Christmas

Since the days here are getting shorter and air, colder, I figured it'd be a good time to start thinking about Christmas. It always creeps up on us faster than we can prepare for it and I, at least, need a head start getting into the holiday spirit of giving and receiving. Yes, it's giving and receiving. It could mean other things, but that's why I need a head start.

Another obligatory post

If there's one thing I'll say about today's iPod announcement, it's that I'm glad I got a nano when it came out and not a regular one. Also, I don't know if anyone else thought it was abnormally proportioned, but suprisingly, the iPod today is just as tall and just as wide as the iPod of yesterday. It's just thinner. That widescreen really throws me off.

You, too, can be a sellout

http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/50936 (expired, check techbargains.com for new deals)

I used that 25% off coupon and got the Dell Inspiron 6000 configured as follows for 897.07 (shipped and taxed). Make sure you get the free PC recycling kit!

• Intel Pentium M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
• 15.4 inch WXGA LCD, 1280x800
• 512MB Shared DDR2,400MHz 2 Dimms
• Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 900 Graphics, OpenGL 1.4, barely DirectX 9 compatible
• 60GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 5400 RPM
• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, No media
• 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
• Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11b/g,54Mbps)
• Internal Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth 2.0
• 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, Up to 4 hours
• 1 Year Limited Warranty, 1 Year 24x7 Technical Support, Mail-in Service
• Free Recycling Kit
• At least 6.65 lbs

Last updated: 10/16/2005

Asian restaurant etiquette?

Slashfood thinks that rubbing your chopsticks together to get rid of splinters is a faux pas and an insult to the restaurant. What if there really are splinters on the chopsticks?

My recommendation is to stay away from that restaurant, duh.

From now on, I won't assume that there are splinters on the chopsticks. But if there are, I intend to sand away. Click through to see their comic cell on the topic.

SEE: Slashfood

Random updates

• New phone that's all locked down by Verizon, using mom's bluetooth headset.
• Went on a visit to the new (1-yr-old) Bloomberg building, very cool. (BTW, it's a LLP, or some other kind of partnership).
• Didn't get a McKinsey Interview after their cocktail party.
• You can visit this site through willmonwah.com
• Got new headphones for the nano, volume deficient, but maybe that's a good thing.
• Actually played 3 matches at table tennis practice.
• Completed the easiest sample problem at TopCoder. On second thought, maybe I should have deferred mentioning that.
• I'm down a donut and a ticket to NY Penn Station. Realized too late that the "I just need some money to get home" "non-bum" was probably not interested in going home. How come my late night escapades in New Brunswick don't have happy endings like this.
• Attempting a switch to Google Reader.
• Believing the hype about the upgraded Airport Express. Airport express is a wireless router, range extender, usb-print server and an audio bridge between iTunes and your stereo system. Apple has already adopted an newer video codec called H.264 that would make it more feasible for them to sell you videos through iTunes and send them to your home theater. If it's that simple, they would've had to address the problem of controlling your movies from your computer remotely (!?), or maybe it's something else other than the video iPod.

SOURCES: Check links.

About this blog and me

I've often visited blogs and wondered what they were about. Who is the person blogging and why are they blogging? Here's the answer to those questions concerning me.

Who am I?

I'm a recent graduate of Rutgers University and work as a programmer in the greater NYC area.

About this blog

On one level, as you can see from the title, this blog is frequently about Apple Computer, Inc. I have beenwas a small shareholder of the company since October, 2001. The title used to be Bits and pieces. When I realized that Bits and pieces is a terribly unoriginal blog title, I adopted one less cliched, but still implicative of no one topic in particular, reflecting my refusal to acknowledge any specific focus.

On another level, this blog is a my contribution to the web. I try to elevate and promote certain ideas and some times share some of my own. I also try to keep people I know and who care about me updated.

LAST UPDATE: 10/20/2006

Mid-day update

I saw Corzine (came within a couple of feet of him) at the end of a rally at the Rutgers Student Center surrounded by a small crowd of people and soon before he was rushed off. I couldn't really think of any questions on the fly, in awe over the celebrity of the affair. Here was one of just 100 senators representing 280 million people in the largest, most powerful modern liberal democracies in the world and I didn't have any questions to ask or interests to press. A student stopped to ask him one more question on abortion and his answer impressed me in framing it on the context of people who are actually affected by the issue. It wasn't clear what his response was, but the person who asked it recorded it on his 4G iPod with the Griffin iTalk accessory so hopefully it will appear in the media.

UPDATE 12:000 PM EST 10/06/05: And indeed it did appear in the Targum (I recognized the guy with the iTalk). And upon reading what he actually said about abortion, I guesss it's not that insightful but satisfactory, I guess.

Not sure what to blog about

I'm not sure what to blog about, so I'm going to ramble. This isn't necessarily out of the ordinary, right? First of all, I've been thinking about some positive qualities I'd like to develop related to a quote in that Maryknoll magazine I mentioned for Independence Day about different ways of looking at people. Basically, the story was about a missionary priest of a village feeling obligated to do something to punish a parish member who had divorced or otherwise cheated on his wife for another woman. The rest of the community, although in no way approving of the unfaithfulness of the man, felt little inclination to ostracizing or otherwise punish "the adulterer". The priest learned that his parish members took a holistic view of the man, weighing his contributions to society over his personal shortcomings and spiritual crimes, while he himself was fixated on the negative. WWJD? Obviously, it depends on circumstances and consequences.

My take on this is more general. While pessimism is a terrible philosophy in general, optimism isn't necessarily the cure. The priests parish members didn't necessarily try to just look for the good in a person, so much as looking at the whole picture. To do that, one should merely control their emotions. If something about someone really bothers me, I tend to get fixated on it and allow it to irrationally dominate my impressions of him/her, masking positive qualities. And, having heard the Dalai Lama talk last Sunday, emotion, be it love or hatred (yes, strong word) cripples reason. My original hope for myself, however, was indeed to look for the best in people--to see their potential and help them realize it, even if they don't see it themselves.

SOURCE: Procrastination : /