Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2011

Federal spending cuts financial aid

Fun stuff. Federal spending has never been a favorite topic of mine. Lots of politicians are single minded in doing what they can to get paid more or re-elected. It's an unfortunate truth in a capitalistic world where the corporations secretly deal in the background.

As many people know, the United States has a sizable debt piled on due to the recent wars we've fought. The House Republicans want to cut back on spending right now and have drafted up a spending bill for the remainder of 2011. What's the kicker? They are cutting down on the Pell Grant that provides financial aid to students such as myself and grants towards science research by 15%.

Such a cut would lower the amount of aid that the most needy people could get by nearly 850$. This would cause over 1.5 million students to be ineligible for this form of financial aid! I feel this is a terrible idea for a place to have spending cuts. Education is one of the most important parts of our society today. In order to preserve the future of our country, we need to keep the citizens educated and give them the necessary skills to tackle problems.

Surely if we spend billions of dollars fighting a downhill war, there must be some way to cover the few millions of dollars that would be saved by cutting such an important bill right?

Source

Also, for kicks, here's Representative Anthony Weiner (New York 9th district) calling out the Republicans for violating their own rules. I guess not all Democrats are spineless eh?

Chopsticks

So many people always criticize me when I eat chips and other foods with chopsticks. Why do I do it? Well it's cause I don't like that greasy feeling all over my hands! I'd rather not get dripping sauces or leaky grease onto my fingers. They are just sensitive in that way. But apparently I'm not the only one that thinks this is good:


Ha so take that negative nannies that don't approve of my "strange" habit.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Real life FPS

There have been a huge streak of FPS games these days simulating "real" warfare. They are quite intense with lots of different guns, stages, and huge multiplayer action. For those that haven't ever played Call of Duty, here is a clip:



Pretty action-packed eh? The thing about these games is that there is a major detachment from what actual army fights are like. In the games, the player has no value for the life they are given. When they die they respawn and are given another chance later on. This allows the player to rush recklessly with guns ablaze with no real repercussions other than maybe losing the online match.

Here is a video of a first person perspective of an actual soldier fighting it out of a REAL ambush:



It may seem less "intense" but in real life you only get on chance. One tiny mistake will cost everything. Not only your own life, but you are putting your comrades' lives in danger as well. Once you realize that, this would have been one of the most intense clips you ever watch...

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Status update

1000 views, and top mark on Google! Bing is still weirded out though - nothing has changed on that end. Thanks for the help guys, this project has been going great so far. There are only a few days left in the Rankmaniac 2011 project.

One of the groups had the good idea of writing down lots of synonyms as a post since Google likes to mark people based on similarities as well. I'm going to look up synonyms for the two words Rank, Maniac, and Mania and alternate in using them throughout a paragraph.

Here I go with trying do this:

In the year 2011 (twenty eleven or two thousand and eleven), there has been a recent madness in which the hierarchy of fanatic teenaged girls have started a craze for overly reacting to an assortments of loony fixations. Some fear that this type of delirium amongst girls in the range ages from 6 to 18 might be a disease. Doctors have pinpointed symptoms in which girls go into a frenzied formation of squealing madness that only the most psychopathic person can withstand. Common triggers for this hysterical behavior include 5'3'' tall 16 year old singers with swooshing hair, giant abnormally sized stuffed animals, and Barack Obama. Be on the look out for the overenthusiastic diehard extremist girls. They can go into a berserk state at any moment and destroy the echelon of any hierarchal civilization.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Clothing

Some clothing is so freaktastically expensive these days! Anybody ever buy a 100$ pair of jeans or a shirt for over 200$? Looking at you ladies! For a simple guy like me I have no clue what people go for such expensive clothing. Yeah I guess they look nice and ritzy but doesn't something that costs 75% cheaper feel just as nice?

A lot of it is catered towards extravagance and these types of clothing do look nice. But that in no way justifies this monstrosity:


Over ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS for a torn up t-shirt that looks like it belongs on a homeless person? Seriously what the heck! You want nice shell ear rings? Go to the beach and pick them up for free for goodness sakes. There are some things that are just plain ridiculous in the world and this is one of em.

That fabric most definitely is worth about a dollar that means that selling one shirt would have made over 1500% turn around! Whoever designed this better have higher-plane-of-existence knowledge and made this crummy shirt cure everything including common sense. Okay I give up. I have no clue why people like this stuff. Somebody please explain to me why something like this can even get on the market!

For me personally since I was the youngest out of all my relatives and family friend's children, I just get all the hand me downs. Free tux? Can't pass that up. Free jeans? Why not. The shirts don't always fit but they do serve as nice pajamas every now and then. Fun stuff.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Sushi

So I went to a sushi buffet today with my friend. It was the worst experience of my life. For people that don't know how a sushi all-you-can-eat works, you order all the sushi you want for a fixed price. However, you must finish everything you order (no leaving the rice ball behind either!) or else you pay extra for whatever you can't finish.

My friend and I were pretty hungry at the beginning. We ordered a lot of great sushi and it was awesome. When the time for seconds came around, we though we could go for more... Oh how wrong we were! In the end I had to stuff my face with sushi to a point at which I felt like I would explode. And my friend didn't want either of us to die so he decided to cut it short and pay for the rest we couldn't finish.

...Sad thing is this is the third time this has happened...

Sunday, February 6, 2011

George W. Bush

Rant rant rant. Squabble squabble squabble. Uproar roar roar. Did you guys hear what happened to good old G.W. when he was supposed to go give a talk in Switzerland? A good amount of protest and political movement happened to try to force him to not come or to put him in jail if he does.

Why? Waterboarding of course! This form of torture that has been recognized by nearly all of the countries in the world was used on many occasions by the former president. He defended his actions in his memoirs and continues to say that this form of interrogation helped to protect the U.S.

The people in Switzerland did not want the former president to come into the country. They said that any other person that has openly admitted to torture would have been locked up and put on trial in the neutral country. George Bush did not want to be slammed into jail so he canceled his trip.

Now this brings up a good question. Does a former president deserve some sort of immunity from his actions taken while acting as head of state? Maybe so. The U.S. at the time did not officially recognize waterboarding as torture (Obama has changed that however) so technically what he did was OK in the U.S. However, the U.S. has taken part in the Geneva treaty to not torture any political prisoner. This is the notion that the people of Switzerland are trying to grill Bush on.

It's probably a good idea for Bush to lay low for longer. Ever wonder where he disappeared off to right after he left office?

Source

Friday, February 4, 2011

Windows updates

I officially hate Windows updates. The fact that they are so intrusive destroys the entire purpose of having a good user experience! Why is it that if I leave my computer on overnight to say, run a long job (or download some large items :D), and all of a sudden I wake up in the morning to find out that Microsoft forced updates on me and rebooted the comp? It's always hilarious when I see lecturers presenting with a powerpoint and then have intrusive popup for these updates take over the screen!

I like what Google does with Chrome though. A small notification appears that then tells you to reinstall. However whenever you restart Chrome it will auto install. Yes it's slightly intrusive but it does not do anything forcefully.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Randomness

My project team member is a troll. We have a website for CS141 that he constantly puts random javascript on! Yes, it is our fault that we do not sanitize our input but he keeps doing it! Whine whine whine.

Fun email I sent to Donnie:

Hello Mr. Redston,

I am slightly irked in finding out today, Thursday the 3rd of February of the glorious year 2011, that a promise that you, Mister Ronald Redston the Third, made to be yesterday, Wednesday the 2nd of February on the 11th year past the 2nd millennia, has been broken. On that fateful morning during glass my friends and I conversed about a certain "bib cat" if you do recall. We traversed the intertubes to find such an example of a "bib cat" and after painstaking work we decided to show you. It was during that time that you, the defendant in question, promised to put said "bib cat" onto your PowerPoint slides if I, the accuser, were to send you the picture of one "bib cat".

This internet mailing log shows my side of the transaction:

Subject: bib cat
Date: February 2, 2011 11:35:26 AM PST

One "bib cat" was sent to you by the internet mail and should have been received by you. If you do not take action and add an example of a "bib cat" to your notes, my fellow witnesses and I will not stand lightly to such a blatant disruption of our mutual trust. I hope you heed this warning and do not take it lightly.

Cordially,
The party for fair treatment of "bib cat" and "yak zap"

But yeah right now we're doing distributed file system stuff in class. It's going well, but there are still a lot of issues we need to work on.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Actual content #1

So... Actual content? Does this site have any? Sometimes. Yes. Most of the times, copied? Maybe. But I'm not entirely sure what actual content revolves around. Either way I'll just spew about my day today.

I got a matte screen protector for my mac today (thanks to the anonymous person who helped me order). It definitely makes the shinyness of the screen go down by a tad. Not as much as I would have hoped for but it seems that with a more matte screen the graininess of the protector starts to obscure the vision of the screen. Either way, it makes my macbook nicer to look at. No longer is it a 2000$ mirror!

I hope it helps my vision though. My parents from when I was a kid always found it really scary whenever I sat any sort of close to the TV. They thought that my eyes would deteriorate like a monkey and just go poof. I guess they never wanted me to wear glasses even though I do now for fun (ironic isn't it).

The main piece of software I've been using recently is focus booster. What it does is have a timer for 25 minutes in which a person is supposed to concentrate on doing a task. Then there are 5 minute break intervals for a bit of relief. This is known as the pomodoro (Italian for tomato) technique. It's quite interesting though I'm still having lots of difficulty trying to focus during that 25 minutes of time. I'll see how it goes and post more about it later.

Most exciting thing is that Rankmaniac finally updated! I wonder why it came up all of a sudden. The sister sites are going at it too but not anywhere close on the radar just yet. This project is still a bit wishy washy in my mind though. I don't feel much academic gain from it at all. Mostly just a side venture that I'm probably spending way too much time on. Though if I really do need a website later on it might help.

I also realized that with the keyboard protector on my mac that I type alot slower. The protector is nice though since it prevents my shiny Mac from getting infested with crumbs and bits that like to float around. And hair! Oh the hair is so annoying to get out. Hmm I think I've ranting too much right now! But my hair needs to be cut. Yup.

That's a good update of actual content thats probably insanely boring. Okay will post funny stuff later. Bye bye.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

My short name

So my name is only four letters long. There are both pros and cons to this:

Pros:
-Huge time saver on standardized tests! You only need to bubble in a few letters
-Unique. Not many people have the same name as I do

Cons:
-People think my name is weird stuff, like Y.E. Lu
-I can't make a Google account with my name! Google requires 6 letters and I can only give 4 :(

The last point has bugged me for a while. I can only stick with my old screenname from sixth grade and have not had the chance to change to anything that works. Kind of sad eh?

Monday, January 31, 2011

Canada hardcapping internet usage

More strange internet dealings happening that threatens the current web structure! Canadian ISPs have decided to put a hardcap on the amount of bytes people can use on the internet. They will offer tiered levels that give more space. What does this mean? This means that large downloads such as movie streaming or online content delivery (such as Steam) will be heavily less appetizing now. Furthermore, people just can't use the internet as freely as they want to!

Also people now will have a much better incentive to block ads to save bandwidth. What will this mean? Many free services will lose revenue that they otherwise would not be losing. This may be a huge issue in itself!

It is not unheard of for ISPs to block certain users for obscene amounts of data traffic (up in the terabytes). Comcast has gotten many complains about this from active peer to peer file sharers. However, this is the first time that an ISP has decided to cap the data flow at such a low level for everybody. This assumes that the outliers that actually affect the network are the common case which definitely is not true.

Yes this is not nearly as crazy as what is happening in Egypt right now but it certainly is quite a stir for the internet community. It may just blow over sometime soon but we'll see what happens.

3D movies and new technology

Does anybody actually like 3D movies and 3D TVs? The cost of buying these new devices are ungodly obscene. Movies also cost extra but are they worth it? The glasses just seem to fog up the color and vibrance of the movie itself not to mention that only about 20% or less of the content is actually "3D" for most movies. The magic just isn't really there. Until the day that we can watch such things without extra peripherals I'm going to keep my money out.

And what about the Nintendo 3DS? Gimmicky? Headache inducing? Probably. The angle that you can see the screen without having to adjust your head is about 1 tiny degree. Why is everybody pushing the need for 3D so much? As of now the content given does not seem to be useful at all but rather just a flashy technique for people to spend money on. However if somebody comes out with a holodeck like experience I definitely will buy it.

Augmented reality applications however are really cool. Especially with phones becoming so powerful and connected to the cloud, data can be (pre)processed and delivered on the fly. Have people heard of the Google Goggles? Image search recognition on the phone immediately. It is some really cool stuff that will definitely light up the tech world if it becomes prevalent. I will hold off on getting a smart phone for now though. Shouldnt be buying too many toys in such a short amount of time :)

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Egypt protests

Compiled video of the protests in Egypt. I honestly hope somebody steps up and makes sure the protestors get their voices heard...

China blocks Egypt

Okay now this is getting out of hand. China has now blocked content that contain the word Egypt due to the protests going on. I guess they don't want their own citizens to take an example?

--
China has blocked the word "Egypt'' from the country's wildly popular Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media.

China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest.

A search for "Egypt'' on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown".

The service has more than 50 million users.

News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news websites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast.

China's foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on the events in Egypt.
--
Source

Friday, January 28, 2011

Technology

People these days take technology for granted. We always expect to be able to turn on our laptops and check the web for updates (to this blog right?) without fail. But the event in Egypt has got me thinking of what can go wrong. A government can just decide on a whim to take away an entire country's internet is just plain ridiculous! I honestly hope more people look and realize how atrocious this is but also how dependent we are on technology to survive.

Also, I'm just going to hate it when my paper runs out of batteries.

Ramble

I awoke to the phone ringing and even though it felt like I hadn't slept all that well after I got up and had some coffee I knew the 6 hours of sleep had really helped A LOT! I'm not saying though, that I won't tell you to f* off if you're giving me more information than needed.

Maybe Ill tell you about the fantastic evening I spent mostly alone last night. I was going to tell you about the The Back Facial..... which was soooo incredible you just can't believe it....... but I'm going have to save that for later. Sorry there was no post yesterday, but I spent all day driving up from L.A..... and by the time I got here, it was all I could do just to check my email! Last night when we got home I was so tired/bored that I just got ready for bed and listened to Sigur Ros until I fell asleep. When they ring the call bell two seconds after I was just in there and they want me to do something stupid like.... fix the blanket on their lap, I will ask them why they waited til I left the room. I was told i bird walk, it means like, talking about something, going off on a tangent and talking about something completely different, then going back to what i was talking about before like i havent been ranting about something else for the last 5 minutes.

I had the thought, in the middle of my spiky moments on Tuesday and Wednesday, that I've probably been on a wrong track in my general efforts, perceptible through this journal, to keep undue hopefulnes out of my daily round.