch of "minor errors" after which I was finally able to log in again. Yay!

I just spent an hour backing up the spare image onto another machine (my workstation) and moving my music, movies and photos out of the encrypted home directory. Then I moved some applications, caches and font files out as well putting symlinks in their place. Now my sparseimage is only 1GB ... shortened by 96% :-) It's time to back up my photos to my roommate's terabyte disk array.

Should I move to San Francisco?

2007-01-18T06:45:40Z

Current location:
Lovely south bay suburbia. 15 minutes to work.

Pros of moving to SF:
- restaurants
- small-band concerts
- more young people to meet
- lovely views from apartment
- great walks, parks, biking

Cons:
- car parking costs $300, plus owning, insuring and maintaining a car that I hardly use is like wasting another $700. Ideally city-dwellers should not own cars, but I can't afford to take the hit of selling the car right now.
- rent is an additional $300-$500
- less room to live and less privacy with a roommate (unless I spend another $500 for a house or a 3 bdrm). I hate sharing bedroom walls.
- some furniture just won't fit
- no in-apartment laundry unless I pay more money
- no independent house unless I pay lots more money
- my visitors can't park and will have their cars broken into
- commute to work: 3 hours wasted a day (but maybe I can take up reading, but I can also do that without moving to SF)
- no more loud home theatre fun
- I can't do much on the weekdays because the city will be asleep by the time I get home from work. Will I even wake up early on the weekends to enjoy the city life?