dracil

So it looks like my plant is finally recovering in the bigger pot and being outside. Well, the parts that look sick and dead are still sick and dead, but the new growth is looking healthier.

Last entry before I leave for the airport.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Hmm, got to use the Eva VIP lounge. Free food and drinks = good. Brought some extra drinks for the flight.

Flight-wise, I forgot to request seats so I got aisle seats both time, which was ok I guess. Just as long as I'm not stuck in the middle it's all good.

I was seated next to a certain mother and daughter of this family of three for both flights. The son was always seated a little bit away. The mother recognized me the second time and asked if I was going to Bangkok. She probably assumed I was getting off at Taipei before.

The stores in the Taipei airport open by 7am, although some were open before 6am.

My watch broke. I pulled the knob to change the time and it just came off. Then I lose the knob later, so my watch is still stuck on PDT time.

Eva really needs to fix their music system. On the first flight, essentially 4 of their music channels didn't work.

Since my flights was essentially between two months (depending on how you look at it), the music/flight program changed between flights.

Watched In Good Company, Ocean's Twelve, and Robots. I didn't finish Ocean's Twelve although I did watch most of it. It just wasn't that interesting. Robots was the general predictable children's 3D animation film. In Good Company was probably the best of the three, although it didn't really have closure for one of the characters.

On the second flight, the flight attendants actually forgot to give the man besides me his meal, so he became justifiably pissed.

Massage seat packaging was pretty worn despite the Fragile sticker that the EVA people had stuck on it.

Thailand = HOT/humid/sticky.

As expected, cat at home is avoiding me. Cats outside are friendly as ever. They seem to think my fingers are some sort of chew toy or something though. They have really bad breath. Oh, and hooray for allergies, as I'm starting to sneeze a lot again.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Forgot some stuff that I was going to put down.

I finished the Da Vinci Code during my flight from San Francisco. Almost 500 pages, not bad.

Oh, and I found it rather amusing to find several anime figurines on top of our TVs when I came home.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Well, that cat's not afraid of me anymore. I saw it when I came down in the morning, and it didn't run away, although it disappeared afterwards until my mom came home. After that, it hasn't gone in hiding again.

Hmm, I don't think I've fully recovered from jet lag yet. I start feeling sleepy after 8pm, although I guess I sleep earlier this way (it's 10:49 pm now).
Currently feeling sleepy

dracil

Got a haircut, had some pictures taken (for visa application). Bought some RAM for the left computer so it's no longer slow as molasses.

Your #1 Love Type: INFJ

The Protector In love, you strive to have the perfect relationship. For you, sex is nearly a spiritual experience, a bonding of souls. Overall, you have high expectations for any relationship you're in. However, you tend to hold back a part of yourself. Best matches: ENTP and ENFP

Your brain: 100% interpersonal, 60% visual, 100% verbal, and 140% mathematical!

Congratulations on being 400% smart! Actually, on my test, everyone is. The above score breaks down what kind of thinking you most enjoy doing. A score above 100% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 100% means you use it less. It says nothing about how good you are at any one, just how interested you are in each, relatively. A substantial difference in scores between two people means, conclusively, that they are different kinds of thinkers. Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice, which I think is obvious: Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 80%. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 100%. Don't have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 200%.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 73% on interpersonal You scored higher than 38% on visual You scored higher than 75% on verbal You scored higher than 69% on mathematical

Link: The 4-Variable IQ Test written by chriscoyne on Ok Cupid

Currently feeling tired

dracil

Hmm, woke up too late for church (slept 10 hours). Spent day tutoring my dad on calculus (not surprising it was confusing considering the number of errors in the professor's notes) and cracking games for my mom.
Currently feeling sleepy

dracil

Lovely, the computer with the DSL is having some network issues. First sign of trouble is a really long startup stuck in the setting up the networks part. After that, if I try to use the DSL, I get 100% CPU usage when it tries to log in to the network after it verifies name/password. And the normal modem doesn't want to work either. And messing with the stuff back there sucks because I get shocks if I touch the computer case in the back. Ugh.

I'm using the computer on the right at the moment, but the dial-up sucks (I'm connected at 33.6k).

For the past couple days, it's been raining hard in the evening, but it doesn't last long. I miss heavy rain. I also miss flooding.

Oh, in case you're wondering, the time zone here in Bangkok is PDT + 14. So add 2 hours to my entry time and flip the AM/PM to figure out when I'm posting.
Currently feeling annoyed

dracil

Hmm, my dad called the DSL company but then he had to go to his night class afterwards so I was stuck trying to converse in Thai with the guy. This lasted for a while until he went to find someone who could speak English, but in that time, the error message had changed, and then I tried switching the phone lines and it worked. So the internet's fixed now.

Rain again.

Need to get up very early tomorrow to go to the US Embassy for the visa application.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

First, my visa application. Dad drove to his company, then we took a taxi the rest of the way. When we got there, there was a line stretching outside the compound. Ok, now I see why my dad wanted to go there early (it was only 7:10, and it opened at 7). While waiting, I noticed a sign saying that interviews would currently be scheduled for August 18. That gave me a slight cause for panic, since my planet ticket was for July 31st, and I had to go to USF by August 15th for an orientation. Not much later, we reached the entrance, and that was when I noticed how long the line stretched *inside* as well. Ack. And it was actually uncomfortably warm even at this hour. However, halfway to the window, a woman started going around checking documents. When she checked ours, she told us to go inside the building to Window 13. Whee, express service, and there was air conditioning inside as well. Lucky Break #1. Things inside went relatively smoothly. We missed some things on our application so they made us fill it out right there, then we were asked if we wanted to do the interview today. Lucky Break #2. So of course I said yes. The interview itself was actually relatively brief. Index finger fingerprints from all of us, and a couple quick questions and that was it. No detailed interrogation of why I was unemployed for my entire OPT year. I can pick up my passport with the visa on Thursday. So, I guess I probably worry too much. But of course, there are still two days for them to come up with a reason to deny me my visa.

Dad went back to the office while my mom and I went home ater that.

Shortly before my mom went to her dentist appointment, someone from the DSL company came by to try to fix the problem. But before that, the computer had become even more temperamental and refused to finish loading windows. Only Safe Mode worked. So the guy tried to diagnose the problems with his laptop and safe mode. Everything seemed to check out fine, and the computer booted up properly later. Might have something to do with the modem not playing nice with the computer (he unplugged it to test with his laptop). Anyway, after installing new drivers, it still didn't work. He basically gave up since he had no idea what to do either. I was looking up solutions for the problem on the computer on the right, but the dial-up connection had gone screwey. But the DSL modem worked so I used that after he left, and after a few minutes of googling, I found the problem.

So here's the solution for anyone who may have trouble with getting 100% CPU usage with their services.exe when the connection gets to "Registering your computer on the network." This is caused by having a big hosts file. For some reason, big hosts file work fine for always on connections, like the ones I've been using in the US. However, it screws up your connection if you have to dial-up anything, even if it's ADSL. I had added a hosts file a couple days ago when trying to get rid of ads on the computer, but it was after I had already connected to the internet, so that's why there were no problems until the next day.
Currently feeling happy

dracil

Yuck, my internet here gets routed automatically to a crap proxy server that's banned on a lot of sites.

There's at least a dozen cats and a dozen dogs in my neighborhood. The US feels almost devoid of animals in comparison.

Hmm, listening to Yoko Ishida's Para Para Max CDs. It's basically all anime songs remixed. Listening to the songs makes me feel a bit nostalgic since most of the anime on it is relatively old.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

The thing that has been on the news for several days now was a video that showed some people taking the food that people put in front of dead people and then selling it to restaurants. Of course, this food will be covered with incense ashes and is unhygienic. So apparently, the video was a fake, and the guy (political celebrity who has since been removed from PFP and lost his show I think) responsible claims that he didn't do it, and blaims his assistants. Supposedly he did the exact same blame-shift thing a while back in a previous scandal (heck, one of the assistants was even wearing the same hat). Tsk tsk. He's pissed off a lot of people. His assitants are unhappy. His party's unhappy. The media's unhappy. And of course, the restaurant owners in the area are unhappy.

The other big news is that Lee Ao claims that he recieved CIA documents on May 27th showing that the Taiwanese president was actually the one behind the assassination attempt on March 19 last year. Except the target wasn't himself, but rather the vice-president. Here's a choice quote from here: "李敖說，根據選罷法規定，選舉過程中副總統候選人傷亡，選舉照常舉行，所以陳水扁的原意是想真槍實彈幹掉呂秀蓮，再把陳姓槍手殺人滅口，讓真正的李性槍手逍遙法外，至於他自己則可利用呂秀蓮的傷亡得到同情票，所以在整個秘密過程中，呂秀蓮不過是「該死的棋子」，根本全被蒙在鼓裡。"
Currently feeling thoughtful

dracil

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

20% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Currently feeling amused

dracil

Bleah, undocumented changes suck. I just noticed that the navbar code at the top of the page has been changed. Again. Of course, this means my layout gets screwed up a bit. I've since fixed it. For now.
Currently feeling annoyed

dracil

Today's 5/5 on the lunar calendar, so we made (well, mostly my mom, I just soaked the bamboo leaves in water) and ate dumplings.

My dad tried to get me to tutor him again, but it turns out its not math anymore, but actual class material now. Combination lines. Minimum variance portfolios. O_o I don't get it.

Lots of creepy crawlies here. The other day, found three snails around the plants just outside the house, and one of them was rather big. There was also another dead one near the gutter that had been run over. I dumped the live ones into the gutter. I wonder if the sewage poisoned them to death...

Speaking of gutters... there are also a lot of cockroaches around here, and it's impossible to get rid of them, because they'll just keep crawling out of the gutter.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

My Brain Trainer - interesting test. Similar to the psych experiments I did in the past. You're given a word and an object. Press the right arrow if they're the same, press the left arrow if they're different. If the word reversal is there, you have to press the opposite arrow instead. Test ends when you make 30 correct responses. You're supposed to do it 5 times as well, since the Performance score is based on the 5th trial average.

What I noticed is that each time I did it, my improvement rate increased by about 3 points. So I improved faster and faster the more I did the tests.

Since the standard deviation is 20, and one standard deviation is the 84th percentile, that means I'm probably around 82nd percentile.

PERFORMANCE: 87.74
Reaction Time: 1010
Accuracy: 91
Conc Level: 65

PERFORMANCE: 90.15
Reaction Time: 846
Accuracy: 83
Conc Level: 82

PERFORMANCE: 97.44
Reaction Time: 707
Accuracy: 83
Conc Level: 80

PERFORMANCE: 106.48
Reaction Time: 726
Accuracy: 91
Conc Level: 86

PERFORMANCE: 118.48
Reaction Time: 655
Accuracy: 97
Conc Level: 79


Currently feeling amused

dracil

For lunch, we went out to eat at Oishi, which costs around 200 baht, or about $5 for a rotating sushi + hotpot buffet. After that, I bought a new watch. Back to digital again. Hopefully, the 200m water resistance really means 200m water resistance this time. It's also solar-powered, which should eliminate the need to change batteries for a long time (it's still a battery, so eventually it'll wear out).
Currently feeling happy

dracil

Whoops, forgot to blog yesterday again. Well, not that much happened. Need to go to the dentist today though.

Oh yeah, Phantasmagoria of Flower View 0.02 demo is out, but it's slow as heck on this computer.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Hmm, dentist appointment was alright. She was unhappy that I hadn't seen her for 1.5 years though, which I assume, meant my general dental condition was worse than usual. She even took a couple x-rays to make sure that I didn't have cavities between my teeth.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Ick, this spam is annoying me greatly. How many friggin' zombie computers does this guy have? Or have they figured out a way to fake their IPs when posting comments? I already have 52 IP bans and it still keeps coming.
Currently feeling pissed

dracil

Stupid kittens from next door haven't learned to not poop right next to their food.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

While feeding the cats tonight, I decided to get rid of the mosquitoes that tend to follow them around. Unfortunately, the cats ran away after a couple minutes, but I did manage to kill several dozen mosquitoes with the electric racket.

Other than that, spent the day trying to install Win2k SP4 on the right computer. First attempt = hang. Second attempt = wrong installation (English installation doesn't work on the Chinese windows). Third attempt = hang. Fourth attempt = installed under safe mode. Yuck. Then it was getting all the other patches like IE6 and all the security updates and then cleaning out the spyware.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

(backdated entry)

Didn't get a chance to blog after coming back yesterday, so backdate.

Went to my grandmother's place since she'd just returned recently. Mostly my aunts there, and I'm the only "kid" there now. This should be a weekly thing now.

After that, more mosquito genocide at home. I wonder if the small ponds are a breeding ground for the mosquitoes. Then again, there are small fishes inside so any mosquito larvae would likely be eaten.

One of the kittens may be dying. Really skinny compared to the other kittens.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Meh, tuberculosis testing sucks. Doctor said skin test, so I thought it was gonna be some sort of skin patch. Nope. Nurse brought out a needle and proceeded to stick me with it, making a nice swelling since I think she injected whatever it was under the skin. I have to go back in 3 days, and I think the swelling's supposed to disappear if I don't have TB and be greater than 1x1cm if I do. The swelling's pretty much gone now although if I look at my arm horizontally I can still notice the swelling a little bit and it's still a little red.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

So it appears that kitten's dead, or at least it's nowhere to be found. It had seemed energetic enough when we gave the kittens fish and milk last night. So it's down to 2, from an original 5.

Oh, and talked to Lele today! She's been MIA from the internet for quite a while now so it was nice to hear how she's doing.

Hmm, the redness from the TB testing has spread to about 2cm in diameter and there's a very slight bump. Looks like a bad mosquito bite. From what I can tell from Google, the redness is not what's supposed to be measured. Instead, my skin there's supposed to harden. Although there's still about a day to go before I'm supposed to start developing a reaction if I am actually infected.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Hmm, the redness moved. Since I woke up, it seems to have moved down my arm by half a cm, and seems more faded on the edges. The part that was originally marked seems a little darker in color though, although it may just be my imagination. I assume that's what they'll be measuring. It looks slightly less than 1cm though, which should mean it's a negative reaction.

I'll be going to the hospital myself tomorrow. Don't like it, because I can't actually read Thai, and I always imagine worst-case scenarios. At least in the US, there are lots of online maps that are clearly marked. The streets in Thailand are a mess though, with lots of side streets interconnected to each other that aren't usually on maps.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Taxi driver didn't seem quite sure how to get to the hospital, but otherwise, besides overcharging me 10 baht on account of "not having exact change" it was fine.

Nurse claimed the size of the induration was 1.2 cm, and the doctor confirmed the test was positive, although he only wrote down 1 cm, but that's just enough for a positive result. X-ray however, showed that everything was fine. The doctor assured me that most Asians get positive results from the test because most of us get immunized shortly after we're born. I was immunized about 2 months after I was born.

They didn't charge me too much this time though. No doctor fee, just the cost of the X-ray and miscellaneous fees.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Public Service Announcement: A while back while cleaning out spyware and other junk from my parents' computers, I noticed that there were several sites claiming that conime.exe is a trojan that is part of BFGhost. This is *not* necessarily correct. If it's in your Windows directory, yes, it is a trojan. HOWEVER, if it's in your Windows\system32 directory, then it's actually a system file, part of the IME.


Currently feeling okay

dracil

Well, one of the things was the president's son's wedding and their claim that they were just "normal" people, other than the fact that they made use of the president's plane and govenrment vehicles to ferry in guests. Maybe when normal people are allowed to use the president's plane and other vehicles for their own weddings as well then they have the right to call themselves "normal".

The other big news is the whole dispute with Japan over Japan chasing away or detaining Taiwan's fishing boats in the Tiaoyutai islands. Interesting commentary I heard today was that, for all the noise and stunts the DPP makes about Taiwan's sovereignty, they certainly aren't doing much when a part of the sovereignty is being directly challenged and that perhaps the government should organize a Hand-in-Hand Rally around the Tiaoyutai islands.
Currently feeling amused

dracil

http://www.projectaon.org - A project dedicated to bringing the entire out-of-print Lone Wolf series to the masses, approved by the author!

I have 15 game books from the series, as well as a novel (second book). I still remember originally buying the second and third books off a used book sale at my elementary school. The only place I found them being sold later on was in a bookstore in Singapore. Now I'll finally be able to complete the story. The only bad thing about the HTML version is that it's not portable like the actual books.

These game books were one of my favorite past times as a kid. In addition to the Lone Wolf series, I think I also have two Choose Your Own Adventure books, one with a D&D theme, the other was from my cousin I think. Haven't seen either book in ages. I have the third and fourth book from the Way of the Tiger series as well, bought used from a friend. Then I have one Mario Nintendo Adventure game book, and finally I have the first four books from Virtual Reality Adventure.

I used to regularly hunt for these game books in bookstores, but they seem to have pretty much disappeared. Most people satisfy their gaming needs on the computers and consoles now. A shame really.
Currently feeling excited

dracil

How's this for a lifelike robot? If you can't tell, it's the woman.


Anyway, I wrote USF asking about my housing situation and they told me I have housing now. A small double room, one of the cheapest ones I guess. About $3k/semester. The other graduate housing is in these apartments that are pretty much fully furnished with what I'd need. Except they cost about $2k more per year. The bad thing though is that my place is about 12 blocks from campus, although there is a shuttle. I guess it's like Clark Kerr at Berkeley. To reach the edge of campus would take me about 10 minutes assuming it's relatively flat. So much for thinking of walking to Japantown. Well, I suppose I could walk there after class, then take a shuttle back. In any case, one less thing to worry about.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

I really don't like their music here. It's generally too slow and/or sounds too much like a children's song. And it doesn't help that the instrument they use reminds me of the ones used by people on the streets playing Thai music hoping that passerbys give them some cash... I guess I like Newman's music better. I've also noticed that the parts that get sung or spoken seem to be reversed between the two churches.

Overhead projectors for music is preferred, but I like how the churches here have almost the entire mass written out for you so you generally know what to say or do at each point.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Because the world needs this. And because this represents what most Christians believe. Yeah yeah, it's mainly to annoy the Creationists more than anything else.

and
Currently feeling mischievous

dracil

Bush seeks to eliminate torture worldwide, oh wait. - Why don't we start with the US first?

Zombie dogs! - they drain your blood and replace it with cold salt water for several hours, then they drain the water out and pump your blood back in. Hey you're alive again!

Mad Cow outbreak in the US - they seem to be trying to keep it quiet. Or at least none of the news sections in forums I visit have mentioned it at all.
Currently feeling amused, fascinated, meh

dracil

Hmm, looking around I saw someone created the Logos Fish. Certainly more original, but could be mistaken as just another variation on the Darwin fish without the Theistic Evolution around it. The benefit though, is that it can be used by non-Christians as well.

The three he has are as follows:


There's also the Evolushark, although that's more for evolution in general and the intent, from what I can gather from the site, is of a more atheistic bent.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

I have a Knights of Doom book that needs an errata on one of the puzzles, but is otherwise rather fun, and I have an Asterisk game book that's pretty much fallen apart from overuse. Well, most of my game books aren't in very good condition either.

Oh yeah, I found out the later Lone Wolf books I have are the better UK version. I'm actually pretty sure I have Legacy of Vashna, although I believe it is the US version, and I can't find it.

The electricity in my house has gone off three times today for one second each time. Kinda annoying and not exactly good for the computer.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

France gets to be the guinea pig. 100 million Celsius means if something goes horribly wrong, you definitely won't want to be anywhere near the power plant. Do we even have anything capable of withstanding that amount of heat?

Quick patch for Google Video Player to let you play video files that aren't on Google's server. Wonder what Google's response to this will be? Not that they really bothered trying to protect this restriction anyway considering the source code was freely available.
Currently feeling amused

dracil

Oh boy, the cat's in heat. I thought something was odd when she started being more friendly and meowing more starting yesterday. Lots of rolling on the floor, and trying to reverse-hump my foot... O_o No dragging her butt on the floor yet though. I think the tomcats in the neighborhood know she's in heat.

Other things to look forward to: loud yowling (maybe not, she's generally very quiet and timid), spraying (this may be bad).

Interesting methods people have to calm their cats in heat.
Currently feeling okay