Feeling Good About Myself

... For the first time in a while, and only for the past hour. I was able to finish homework on my own. My solution appeared correct; the accuracy of it is another story. But until the actual solutions come out, I will continue feeling good about myself until I hit a brick wall tomorrow.

Site Simplication

I've done a somewhat minor update to the way USuMBS.com is to be navigated. It's still incomplete, but I am tired and have wasted all day on this unintentionally.

This follows from a few people telling of their confusion from the previous design with a bar that appears below the button. This simplification does away with the bar that was present from the beginning, and allows for shorter load times.

Watching Jeopardy

We'd watch Jeopardy religiously every evening at 7:30 pm. And when we do, a commercial for the local news would come with this guy. His bio was taken from CBS 5 WTVH.

We LOLed.

Onto Facebook

I am attempting to get my blog posted through my Facebook profile in an attempt to garner more readers. Let's see how it works out.

Apple Retail Comes to China

From my favorite AppleInsider:

Ahead of the summer Olympics, Apple on Saturday will open the doors to its first retail store in China, a glass-enclosed high-profile shop situated in Beijing's newest retail development: the Village at Sanlitun.

And also from AppleInsider, proof that Chinese people use Macs:

DMV Road Test. Status: Scheduled.

I decided to continue my driving lesson from when I started back in January. I gave up then because the Spring Semester was starting up and it became busy really fast. I decided against taking additional lessons and the road test then.

Yesterday, I went back for a hour's worth of driving. I was surprised that I did well. The instructor said I was ready about 15 minutes in. After that, we were chatting and just driving all over. A kind of waste of time and gas, but it was fun.

Scheduled for road test, set for Thursday, August 7. (Hmm, that's a day before the Beijing Olympics begins. Maybe it's good luck.)

Future of POTD

... is uncertain. Life has gotten in the way. I have returned to it for now with Today's POTD:

Yay, Chinese!

As you might have found out already, the new iPhone 2.0 software update and the iPhone 3G came out last Friday. I was looking forward to the update for iPod touch, and the features I was really looking forward to were the new scientific calendar and the improved calendar. Perhaps the biggest thing about the new software is the support for applications. I have already purchased two games for the iPod touch (which I expect to also work when I get an iPhone down the road).

One of the most interesting features to me is the support for East Asian languages now. See below for Chinese (Traditional). There are two ways to do it: (1) writing (more like drawing) the word with your finger, which I found a bit easier to use for simple words, but difficult at the same time because of my lefthandedness*; (2) using pinyin to spell out the sound of the word, which I prefer because I am better at speaking than I am at writing the Chinese (usually**). The nice thing is, there is the option to type whichever way in between sentences or word phrases with the simple touch of a button. It's nice when I see a word but don't know since I am able to still writing it onto the iPod. Very nice . . .





* I tend to write the wrong way, drawing lines right-to-left rather than the proper left-to-right. The iPod seems to take into account the direction in which a line is drawn, so I saw I kept receiving words that did not look anything like the one I had "drawn".

** My Chinese is overall still pretty bad, unfortunately.

One 'Fuck You' Too Many

This is the reply I got from Ricky today:

Dear Mr. Cheng,

A profanity filter has recently been placed on your account due to the numerous swear words you have been sending in your email. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Ricky's iBot aka o.O

Dinosaurs (on Hulu)

What I'm watching now:

Happy Fourth

Barbecue with neighbors, cousins and Peter and Jan.

It seems to me nearly all Americans are so out of touch with what Independence Day actually means. I feel it may even be somewhat insulting to simply stay home, barbecue and throw some fireworks. How did this replace the true nature and meaning behind the holiday?

Happy Fourth, nonetheless.

Vacation from POTD

Since this is my only chance to take a real break this entire summer, I will delay posting POTD until the end of my break. Interestingly enough, I have been taking the D40 out everyday this week. Photos to come back later.