Real-Time Flight Tracking

Aeroseek

This website is amazing! I can track in real time my brother's flight even though it's on an international route, and I can even make it display on top of Google Earth! And it even self-updates the info once a minute, even on Google Earth!

Python is nothing short of astonishing

What a nice learning day I had today!  Continuing with my SuSE Linux playtime, I installed and tested lots of libraries and programs I found in the repository that guy in the Google Groups posting pointed me to.  What a nice guy!

Well, just installing other people's software is something... how about installing something I myself made?  I have in my Windows machine a program that can control a GSM modem.  By the way, a GSM modem is a modem that works with the GSM celular network rather than the plain vanilla telephone land line.  I made that program using the Python programming language; I also used a couple of extra Python libraries, one to access the serial port --which physically connects to the modem--, and another one to create nice GUIs.

I simply copied the files from my Windows laptop computer to the Linux desktop computer, and pooofff!  It worked!  The only tweak it required was to change the name of the serial port.  In MS Windows, serial ports take a name such as COM1, COM2, etc.  In Linux it's /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, etc.  Well, it'd be nice also if the font sizes were the same too, but the heck with it.  Just a minor detail that the same text takes more space in Linux than in Windows.  As a result of this, some words that show completely on top of a button in my Windows laptop, are truncated when displayed on Linux.

And how do I know this little program of mine works?  Because I was able to send an SMS to my mobile phone!

Lots of fun learning today

Lately I'd been playing as much as possible with the new SuSE Linux 10.1, but I'd gotten stuck with some things I couldn't figure out by myself for several days.  I wanted (cause I know I'll need in the near future) to install some software, wxPython libraries to be exact.  This is nothing out of this world, but for some reason, I couldn't get it done.

First I was looking for files ready to use and install on top of my SuSE Linux.  Since I couldn't find, I tried to make my own out of the source code, but this wouldn't work either.  I also tried using the ones I found for RedHat, Fedora, and even Mandriva, but these didn't run on SuSE.  I'd almost run out of ideas, when I decided to post the question in Google Groups, and within a few hours somebody had already pointed me to a special directory I didn't even know exists where SuSE puts some more (quite a few more) rpms that are ready to use on 10.1.

So the next morning I come to the office and give it a try... and how wonderful!  Everything starts to work fine, and I even stumble upon other goodies I'm gonna need soon.  Been playing with them, putting them together and stuff, and they all work together like a dream!  This is really awesome!

Dead girl's mother upset with 'insensitive' police

The Daily Yomiuri

I think the girl's mother is just being too sensitive, looking for hidden messages where there's none. I get tired very quickly of these kind of people. Oh, don't touch me even with the petal of a rose. Fuck off!

Blessed bug killer & burning fat with water

Gee, I wonder what they put inside this insecticide.  Since it's so freaking steamy hot I like to spend most of the night with the door to my balcony wide open and leave the fan pushing the hot air out of my room.  Tonight I was doing something at the computer with my back to this door, and I suddenly start to hear some flapping wings.  At first I don't pay much attention, but then to my right I see one giantic cockroach.

This bugger must've been about 1 1/2 inches long.  Absolutely disgusting.  I ran for the can of roach killer and sprayed it from about 20 cm away for less than one second.  It was a direct hit, and the cockroach was knocked out, but not quite dead yet, in a minute.  That stuff is really powerful and I'm very thankful to the manufacturers.  I wonder though, would this be legal in a developed country?  Perhaps it's too toxic and not approved for home use?  I don't know.?  Ha!  If it hadn't worked quickly like this I'd probably be bitching that it's poor quality stuff that could only be sold in the Third World.

Well that scare made me lose a page I was reading.  It said something very interesting and kind of makes sense.  It said that you can burn calories by drinking cold water.  The reasoning is that once inside your stomach, your body will try to warm up this chilled water and for this it needs to burn calories.  It even gave some reference numbers like drink this much and after this many weeks you'll burn enough calories to lose that many pounds.  Interesting.  I wish they also found a way to lose weight just by eating Burger King Whopers.

Cable for TV antenna

Just recently I saw a notice in my building saying that they have put up some parabola antenna and now we all can receive in our rooms some free TV signals.  My rented apartment came with cable TV, so I already have a lot more channels I care to watch, but today I had some spare time and decided to go out and look for this cable.

I've never bought one of these, but I expected it to cost no more than USD2.50.  I went first to a nice hardware store, and mother fucker, those freaking cables were being sold at about USD35!!!  Dude, at this price you can plunge your cable up your ass; I don't want it.  I wonder if there's any moron out there who's paying that kind of price?

Since I still had plenty of spare time, I went to a shopping center full of small electronic parts shops.  Very quickly I found the cable I need, and yes, the price was about USD1.25.  This makes sense.  But what puzzled me is when I took a closer look at the cable's endings.  They actually have a male and a female plug!  I hadn't thought about this, and to my surprise at first I found mostly only male-male cables.  This was very odd to me, as you'd expect these things to be male on one side and female on the other.

The girl at the store insisted that what I need is a male-male, but I thought this didn't make sense.  Anyway, since they're so cheap, I bought one hetero and one homo version.

I brought these cables to my apartment, and I'll be damned... the girl was right!  This is very odd because if it's going to be a homo cable, then it should be a female I think, I've seen it to be female in other countries I've lived before.  Anyway, next came the reprogramming of my TV set, which was done in a flash.  Gee, I only got the same local channels that I already get in cable (cable perfect signal, new aerial poor signal), and like three crappy free satellite channels.  So much for the new parabola antennas.

Are these guys for real?

Today on CNN I saw separately Enron ex-CEO Ken Lay invoking god, saying that he loves god and he'll see that goodness is achieved and stuff like that (not his exact words, but that was the idea); and Donald Rumsfeld giving his special spin on the war in Iraq.  How disgusting.  Their comments are insults to the intelligence of the listeners.

I just saw on the TV screen (CNN channel):  Investors lost 60 billion USD.  But the announcer said with her voice that investors lost 2 billion USD.  Which one is right?  In any case, Lay and his buddy Skilling are so fucking greedy, and on top of that calling on god just like the other idiot Bush does.

I'm sick of these mother fuckers.  Why can't we all live with some peace and justice?  Why do we need to invade a foreign country just so that we control their oil fields?  Why do people need to steal hundreds of millions to live in luxury when most people in the world can live decently with a tiny fraction of that?

Gay storks make good parents

Ananova

This is amazing. Maybe some bishop or somebody should excommulgate the storks and whomever propalated this news which goes against the saint laws of mother nature. Please don't read the linked article, or you may end up in hell. Amen.

Nine killed by fake Chinese drug

BBC NEWS

Horrible news to start the week. It makes me wonder, these guys making the fake medicine don't know that their actions could lead to the death of human beings? Just so that they can make a few bucks? Would they still do it even if they knew that their own mothers and daughters are the ones who are going to be treated with those things? Greedy mother fuckers.

Peschardt's People

Just a while ago I was watching this BBC interview program.  Today they had some Thai businessman who does TV and a few other things.  Near the begining Peschardt asks him how's it living in Bangkok, and the Thai guy replies that Bangkok is very safe.

Yeah, from his position it must be very easy to say so.  He was riding in his chauffeur driven car, and he had a police car escorting him too.  I'm sure it's very safe this way!

Fall of a tile

My apartment building's facade has the appearance of a red brick wall.  But in fact they're just tiles that look like bricks.  For security reasons, each of these tiles has a big ugly screw right on the middle of it.  From my apartment to the ground level is a good 18F fall, so this is a good measure.  Yet, just a few minutes ago I was sitting near my balcony, and I see one of these on the upper ledge of my balcony detach and drop.  I can even see that the tiles that had been right next to the fallen one are also a bit detached now.  How dangerous.

Urgent notice & Quicktime upgrade

Yesterday this guy from the office called me from his mobile phone while he was driving to tell me about our office's possible moving to another district.  He ended the conversation by telling me to think it over and to let him know my opinion.  I figured that if he calls me like this it must be a really urgent thing.  But this morning that I saw him in person at the office and we were sitting in neighboring desks, he didn't mention the moving at all.  So what was that phone call yesterday?  More blabber?  I already made up my mind:  if it's a productive thing to do, we should get moving soon.

In unrelated news, today I noticed there's a critical update for Quicktime, so I downloaded it and started to install it some ten minutes before leaving the office while I shut down the other computers.  But at some moment I saw an error message on my laptop computer, where this update was taking place.  I didn't pay attention, and clicked on the only button:  OK.  Then I see that the installer has come into what looks like an infinite loop.  I saw the installer's progress bar reach 100% and then go to 0% and start increasing again over and over, at least five times.  And the legend right above this progress bar would always say the same:  Installing Quicktime, not "deleting backups", "registering ...", "copying files", etc.  Fuck that looked bad, but the installer's Cancel button was disabled, and I couldn't right click on Close either.  Then after nearly 30 minutes, the installer finished gracefully.  It appears that Quicktime was installed correctly after all.  So much for this media player I rarely use!

Rainy day, dirty feet

Today it was raining a lot around lunch time.  I went to the supermarket nearby to buy something to eat.  The footpaths here are made up of concrete tiles, but these are pooly installed.  Some of them appear to be simply laid on top of the ground, rather than being fixed with some sort of superglue.  The result is when you walk in the rain, every once in a while you'll happen to step on one of these loose tiles and squirt water on your other foot.

And of course, this is nothing like tap water.  It's very dirty water --not to mention the countless stray dogs shitting au naturel.  Today I happened to come to the office wearing sandals, so after so much splashing, now my feet are clearly very dirty.  I can see the sandal patterns on my feet!

I wonder if the guys in charge of building the footpath are proud of the quality of their work?  Perhaps they're not even smart enough to feel pride for a work well done?

Iran: EU offer 'walnuts for gold'

CNN.com

I love this analogy! Hey, I wonder Iran is a democracy too, isn't it? Then how come it's not okay for Iran to have nukes just like Israel and the US do? China and Pakistan are allowed to have nuclear weapons as well even though they're ruled by dictatorships.

How's that for double standards, huh?

Possibly moving again

Fuck, the reason why I moved to my new apartment less than six months ago is because I wanted to be closer to the office.  The roads here are too crowded, so the idea of being able to walk to work is really appealing.

Now I hear that there's a chance our office might be moving to another location, meaning I'll have to spend time and money in commuting.

Well, the reason behind this is that by moving, we might be able to save money in office rent, and also in the other location we'd be able to oversee other businesses as well, read more income.  So if it has to be done for productivity reasons, I'll bite the bullet and tell the guys I agree with the moving.

But one thing that worries me a bit is safety.  The "other business" that we would oversee that would be sharing the small buiding with us is a travel agency.  Nobody said that, but of course it would be open even on Sundays because it's in a tourist area.  Okay, somebody please tell me who's going to be taking care of our office not being broken into on a Sunday when the travel agency downstairs is open?  I've seen the location, and the space our office would occupy has only a rather flimsy door.

Robbie's songs help kids learn

Ananova

I wonder how good is Anastacia's Left outside alone in this task. Its melody is certainly very catchy!

By the way, I read somewhere that a long time ago Anastacia was having problems with her boobies being too large for comfort, her own comfort at least. So she got them reduced. Ha! I wonder if there's even one man in this world who would do the analogous: reduce the length of his dick due to some inconvenience of it being so large. That would be nonsense.

Fish overpopulation

Several months ago some guy at the office brought fishes to improve the Feng Shui of our company.  What a crappy superstition.  I really have very little patience with people like this.  Anyway, this is none of the fish fault so now that they're there, we must take care of them.  They cannot feed themselves, so it's up to us now.

At first he'd brought I think eight red fish and one black of the same species as the red ones.  I thought that was a strange combination, but after searching in the Internet, voila, Feng Shui was the reasoning behind.

Soon after, five of those fish died, and yep, you guessed it... following the Feng Shui instructions he didn't bring replacement fish because the logic goes that those fish died because they absorved bad luck that was otherwise going to hit somebody in the office.  So for a long time, we had only four red fish in this rather small fish tank.  I think the size of the tank was good for the number of fish.

Now come Monday morning, and I see that suddenly there're seven new fish plus a tiny shrimp!  Five of the new fish are about the same size as the previous red fish, and I think this time the fish tank is rather overpopulated.  Same amount of water, same amount of aeration... fish shit accumulating more than twice as fast as before.  Oh, and by the time I left the office in the afternoon, I couldn't find the shrimp anymore.  I wonder did the fish eat the shrimp?

SuSE Linux 10.1 finally installed!

I couldn't resist it, and I dedicated practically the whole office working hours to installing SuSE Linux 10.1 in a spare desktop computer we have at the office.  Since it was my first time with this particular version, I took my time reading all of the menus and so on.  But now that I've seen it I think that if I want to install it again I can do the whole thing again in perhaps one hour.

The installation went really smooth.  The only strange thing was when I needed to swap the installation CDs, but no big deal.  I thought I'd need to slip in CD1, then CD2... CD5, and finally the Addon software CD.  It wasn't like that.  Instead, I was required to insert CD1, then Addon software CD, then CD1 again (I think), then reboot the computer, then CD1 or Addon software CD again, and then yes, CD2, CD3, CD4, and CD5.

After the installation was finished, it took me quite a while to get the wireless USB adaptor running on this Linux box, but finally it was a success!  I'm not completely satisfied with the wireless network software configuration though.  This is because each time I reboot the computer and login, I have to input some passphrase or something to the NetworkManager before it'll attempt to connect me to the wireless network.  It shouldn't be like that.  I'm sure there must be a way to make it remember the passphrase and connect me automatically each time I login.

Also, while playing with the features, I noticed several times that Firefox would take forever to load pages, but other times, it would be really quick.  I'm not sure this is a SuSE problem, maybe it was an ISP problem.

Skype wasn't part of the SuSE distribution, so I had to download it by myself.  When I installed it, I found that it was version 1.2 (sucks).  The Windows version is already past 2.0!

All in all, I'm very pleased though.  With this new installation, I've got plenty to learn.  And all of it will be fun and useful, I'm sure!

Over two week unwashed coffee cup

A friend just contacted me on Skype.  Until this morning he was here visiting, but then he flew back to his country and now he wanted to say thank you for looking after him and stuff.  He said that he had a coffee cup in his kitchen sink he hadn't washed when he left more than two weeks ago.  Now it has grown fungus or something and his whole apartment stinks he says.  Gee, I couldn't stand the idea of leaving it even one morning unwashed, imagine two weeks!

Mythbusters

Not long ago I saw in the Discovery Channel an episode of the Mythbusters in which the guys tried to confirm whether it's true or not that people can be sent flying a few feet backwards when they are shot with a high powered rifle.  In the program the conclusion was, if I'm not wrong, that this happens only in the movies, but in real life probably not.

Well, last night I was watching in the History Channel (again!) a documentary in which they show people risking their lives for other people.  They showed many times in slow motion the video of the assasination attempt of President Reagan.  One of his bodyguards stands in front of him and takes the bullet, in his chest I think, to save the president's life.  In that footage it's very clear that the guy is lifted off his feet perhaps one or two inches at the moment he took the shot, and it was a rather small firearm!

That was one brave guy!  And he did it instinctively, not after receiving a specific command.  By the way, he survived and fully recovered.

Odyssey downloading SuSE Linux 10.1

First off, I should point out that none of this is the fault of SuSE.  The problems were all on my side.  I'd been very eagerly waiting for the release of 10.1, and finally it came out last Thursday.  So on Friday morning I started the download of the six CD image files.

At first, the downloads were so slow that I was probably getting little more than the speed of a telephone line over our ADSL at the office, and this situation lasted for most of the office hours.  Very frustrating.  Then I went back home, and was monitoring the download by using UltraVNC.  Very neat trick!  In the evening though, I started to see more decent download speeds.  I was pretty glad, but still it wasn't going to be done before I went to bed.

This morning I wake up, and can't see the remote computer.  Something's wrong with the Internet connection at the office.  I have no idea what time this problem arised, but there's the chance the download might've been interrupted as well.  So even though it wasn't in my plans, I went to the office.

I don't understand what happened.  Our office wireless AP seemed to be working fine with the wired computer, but the wireless one doing the download couldn't connect.  The thing is, I checked the state of the downloads, and two of the CD images were incomplete, so I resumed the download.

When I had my six images, I ran the checksum program, and found that two of the images were incorrect, so I had to download them again.

The wireless computer can't burn CDs, so once I had all of the images, I needed to pass this to the other computer that does have a CD burner, but what a pain in the ass.  For some reason, the wireless computer kept on losing the connection in the middle of me copying the files, so arrgh!  I needed to physically bring the wired computer downstairs and place it right next to the wireless one and connect them both with a crossover Ethernet cable.

This made the file transfer really fly.  The speed was different like night and day!  But once I had all of the files in the computer that can burn CDs, I checked again the checksum values, and most of them were wrong, so I had to repeat over and over and over again these file transfers.  I couldn't understand how come the checksums don't match if the filetransfers went on smoothly.  But then eventually found out the checksum program was flaky!!!  Fuck!  This utility had never let me down before, and for me it was unthinkable it would fail this way.  Unbelievable.  At the end, I just have to assume these images are good.

Anyway, after a very long wasted time, I proceeded to burn the magic CDs!  Addons CD, CD1, CD2, CD3... and then power failure in the middle of burning CD3.  Fuck!  Of course, that CD was corrupted for ever and ever Amen.  So then I pop in another CD.  Strange, the CD burning program doesn't get past 5% progress even after 10 minutes of work.  Is the CD burner damaged from the power failure?  I don't see anything changing on the GUI for many many minutes.  This is already many times over what it should take to create the CD.  So, I power off the computer and start to wonder maybe I need to use yet a different computer to burn the CDs, and this will require again the file transfer ordeal.

But once again, I give it one more shot, and this time it works!  CD3 is successfully burnt.  The problem appears to have been a defective CD.  Gee!  Then CD4 and CD5 burning uneventfully.  Wow, today it's Saturday and I ended up staying at the office almost like any regular working day.  But I'm glad I did it.  Now next time I get some spare time, I'll install this baby into some spare harddisk!!!

By the way, just to test I brought the office's wireless AP home to see if I lose my connection like in the office or not.  I didn't change anything, even the ISP user id is the same, and so far, the wireless AP has been working flawlessly for more than one hour.  Odd.

Optic illusion at Google Calendar & the science of murder

For several weeks, until yesterday I saw that certain national holiday was automatically marked in Google Calendar as being June 2nd.  May 12th (yesterday) was marked as a regular working day.  This was wrong, it was the opposite.  And as a result of that mistake, I even showed up for work at the office.

Today I open again my Google Calendar, and now that national holiday is correctly marked May 12th, and on June 2nd there's nothing.  What the hell is going on here?

In other news, yesterday I was watching The History Channel.  They were presenting some program about weapons of mass destruction.  At one point they talked about a 50 megaton (equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT) bomb the Soviets tested who knows when.  They said that this bomb is so powerful it can cause third degree burns within a radius of 64 miles.  I wonder what kind of lunatic would deem it necessary to inflict this degree of devastation?

In another part of the same program, they talked about chemical weapons, and said that at some point --and presumably now a days too--, the US and the Soviet Union had enough nerve gas to exterminate every single human being on this planet, each.  I mean, why?  Why do they need nerve gas for six billion people when their potential enemy's population is only a few hundred million?  Is this just to line the pockets of the gas manufacturers?  This is sickening.

By the way, I wonder how come the country with the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons has the moral authority to go tell other countries that actually, nuclear weapons are a bad thing for them to have?  Do as I say, don't do as I do, huh?  Yeah, I agree it's not a good thing for North Korea and Israel to have nukes, but the US is in no position to be demanding other countries disarm.  What?  You say it's required to defend democracy?  Oh thanks, now I see the light!

Intelligent design

Scaryideas.com

This cartoon explains perfectly my opinion regarding Intelligent Design and its supporters. Enjoy!

Wrong holiday marking on Google Calendar!

WTF?  I showed up for work at the office, and strangely enough, I'm alone.  I checked on Google Calendar, and it says it's a regular working day.  But now that I check with a paper calendar printed locally, I see that indeed today is a national holiday!

Wrong mailing address again!

My company is housed in a small, old four storey building.  Me and the other guys are usually in the second floor, and nobody is in the first floor.  On top of this, there wasn't a doorbell until a couple of weeks ago, so each time somebody came to our place, either they call us by mobile, or if they don't know our number, they just leave us a note... even though we're upstairs!

This usually used to happen with messengers.  They leave us a note on the door, and then we have to go in person to the post office to collect the envelope or parcel.  Yeah, this sucks so we got a wireless doorbell, and it's really neat!

But so far in just a couple of weeks of use, we've already found the mailman trying to leave us registered mail that doesn't belong to us!  The street address is correct, but the name of the company and the name of the person are wrong.  I don't understand why.  Just a few minutes ago I rejected some big envelope from Japan.  Only the street address was correct.  The company name, the worker name, the phone and fax numbers were incorrect.

NSA has database of domestic US phone calls

ABC News

This doesn't sound right to me. If they didn't mention what country they're talking about, I'd figure it's North Korea, or some of the very old East European communist countries... but in "The land of the free"? And from what I can see in the news, common citizens are not that much disturbed by this. I guess Bushes' scaremongering works!

Booh! War on terror! Trust me, for your own good, let me take away your right to privacy!

It's not my ADSL modem, it's the ISP's server!

Yesterday I went to visit my brother in his brand new house.  It's a really beautiful house in a gated community.  He's got ADSL from the same ISP as I do too.  I happened to be carrying my laptop computer, so I connected it to his home wireless network... and sure enough, I got disconnected just like it happens to me at my own apartment:  I remain all the time connected to the wireless access point, but from time to time, my Yahoo! Messenger is logged out and automatically logs in again, my Skype logs out and automatically logs in again.

This is definitely not a modem problem, not a house wiring problem, not a billing problem, not a virus problem.  This is a server problem on the ISP side mother fucker!

But the strange thing is that this problem doesn't happen at our office with the same laptop computer. Our office uses also the same ISP, the same ADSL plan, and is housed in a far older building.  How come this 21rst century thing works better in the antique quarters instead of the spanking new buildings?

World's most travelled bike stolen in UK

Ananova

This is one man I'd really like to meet and chit-chat with! Must be a hell lot more interesting than George W and his self-righteous buddies! Wow! I wish I could do the same thing as him. But he says he only used GBP1,000 per year during the first years? How did he do with health insurance and stuff?

Suicide news

I'm listening some news radio station via the Internet.  This is local news in a third world country.  They say that this day there were three suicides in the city, and they proceed to explain the names, ages, street address, method of suicide, possible reasons, and other special circumstances.  One was said to have left a suicide note with instructions for his cremation.

I thought this is too much information.  I'm surprised.  Is it that they don't have anything else to report?

This is a strange new world

Last week I ran to the border to renew my entry permit.  Just cross the border out, and then come in again.  But it left me so tired that I didn't have the energy to write about that until now.

I saw so many things that would be illegal in my own country... man!

First when I arrived to my final bus stop, I still needed to ride on a mototaxi to get to the border.  The guys who came offering me wanted to charge me about USD1.50 for this, which I thought was a rip off.  But then when I finally accepted, I saw why:  it's a 10 minute ride along the highway (did I mention it's on a mototaxi?), and although we're going at around 60 mph on a road with patches of dirt and some liquid, I'm given no helmet!!!

When I cross the border I'm surrounded by so many touts offering totally useless things, like shade from the umbrella they want to carry above my head, like 'help' with the immigration paperwork when this is perfectly done by yourself, a bus ride to the neighboring town, getting my passport stamped real quick without me having to walk the extra 100 yards, etc.  Well, this is not the first time I go to that border crossing so this time I don't fall for any of that shit whatsoever.

My plan was to cross the border, have lunch at one of the buffets inside the casinos right across the border, and come back.  But since I arrived way too early for lunch, I decided to walk further inside that horrid town, and look around.

At first I was followed by more and more touts trying to sell me bus tickets for the neighboring town.  Really annoying guys as they were cutting my way in a rather dangerous way in the middle of me trying to cross a road.  When I was about 150 yards inside, I started to smell the garbage, and it became clear they probably don't know about garbage disposal in that country.

Some 200 yards further inside, I found a fresh produce market.  Really odd.  Those guys where selling their stuff right next to the piles of trash!  I also noticed that the people selling meat weren't using any kind of refrigeration whatsoever.  The meat was just hung from some large hooks right in front of your nose, with not even a glass protecting them from dust or flies.  I saw some lady using the meat chopping board as her dinning table.  She was eating a bowl of noodle soup on top of that chopping board.  I also thought it was very odd that the sales counter was not really just a counter, it was a platform that went all the way to the back of the kiosk, so the salespersons weren't standing on the floor at the same level like me, they were on top of the counter.  Ah, and by the way, many of them were taking naps on their hammocks they had hung up right next to the meat!

Another strange thing I noticed is that perhaps more than half of the motor vehicles I saw there didn't have a number plate.  Does that mean they're stolen cars?  I don't know.  They're just too many to be all of them stolen.  But then how come some cars do have number plates?  Is it optional?

When I started to feel hungry, I walked back to the border looking for the casinos and came inside three or four of them looking for the buffet lunches, but unfortunatelly they didn't have that anymore.  I didn't feel like eating there anyway.  Oh, but on my final way back, I found from the distance one more casino with a big sign saying "Japanese Buffet Restaurant", so I took the trouble of going take a look, but once inside, it was like a small cafeteria, devoid of customers with two bored servers.  I didn't see the plates of Japanese food anywhere, so I left disappointed back into this land of the free.

I arrived back into my apartment so tired and thirsty, and in some sort of state of zombieness... I didn't get much done this weekend.

Dishes' good looks are truly powerful

This afternoon I had a lot of sandwiches, so tonight I wasn't really hungry.  But flipping channels, I bumped into a program about Japanese Ramen soup.  They are discussing which of these two is tastier:  Miso Ramen or Salt & Butter Ramen.  And to prove the good points of each approach, they're showing several restaurants' takes on these two.

Just looking has made me hungry again.  These humble noodles are really powerful.

Click

BBC World

Today I was watching Click on BBC World. They showed an interview with a guy who was able to sneak into several NASA computers for a period of two years! Rather than trying to guess the passwords of these computers, he simply searched for the ones that didn't have any password set!

When asked for his motives, the guy said that he wanted to find out about advanced sources of energy and stuff like that that the US government might be learning from UFOs and keeping them secret in these times of energy crisis.

The guy describes finding really fascinating things within the NASA computers, and although there's no guarantee he's telling the truth, at least the BBC found him worthy of attention. You can find the complete interview in the link above.

Internet connection here sucks

I think this is really ridiculous and unacceptable.  The government is blocking many websites from abroad that it deems not good for the people of this country.  I've discovered this includes many gambling and porn sites.  Well, yeah I agree these don't help a lot in building the virtues of the general population.  But on the other hand, who says that the guy making up the list of forbidden sites actually is more virtuous than I already am?  Who says that his moral/religious values are more valid than mine?

If it were my mother or somebody like that, well... but someone who doesn't even show his face is deciding for me what is okay and what is not okay for me to see?  Fuck off!!!

Finally a mosquito coil that doesn't stink!

I read that mosquito coils can raise your chances of getting cancer, so whenever I go to buy these I pick from some brand that I know.  Unfortunately all of them stink very bad.  I hate them.

The other day I was in the supermarket though, I saw a new brand in which the active ingredient is different than most other companies'.  This one uses 'es-biothrin' instead of 'd-allethrin'.  On top of that, it claims to be floral scented.  Yeah, the Bayer offering claims to smell like lavender flowers but smells quite bad anyway.  I bought one box of this new brand, and now that I'm using it, I'm pleasantly surprised it really smells like flowers!  It's almost a bit like using Glade in my living room!

I miss Taco Bell Chalupas

In this country unfortunately there's no Taco Bell, thus there're no Chalupas here!  Sometimes I'm really dying to have a bite of those.

However, the local KFCs and McDonald's do have something similar, sold under completely different names.

KFC sells something it calls "Shrimp Puff".  Yes, it has shrimps inside, not chicken.  This is very odd for a fried chicken outlet, but even stranger is the funky combination of veggies and sauce they put inside together with the boiled shrimps.  They do put shredded carrots, and I think they put some broccoli too!.  The sauce is some sauce that is a suspiciously intense orange color, but tastes like cheddar cheese.  The sauce is nice.  Overall, I think it's overpriced, and it doesn't taste that great.  If somebody treats me, yes I'd eat it, but I don't think I'd spend my money on it again.

McDonald's sells "Grilled Chicken Foldover".  Instead of putting minced meat, they use two patties of chicken meat, the vegetables are the same as in a Big Mac, sans the pickles, and the sauce has a hint of olive.  Very nice really!  And when the presentation is in one of those special design boxes with a peel off strip.  Costs about USD1.25.  A bit expensive for such a small snack, but really tasty.

Shame on you Philips again!!!

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Science (Watt a Lightbulb!)

Here's a lightbulb that came without any known promise of long life, and more than one hundred years later, it's still good. What a difference with that freaking fluorescent lightbulb from Philips that says in the box that it lasts three years, but in my case lasted approx. three months only!

Problem undefined

Woke up this morning, and again I'm still getting kicked out of my Yahoo! Messenger and sometimes I also have to click on Reload several times until I can reach some webserver.  So I called quite angry to the ISP's help desk.  I'd called them two days ago, and left them my phone number, but they'd failed to call me back.

I had to wait a long time before a human being finally answered.  The girl took very well my bad humour, and offered to send a technician to my apartment and check my computer and the wiring in the building.  Well, I know there's no problem with my laptop computer cause when I take it to my office, I don't experience this problem; and I don't think it's the building's wiring either cause this building is much newer than the one housing my office.  But okay, I accepted her to send me somebody.

Surprisingly, the technician arrived the same morning, perhaps some three hours after my phone call.  That was quite something.  Then the technician was a rather nice lad, and even spoke some English.  He checked all of the wirings and stuff, but didn't find anything bad.  I told him the problem only happens in the evening.  He can't figure it out, especially since the connection is working fine right now.

Conclusion, if I experience problems again, please call again their help desk.  Doh!