The Firm

The Firm's chairman Henry M. Paulson Jr. is very likely to succeed John W. Snow to be the next Treasury secretary for the Bush administration.

Mr. Paulson is going to make $175,700 for this new job. Last year, he made more than $38 million at Goldman.

Google Ad

I was reading an issue of Wired that I collected from the basement at work, of course, for free. In it there's this Google print ad that got my attention.

It's about a girl called Niniane Wang, who at the tender age of 10, learned the Lisp programming language.

I don't remember what I learned at 10. I didn't hear about Lisp until maybe 10 years ago, and of course I don't know anything about Lisp except it's a programming language developed by some MIT folks, hey I don't even bother to wiki it. If reading this makes you so depressed about your room temperature IQ and deficiency in things in general. Please don't. If it's any comfort, you got me as company.

There are some people who are really smart. To visit smartie Niniane, click here.

Dalila

It's basically yellow.

Radiator

This is a cast iron Kohler radiator, it weighs a ton. I unscrewed it, lay it down on the floor so as to paint the part of the wall behind it and later the radiator itself. The previous paint job, I guess nobody bothered to move it, the back of the radiator is rusted. I got to give it some tender loving care.
I need to go to the YMCA more and start bench pressing 200 lbs in preparation to moving stuff life a 300 lbs radiator.

Breaking: Enron Chiefs convicted

Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Fantasy accounting is not accounting. And you can't claim ignorance while being a CEO pocketing millions in compensation.

Meanwhile, I am still stuck doing SOX compliance shit, thanks to Lay and Skilling.

UPDATE: Dow reacted to the conviction by closing at 11211.05, up 93.73 points. Wall street pundits are cheering for the guilty verdict. I just hope that someone can reverse the SOX regulation so I don't have to do any SOX related shit.

Scary Movie

This is one scary movie that grabs the attention of the public.

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Harry is about to sing "Be Our Guest." The little guy in the very back is Mr. Harry. I guess he's not that hot.

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I found the picture surprisingly sharp. For more details, go to flickr. I have given up shooting in RAW or what Nikon called NEF format. I just shoot JPEG and dump the file to my harddrive and sometimes upload them to flickr and this blog. My organization skill is close to zero. And I don't back up my hard drive, I like the idea of living dangerously (I think that's from an AOL commercial). One of these days, I just got to organize and backup my pictures before Murphy's law setin.

Painting III

Alex and Harry volunteered to do the painting. I guess 10 years from now, they can be of some real help. Anyway, they were enthusiatic about it. They thought it was fun. I wish I had that attitude. I think, for me, the fun's gone maybe 10 minutes into it.

It's inherently easier when other people do it. By doing this myself, I gained some new perspective. I don't think it's that easy. And in terms of time needed, it totally exceeded my estimate. I thought it could be done in an 8 hours workday, but I guessed it wrong. There was just more preparation work needed to be done, moving stuff around was one, getting the right tool another. Overall, it's not that straight forward.

Flat for the ceiling, eggshell for the walls, semi-gloss for the window, door and floor trimmings.

I ran out of the Benjamin Moore Regal white semi gloss, so I still haven't done the floor trimming (or called floor board or molding not sure) yet.

To be contined ....

Painting II

Painting

iBook does rainbow display

(or how I got screwed by Apple)


Here is my latest iBook display. It's sort of funky, isn't it.

Dow diarrhea continues

I guess the US economy is not that hot after all.

Apple Blossoms on 5th Avenue

Apple is going to open its 5th Avenue store at 6PM today and giving away MacBook every hour for the first 24 hours. So let the MacBook riot begin.

I plan to go around 4AM to enter the lucky draw. No, just kidding, no, I am not kidding.

5/20/06 UPDATE: I didn't go to win any MacBook.

Cheese Pizza

Okay kids, this is what the World Wide Web was invented for ...

Cheese Pizza

Traditional and comforting. You focus on living a quality life. You're not easily impressed with novelty. Yet, you easily impress others.

What's Your Pizza Personality?

iBook Surgery

I performed my first iBook openheart surgery, and the result is so far so good.

My iBook sufferred from the "90 degrees and black out" syndrome which is pretty well discussed in Apple's own user's forum. On top of that, my original power adaptor isn't passing the power, and my battery isn't holding up a good charge (I had to borrow someone's from work just to charge the battery).

So, I ordered from Small Dog, the reed switch assembly ($20) and a third party power adaptor ($29). $7 USP 3 days select shipping. I didn't order any extra battery.

I read the following links and got the job done. Here, here
and here. The last link is about harddrive replacement but I like the way the guy taped the screws on a cheat sheet. I did similar but still got 3 screws unaccounted for, OKAY, I know I dropped one for the top shield.

After the surgery, the iBook is 3 screws lighter. It's embarrassing. Other than the screws, one major hiccup was I forgot to plug back the keyboard cable before I replaced the RAM shield and worse, I thought I had to take off the bottom cover and the front cover to plug it back in, when indeed removing the RAM shield is all it needs to plug the keyboard cable to the board ... It's been a long operation.

Nikon is getting edgy

This is a follow up to my earlier post regarding Nikon. Nikon is using Kate Moss to market is Coolpix S6.

Here is the latest:


Nikon has a total new website called, gasp, http://www.stunningnikon.com, of couse, pop-up, flash, full screen and all the shit you would expect.

Kate Moss is all right, but I don't think it breaks any new ground and I don't think it effectively conveys anything stunning about the Coolpix. She is just moving around trying to look "sleek,sexy, and stunning." If anything I think the print ad works a bit better, it's more succinct. The video just feels contrived and dragging on 35 seconds too long.

Apple MacBook

Apple is introducing its MacBook, priced from $1099 to $1499, give or take depends on customization.
Meanwhile, I ordered a power adaptor and a reed switch from small dog for my dying 800mhz iBook. I want to get it back to working conditon at least. I only have OS 10.2.8 installed. This is going to be like a brain surgery or open heart surgery for me. The last time I opened something this compact and complicated was my Nikon Coolpix 990, and I couldn't put it back. Oh well.

m:i:iii may not be showing in China ...

because there are scenes showing underwear.

In China or at least the part shown, people don't have dryer or prefer to hang their clothes, underwear included out in the open to dry them naturally and glimpes of underwear as backdrop while Cruise and company fighting terrorists in Shanghai and Xitang is a no no to Chinese censor.

To see Chinese underwear flying in China, you probably need to see the pirated DVDs or something.

Another Day, another fake writer

I mean scientist who fakes his research.

This is front page material as reported on the New York Times today. Chinese scientist Chen Jin was accused of faking his research and stealing chip design and passed it as his own.

According to some reports, his Hanxin chip was simply manufactured, if you can call it manfactured, by hiring migrants workers to scratch off the name Motorloa and replaced it with the name Hanxin.

Of the two students interviewed at his university, Jiatong, where he worked and subsequently fired amidst this scandal, both expressed sympathy to Professor Chen as he was simply unlucky to be get caught.

I guess if you are smart, you are almost expected to plagiarize or cook up your own findings to turn some quick bucks in China, or anywhere.

Saturday

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. OKAY, I know how to spell Saturday.

Wii is rocking at E3

Nintendo's secret weapon is unveiled at E3, and the exit poll says it rocks.

In order to let my kids grow up like any other kids, I already bought them a Nintendo Game Boy Advanced. The Wii maybe the next buy. Just a maybe.

Microsoft and Sony are good but they are expensive and dare I say pretty complicated. I never understand the whole digital home entertainment center anyway. It's like they are designed to take control of your living room or your life, I say fuck that.

User generated content

Sony is getting on the bandwagon of user generated content for their sony style ad campaign. New York Times has an article titled "An Agency's Worst Nightmare: Ads Created by Users." The animated spot is created by a 19 year old Tyson Ibele, as opposed to by some ad agency with fat cats and slave labor from cubicle farm.

Mr Ibele was rewarded with $1,000 for his 24 second animation.

"We can scare the agency, and that's just fun to do." Mr. Fasulo, the chief marketing executive of Sony Electronics was quoted in the NYTimes article saying that.

Here's the video created by Mr. Ibele, not me:-

Run

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I'd like Spring more if not because of allergy. This year has been pretty bad.

BitTorrent

If you can't beat them, join them. Warner Brothers decided to use BitTorrent as the technology to hawk their library of movies. I used BitTorrent a few times to get some disc images, and it worked as predicted. Unless it's free, I won't bother to download, as it still takes quite some time to get the data via an alleged 5mbps downstream connection (just checked, it's only around 1.5 - 2.5 mbps from around 9 t0 12AM, cable connection).

Enron trial is almost over, both sides rested their case. I think the closing arguments will be some time next week. I guess they very likely will get acquitted. It's a waste of government money. Let's see what's really going to happen.

Sony announced PS3 will start shipping around November. Meanwhile Microsoft announced it will ship HD DVD for its Xbox 360 game console. Nintendo says its Wii will ship in Q4. Now, all the game boys have something to cheer about.

Apple wins the Apple vs. Apple lawsuit. Apple won because the judge has an iPod. The Beatles' Apple Inc. lost the case.

m:i:iii

The mi3 opening weekend box office gross was considered to be a let down.

The movie debuted with $48 millions over the weekend, about 10 million less than the previous Mission Impossible installment. Of the 48 million gross, yours truly contributed $10 of it.

I like the first one, then the 3rd one, the 2nd one is my least favorable one, the slow motion with the flying white doves were just too much for me to handle.

I always think writing amateur film review is easy. If you are willing to part with your $10 and sit through 2 hours, you are set to write a film review. Book review is much harder. First off, you have to read the book, unless you listen to audio book, which in most cases last more than two hours. So almost anyone can be an amateur film reviewer.

JJ Abrams have a lot to live up to. After all, we are talking about the Mission Impossible franchise and Tom fucking Cruise, probably the last mega male star living and breathing. After watching years of movies, I have to say I am getting desensitized, I mean, how can any action movie be exciting any more. Sure, there are lots of explosions and jumpings and kickings, but do they really excite me, not really.

The film makes some references to other films I think. One is True Lies. There are definitely some parts of it that seems very True Lies, just that True Lies is bit more original and better.

The adrenaline shot to the heart is bit Pulp Fiction.

The motocycle ride to meet his team is a bit of Top Gun.

The film flows all right but I can't find any definitive moments. In the first MI, there is the Langley vault scene, the restaurant scene and the helicopter inside the tunnel scene, in my mind they are pretty definitive of the first MI film. And the first MI is better paced and have better character development, more cerebral. And you can see Cruise in dfferent lights, in suit, in tux, in street clothes, in mission attire. On the other hand, mi3 is pretty monotonous when it comes to Cruise, he's just a fighting machine, not a lot of thinking. The opening sequence seems to be pretty good. But only to reveal that it really didn't add anything to the finale except a pure repeat. And what the fuck is the rabbit foot? Even Ethan had to ask what. And JJ Abrams and the team of writers just totally got lazy and didn't bother to come up with anything to it. No, it's not cool, it's just lazy film making.

Overall, the film is good, but not extraordinary like you would expect from screen god, Tom Cruise. Yes, this is a film review, and I am not going to cover my ass to say it's not. It's not good that's all.

P.S.: For an acid-tongued critical review from the real literary type, I suggest you read this piece from the New Yorker.

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This is a long e-mail exchange with a spammer, not by me. Well written and oddly amusing.

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Brooklyn Botanical Garden, April 30, 2006.