Posts from — October 2006

Why would people want to read other’s thoughts?

To me, I love watching people and semi-analyzing them in my head whenever I go out to any public places. I could spend hours just to watch people in a coffeeshop, sometimes eavedropping their phone conversations. (I don’t even have to eavedrop actually. they’re loud most of the time.) I could create a profile in my head of what that person like or what kind of job he/she does for a living. I’m absolutely a voyeur.(in a non sexual way.)
Once I had to wait for a friend in a Starbuck for about an hour. Fortunately, I had a book with me. I thought I could read the book while waiting for my friend, but then I ended up spending an entire hour looking at how people walk.

Who wouldn’t want to know other’s thoughts?

People like to gossip. We all want to see a few different sides of others, weaker and uglier sides are even better. Those kind of things would probably make us feel better about ourselves. Ultimately, I think you might get to know yourself a little bit better by just looking at other people.

Ever since the resignation of Richard Nixon, a very smart man who got caught abusing his executive power, the GOP has deliberately avoided nominating conspicuously intelligent people for president. Gerald Ford was smarter than he looked, but he was unable to dispel his buffoonish image. Ronald Reagan was famously checked out and ill-informed. George H.W. Bush, though clearly smarter than Dubya, is not exactly imposing in the brains department, and he’s demonstrated almost as much difficulty as his son in formulating a coherent sentence. And George W. Bush? Let’s just say the guy is either mentally lazy, not very bright, or some combination of these two. I’ve never felt it necessary to refine that diagnosis; the term I favor is “functionally dumb.”

from Rush Limbaugh fakes stupidity By Timothy Noah Slate.com

Interesting remarks…and it might be true.
The way I see it is that it takes certain amount of courage to let people view you as a dumb, ill-informed person. May not be courage, I should say it takes patience and self awareness even. What would you get from acting dumb, you might ask? You get publicity, sometimes you get public sympathy, and above all else, you get to be the president of the United States.

I’ve shopped around for a tiny bluetooth headset for my cellphone lately since I got this new cool phone from Samsung. However, I don’t like the idea of having people watching me talk to myself like a crazy person because nobody can see the tiny teeny in the ear headset.

Now, I got a solution!  People won’t be looking at me thinking, “What a nutcase” anymore. mwahaha… My quest for the perfect bluetooth headset is over.

let me introduce my new cool gatget.    TADA!

an unrelenting huffiness that’s supposed to be cute—is nominally a conservative talk-show host. (The premise of the show is that she’s a dragon-breathing polemicist, but I haven’t heard her espouse anything more controversial than capitalism.

I read it somewhere I don’t even remember now, probably from Slate. The writer was talking about Calista Flockhart in her new shows Brothers and Sisters.

I don’t even watch the show or remotely like Calista Flockhart, but the statement above caught my eyes. Full of big words and good use of objectives?

“Real Musicians have Day Jobs.” is probably my favorite bumber sticker I’ve ever seen.

You can’t really replace Musicians with anything else.

“Real Artists have Day Jobs.” No… That won’t work. If artists have day jobs, they would be a sell out to their peers. They won’t get any respect from their own industry. (I shouldn’t use the word “industry” with “artists” for obvious reason, but…)

Actually, haha, there’s no other right-brained professions I could think of that could replace Musicians. Musicians are specific enough, but not too specific, artsy enough but not too commercial, and easy enough to be ones, but not too easy so that everybody can be one.

I wonder if a painter gets instant satisfaction painting something for himself without showing it to anybody. I know musicians actually get that satisfaction just playing for themself. They get some kind of adrenaline rush or a dose of endorphine while playing it and after they’ve finished the songs.

Musicians play because they want to… simple as that.

So, I got back to WoW, and I also joined Angst guild. We went on the first Zul’gurub run today with some help from 3 or 4 raiders from another tier 3 guild on the server. We downed Hakkar after 3rd tries and almost 5 hours later. There were a lot of briefings before every bosses fight and even thrash mobs fight. I don’t mind that actually. They even let me dpsing the whole run.

I actually don’t really like doing dps since I know I’m a lot better healer or tank than dps. And to tell the truth, dpsing is boring. Although, you have to keep up with the strategy when fighting bosses but you don’t really have to “try” anything. Actually, dpsing as a druid is boring. You can’t stun or disrupt spell when fighting. All you have to do is just hitting 3-4 buttons over and over until the boss is dead.

I’m not complaining. I can’t complain actually. Since Angst is the only guild I can raid with. I should just shut up and try to have fun with the game.

gDisk for Mac and Gmail Drive for PC. Try it!

My next fun/educational project is to install Mac OS X on my PC.

Edit (10/22/2006): Oh noes! I don’t have SSE2 compatible processors which are Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 at least.

There are always something interesting during the first 30 minutes into a movie. Much more interesting than the last 30 minutes.

It’s where the story getting developed and where we get to know the characters. It’s where the viewers’ own imagination taking place. You have hundreds of story lines developing in your own head. Sometimes, they turns out to be better than the “real” movie you’re watching, most of the time actually…

There’re a few TV shows I’ve stopped watching before they ends. One of them was “Lost.” The show was really interesting in their first season. It really made me want to find out more about the story, until they started to kill off some of those characters who had low viewers rating…
That’s when writers started to write the story according to ratings… what a bunch of BS.

Heroes is the show I’m currently following with a lot of hope. Not only the casting is so perfect but the actors are also brilliant. Also a promising plot with good subtext that’s not too hard to digest for anybody.

Let’s just hope they won’t kill off the cheerleader.

A friend of mine emailed me

“…check this out ..go to kqed.com…sierrasoundstage….tommy emmanuel …omigod…..”

I did the search for about 10 minutes through KQED and PBS website without any success. I didn’t know who this Tommy was but I knew he had something to do with guitars or at least with music. This friend of mine usually just emails me once a month or less. He’s a guitar nuts and he knows a thing or two about music. I really had to find out about this Tommy Emmanuel.

I found out that he had a show at Sierra Center Stage 2 months ago. KQED probably aired the show a few days ago that somehow caught my friend’s eyes. Wow…now it caught my eyes and ears, too. I’ve just finished downloading the whole show at 4AM in the morning. wow…It doesn’t take a guitarist to appreciate this guy. It’s totally worth staying up tonight.