UltraCrepidate

I slack off on updating this site. Don’t despair, it just means that I have more events to write about later. The drafts are piling up and I am having too much fun in the physical world to want to sit down and go over grammars.

In the mean time, I guess I’ll have to refer you to the restaurant review site I am doing with Kirk. It’s his first real website and he’s in charge of the layout and maintenance. I am just a guest blogger. The location is 9to5ers

Just realized that I am a sucker for this hairstyle:

So far, I’ve been attracted to the women I’ve met with this hairstyle. Even those whom I wasn’t interested before.

It all started with seeing first class dancers in them.

“So, yes or no?”

“Well… blah blah blah blah blah blah”

I waited patiently, even nodded and added some sound of agreement, but most of the speech went into my left ear and came straight out. I am not disrespectful or anything, I’ve just experienced this crap too many times. So, since I am the dick that I am and I get a kick out of forcing people to take decisions, I repeated the question.

“I heard what you are saying and what you are implying, but I still need to hear it from you because I work only with truth. So, yes or no?”

Don’t know about you, but I don’t like it when someone avoids making a decision. Sure, I created this question in an otherwise boring day, but it is there and I can’t understand why people have to use implied meaning to answer what was originally a yes or no question. For some, it’s the way they’ve always answered, for others, they feel uncomfortable saying no. For me, the first initial response is always no if I never thought about the question and came to a conclusion.

This situation happens most with woman and I have inquired a few about this aversion to say a definite yes or no. It’s usually to save the guy some pain of being denied or a covert way to leave an opening to later reverse their mind. I guess a colleague put my attitude nicely in his joking remark during one of my forceful questioning of a female colleague:

“Quick, just say yes or no. Peter has no time for this.”

Yes, you can’t hurt my ego by saying no to me. My well being is not dependent on your decision, please don’t diminish me by believing it’ll do anything. So let’s cut the crap please and just answer a simple question.

I’ve been struggling to make my lunch box tastier and have perfected different main dishes suitable for microwave lunch boxes. These are then frozen and stored to survive their 2 week shelf life. I use a lunch box with two divisions so that I can mass cook different dishes on odd nights and later mix/match to my heart’s content. Yet, there’s always one dish that bothered me because they tasted awful after being microwaved: frozen veggies.

My doctor friend and a chance encounter with a food process engineer both confirmed that the nutrients in frozen veggies are kept pretty well. (while my nutritionist contact disagrees, but I prefer to trust doctors and engineers) With this information, I concluded that the most time saving and frugal way of taking my daily consumptions of veggies is in these packages of frozen veggies. Real life is never as good as you think.

The taste was awful.

I finally found the solution last night, after countless times trying to spice it up. I’ve baked, sautee, fried (pretty tasty but takes too long) and boiled to come to the perfect way to cook it. This is what you do.

• Heat the frozen veggies up in a wok.
• Let it melt and don’t drain the water
• After all the ice are melted add olive oil
• Stir fry a bit and later add soy sauce (Make sure you use Kikkoman’s other wise it’ll taste like crap). Don’t add too much that it change the color of your veggies.

That’s it, no salt, no nothing but soy and oil. it’s a great side dish against my sweet and garlic BBQ pork on rice.

“You are not allowed to have girlfriends till university”

Until this day, I still hold a grudge towards you for this and an even grudge against myself for following. I understand, the cultural background and the reasons behind why he had imposed that on me, but it doesn’t necessary mean that I understand “it”.

What possessed him to follow that belief? The deep rooted Chinese mentality which put career and money first and everything else second? Knowing that he actively enforced that on me back then present the fact that he sincerely believes it. Yet, somehow, my mind refuses to believe a person can place such blind faith on unfounded principles. It’s stupid, and believing in it is stupid.

FUCK YOU for messing up my innocent relationships, imposing your warped view of the world on me and most of all, for trying to brain wash me into believing that all woman are problems.

Why did you forbid such a beautiful thing? Why cause so much negativity in my first experience in this emotion? Do you know that till this day, I never tell you about any of my girlfriends because of the sour memories of what you said? Because all that you said about any of them are NEGATIVE?

You can never show me the positive, but I can depend on you to show me the negative. That is the only time when I will seek you for advice. When I need a view on the negatives that I overlooked. Remember that.

I was very satisfied just lying there on the beach while the sun happily roasted my skin as if it’s having me for dinner. She was flat on her stomach looking at me intently, wrapped in silent innoncence. Together we formed an interesting L shape on the sand of observer and observee. I was warm, on a quiet beach and feeling content. It’s the only thing that I do on a beach nowadays. The water’s not as clean as I remembered in my childhood and I can never shake the slimy feeling off of me when my skin moves in the water. It felt oily. Yep, I prefer the clean and dry sand better.

Which explains why, I was completely caught off guard.

“Peter, if your girlfriend feels depressed, what would you do?” Not even pausing to let me respond to my name.

*Very well, I can play pretend

“Well…” I choked on my first word because my reflective response shocked me.

My mind raced for a better solution, but by then, she had already observed my reaction and deducted certain meaning. I know then that there’s no other choice but to tell her the truth. Knowing that she, like me, has perfected the art of behavior observance through dancing.

“First of all, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with a depressed girlfriend. She’d have the confidence and self motivation to get through that type of mood…” I took a breath.

“But not everyone can be confident like that.” She quickly interrupted.

“Oh?… I don’t know then, I never had to deal with that yet.” I replied finally.

She looked away and by that expression, which I’ve come to understand as my failure in some kind of test. That’s when the sudden realization came. Could she be? No way… But ever since I’ve known her, ever since the first time I saw her on stage, I’ve always thought of her as the most fun, random and crazy person out there. I realized then that I don’t know her at all.

“Wow, my opinion of you just changed.” I said sadly

“Me too.”

That was a fond memory and for some reason, the question came back to me today. Actually, it was the answer that came to me today, followed by the memory of this question: “What will I do if my girlfriend is depressed?”

I will show her a better existence.

Economy is a great insight into human nature. Given a set of conditions, the majority of human population will act in certain way while a percentage act in another and in the end, a small group of pioneers will take some radical actions.

I get to analyze a quote from Warren Buffet (He’s the person I quoted the most in my blog posts, for the simple fact that I sincerely believe I can never outdo him in my life. Until I can achieve something close to what he achieved, I won’t even dream about it), from his Toronto visit this week. Warren Buffet said: “The Canadian dollar will continue to climb.” A conclusion that is going to change my economic strategy for the near future.

No, this is not simple Canadian pride, but the result of a look at the big picture. The majority of Canadian economy lies in exporting its products to the US. Because CDN dollar is considered by investors to be a resource/banking based currency. So when a resource crunch occurs, the CDN dollar goes up. It’s the same as buying gold. This should be good news for Canadians right? In a consumer’s view yes, but in my world, NO.

The rest of the industries are in shit, why? Because the price of all Canadian products are now 1/4 times higher than a year ago. The tech sector is hardest hit because people expect hi tech products to go down in price over time due to improvements in process and cheaper components. The tech sector has only seen about one year of good times after the 2000 collapse, this is too soon to be seeing hiring freezes.

Soaring tech stock prices, big companies buying random startup e-businesses, credit crunch, and hiring freezes? Does it sound familiar?

On another side, my stock trading is benefiting from this knowledge greatly. My bet in the tech sector has paid off greatly, which also brought my attention to something else. I am earning more in investment than the maximum pay raise they are allowed to give me for great performance (If they ever do a performance review). Which, by my automatic valuation filter means that I should put the minimum effort into my job so I can keep it and maximize my researches in investing.

I also decided to waste 2% of the money gained on anything I feel like. Which, at this early point in my experiments, isn’t much. I believe that it is very important to have fun while learning about investing. It also brought on another question that I have to think about later. If I multiply the investment capital by 10 (~10 years) and pull off this mediocre performance, I will then earn the same thing investing part time (~1 hour per day) than I am making working full time. No more working for a boss in 10 years!!!

I’ve reached my 1 year of investment as well. Meaning that I am done stretching my wings and is ready to fly and take on more risk. Mind you, my current portfolio is pretty risky already, but they are mostly based on large firms with huge capitals and great fundamental products. The next stage, is to move on to a more frequent trading interval (currently only moving each quarter), focusing on smaller percentage gains (~5% per trade).

So that’s a wrap, for my weekend rambling.

I’ve always wanted to write a cover letter tailored for myself and not the company which I am sending it to. So I thought: “Why not post it here?”

My main strength as a working productive citizen lies in the culmination of knowledge that I acquired in my dealings within different social groups. These, in my best attempt to identify them, are: Engineering, Investing and Performance Art. I agree that these are very different and unrelated fields, but believe me when I say that they all have the same origins: my curiosity and my search for a challenge.

That fact that I get satisfaction and entertainment from finding out how things work makes me naturally inclined to become an Engineer and have since eased my stress through numerous tough periods of product development cycles. It also takes away some of the mythical awes in technology and analyze them dispassionately.

The practice of constantly analyzing from different perspectives evolved naturally into my interest in investing. With that, I was able to learn and appreciate the art product valuation. This venture into the world of investing brought me face to face with my self. The doubts, emotions, losses and decisions all helped in furthering my understanding of the corporate world and most importantly of all: human nature.

To compensate for my technical and analytical interests, I took up ballroom dancing when I turned 18. I find it a great counter balance which improved other areas of my life. Through dancing, I learned how to express myself better as well as reaching a comfort level when performing in front of hundreds of people. Not to mention that it is a great way to stay fit. Because it is so different from the social circle of Engineering, I became more attuned to starting something unusual. which explains why I decided to join a start up chip design house in Taiwan when I graduated in year 2003; the year where high tech bubble is in full bloom.

So, if you are in need of an inquisitive person with technical background that can correctly analyze the market and is not afraid to be in the public spot light. I am your man.

It echoes my experiences in life. Just like love, it happens when you least expects it. I used to care about putting in a good entry, crafting it around the few beliefs that I think will increase readership. Which is why, it is strange to see the traffic increase in the past month where I didn’t particularly pay much attention to my site.

I remember checking in after 3 days only to find that the layout is totally messed up because I left the wrong theme on display. Add that to my less than enthusiastic approach to publish my blog with any technique you’d find on SEO optimization blogs and you understand the exertion I am feeling from all the efforts.

I am only writing about what I am doing everyday, on things that interest me, which is usually some time of experiment. Since we are on the same topic, let me tell you about my finding on trying to manipulate the great search engine: Google.

My two experimental sites are now banned by Google. It’s easy to check that whether or not yours is banned by doing a search with your exact URL. It should show up as the first entry. Both sites were banned because I had some type of link exchange script running, which is fine and I prefer that they do.

I also found out that participating in purchase of links will usually lower your PR by 2 levels. So basically they are starting to address the spam websites that are designed to increase page rank. I want Google to win so we can go back to the old way of simple web designs. What do I mean? Well, today’s internet is like a Microsoft design whereas the old web is either a linux or Ipod. See this video for what I am talking about.

So, I’ll probably continue on what to do. Staying with simplicity while increasing user friendliness. In the mean time, provide you with original content. Original enough to have no other copy because it is about me!

ln -s /shares/internal/PUBLIC /usr/www/lib/
vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
insert dir-listing.activate = “enable”
:wq
reboot

These are the final commands that I sent before a reboot. The purpose was to enable http browsing of the 500GB mybook world edition that I bought for $170 (total after tax and shipping). My heart sank as I see my internet connection die while the reboot takes place. Although they should be completely unrelated events, but when they happened at the same time during hacking, it mean something.

A day later, I am still reflecting on how I bricked the $170 NAS storage device and why it affected me so much. I tried to talk to people at my work place, but all they gave me was that look. The look that the non geek population gives to geek population when they start talking about linux. That look of “Do you have no life? You spend your weekend on what? Computers?”

How can this even affect me? Surely not because of the $170 I spent on it, I’d gladly spend $170 to learn anything and I did learn a lot. I’d say that my knowledge of both linux and networking have increased by two fold after this weekend. It affected me, because I had everything working. I had SSH and FTP access working. Setup my router to link with DynDns to redirect a domain name to my home network’s random IP. The router than direct the SSH and FTP request to myBook World without having my home computer on all the time.

In non tech term. I created a Hard disk that I can access from anywhere in the world anytime I want by entering a domain name (Meaning, no firewall can block this). The beauty of this is, that the IP is random and myBook world runs on Linux with only 4W usage per hour on standby and it only wakes on hard disk access (20W per hour).

I had it, but now it doesn’t work. I want to say FUCK YOU! But there’s no target to say it to.

At least now, I am forced to spend time on other project so I can feel accomplished and get that frustration out. Maybe you’ll see that new layout on this site I’ve been talking about.

Every now and then, I come across something that stimulates new thinking. Whether it is from training my fingers to move in new ways via Guitar Hero or discovering the yin and yang of life while reading the uses of ginger to compliment sushi eating experiences, I log it all here. One, to remember. Two to help others make sense of the world.

Previously, I wrote about the Orange Box, today I am going to write about one of the extra games which came with the box because it changed something inside of me. Portal takes the complex idea of warp gates and went on to implement it in the best way they can.

I have thought about the possibility of gateways before (mainly, black hole theory), but never thought beyond the physics of creating and problems in entering the gate. Portal sets the player in a reality where this is possible, forcing us to accept the reality and deal with just the consequences.

I finished the game in 3 hours wanting more. There isn’t one level in Portal where my mind wasn’t challenged, or my concept of physics got distorted. It changed me because I was forced to rewire part of my brain to understand it. Knowing myself, I welcome any chance I have to do that.

I lived the life! Wasted money! And boy, does it suck to be single. Check out the Q3 report. It’s almost a year since I got serious about investing, after next quarter, I can finally do a review of exactly how well I did in a year. I discovered that Socializing cost about $400 per month if I do it every weekend.

Luckily winter is coming. So I will be staying at home to play video games most of the time. This should reduce the cost of living somewhat. Speaking of cost of living. I am really surprised at how little I use in terms of cleaning supplies. Thinking back, the rate at which my previous roomates and I consumes the supplies are probably 20 times my current rate. Minimalist living style does have its pluses.

The problem I am seeing now, is my food consumption. Whatever savings I gained from smaller supplies, I now made up in groceries. This is the only instances where I regret having my genes. The fact that I have to cook my own meal when I am dead hungry doesn’t help.

I will be reducing the frequency at which I post due to several reasons. The primary reason being the fact that I am still tweaking a new layout made from scratch. The second is due to my current initiative to improve my Engrish. Thinking about taking some basic classes and trying out Livemocha’s free language courses. I don’t have an opinion on the site yet because I only started recently. The fact that this is free is too good to be true.

Ever had a shopping frenzy? Or felt that you must buy something? Don’t feel bad, it’s the great marketing gear in the works. If everyone are as analytical as me, some people would be out of jobs and there’d be no point in persuasion.

Self analysis of my resilience

The establishing of life filters 1 and 2 helped me greatly, but I can’t attribute the great control of my impulses purely to that. It also has a lot to do with the fact that English is the 3rd language I learned in life. Whereas a girl who says fuck in Mandarin will make me think she has no class, the same “fuck” in English, will amuse me more than anything else because it’s rare to hear. As you can see, the emotional impact is different.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t get the impulses to shop. If anything, it is even harder to control the craving when the need to shop comes from within. Because you’ve already convinced yourself on an emotional level that you need something, thinking that it is perfect for your lifestyle, but do you really need it? The hard part is to convince yourself otherwise.

Wait before you buy

First of all, wait before you buy. If you are enticed by certain “deals”, you usually have time to wait it out a bit before the deals are off. I usually wait till 3 days before the end date to exercise that option. Sometimes you can even just tell the sales person that you’ve seen this deal before and ask for it. So a deadline is never a deadline in a sales person’s dictionary. Waiting also gets rid of the heightened emotions that you feel at that moment which compels you to make mistakes in your analysis.

There will always be other great deals

To prove the truthfulness of this, I asked a mattress sales person on the price of the one I am interested in (Of course it’s on sale at that moment and last only for 3 more days.) and checked back after a few weeks. What did I find? The same price on the same 50% off liquidation sale.

Take a test drive

Always test the item against the function which you intend it to do. You might think that it functions in a certain way, but in reality, it doesn’t. Your mind constructed the fantasy. Furthermore, are you buying it with speculation that it might be able to be changed to do something else? Is that method proven with testimonials? This is where Google comes in handy. A quick search on certain items will always land you numerous negative reviews. Don’t take it all as truth, certain people just have no clue, but read those who provide careful analysis of the unit and weight it against your own way of using the item. Things like ergonomically uncomfortable are usually ignored by me since I enjoy adapting to new ways of interaction. But if a hacked Wiimote introduces a 200msec delay in game, that’s a deal breaker for me because I like sniping. So test driving will actually act as a counter balance to the euphoria you are feeling. Have an clear idea of which need the item has to satisfy and think of a few deal breakers where no means no.

Compare prices

Again, how much of a price difference can you ignore? I am up to a point where $20 difference in price can be ignored. I make most of my savings while buying expensive items like fridges and stove. Since the time it takes to find another item of $20 savings is not worth it. Items under the range of $200 are simply bought without comparing prices. (The most basic discount is 10% so 10% of $200 is $20).

End

I hope you enjoyed this and that this will help you in the future in determining what to buy, or to quench your thirst to buy a new iPhone. Below is an example for my reason to ignore all the gadget craze. It is very simple:

UMPC is coming and it won’t be long until Apple comes up with a touchscreen tablet PC. The technologies are already there, just not cheap enough to bring everything together yet. When that time comes, I won’t be needing any gadget at all. What do you need in a gadget? Mine are simple, make phone calls online, connect wirelessly to the net, listening to MP3, touch screen to draw in photoshop. Why waste money?

October 2nd saw the release of a fix. Information in the patch said something about fixing the position prediction algorithm. Curious in nature, I decided to see if I was right. And I was. Immediately, I started dominating the playing field.

“So I am not as rusty as I thought.”

Some of the feelings are coming back now. I just let my hands move by itself. Each shot strengthening the connection between past and present. I say, I have a 25% hit ratio at the moment should be able to get back up 50% once I am more familiar with the new setup. For an improved sniping experience, I have long switched to my own way of holding the mouse. Instead of moving my whole wrist or elbow, I decided to plant the wrist on the mouse pad and rely purely on my fingers to move the mouse. I hold the full weight of my mouse between my thumb so that it slightly float above whatever surface it is on. I figured that my fingers have more precision than my wrist. The gain in precision is thus obtained by decreasing the range of motion. I managed to offset the handicap slightly by increasing the mouse sensitivity to 75% while playing games.

So I kicked people’s ass for two nights straight, the improvement is staggering. I am usually the one with the second most points on the leader board, with the first being a scout of course. So, with that record, I think I can safely say that I am more entitled to judge this sniper class. Here are some interesting tid bits that I discovered.

• When coming out from a wall, enemy snipers who’s already in position can now see your arm first before you can see them. Giving a camping sniper first strike opportunity.
• Fully charge head shot will kill anyone
• Head shot without charge or a fully charged body shot will kill the light armored classes: Sniper, Engineer and scout.
• You can shoot through the cracks between any object. Giving you some very interesting cover.

I also noticed a big difference when playing COD with my co-workers. I seem to have an easier time sniping them off than before. Everything is like slow motion to me, feels like my brain is in a sort of over clocking mode because TF2 is a much faster game and people jumps around more. Maybe my theory was right, if we are forced to take information at a higher rate, we’d think faster. Further reinforcing my belief that, we need to constantly put ourself on the edge in order to improve.

I have gobbled up and filtered through an insane amount of information in the past years now that I have nothing better to do. I still remember being referred to StevePavlina’s personal improvement site and the optimistic view it brought to my life afterwards. That lasted for a good while, but what can I say, junk is junk. I even went as far as trying out a Triphasic Sleep pattern based on his blog posts.

That is when my belief in the truthfulness of that site waned. There’s one major hurdle that he never once mentioned and that everyone else who tried this superhuman sleep pattern has complained about. The problem with sore eyes. It is a fact that our eyes suffers great wear and tear without rest in this superhuman sleep pattern and it is also a fact that he never mentioned anything about it. Add that to the fact that the recent blog posts are filled with fluffs which are designed to generate word counts, not content.

Which brings me to a blog that practices both quality, with real life examples and still manages to keep everything short so your attention don’t wane. Ladies and gentlemen: PickTheBrain

This is one gem out of 6 months of surfing randomly. (The number is so small because blogs exploded in recent years. I often see one author with 2~3 blogs updated regularly). I will continue to read and monitor other similar blogs to see if any contents are copied, but so far, so good and I think it’ll benefit the few people that reads my blog.

I got so addicted that I wasted one full day just playing it. It feels like the game that I used to know, but more fun. It’s not just senseless tossing of grenades or dominations of the snipers anymore. It’s all about strategy.  Let me first go through some of the balancing changes.

Sniper: None

Engineer: None

Pyro: Is now god of closed quarter fighting. I think they increased the flame thrower’s damage by too much. A duel between HWguy and Pyro usually ends in pyro winning. Even if you live, the flame on your body will still kill you.

Soldier: The rocket blast radius is bigger, and the rocket jump is higher now. Basically back to the same level as TFC. Soldier is an exact copy from that game.

Demoman: Grenade damage slightly decreased and are limited to 4 grenades per reload instead of 6. Reason being, that no one will use soldiers because demoman is statistically a better performer.

HWGuy: Minigun is now more accurate and can do critical hit when bullets hit the head.

Spy: None.

Medic: None.

Scout: None.

My best class is now a soldier because its power and controls are exactly the same as TFC, my experience with soldier are usually better than anyone on my team. Using soldier usually land me on the top of the frag list. That is, without capturing anything. A quick check on my kill ration shows me that I do around 6:1.

Tried sniper a bit. I still have a hard time hitting people. Still slowly adjusting to the new sprite 3d model and feel. For instance, I used to aim for the top of an enemy’s head in order to land a head shot in TFC. TF2 moved that spot to somewhere lower. Around the neck area. Moving target is also different now, the net code that calculates a hit is strange and I haven’t figured it out yet. Add all this, to the fact that I’ve been gaming with my alternate hand and I used to play TFC with reverse mouse, my sniping accuracy is comparable to that of a noob. At least I still know some of the strategies.

I can’t really explain it. I hate the fact that snipers are nerfed so much, but I also love the fact that it is very team oriented with its built in voice chat ability. A team with someone who issues commands usually wins against a mob that just want to frag. Except of course, when I decide to be an engineer/soldier to defend. Even so, a good combination of HWguy, medic, soldier and scout will usually destroy my defense.