Saturday, December 30, 2006

Random thoughts before the year ends

Originally posted on xanga.

I am listening to "Into The Ocean" by Blue October and realized that it reminded me of one of my favorite songs, "Heart and Soul" by T'Pau. Take a listen and see if you agree with me. Which than reminded of a Pretty Poison song, "Catch Me, I'm Falling".

Gonna play some basketball tomorrow hopefully. Gotta get some exercise in.

My daughter is sick. Hope she gets better.

I luv my wife. =D

I am up to about 150 chinese characters now. I am thinking about learning the simplified versions, but am hestitant. I picked up a menu at a chinese restaurant and could make out 5% of the characters. Most the restaurants around here still use traditional. I need to get to 1500 to be ok. After that, learn the 1000 or so simiplified versions. Wish me luck.

I miss having an ipod, my 3rd gen broke, doesn't turn on anymore. I am too cheap to buy another one. Plus, I hate using iTunes. Guess I'll have to stick to my trusty sony walkman that plays cassettes, but has an FM tuner.

I had a good Christmas.

Hope all of you have an Happy New Years!

Friday, December 22, 2006

Ebay shipping

Originally posted on xanga.

So I have a few things I was looking at on ebay. Some CDs from the 90s and 80s that I think I wouldn't mind having for around $5. Who buys CDs these days anyways? Old skool guy like me. Anyways, I looked at some CDs around $1-$3, thinking shipping would be like Amazon's maketplace ($2.59). So the total would be around $5. I looked at around 10 CDs. The lowest shipping I saw was $5.80. What's going on?! The S&H cost more than 3 times the actual CD. Well, ebay's lost my biz, I've gone back to Amazon, even though the base price is higher, with the S&H, its the same. So, what's my point? Shipping is crazy on ebay!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!

Friday, December 8, 2006

Rant and Rave

Originally posted on xanga.

Rant:
I was prompted by windows media player to update to the latest version, WMP 11.  After getting it installed, WMP restarted.  Which I hate because I have to load my CD again.  So, I tell WMP to Play CD.  I have a CD of Albums in MP3 format.  So, with the old WMP, the List Pane has each album listed with a plus sign next to it.  I can expand it and select which tracks to play.  Well, with WMP 11, I can't!  It only list the album name.  No plus sign, I can't select the track I want to play!  I have to play it all and move around with the track forward.  Lame.  I though the move to "Vista" was suppose to be better, not take away existing stuff.  Lame I say again.  Thumbs down to WMP so far.

Rave:
Although I didn't watch the game, I did catch the score, Phoenix 161, New Jersey 157.  What?!  Both teams over 130 in an NBA is unheard of these years.  We're not in the 80s anymore.  That's crazy.  Props to the Suns for showing that offense still means something.  Unfortunately for me, offense or defense, I can't play a lick.

Friday, December 1, 2006

Day Break

Originally posted on xanga.



The new way of watching TV is on your computer or laptop. I've watched 4 hours of Day Break and love the show. But I've watched it from the ABC site. The quality of the shows is great too. I can't complain. Well, maybe one complaint, they should post all the shows so I don't have to wait for it. =D

Friday, November 24, 2006

Black Friday

Originally posted on xanga.

I went to Target this morning and it wasn't so bad.  I only missed out on 1 item.  Although this item was the reason I went there, I may still have been able to get it if I hadn't bumped into other ppl and started to chat.  I passed by a neighborhood Best Buy after my shopping at Target and was glad I wasn't part of that madness.  Now, back to work.  Yes, my client is working today and so must I.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Learning Chinese

Originally posted on xanga.

My Chinese speaking skills continue to decline as I get older.  The opportunity for me to speak Chinese has become non existent these days.  The only times I do speak is when I order food at a Chinese restaurant.  So my vocabulary gets smaller each week, month, urgh.  Having grown up in the US, my Chinese writing and reading skills are very poor.  I can't read a Chinese menu!  I have to go on memory and even that is starting to fade with age.

So, I've made it a point to speak to my daughter in Chinese only.  That's hard since my Chinese sucks and I end up using a lot of English anyways.  So I decided that I should learn to write and read Chinese to help improve my Chinese.  My goal is to eventually read a Jin Yong (Louis Cha) novel(s).

Having my old beginning Chinese books from my college days (easy As), I started to learn Chinese writing/reading.  I thought that if I got 500-700 characters down in the next couple of years, I should be good to go.  Well, I found out that I need 1500-1800 characters to just read the newspaper.  Plus, I am learning Traditional Chinese.  So, if I do learn these, I'll have to relearn 2000+ for their Simplified counterpart.

Wish me luck.  I hope to do all this by the age of 40.  That'll be around the time my daughter rebels and wants to stop learning Chinese.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Originally posted on xanga.

Here's a short list of some of my favorite movies:
  • Braveheart
  • Blade Runner
  • Brazil
  • Speed
  • Jerry Maguire
  • The Matrix
  • Waterboy
  • Point Break
  • Hard Broiled
  • Swordsman II
  • Once Upon a Time in China II
  • Chungking Express
  • Chinese Odyessey I and II
  • Infernal Affairs
  • Guns & Talks

Saturday, September 23, 2006

First Blog

Originally posted on xanga.

I've decided to join the blog community to learn more about it.