linterry's blogger

Here's a shot of the "FronPage" computer book package with 3 CD's I mentioned last week.
Note how the box claims to be at an oriignal price of 598NT, and selling at the "special" price of 480NT



Here's the back of the box.



Note in the bottom right hand corner, next to the ISBN, is the wonderful official standard price of 480NT. We can pretty much conclude that this item was never sold for 598NT, and that this "sale" is totally ficitious. Thanks to explotive tendecies of a capitalist economy, millions of people are taken for a ride by these absolutely despicable + dishonest practices... and nobody's there to protect us from these tactics.

I want to talk about Taipei 101 a bit. Everytime I go to Taipei 101, something doesn't feel right. It seems that practically every store is a "ghost store".. meaning, they're not really there to sell anything, there just there for the sake of being there. I saw this item on display a while back:



Who makes it? What it is made of? What is it called? What's with the extra 50NT on something that costs over NT100,000? There was nothing in that display box that explained why the thing was so expensive. It was just this rather unremarkable piece of jewelry sitting there with a ridiculously expensive price tag. Is any sane person going to buy this?



Most stores in Taipei 101 are like this. Pristine, sterlile, vacuous, over-arranged, pretentious... these stores were obviously NOT built to sell things. Just look at how all those individual items of clothing are so precisely placed in a perfect postiton (with ample leftover shelf space, I might add). It's so perfect that it looks more like a museum rather than a store. Can you actually buy the stuff inside? If you were a billionaire and were planning to commit suicide tomorrow, I guess it's something you could do for fun. Honestly, if I were ever so miracuously lucky to witness a NORMAL person purchase anything from one of these museums, I would be willing give up porn for the rest of my life.

If you want to see people actually BUYING stuff (what a concept) at 101, all you need to do is head down to the "discount" B1 floor with your average joe blow retailers like Giordano and Hang Ten. There, it looks more normal. Clothes are sometimes scattered about, change rooms are busy, and there's at least more than one of the same goddamn item (so you actually have better than a 1% chance of finding the right size)... basically, it pays tribute to the original concept of a "store"... a place to BUY something. Of course, the mall designers are probably infuriated that they had to let such low class names pollute their shopping directory, but people would probably suspect the mall is some kind of huge cover up for mafia gangs if sales were less than 0 in a fiscal quarter.

So what's the deal with all these empty pretentious image-oriented museums infesting the prime locations of the 101 mall? Is this some kind of sick joke or something? Well, if it weren't for the fact that everyone just "accepts" thse things as facts of reality, I'd venture it's worse than a joke, it's downright ludicrous. Less than 1km from this 101 mall, there are plenty of dilapidated houses whose residents probably don't have more than 100,000NT in total fucking assets. And here is a piece of meaningless jewelry selling for more than what a person is worth. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not meaningless, of course it has meaning, it's there to satisfy that extremely practical and important desire for a woman to look beautiful to herself (to herself being the key word here, because if I ever saw somebody wearing that thing, I'd spit on it).

Ironically, the answer to all this insanity can also be found in Taipei 101... in the overpriced, gaijin-wannabe "Page One" bookstore, who order their books through some kind of amazon.com clone. If you meander over to the economics section, next to the investing aka "buy this book and you'll get rich off stocks" section... there's a whole array of books on anti-capitalism anti-globalization. Anything that talks about the "uneven distribution of wealth and power" should pretty much do the trick.

Am I a hyprocrite for going there 4 or 5 times? Not exactly. It has a great food court, a great spacious coffee plaza that sells coffee for less than a goddamn lunch, and despite the fact that Page One isn't exactly the cheapest store around, it is well stocked with countless english books that you can read at your own leisure. Actually, that's what I believe the majority of people do at 101... they eat at the food court, maybe buy a couple of things at the "discount" B1 floor, look around those museums a bit, drink coffee, read a book or two, then go home.

I guess I just feel sad/angry when I see so many fake stores massed in a single location... and I really feel sorry for the people who work there... they just sit at the counter, looking at customers passing the store from their ivory towers all day long with nothing to do but to pretend to be busy. These stores exist becuase of some strange fucked up mall management guideline that says "we should strive to create a high-class image for international visitors so that they don't think taiwan is a poor 2nd world country". Stop the goddamn pretension, all somebody has to do is get on a stupid bus and 30 seconds later they won't be able to look away from all the 2nd world crap that is actually the HEART and SOUL of Taipei.

I just had a heated discussion with Shinobu about the Passion. She watched it yesterday on my computer while I watched something less pornographic on cable TV (didn't want to risk puking again). Apparently, she LIKED the movie, and said that she cried at least once or twice. That was pretty mindblowing to me. So we started arguing from the extremists point of view, my side: the movie is focused on the violence, her side: the movie needed the violence and successfully portrayed the intensity of christ's suffering.

Well, since 50% of critics think it's a work of art, I can't intellectually say that it's an impossibility, but given the extreme negative reponse my body gave out while witnessing the torture scenes, IT'S A FUCKING MIRACLE ANY NORMAL PERSON WOULD LIKE THIS MOVIE. While Shinobu made a good point that everyone has difference tolerance levels to violence, I can say with a fairly certain degree that this movie has emprically surpassed what MOST people (ie in the majority of the bell curve) would consider "acceptable".

I have to agree with the South Park people. Movies should be made to entertain, one way or another. That goes quadruple for movies that are marketed as "mass-audience", stuff that's shown at every major theatre and if you don't watch it, then you're "missing out". Passion has been most definitely treated as a "mass-audience" movie. You can't avoid it. Posters everyone, short documentaries about the movie, interviews with Mel Gibson, a fucking COVER PAGE on Time Magazine... you just can't avoid getting the feeling that "if you don't see this movie, boy are you missing out on something special".

I'm sure there are worse movies than the Passion in terms of gratuitous violence. FORTUNATELY, they are sitting out of sight in the darkest corners of the underground video scenes. My huge objection is that something this PORNOGRAHPIC is allowed to be distributed on such a grand multinational scale, hyped umpteen times by the media and proudly displyed as the main feature film at most major cinemas.

As I have said before, this movie, without the explicit violence, is nothing more than a series of cliched scenes on after the other with extremely forgettable characters and incomprehensible German-sounding Aramaic lines spouted left and right. How can such a movie receive artistic praise? It simply defies any logical defintion of what a "good" movie is. It's like calling cheap MSG-laced food "great cuisine". You don't need a lot of skill to put MSG in food. You don't need a lot of skill to put horrific violence in movies either. Neither, in my opinion, are commendable.

If this movie acutally had good characters, less cliches, more thought provoking dilaogue, and was simply MORE OF A MOVIE, then I would have found the violence more acceptable. I would have probably sided with the "necessary evil" point of view. But as it stands, outside of the violence, this movie has very little to keep anybody's interest nowadays. It's almost as if Gibson shot the movie once without the violence, but everybody fucking fell asleep, so he added the splatter fest to wake everybody up. Of course I'm pretty sure that's not true, but when I see "extreme violence" layered on top of a "shitty movie", the one word that comes to my mind is CHEAP!

Today at ChengPing bookstores I saw something that simply made me sad. While waiting for my girlfriend to pick out a diary/calendar, I rummaged through the computer books section, and I saw this thick shrink-wrapped package with the title:

"Microsoft FronPage"

No I didn't spell that incorrectly. "Microsoft FronPage" was written in huge type right across the book, along with a bright symbol indicating there were *3* CD's included, and that the original price was 590NT but it was selling at a "special price" of 498NT. I looked at the backside of the package and near the ISBN bar code, in plain small type, was the price tag of 498NT.

The whole packaging looked like it was designed by somebody who has just learned to use Microsoft ClipArt. Cheesy cartoon characters, gaudy colors, it was quite painful to look at. And yet it hoped that by proudly displaying that it included not just one, not just two, but *THREE* CD's, and that it was (falsely) on a special price of 498NT, some poor sap would actually buy the product.

What is even sadder than the fact that a bunch of people actually had to sit down and make this product (under a very unreasonable deadline, I'd imagine), is the fact that it's even being sold in a store. If I saw anyone actually take that product to the checkout counter, I'd probaby stop him and tell him to think twice. I don't even need to open the book to determine whether the "FronPage" book is good or not, the fucking TITLE is spelt wrong, how much credibility can you put on the quality of the material??

The thing that bothers me the most is... are books like the "FronPage" book a necessary evil? How about junk mail? Telemarketing? Consumer deception? Are these problems just waiting to be solved or are they simply necessary by-products of a capitalist economy, whose existence is closely tied in to all the good things capitalism brings? There's that "Maximizer" side of me again at work. I simply hate unnecsesary evils; they should be purged immediately from this world.

Today on the streets of Shi-da I saw so many cats & dogs prowling about. Out for a walk? More like out for a fuck (sorry if that resembles azn_anonymous introductory catch line style)

Recently, I've been hornier than usual. I still have that scientifically unfounded theory that it has something to do with springtime. The new smells, the warm sweaty weather, the sounds of life in the air... it all has a deep and profound impact on our hormones which causes us to behave differently. Emperical evidence: 2 days ago, I had sex once + jacked off twice ALL IN ONE DAY. That never happens in winter. My girlfriend as always thinks I should have one testicle removed. They're "working too hard", according to her.

Society (or at least the American variety) seems to project the ideal human being as someone who's looks like they're in complete control of himself/herself. Eg. If you want to fuck, but can't find a fuckable woman, then act like you don't need to fuck. The problem is, for an astute chap like me who "thinks too much", the desire still manfiests itself in certain ways. For instance, guys will start talking weird to girls, and do all the "little, sublte, barely fringing on inappropriateness" things so solicit their attention. Honestly, I only have to take a 10 minute walk around NTU and I will at least see one case of a guy who's operating by his balls. Girls don't seem to mind too much either, as long as the guy isn't some kind of faggoty nerd, they really appreciate the attention, even though they may be totally sexually satisfied by somebody else.



I'm definitely not the "trusting" type. Yesterday, I saw this picture of Zhang Ziyi on Alfatiron's site, and I had to jack off. It's not something I think about.. it's an instinctive reaction to seeing a beautiful girl who's not my girlfriend. It's amazing that such a small JPG can have such a profound catalystic effect on a human being.

A week ago, I took the 74 bus to meet my girlfriend at Breeze Centre. Since there were no seats other than this strange "raised platform" at the very back, that's where I sat myself. There was already one Capricorn-ish beautiful girl there, but of course out of social courtesy I sat at far away as I could on that "raised platform". Kept using my peripheral vision to check if she was throwing glances at me (she wasn't). But a few minutes later, a bunch of people came on the bus, including two "not-that-pretty-but-young-and-nice-bodied" girls who seemed like quite the adventrous/chatty types. They came towards the back, said to each other, "why don't we sit back there", and that's what they did. They squeezed themselves between me and that other Capicorn-ish girl and holy shit I just got a massive erection right then and there. One of the two girls was sitting at a girlfriend-grade closeness, her young juicy thighs rubbing against me, her mild perfume + her sweat wafting towards my nose... yep, I had a huge motherfucking boner that day. Of course, out of social courtesy, I just pretended not to care and just navigated the menus on my monochrome cell phone, when in reality I'd much rather have been "navigating" her tits and pussy.

So, should a girl trust a guy like me? Who gets all sexually excited just by seeing or coming into casual contact with other girls? Sounds like they should all stay away from me, cuz I'm just out control right?

But maybe... just MAYBE, perhaps... that EVERYBODY's like me, meaning everybody's fucking horny this time of year, but nobody admits it directly, instead they let it manifest itself through enigmatic xanga poetry and investigative writing about their relationship with their boyfriends/girlfriends.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to jack off for the 2nd time today.

5% on Rottentomates! Holy shit! But I actually sat through the WHOLE MOVIE with Shinobu (a rarity with our short attention spans) We actually thought it was pretty funny and entertaining. Like that one review on rottentomatoes said... it seemed to be self-aware of its own stupidity, which magically made all the stupid stuff excusable, even funny at times. By the way, I always get touched by high school love scenes, probably becuase that was something I was totally deprived of.

It's funny how some movies would really suck if you actually spent money to see them (so don't go to Blockbuster and rent The New Guy, please), but if you can watch it for free on cable TV they somehow stand above the rest. The New Guy is an example of such a flick. There are so many other "emperically better" movies playing at any given time on the numerous movie channels, but they all seem to blend into a single mix of "your average flick". So basically, unless we see a really stupid-ass low budget flick, or something that seems exceptionally good, we won't give 2 seconds of our attention.

Perhaps this illustrates the human desire to want something differnet from all the rest, even though that "difference" is not necessarily "better".

In today's "made for trailers" movie indsustry, I really wonder how this movie ever got approved. I can't imagine a director wanting to do this movie out of passion (like Kill Bill), and I certainly can't imagine anyone paying money to see it... so its very existence puzzles me.

Today at ChengPing I read the new BusineesWeek which had a review on a book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by a Mr. Schwartz. Just by reading the review, I would venture that I would really enjoy this book, because it discusses something that has been a serious reality in my life: too much Choice is a bad thing.

According to Schwartz, there are two kinds of buyers, "Maxmizers" - who won't settle for anything but the absolute best for their money, and "Satisficers" - people who are satisfied as long as it's "good enough". I believe I am a pure "Maximizer" especially when it comes to expensive purchases. I'm not proud of it, being a Maximizer is sheer torture... the mind-boggling amount of necessary research before any significant purchase (while trying to filter through marketing crap), the fear of making a mistake during the purchase, the fear or potential post-purhcase regret ... these are the things a "Maxmizer" suffers from but of which "Satisficers" are spared of. Shinobu is a real satisficer, or at least that's how it seems. I have never seen her mull over a purchase, or complain endlessly how something isn't the way she thought it was. She doesn't mind getting fucked over, becuase most likely she doesn't feel like she was fucked over. As long as the product isn't dead broken, she'll use it happily. Ironically, despite all the energy and time I invest into the decision process, I don't get appropriate returns. Just look at my Sony XBR, or my 172X (well I have to say it's a good monitor, but not for all the agony I went through). I say that my 151S is really good but now I realize through A/B comparison with the 172X that the reason for that is because when I bought the 151S, I didn't give a shit about LCD's, I was more worried about getting a girlfriend. So my expectations were real low and naturally, I was satisfied with my purchase. I was a "Satisficer" back then, now I'm back to my "Maxmizer" ways.

Bottom line is, in this day and age it truly sucks to be a Maximzer because of the dizzying variety of choices in any consumer market and the psychological stress associated with making a good decision. If you wanted a car stereo, wouldn't it be as simple as going to Future Shop and getting one? Not for a Maximzer, because there are like 20 different speakers, 20 different amps, and 20 differnet CD players, that in total there are thousands of combinations to choose from. Plus you could replace only the front speakers, or only the rears, or both, or add extra speakers... ? A Maximzer probably wants something "ideal", like a system that actually reproduces music faithfully with a flat frequency response. That's another 300 hours of intensive market research, after which there's no guarantee that he's going to make the right decision. Judging by the Polk speakers and the Sony CD system I installed in my Civic, that's exactly what happened. I spent 400-500 bucks on replacing the factory sound system and it was so underwhelming.

One thing I do like about Taiwan is the convenience. Since we live in the heart of Shi-da market, there is a 7-11 literally 20 paces away from our front door. On a commercial break, I actually have enough time to put my jacket on, scoot over to 7-11, buy a couple of beers and a microwaveable pizza, and come back in time for whatever I'm watching. The only thing of significance within a 1 minute walking distance of my house in Toronto is a goddamn Esso station.

Actually, I could also go to Family Mart within the same time since it's RIGHT NEXT to the 7-11, but for some reason I like 7-11 better. For one thing, I hate the cheesy Family Mart jingle that plays whenever the automatic sliding doors open. Also, the interior decorating isn't as "homey" as 7-11... it's too bluish white as opposed to 7-11's warmer whites.

Of course, along with the convenience, comes the overcrowding. Without a dense residential areas, there wouldn't be dense commercial areas, so as with many things with life, I gotta take the good with the bad.

But to be able to buy pizza, hot dogs, beer, soft drinks at 4am in the morning in less than 30 seconds? That's fucking priceless. It just kicks so much ass to live next to a 7-11. I think I pretty much buy something from there every frickin' night when I feel hungry or thirsty. By the way, if you live in Taipei, I recommend their microwaveable pizza... it tastes pretty damn good!

Do you ever feel there's some kind of evil sports god that stops you from seeing the stuff you want? Kinda like whenever you start watching your favorite team play live, they start losing and give a shit performance, but when you leave for dinner and come back you find that they somehow took over the game midway. The evil sports god just didn't want you see the stuff you wanted.

It's kinda like what's happening between me and my favorite soccer player Thierry Henry. Although I've seen him score countless times through replays, I've only seen him score ONCE live... and that was a rocket of a shot as he blasted it from midfield into the top corner. Needless to say I was in sheer ecstasy when it happened and started jumping up and down like a fool.

Today, Arsenal playeda gainst Leeds, and it was live on ESPN... I started to watch it, but Pires scored in the 5th minute or so and I thought... ehh... shitty opponent, probably not worth watching. So I go and play warcraft with my girlfriend.

After a few matches, I come out... and I see the scorline... 5-0. Whoh. Then the commentators talk about how this match was a real treat for Thierry Henry fans. Huh? What? What treat? Fuck fuck fuck I thought... what happened? Did he score 2? 3? What happeend?

He scored 4 fucking goals. A goddamn record for Arsenal players. Superlative words like sensational, electrifying, were used without end and I MISSED THE WHOLE FUCKING THING. Goddamnit. I watched a full 90 minute game last week (Arsenal vs. Newcastle I think) and Arsenal scored *0* fucking goals. today I decide to only watch the first 10 minutes, and I catch the only goal that WASNT' scored by Henry.

Fuck that.

My girlfriend and I are playing TOO MUCH Warcraft these days. It's getting out of control. Basically, any minute we are not having sex or eating food, we spend it on Warcraft. She's getting pretty good at micro. I'm seeing Force of Nature and Entangling roots used pretty often in combat. She's already a better player than my old partner Danny.

I would like to continue my discussion of the "Taking things for granted". It also ties in with the "emotionally cyclical PC upgrade world" that I wrote about before.

I just tried out Far Cry, some generic FPS based on a pretty sophisticated 3d engine, CryEngine. Of course, when I say "sophisticated", it's only in reference to what's available today. "Sophisticated" eight years ago was anything based on a 3d accelerator.

On a Radeon 9800 Pro, the graphics were quite stunning. Even my girlfriend couldn't help but sit beside me and enjoy the luscious detail in the tropical landscapes. The water, the sky, the immense viewable areas, running at 30fps+, it was all breathtaking. But then I think back on the many times I have had this very same feeling, but with 3d engines that are now outdated. Quake2, Morrowind, even Warcraft3... I remember how all these games gave me that "Breathtaking" feeling.

The problem with the "Breathtaking" feeling is that it short-lived. It takes only a week at most to get used to the new quality, after which is has no emotional meaning in the sense that it no longer can bring you any euphoric feelings. Basically, you feel "dead" about the issue. Any semi-hardcore gamer who buys 3d hardware on a semi-frequent basis can attest to this.

What is interesting is that graphics quality has already surpassed the "funcitonal barrier", that is, at the current stage, the quality is more than acceptable. We can make out clearly what is a tree, what is a person, what is a rock, with roughly the same acuity and perception with the latest Farcry engine and with the Doom software 3d engine.

So in a sense, improving graphics is not a very beneficial affair. You don't increase functionality at all (maybe a little with the higher resotluion), but you make everything more complicated and turn people into graphics snobs because they can no longer play on older 3d engines without cringing.

What about fps? Strangely, fps is one statistic that has remained fairly constant since the dawn of video games. Nintendo and Sega games mostly ran at a constant 60fps, even the ol' Mario Bros, or Ice Climber... and nowadays you should consider yourself lucky if you can even get a 3d engine to run at 60fps.

The fps is a different beast. It is difficult to notice any improvement past 60fps, which is already capable of reproducing high speed motion with a "Super smooth" effect. So in the fps case, there indeed is an upper limit where no more gains can be realized. Since nobody gives a crap about improving something that has already been maximized in the early 80's, they instead have allowed it to fall. Now 30fps is considered acceptable for the average 3D engine. Of course, as a fps snob, this really hurts, because I am much more sensitive to animation speed than image quality.

How does this tie in with anything else in the world? Well, people share the same attitudes towards graphics quality as they do with MONEY. MONEY is a dangerous thing to covet because there is no upper limit, and one can get easily hooked to the "Breathtaking" feeling of getting a higher salary, of making big bucks off a good investment. I am certainly NOT denying the importance of money. When it comes to buying food, a house, insurance, transporation, money is essential. But once you have delicious home cooked meals that cost $5 for 5 people, a 100sq ft. apartment, adequate health insurance to protect you from disaster, and a car that works... and enough leftover money to go to the zoo or the museum on weekends... money has already done all it has can in the functional department.

If you want to eat at that 5-star restraunt everyday, drive the most expensive Benz, wear a $10000 Rolex, or live in a penthouse, or simply want that ego currency over your friends that you make an extra zero in the salary figure, then you are strictly in "breathtaking-only-satisfaction" zone. It's exactly the same as the 3d graphics image quality. You're only making life more complicatd and turning yourself into a snob, just to enjoy that one week or a month of the "breathtaking feeling" of suddenly moving up a level in the income bracket.

However, if you stay at the same income bracket for any extended period of time, that "Breathtaking feeling" will evaporate. I don't need to be rich to know this. I already know.

What I am trying to say is this: for all that hard work and sweat you put into making that big bucks you think will release you from all your unhappiness, you only get emotional return for the dy/dx > 0. That means there must be some kind of change in your wealth situation in order for you to continue having that satisfied feel. In terms of happiness, who do you think is happier, a $34 million CEO whose salary hasn't changed for the last 5 years (and has to worry day in day out about the share price of his company) or a simple dude who just got promoted from junior programmer to project leader and had his salary doubled from $30,000 to $60,000? Exactly. The numbers don't really matter anymore, it's the rate in change.

However, going with the "Functional barrier" I was talking about, a person making a constant $30,000 is much more "happier" than a starving African, but in a different way... the $30,000 person may not be experiencing "euhporia", but at least he's not in fucking physical pain like the African. This is a case where simply comparison of numbers makes a huge difference, because we haven't crossed the Functional barrier yet.

Unfortunately, you can't keep going up indefinitely without making your life more complicated and devoting more and more of your time towards your work. When do you say to yourself... enough is enough? Probably never, since as someone who's aware of the absurdity of always wanting more, I still can't stop myself from buying new 3d accelerator cards, or new PC hardware. It's the passion of becoming better, wanting something new, that keeps us going in this loop of insanity.

At the same time, in our pursuit for money, we forget the other vectors in our life, like health, and spending time with loved ones... the common things that people neglect and sacrifice for the sake of wealth. In that sense, it is very simliar to the fps statistic in 3d games, you've pretty much maximized the relationship quality with your girlfriend/wife when you 1st met, so what the hell is the point of trying hard to keep it that way when you have opporutnties to increase your income to unprecented new levels? Unfortuantely, the correlation between these forgotten vectors (relationship with gf/wife, health, etc.) and your overall DAY TO DAY happiness average is VERY FUCKING STRONG. Unfortunately, we are either not aware of this or simply forget, and thus the quality of life spirals down as our wealth increases when we originally thought it should have been the other way around.

A recent survey of Japanese people asked this question: "where do the happiness people in Japan live?". Mainlanders unanimously voted "Okinawa". Okinawa people unamimously voted "Okinawa". What is Okinawa like? It's not rich or classy or sophisticated at all, it's just a simple touristy island. How can such a insignificant place house the happinest people? Becuase they are simple and do not have the same lofty goals as mainlanders. They enjoy the simple things, good weather, good food, and take frequent naps in the afternoon. I am not advocating this lifestyle to anybody, in fact given my North American programming I probably could not adapt to that kind of life, but it is just an INTERESTING thing to notice about people. Perhaps we could say, in some twisted way, that a lot of people are programmed to covet wealth to such a degree that they are programmed to be unhappy?

Ever since I set my up a computer for my girlfirend, we've gotten hooked on Warcraft 3. Wow, playing old maps like Legends, Lost Temple, and Battlegrounds... brought back sooo many memories of 4th year university, when Charlie, Danny and I would kick some serious butt on battle.net. It's kind of sad really, how we never play anymore, but that's reality.

My girlfriend's learning the Night Elves, I'm sticking with Humans. Here's a screenshot of our last game against 2 computers on Normal. We don't always have the best communication ("Hey, get the fuck over here NOW!") but we always end up winning.



My girlfriend's become more and more of a kickass person as time goes on. Sex partner, eating partner, Warcraft3 partner and a great cook all in the same person. You couldn't ask for more. Except for sex with all her sisters at the same time. That's still going to be my ultimate fantasy until I die.

In the wee hours of the morning, I have come to an epiphany. We have all heard the cliche "people take things for granted" hundreds of times in our life. It seems like a deceptively easy concept but quite frankly at the age of 24 I am still trying to grasp the delicate intricacies of this profound statement. You might wonder what has triggered this epiphany. The catalyst is no other than the Samsung Syncmaster 172X sitting on my table.

Wait a sec, you say, an stuipd LCD giving epiphanies? Bollocks! But please read a bit further, I promise you will not be disappointed.

Here's the thing: over the last 3 weeks in my blogger, I have explicitly expressed my dissatisfaction with this monitor from day one. I have tried to return to the store to no avail, when the digital DVI failed on me I tried to sell it on forumosa at a cheap price, when nobody bought it, I sent it to warranty in hopes of getting a new model. When I got back the exact same monitor, I went through all the hassle of creating a Yahoo auctions account so that I could sell it to the highest bidder.

Every day, before I went to bed, I would actually dream of the "ideal" LCD sitting on my desk. I would mentally torture myself with regret for not purchasing the "right" monitor the 1st time. The only thing that brought me relief from this was the idea that I could sell the monitor, and get a "better" one. Somehow, I just assumed that a "better" one was out there, even though I had no idea what it was, or who made it, but I felt so certain of one thing: it was NOT the 172X. From reading countless newsgroup reviews, I had a couple of LCD's in mind, namely the Viewsonic VP181s and the NEC 1880SX. But they didn't sell those at NOVA, the only good LCD they did sell was the super-expensive Eizo L567 which has been ranked as the "top performing 17" LCD on the planet, bar none".

And so, in a desperate attempt to end this unstoppable coveting, I just bought the damn Eizo and took it home. I plugged it in, the BEST 17" LCD IN THE WORLD, and as I said before, it was quite underwhelming. In fact, it didn't look all that differnet from the 172X, except it had a visible ghosting effect. I panicked and returned the unit as quickly as possible, since the ghosting was completely unacceptable to me.

Now, here's the most fucked up thing, I AM NOW TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH THE 172X. I'm not saying this as a way to forcefully comfort myself or something, it's the truth. Today was the 1st day in the last 3 weeks that I didn't look up one single piece of LCD information on the Internet, because I'm so happy I have a monitor that can display good colors (with Powerstrip and some clever shortcut mappings) and have minimal ghosting. However, for that to have happened, I had to purchase the best 17" LCD on the planet in order to bring PERSPECTIVE to my desires. Once I knew that "this is pretty much as good as it gets", all of a sudden my heart stopped longing for anything better.

But what's fucked up is that it's the SAME GODDAMN MONITOR as the one I despised for 3 weeks. It's the exact same physical object sitting on my desk, and yet my feelings towards it have completely changed from hate to love. So the question is: why didn't I just love the monitor from day one? Why did I have to torture myself believing that somewhere out there, something "Better" was waiting for me, and all I had to do was to pay more money to get it?

That's the whole point of this long-winded story: it's not the things we have per se that make us happy, it's the way we look at them. The problem with humans is that we're PROGRAMMED by Mother Nature to de-value anything that we already have and glorify anything we don't, even though there is little difference in the physical value of both objects. The Samsung 172X, from the very beginning, had the innate potential to satisfy me, the only thing that was stopping me from being satisfied was myself.

The exact same analogy can be applied to life in general. Everyone always seems to be dissatisfied with life, even though there may be nothing emperically "wrong" with it. They always seem to want a better job, a better home, a faster car. Once they get what they want, they may be content for a week, a month, a year, or even a decade, but it is only a matter of TIME before dissatisfaction creeps in again, and the vision of something "Better" dangles in front of our eyes, beckoning us, asking only for our money and time and effort.

But let me offer you this thought: What if, hypothetically, a omnipotent omniscient deity were to show you (in some unimaginable way) the infinite possibilities your life could be at this very moment, had you done things differently, and then TOLD you that where you are now is the best possibility out of all of them. Would that not bring you relief in some way, that all the nice things you have were the nicest things you could have gotten? I can't speak for anyone else, but if I was armed with the knowledge that I'm living best the life I could've lived, it iwould make it infinitely easier to accept the bad things and appreciate the good things.

In that sense, the knowledge that you are already living the "perfect" life (perfect in the sense that nothing better could have been achieved from the day you were born) and actually achieving your "ideal" life have EXACTLY the same value. Both will bring you the exact same feeling of satisfaction that you crave. Materially and cost-wise they may be entirely different, but in terms of emotional reward they are EXACTLY THE SAME. And that is quite something, because it totally defies the common thought that the more you have, the happier you are.

Thus, from my point of view, people who are easily satsified and lead simple, humbles lives are BLESSED, those who need to reach the top of every mountain and achieve everything, are CURSED. Because while both people will potentially expereince the exactly same feelings of satisfaction, the one who is hard to satisfy needs to work a 100 trimes harder and has to sacrifice 100% more to achieve the same satisfcation. In other words, they both achieve the same result (X amount of satisfaction), but one needs to do a hell of a lot more work to get there.

Which would you rather be?

I'd like to share with everyone my "Xanga Favorites" list, or should I say, the "Xanga Stalk List". I've browsed through a lot of Xanga pages but only a select few strangers make it to my favorites page.

By default, I always bookmark xanga pages of people I've actually met in real life, even if the site sucks (ie never updated), so I'll exclude that from this list.

By reverse order ranking:

Males

#3. Alfatrion's Domain (http://www.alfatrion.com/main/index2.php)

Derrick's friend Farhan. Never met the guy, but he has a unique design and he writes with good frequency about his daily life. Seems like a really decent guy. Strongly suspect a secret crush on pk_girlo, due to the inordinate amounts of "hey, don't forget me" comments left on her site. Wish he would leave out that background MP3 track though, makes me have to click the browser's "stop" button one too many times.

#2 bakchoi (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=bakchoi)

Close runner up to #1. Sarcastic, rude, and boorish. Has a lot of interesting anecdotes of his alcoholic life in HK, mostly thanks to his crazy-ass father. I'm a little disturbed by his fascination with fecal matter though. Even if it's said in a light tone, it's gross and distrubing. Very bad-ass and I applaud him for having the acumen and courage to speak out against the "Cecilia Fad". I agree with him wholeheartedly.

#1 azn_anonymous (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=azn_anonymous)

The King of all Xanga Pages. If this guy's site went down, it would leave a gaping hole in my daily xanga routine, because nearly 50% of my Xanga time is on this bad-ass's site. His vocabulary is vicious, his expression eloquent, and his content controversial. His loyal fan-base, who sucks his dick with endless "Nice post" comments, are a testament to this guy's writing ability. If I could only read one Xanga page for the rest of my life, this guy would be my first pick.

Females:

#3 pk_girlo (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=pk_girLo)

The Damsel in Distress. Demure and emperically beautiful, therefore stalked by many. Although her posts are not very interesting (and also getting very cryptic), the sheer number of comments on each insignifcant post is very fascinating. Through her xanga, we learn how men can be reduced to ape-like intelligence in the presence of beautiful woman. It's almost like a social experiment, really.

#2. chynadoll (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=chynadoll18)

If there's anyone who should be afraid of being stalked by me in real life, it's probably chynadoll18. If I ever go back to Toronto and see her on the street, I'd probably follow her for a good 10 minutes just to get a good look as to what she looks like to real life. She seems rather neurotic but that only adds to the believability, and thus the attractiveness. Unfortunately I'm not really intersted in what she has to say anymore because it's all about her career and school life, instead of what she did with her boyfriend last night.

#1 TeddyP (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=TeddyP)


I have no idea who this person is, but she probably has the most interesting posts of all the girls' xanga sites I've seen. Reflective and deceptively mind-provoking, she writes in a feminine hybrid of proper English and Chinese-multilated-English, which only adds to her uniqueness. She's the kind of girl that given the choice, I'd want to talk to instead of sleep with. Also, I have to give her gratitude points for being the ONLY person to ever add my dummy xanga site to her favorites. Finally, since she lives in Taiwan, all the banal things she writes about in her daily life is automatically doubled in terms of my interest level.

By the way, 3 of the 6 people in the above list are Capicorns (50%). Of my entire list of 15 Xanga pages, 5 of them are Capicorns (33%). I don't know how to explain this imbalance except for:

1. I prefer pages written by Capicorns
2. There are too many Capicorns in this world because people like to fuck in spring
3. It's all just a random stasticail coincidence

I wonder there are similar zodiac imbalances in other people's xanga stalk list...

WARNING! IF YOU ARE EASILY DISTRBUED BY VIOLENT IMAGES PLEASE DO NOT READ BELOW THIS LINE
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(that should be enough even for privileged 1600x1200 users)


I download this movie off the net pretty much out of curiosity. Just to let you know (for those who don't me too well), I don't believe in any kind of God or deity even though I may refer to a "God" in some of my posts.

Shinobu and I were real eager to watch this movie. I mean, it's about Christ and it's generated so much controversy and hoopola? Do you know what happend? Shinobu fell asleep after the first 20 minutes or so, and I started using the other computer to look up information on LCD's. It was BORING. Everyone talking in some ancient Latin language, all these uninteresting characters saying shit left and right... B-O-R-I-N-G. I have more fun tweaking the RGB color balance on the LCD's.

Then a couple of days passed, then I saw the "Passion of the Jew" South Park episode, which got me intrigued again... cuz I never got to the gruesome parts, so I fire up Media Player and scan to the middle.

This is what I saw:





This is only rated R? Please, cut the bullshit. This is a prime example of how Americans are so fucked up when it comes to "inappropriateness balancing" with violence & sex. Double penetration and fist fucking are WAY easier on the eyes than seeing a dude getting whipped with a thorn whip 50 times and seeing blood sprayed all over the place. It's disturbing to anyone but the most hardcore sadist. I could feel my stomach turning inside out 5 minutes into the scene. Of course, since humans are instinctively attracted to violence, I couldn't stop watching. My thoughts weren't on the line of "wow, look at christ and how noble he was for getting tortured for us and shit" but more like "I wonder how long it will take for those wounds to heal"... "man, if he doesn't apply some anti-bacterial cream on those wounds, it's gonna infect pretty bad".. and "hmm... will that right eye get healed? it seemed to have gotten hit badly". Literally, I took a doctor's perspective on the situation... "oh there's another big gash, another 30 minutes of surgery for me"... then "oh now you're going for the front too? wow, this is going to be a LOT of reconstructive work here"... and then "oh fuck it you've pretty much just wasted the guy, just killl him." Basically, it was all about the wounds and flesh and violence, because that was the only element that had impact in the movie.

To most non-believers who don't give a shit about the Bible, this movie is nothing more than a sadist's dream come true. The core of the movie IS the violence. I'm sure Christians will come up to me and tell me and say how sad I am, or how misinformed I am, but here's the truth: if you take away the violence, or censor it, the movie becomes much more watcheable, but at the same time MEDIOCRE. In other words, the movie NEEDS the violence in order to to generate attention. It's cheap and just becuase it's a recollection of some historical event doesn't give it a license to do whatever the hell it pleases.

By the way, WHY didn't those wounds infect? I expected to see white pus scattered around those wounds on the following day of christ's torture, but still all red. Should've put some white pus...to make it even more realistic. Anyhow, I think violence is very very stimulating, you don't need it to be an "Artistic" rendition of Christ to have impact... it can be anything as simple as explicitly filiming someone taking a knife and slitting another person 100 times with precision and delicacy. It will have the same emotional impact as The Passion and yet both are in the same league: it's just violence.

By the way, if you haven't seen the Christ, and you were distrubed by the above images, I apologize, but it just goes to prove my point. You'll remember this blog for the next week or so I'm sure, but is it because my blog was good in terms of content or was is just a cheap splaying of grotesque pictures? Exactly. The fact that there is even an entry called "The Passion" in this blogger space, the fact that there is a whole South Park Episode dedicated to "The Passion" is all because of the cheap, grotesque violence. It will win a spot in your selective memory on that merit alone.

Installed the new 512Mb DDR nervously. Heard nightmare stories about how mixing various brands and types of DDR RAM led to system instability. Had a hard time inserting the ram because the stupid Radeon card is so long it blocks the RAM slots.

System still boots up, sigh of relief. See 780,000K memory available, pretty elated. Wow, the computer NEVER swaps now, even after games.

Try playing Warcraft III... 2 minutes in, computer freezes cold. Reboot, try it again. 2 minutes in... computer freezes cold. Oh fuck. Like I thought. Fortunately, I knew this was coming... go into BIOS, lower the FSB speed from 166Mhz to 133Mhz, everything becomes rock solid. Even though PC2700 RAM is rated for 166Mhz, it won't run at that speed with a faster memory module alongside it.

Weird. But who the fuck cares. Like I really notice that 3-4% difference anyways.

Today, I bought the Eizo L567 17" LCD from Taipei NOVA. It was on display with a DVI connection. It really did look perfect. Warm, solid, deep colors, wide viewing angles, and no discernible ghosting according to the mouse pointer and some 3D Pinball. I opened tons of windows, browsers, and it just looked perfect. It also had adjustable color controls even with DVI. Thinking it would be the messiah of all my LCD woes (it has been rated as the top 17" LCD on this planet), I gleefully forked over 20,000NT (even though the previous 172X has not been sold yet), and took the SAMPLE model home. I told myself, I don't want any risks, and if the display looks that pretty here, with no dead pixels, I'll just buy that one.

I plugged it in, and what did I get? That same, overexposed, washed out look as my Samsung 172. It wasn't as blue as the samsung, but it didn't have that same warm , balanced look I saw in the store. I sort of panic, but after a few adjustments in the menus (there's almost every adjustment you can think of... saturation, hue, even gamma correction is adjustable), I reached a very nice picture. I can't say it was that much better than the 172X.

Now, here's where my heart fucking exploded. I fire up Pro Evolution Soccer (the only game I play with any kind of frequency nowadays), and tried a quick match. WHAT'S WITH THE FUCKING GHOSTING!?!?! Holy shit, when players move around the field, it really looks like there's some kind of motion blur effect going on. It was so horrible I couldn't even play past 5 minutes without squinting my eyes and trying to reorient myself. I thought the 172X was bullshitting on that 12ms response time, but apparently there is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over a 35ms response time figure, even though 35ms is a constant figure for S-IPS panels.

That's when I started to panic. Over 30,000NT down the hole and two unsatisfactory LCD's sitting on my table. Am I going to sell this unit too on Auctions? Fuck fuck fuck... then I thought, maybe since it's only been an hour from the purchase and I bought the sample model, I could refund it. After pleading with the store for 10 minutes, they said fine... god am I every lucky. It took me 30 minutes to pack the goddamn thing up because unlike the Samsung there's so much goddamn packaging that came with the monitor. I took it back, and as a "I'm sorry" token I bought a 512MB DDR400 stick from them even though it was not at a good price (3600NT).

You know what. Looking at my 172X with custom adjusted color settings via PowerStrip, it's pretty fucking nice. In fact, aside from the wide viewing angles, the difference in color reproduction from the Eizo L567 and the Samusng is pretty insignificant. Even though the Eizo uses the most expensive S-IPS panel and is ranked #1 in the world (even by Germans) for color reproductions, you'd have to use some scientific instruments to pick it out. I certainly couldn't appreciate any difference despite my super picky and finicky eyes. Also, I originally thought that the Cleartype blue color bleeding on the character ] with the Tahoma 8pt font was due to improper sRGB calibration of the 172X, it turns out the Eizo had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. So in the end, in terms of color reproduction, I COULD SEE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 172X AND THE EIZO. However, in terms of ghosting/response time, IT WAS A WORLD OF A DIFFERENCE.

Do you know what's mind-blowing? That the 2 year old budget model 151S beats both the Eizo and the 172X in terms of a "Good picture". It may not blast you away with super bright images but the colors look damn good with everything (Pro Evolution Soccer in particular looks stellar ONLY on the 151S), and it has that super fast response time of TN+Film matrices. Yes indeeed, the 151S is some sort of strange "super LCD" in the sense that it is the ONLY LCD that satisfies my eyes.

But now I have learned my lesson (or have I?) and I will no longer pursue this meanignless quest for the perfect LCD because as far as I'm concerned: IT DOESN'T EXIST.

Since putting up the 172X up for sale I have done some extensive research on LCD's. The best information you'll find are newsgroup posts from Europeans (russians and germans in particular). Americans tend to be completely misinformed when it comes to evaluating LCD's. Also, American web sites tend to be extremely dry when it comes to distinguishing between various panel types.

Here are my findings:

1. Don't read anything on that stupid spec sheet past the screen size and whether or not it supports DVI. Contrast ratio (x:1), pitch (x mm), brightness (x cd/m&^2), even response time (x ms) specs are all pretty much useless in terms of describing the image quality. Most people will set their brightness level to 100cd/m^2 at home, so anything past that is useless. Contrast ratios are equally useless because of the various ways it can be measured. Max displayable colors is also useless becuse LCD manufacturers use "dithering" techniques to artficially simulate colors than the panel cannot naturally reproduce. Response time specs are the worst because many panels have variable response times depending on what color is changing to what.

2. First determine what type of panel you want. The panel type has the greatest influence on the picture quality, yet ironically it also the most often omitted specification on product sheets (most likely a tactic to create customer confusion). Currently on the market, there are only the following panel types:

a) TN+Film: Oldest, with fast response time but relatively poor color reproduction and a poor viewing angle. Used more often in smaller displays (15") because of the viewing angle problem. Usually considered the "gamer's LCD" because response times can theoretically be as high as 12ms, however it varies depending on what color is changing to what. Used by almost every LCD manufacturer in their lower end models. Some TN+Film models like the 172X are marketed as a high end, but from first-hand viewing experience there is NO discernible difference in terms of response with a two year old 151S TN+Film. Response time, while fast, still does not approach CRT quality as there is sometimes a pronounced "bolding" effect when scrolling 2D images.

b) MVA/PVA: Probably the most common type due to Samsung's popularity. MVA is Fujitsu's version and PVA is Samsung's. Even though Samsung will tell you theirs is better, the difference is negligable. Wide viewing angles, good color reproduction, but a "volatile" response time similar to TN+Film. Ghosting on MVA/PVA panels is often a problem of which the severity is very difficult to ascertain without actually putting the panel through a real world test. Like TN+Film, it is also considered "budget" but used far more often in larger (17"+) displays because of the good viewing angles.

c) IPS/S-IPS. Hitachi's Properitary S-IPS is pretty much equivalent to the Trinitron back in the CRT days. The best color reproduction, wide viewing angles, a CONSTANT response time, which although can be as high as 25 to 30ms, in real world situations it will outperform 25ms MVA/PVA panels. Apple's 23" Cinema Display uses the S-IPS panel so that in itself should be a great indicator of its quality. S-IPS color reproduction is in a class of it's own, (has a wider color gamut, ie can reproduce more individual colors faithfully) and thus tends to be used more often on displays designed for graphic artists. Most expensive of the 3 types, also the most difficult to make (potentially a higher % of dead pixels?) S-IPS panels are only manufcatured by Hitachi, IBM, NEC-Mitsubishi, and LG-Phillips, but sold under a variety of names.

A list of current LCD models and their associated panel types can be found on this site:

http://www.axofiber.org.ru/inside/monitor_lcd_panels.php

As expected, this site is not American, but Russian, as only Europeans tend to know what they are talking about.

As loyal readers may know about my dissatisfaction with the Samsung 172X, I've decided to sell it on Yahoo Auctions (link here).

Somehow, buyer behavior in Taiwan seems to be different from in Japan.

Initially, I put the thing up for 14,000, buy price 17500, over 5 days. On the 2nd day, one guy bid the opening price, and then nothing happened for the next while. Then some guy asks the question (in the Q&A section) "what's your lowest price?", which I thought was strange, I mean the lowest price I'm willing to sell it at is 14,000, it's written on the goddamn auction listing. So I reply "14000", at whcih point, the whole auction just blew up. Some guy left his e-mail in the comment box asking whether he could buy it right away, I told him no and to wait for the bidding to end. Then some other guy posted his number on there saying that he wants to meet at Taipei Main Station immediately. Then (this really pissed me off), some guy actually bid the Buy Price, closed the whole auction down, which got me real excited (cuz I would only lose 400NT from the initial purchase). But when I called him, this motherfucker said he's only willing to buy it at my "lowest price": 14,000.

Umm, I have a question for you Taiwanese folks...

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF AN AUCTION IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO NEGOTIATE BACK TO THE ORIGINAL PRICE?

That's so goddamn stupid. People are not using Yahoo Auctions like they're supposed to. There's so much crooked behavior on these sites that it literally blows my mind just how fucked up this country is. I put the thing back up at 15,500, immediate buy at 17,000, hopefully that will scare these impulsive twitchy people off.

Please download South Park 8x02 Episode "Up the Down Steriod"

I swear to god I haven't laughed this hard for the last decade.

I've been watching a lot of soccer lately, mostly because it's one of the few sports I can enjoy with ENGLISH commentary in Taiwan (Chinese commentators fucking hurt my brain with their sub-amateur dialogue) . Now, if anyone's been following the UEFA Champions League recently, you'd know that the world of soccer has been pretty much been turned upside down now. 4 of the biggest teams: Arsenal, Real Madrid, Manchester United and AC Milan are now out of the semis, defeated by lesser teams in unbelievable comebacks.

In NBA terms, that's like the Lakers, Spurs and Kings and Mavs all getting kicked out of the playoffs by the first or second round. Doesn't sound right does it? Even if there is a crazy ass first or second round upset, the chance that all 4 teams get knocked out is less than 0.0000001%. It will never happen. Every year the East loses to the West. But if the NBA was like soccer, the Nets would probalby have a championship trophy by now.

So what the fuck is wrong with soccer? Is it because the teams are more balanced than the NBA, thus making it easier for weaker teams to beat stronger ones? I think not. Real Madrid for instance, is a fucking all-star team: Ronaldo, Raul, Beckham, Zidane all stacked together in one team, and yet they still lost to sorry-ass AS Monaco. I'm not very familar with AS Monaco, but it has shitty ratings in Winning Eleven 7. How the HELL could they have lost to a team like that? Arsenal with famous strikers Henry and Bergkamp and great midfileders like Viera and Pires, lost to fucking Chelsea, which also has shitty ratings in WE7.

The only possible explanation is that soccer is a much more volatile sport where luck is a much greater factor than basketball. I think I told this to Matt like 2 or 3 years ago, not really sure he believed me. But anyways, in basketball, scoring is done very often and even if you have an unlucky stretch where the ball just doesn't seem to fall, as long as you play better than the other team you will come out on top. It's basically the the Law of Large Numbers, if a team shoots 70 times is it really possible that you got unlucky on all of them? Things will average out.

In soccer, the correlation between playing better and winning the scoreline is much weaker. The problem mostly lies in the fact that a team on average will only get like 10 shot attempts per game, and when they do, it seems too easy to blow it and miss. I watched quite a few Real Madrid games and although they really do have a good offensive flow, I never got the feeling that they could "score at will". Instead, a lot of the scoring relied on things that seemed to be out of their control: a lucky bounce, a defender slipping and losing his marker... etc. Even if Zidane does a 360 spin, beats his defender, sets up a beautiful pass to Beckham, who lobs it perfectly for Ronaldo... if anything goes just slightly wrong, all of that wonderful skilled play goes to naught. Basically, no matter how good your offense is, you still need a lot of luck to score, and that's the big problem with soccer.

I mean, I hear so often in the post-game commentary for soccer games... "the way team X played, they deserved to win", or "team Y could nick a goal now, but they wouldn't deserve it". fuck, it's almost like the scoreline is such a poor reflection of the performance of each team that it has to be mentioned on the side who should actually be winning. Never hear that in bball. Well, maybe that do say it occasionally but certainly never on the same frequency as soccer. Just the PRESENCE of such commentary is a strong indicator that soccer doesn't always reward the better team... it just rewards randomly with an inadequate bias for skill differences.

My current bathroom book (reading material that keeps me company when I take a dump) is "The Dilbert Principle" by Scott Adams. I never really got into Dilbert but reading this book I sort of regret it, becuase it's so FUCKING hilarious! Some of it seems a little contrived, especially the "personal anecdotes" where nobody swears and everybody speaks correct english, but it's still a blast nonetheless.

You know what's weird? That even though I've never actually worked in a large bureaucratic multi-national company long enough to personally experience any of the "workplace insanities" that Adams colorfully presents in his book, I can still easily picture all that ridiculous shit going on in the office. I caught this post the other day from one of my xanga favorites and it didn't surprise me one bit. That is picture perfect Dilbert, brought to real life on xanga.

What is extremely interesting is that while everybody knows how dumbass the corporate system is, nobody can change it. It seems to be a recurring pattern with many systems in this world. Things start out simple and everything makes sense, but as time passes and the size/complexity of the system increases (usually exponetially), gradually we lose sight of the big picture and everything gets totally fucked up.

It's kinda like those cables behind your computer desk. When you first hook up the computer, everything seems simple, a couple of power cables, monitor/keyboard/mouse... it's nice and clean. But over 2 years, as you add and remove hardware, what happens? That "simple and clean" wiring somehow turns into a godforsaken tangled mess behind your back. It's unbelievable how tangled certain wires can get, even though it seems like you'ved never touched them, almost as if it tangled itself behind your back. That's similar to how so many things in this world seem to get overly complicated without us even noticing.

Many moons ago, companies used to focus on making good products and selling them honestly to consumers. Companies which made good stuff prospered, companies which made crappy shit closed down. Simple, and it makes sense too! Then the stock market was invented, which was good for awhile, but unfortunately at the same time created the need to "keep shareholders happy" . Over time, this became more and more important, which meant that gradually, meeting quarterly profit expecations became the #1 priority for any company. What ever happened to "make a good product and you will prosper?". Long gone. The system has somehow evolved into "just make those numbers work, even if it means fucking your customers over, or fucking your own employees over, or cheating your accounting books, or using legal loopholes". Does any of this make sense? From a humane perspective, absolutely not.



Quick example: undergraduate universities. Originally designed as a place for higher education for the sake of higher education. Over time: mutiltated into a overly competitive stepping stone for employment, where even the slightest mistake could mean the difference between a career and unemployment. Absurd side effects: A student whining and screaming to a professor because he lost half a mark on his test due what he thinks is a marking error. Is this half a mark, a simple numerical record for a single person in a world filled of billions of people, millions of which are starving, worth so much hoopola? Not if the university was still a place for higher education for the sake of higher education.

Economies, politics, medicare, software programs, education, large multinational corporations... any system that encompasses a large number of entities and undergoes constant change seems to eventually reach a absurd state where, if we take a deep breath and look at it once again with a fresh perspective, nothing makes sense anymore. At the same time, it seems impossible to change the system because of it overly complex nature and it's seemingly infinite connections to outside entities.

For instance, take that dude Alan Greenspan. I read magazines on how he recommended to increase interest rates by like 0.05% and how that saved the economy or some shit like that. WTF!?!? 0.05%? I mean really, how "tangled" must the economy be to be so sensitive such a small change? The truth is, the economy is so fucking complex nowadays, it only justifies the strange fact that Greenspan looks like an alien, because it takes an alien to truly understand the economy nowadays.

Even something like a souvenir store selling pretentiously attractive goods to customers who are worried that their friends will abandon them if they don't bring them a gift, makes no sense to me. Whatever happened to "giving friends something they actually WANT"? Replaced, over time, by savvy businessmen and marketers, by "give friends overpriced immacuately-packaged garbage (ie anything that's sold in a souvenir store)". (if you didn't know already, I have a serious beef against posh souvenir stores. It's meaningless over-excessive retailing at its finest)

No matter how you look at it... so many common things in our world don't make sense anymore. It's too easy to get caught inside and be thrown around like ragdoll by those long ravaged by the system. And yet at the same time, there's no way to avoid it. Am I going to evade working in a large company for the rest of my life just to avoid senseless company politics? I could try... but perhaps the only choice for a human being nowadays is to simply accept absurdity as a natural result of any long-standing system.

After shipping the Samsung 17" off for repair, and temporarily reverting back to the 15" 151S, I have come to dreadful conclusion:

I shouldn't have bought the 17" LCD

My girlfriend was right. There's something about the 17" that causes eye fatigue. On first sight, everything about it seems better. The brightness, the clarity, the sharpness. But after looking at it for 20 minutes, the eyes get tired real quick. It may also be that the same 10pt fonts are way smaller at 1280x1024, despite the greater viewing area.

I set my contrast and brightness to extremely low settings... like 30/10... but it doens't matter. Something about it makes it hard to stare at for long periods of time.

The 15" is inexplicably more "stareable" at. I can look at small fonts for extensive periods of time without eye fatigue.

Unless the 172X comes back as a totally different screen, I'm going to try to sell this cursed unit, one way or another. It is nothing more than a marketing-driven product... super bright images and super sharp clarity at the expense of viewing comfort. Of course, when decisions are made on displays they are usually made within 10 minutes of casual investgiation under harsh lighting conditions.

Well, Shinobu's family has left, it was a pretty sad affair for my girlfriend, but I guess life is back to "normal" once more.

Do you know that the very first thing I do in the morning is turn on my computer? I don't shower, or brush my teeth, or take a shit or piss (unless I really have to), or put on my contacts, or do any yoga exercises, or eat breakfast, or do anything that normal people usually do when they wake up. I absolutely, positively, must use the computer for 5 minutes blog surfing + checking mail before the day can begin. Like a cigarette addict getting a kick out of his cigarette break, I get a kick out of sitting in front of a PC.

I feel so goddamn comfortable in front of my computer. It can get depressing using it all the time, and sometimes my body feels like it's decaying from the lack of muscular movement, but all it takes is 30 minutes of not being at the computer and my addiction is all charged up again.

It is painfully obvious to me that I suffer from a mental addiction. The question though, is whether my life would be more fulfilling without a computer. I believe it would. For one thing, I'd get a heck of a lot more physical exercise, which has been a prerequisite for all living beings since the dawn of evolution. I'd also be in a healthier mental state. I often feel that my brain turns into mush sitting so long in front of a computer... I start clicking randomly, dragging windows around, opening and closing IE browsers... like a hypnotized person.

How can I stop this?

One way I think is to sell this goddamn 17" LCD of mine and go back to a regular 15" LCD. Honestly, everything got 10 times worse once I got this LCD. It's so goddamn big it's almost like a sin to be looking at it. By the way, doing a A/B comparison with my old Samsung 151S, this newer model is like twice as sharp. I thought my old LCD was razor sharp when I first got it, but this one is even sharper. However, I have to say that it also seems to cause twice as much eye fatigue. Is this normal? I wonder...

Today I had lunch with Shinobu's family. While I will tell anybody in person that it was enjoyable, deep down inside it wasn't the most scintillating event in recent history.

Let me share a secret with you: Being around people I don't know very well makes me TIRED. To the point where I can't wait to go home and enjoy time alone with my computer and DVI-crippled LCD (I'll get that fixed next week hopefully)

It's not that I have any particular beef with Shinobu's family. I think they're a hilarious bunch. They're not pretentious at all, all they want to do is eat good food and drink lots of beer and wine. I guess have this problem with any social setting in general.

The problem is this: the more people you add to a dinner table, the smaller the range of conversable topics. At least that's how I see it. It's a lot easier to pick a topic that interests 1 particular person than to pick a topic that would interest 10. People know this subconciously, so whenever they say something, they must make it "universally acceptable". It's difficult, tiring, and worst of all the topic itself is usually really boring.

Off the top of my head, here are the topics that I would really have liked to discussed:

1. Why Rino still doesn't have a boyfriend and whether she feels embarassed still being a virgin
2. Why Yuri still doesn't have a boyfriend and whether she feels embarassed still being a virgin
3. Are Yuri and Rino jealous of their sister's sex life
4. Are Yuri and Rino jealous of their sister's cup size
5. Which sister the father thinks is the prettiest
6. Which sister the mother thinks is the prettiest
7. How do Rino and Yuri feel about doing a foursome?
8. Does Shinobu's dad feel lonely?
9. Does Shinobu's mom feel lonely?
10. Does Shinobu's dad approve of me?
11. Does Shinobu's mom approve of me?
12. Are they pissed off that they have to live in a hotel?
13. Is Shinobu's mom worried that her Yuri or Rino might never have a boyfriend?

Okay, so obviously, I'm a bit obsessed with sex related topics. But you must agree any of the above is FAR more interesting than hearing the following non-stop:

1. "kore ha oishii!" (this is delicious)
2. "kore ha nan tte iu?"(what is this called?)
3. "kore wo tabe nasai" (please eat this)

Occasionally, you'll get a deeper discussion about the origins of a particular food.

I actually tried my best to oblige and be banal myself, but I realize I really suck at it, and probably look really stupid trying. For instance, I asked Shinobu's dad what he thought of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. He said "It was interesting, first time I saw it". Awkward silence. Then "kore wo tabe nasai".

Shinobu's entire family just arrived in Taiwan today. I thought like most tourists they couldn't wait to see the sights and famous places in Taipei. Instead, all they did is buy loads of beer and wine and fruit, and sit around the living room eating and drinking. We did walk around Shi-da for awhile, but for the most part it was just eating and drinking, just like they were at home.

I've just discovered an awesome trick to calibrate displays without the use of expensive colormeters. It uses a tool that most people have nowadays: the digital camera. Turn off all the lights, load a white image in your display, set the camera's white balance to "cloudy" (usually that's approximately 5800K, the closest you can get to 6500K), and take a picture with the lens right on top of the monitor.

Load up the JPG on your computer. Most displays are so poorly calibrated out of the box, you won't even need to use a color dropper tool to find out that it's not gray. More likely than not, it'll be as blue as the LCD TV's in the Park Hyatt Tokyo:



Notice how the LCD TV they are watching is totally blue. Even the black space where the subtitles are is blue.

Why? Movies are always shot with a 6500K reference white point. Therefore anything that emits light that is not at 6500K will show up as a color instead of gray, like this sorry-ass LCD in "Lost in Translation". The digital camera can be used in a similiar vein, just make sure that the white balance is not set to AUTO. That way, it won't be deceived like the human eye, which can normalize itself readily to a wide range of color temperatures.

Don't forget to check the low end too. Most displays are usually more blue on the low end of the grayscale. That means white will be 7500K but near-black will be at 10000K. Since most displays only allow adjustment of the RGB gain, there's no way to fix this except to use the individual RGB "brightness" and "contrast" settings in the video card's control panel. This will adjust the LUT to compensate for the poor grayscale tracking.

Oh wait, who am I talking to, I'm probably the only 24 year old on this fucking planet who actually cares about color calibration. But I'm sure everyone out there subliminally appreciates a well balance, cinematic picture. I mean you go to a decent cinema and the color is always so right... never too blue, never too yellow, it just looks RIGHT. It's just that I'm the very few people on this planet who bother to investgate why and who shakes his head in disbelief to see 40-50 LCD panels scattered in a computer megastore all miscalibrated to a neon blue 10,000K.

Here's a pic of us at our new place, in case anyone was still wondering... Kinda messy but that's pretty much our equilibrium point. I'm sure most people's equilibrium points are pretty bad....