Capricious Me

I finally got around to watching the season finale of Desperate Housewives… and Bree, who is my favorite of the housewives, had this awesome line, “The man put CHIVES in my Parisian salad! He should be in a strait-jacket!”

The Asus EEE PC t91 is shipping today, according to Engadget and I WANT ONE because it’s chock full of gadgetry goodness. This is the touchscreen model that I’ve been lusting over since it was announced in January.

The T101H should be coming out too… it’s like the t91 but one inch larger. I would actually prefer that one, but let’s face it… i’m probably not going to get a netbook anytime soon while I still have my current laptop.

Well, I start my internship at Parc in less than 12 hours. My legs are horribly sore from the Shinteki Decathlon on Saturday, which was roughly a 12 hour puzzle event. My team, Tvelve Metchsteek, did very well for its first time – we finished all the required puzzles and all but one of the bonus puzzles. A major feature of this event was the traveling one had to do in order to receive or find the next puzzle. One of those traveling bits involved climbing a rather steep hill, for which my thighs are punishing me right now, i.e. I have the mobility of a arthritic cripple.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to convince myself that come September or October, the new Prius, and not the oh-so-sleek Honda Civic hybrid is the car of my dreams, but its half-hatchback half-sedan design bothers me and I’m not sure why. I think it’s best that I stare at its specs and the promise of a super fuel efficient car… and remind myself that I will be able to pull an Andy Bernard and sneak up on someone in EV mode. If I die in a car crash, it will be due to the attention paid the monitor showing how efficiently the car’s running at that moment with its nifty little animations.

As for the Accord, which has served my familiy so faithfully since 2000… it goes to my little sister, who, I’m proud to say, will need it so she can continue experimenting on children (har har, just kidding, I believe the politically correct description is “Child Development Sciences”).

Well, on Friday the 29th I advanced to candidacy after passing my qualifying exams.

As a present to myself, I’m visiting Boston for a few days before my internship starts. Woo!

30 inch monitor. dell workstation with nehalem processor… WOOO. still waiting on 12 gigs of ram for it and 2 more hard drives… :-P

Best quote ever regarding cloud computing (from Oakland 2009 conference, not necessarily verbatim):

It should be called swamp computing. It’s dark and grimy and you don’t know what’s going to bite you.

The other good moment was the proposal for a “West Oakland Conference.”

Why does Apple put 2 different graphics cards in the macbook pro rather than putting 2 of the same, so that you can take advantage of SLI?

It’s retarded. A 9400gt and 9600gt. You can only use one at the same time. They could have made a killing off gamers who want a pretty laptop for games… after all, those gamers can always dualboot to windows for games. Or actually, why don’t they enable SLI mode at all? It’s still possible. It just means both run like 9400gt cards, if what I learned is correct.

Bah. What potential. Wasted.

One of the best times to be in grad school is when equipment funds are about to expire. It’s like Christmas squared. We were warned of the expiration a few months ago, and we’ve held off till now (excepting my Android dev phone) to order new desktops (w/the new nehalem processor) and laptops among other things so we could get the newest offerings possible.

My advisor and all his students all have the same unibody 15in Macbook Pro now, because we look more like a uniform army that way, I suppose. (Isn’t there something insidious about the masses using macs?) I am typing on my newest lappytop, which I have named Myrkvior, and am wincing in pain from how sharp its edges are. Clearly, I am incapable of typing with my forearms raised in the air. We’re still waiting on a massive newegg order that will max out the ram and upgrade the hard drives. :) Once that happens, I’m going to make this baby dual-boot (and run that partition as a VM) and install an Ubuntu VM. Woohoo!

Don’t you love how quickly computers improve and make even 2 year old machines seem obsolete? I do!

I’m on a mini-high right now because my user study data actually seems to support my arguments. ^_^

Don’t you love it when raw data turns into meaningful figures???

Today, while driving to Safeway I had to wait for a young couple to cross the street. I was absolutely disgusted by what I saw.

The female’s hands were empty. Her apparently well trained boyfriend, however, was not so lucky. He held in his left hand, with no detectable hint of rancor, her small pink purse.

Alright, so let’s play devil’s advocate against myself first. Clearly, if he’s happy to hold her purse as a symbol of affection, who am I to judge? Why shouldn’t he hold her purse? Maybe he volunteered. Isn’t chivalry sweet? That’s where my generosity ends.

That poor guy… my first thought was, “Wow. Totally whipped.” Why humiliate your boyfriend like that? It wasn’t even a semi-respectable tote bag that he could pass off as his environmentally friendly shopping tool. It was full-on girly-pink purse that held little besides a wallet. The judgmental feminist in me wants to ask this female, “Did you injure your hands? Do you have some sort of physical defect that prevents you from carrying this small item? Are you actually carrying several loads of invisible groceries that I cannot see because of my nearsightedness and the glare from the setting sun?” There’s no reason not to carry your own damn bag and it’s the epitome of self-indulgent delusions of grandeur and selfishness to make your boyfriend look ridiculous just so you feel like he reaaaally cares.

I admit to having Mike help me carry things if my hands are full or if they’re too heavy, but I would never make him carry my purse if I had the ability to do so myself and I NEVER WILL. You see, there’s a difference between being helpful or sweet and enabling your girlfriend’s princess syndrome.