Friday the 13th

Today is Friday the 13th. I still remember long time ago there was a computer virus with this name that would do a lot of damage to the infected computers on this day. The virus was noticed worldwide in almost an instant and antidote was developed by anti-virus softwares to stop its further damage. That was long time ago and viruses nowaday are being considered far less scary than their modern soblings, spywares. Well, so much about the old days when The Return of Jedi is still the main topic in the town. I come across the original Japanese"Ring" novels (3 volumes, not LOTR though) in Chinese translation some time ago and, still, I am impressed by the author's imagination and the ability to transform a story from a horror one (Ring, the scary movie that was modified from the Japanese version) to a semi philosophical sci-fi storyline (the second Ring, although it is called something else in Japanese), then finally to a thoroughly Sci-fi novel about Artificial Intelligent and networked emulation of the real world...

Car Repair

I've finally got my car's rear drum breaks checked and replaced the break pad today. Did it in a local garage named "Quality Autoworks." I waited for about 45 minutes before my car was finally taken in and checked because they had a busy morning. I did not realized that I have known the person in charge, Ben, for two years now. I first found this shop on Yahoo!Yellow Pages when my car need a retension belt replaced.
The shop still look indifferent than two years ago, with some furniture replaced to newer and nicer ones. Some new tools were added to help things going...

Buying a house in California...?

My girlfriend, who I've spent the last four toughest years in my life with, suggested that we should get a house together when a good deal surfaced. I said, "Fine, but I think a good deal is really hard to define now. Even though the interest rate is STILL low, the house price in California is JUST TOO HIGH." She suggested that we should get one in the East Bay area (Hayward, San Leandro...etc) where more people are moving to and house value are more likely to increase comparing to San Jose and San Francisco. I thought it may be a good idea since we plan to get marry and get a house anyway. Getting it earlier and start to own a house may not be a bad investment after all...

New notebook computer

I ordered a brand new ultra light notebook from BestBuy.com a week ago. The delivery was made very fast although I was not able to actually get it four days after the product was delivered (Major delay was made since I live in an address different from my billing address and I relied on my landlord's son to retrieve all my mails/shipments for me...)
It is an Averatec 3200 Series and I am very happy about this laptop since it is sooo small and light (1 inch thin and 4.5 lbs) even though the battery life is a bit shorter than other similiar products (longest so far I can get only 2 hours and 50 minutes) and the machine is extremely hot during intensive computation and optical drive read/writing. I am still installing all the software including sharing 20 GB of hard drive space with Knoppix Linux.

Webcam

Got a new webcam today from my work place. It's cheap and does the job. Webcam seems to be one of the things that never evolve any further through the years of technology innovation. Or perhaps what I am paying for this (less than $20 USD) is not gonna prove any breakthrough to me. 

Final Exams are over...

Today's test was the last final exam. I sold the textbook right after the exam is over. It was a great deal, an old, outdated, worn, boring business textbook for $48.xx USD. Not bad at all.

Aloha~

This is the first time for me to try Blogger.Com Everything looks nice and fresh for me now... The blogging interface may spare a lot of people's need to create their own webpage like I previously did... (of course, it is still very rewarding and fun to establish your own server and web portal :->)