Month: January 2010

  • How Should You Stay Warm?

    You Should Stay Warm by Building a Fire
    You are an independent, self starting type of person. You are quick to act and make decisions.
    You wouldn’t just sit around and be cold… you’d make sure and do something about it.

    You are a natural leader. You like to be around other people, and you usually end up directing things.
    You are usually fearless. And when you are afraid, you try to confront your fears. You aren’t about to be intimidated by a bit of fire.


    What I’m listening to this week…

    1) The /Filmcast – after dark – episode 83
    2) Epica – design your universe
    3) Flight Of The Conchords – i told you i was freaky
    4) Jet – shaka rock
    5) Matt & Kim – grand
    6) Meg & Dia – here, here and here

  • After much procrastination, I finally upgraded my Blackberry Storm 9530 to the 5.0 Operating System. This essentially makes my Storm into a Storm 2, except without the wi-fi and the surepress 2.0. The reason for the delay on my part is because I really wasn’t looking forward to setting up my customizations and apps for my phone once again, plus there’s always the chance that I’m going to lose my e-mail, text messages, contact list, and calendar data in the process of the upgrade (as reported by some users). Well, after installing a new OS to my PC, I decided why not go ahead and install the new OS to my phone.

    First thing I did was use the backup data option on the Blackberry Desktop Manager, for the “just in case” situation. Then I went ahead and began the process of the upgrade, which I believe took about 30 minutes to do. After it was done upgrading, the first thing I noticed was that my data stayed! E-mail, text messages, contact list, calendar data, and even most of my currently installed apps were not deleted (Blackberry messenger messages were erased though). There were some apps that needed to be reinstalled (like Facebook), but to be fair the upgrade software did have a short list of apps warning of their uninstall during the process. The only thing I needed to do afterward with the apps that did stay where they were, was to reinstate my username/e-mail, passwords, etc… to them; as if I just installed them on my phone for the first time. Some of the settings stayed though, which is a nice plus. I did have to re-customize some of my icons to my home screen, as well as put up my wallpaper again, but that’s not a big deal at all. I got to give R.I.M. a great job on making the upgrade nice and easy, with no hassle.

    The 5.0 O.S. for the Storm may at first glance seem like there’s no real difference, but the truth of the matter is that while the changes look and feel subtle, there IS a difference. I read user reports saying how the Storm feels like a new phone after the upgrade, and I’ve got to admit that I too had that feeling. There’s a certain subtle aesthetic change to the GUI, that it looks better than before. The main major not-subtle improvements that I noticed are the media player (video, music, photos) and the SMS/MMS format, which I thought were changed for the better. It also added a proper file manager function to the list of default apps, which is a very welcome surprise. The overall speed of the phone also feels faster than before, and it’s probably because the memory management for the applications works better. For some cheap thrill, I also do like the “bounce” that the screens and menus makes whenever I “slide” things. Things are just a little bit more streamlined that it’s a significant improvement overall.

    You hear and read a lot of crap about the Blackberry Storm, but I honestly think that it’s a great touch screen phone. If you argue about the amount of apps that the phone has, sure I concede to that and admit that the iPhone and Droid is where you should go for the sheer number of apps. I understand that the majority of users just cannot seem to adapt to the “surepress” (*click*) screen over the traditional touch screen, and that’s the main hurdle to liking the Storm. For those of us who can adapt to the surepress and agree with it’s philosophy of “separating navigation with confirmation,” then the Blackberry Storm really is the touch screen phone for us. Now with the 5.0 O.S. the Storm is even better.

  • Feeling lazy to blog today…
    here let me just post some of my Facebook / Twitter status updates…

    - This whole Team Conan vs Team Leno thing is stupid. Picking a side between the two is unproductive. NBC is lame for screwing things up.

    - Rebooting the SpiderMan films back to high school… Is that Sony’s way of doing their own “Twilight” movies except with Peter Parker?

    - Wow, is this THE Transformers game we old school fans have been waiting for? – http://bit.ly/6P6zdM

    - WTF?! Blue Screen Of Death? I haven’t seen that happen to me in YEARS (literally), and it happens now? On Windows 7 no less. WTF indeed.

    - because of Michael Jackson, I can’t use the phrase “This Is It,” without repeating it several times – http://tinyurl.com/lkr66u

    - saw “Chris Rock : Kill The Messenger.” Haven’t seen his stand up for a long time. This guy’s still got it. Hella funny. Hilarious!

    - “Elmo had four ducks. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Four birds of a feather. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack…..” <- song stuck in my head ^_^ LOL

    - Westboro Baptist church’s Lady Gaga parody song – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/05/fred-phelps-lady-gaga-par_n_412080.html – @_@

    - Warner Bros makes Netflix delay new movie releases by 4 weeks. Meh. All about “instant watch” anyways – http://bit.ly/6FFyGC

    - Fascinating read about what could have been the Disneyland Resort in California – http://yesterland.com/westcot2.html

  • How Much Structure Do You Need?

    You Need Some Structure in Your Life
    You’re the type of person who makes a plan but doesn’t necessarily stick to it.
    You like to have things roughly organized. However, you always are open to new experiences and change.

    You don’t like too much chaos, but you also don’t like to be stuck in a rut. You like to strike a happy medium.
    Whenever things get too routine you like to shake it up a little, even if it means stepping outside of your comfort zone.



    What I’m listening to this week…

    1) This Week In Tech : 230 – nerd bling
    2) Katharine McPhee – unbroken
    3) Cobra Starship – hot mess
    4) Dashboard Confessional – alter the ending
    5) Vampire Weekend – contra
    6) Meg & Dia – something real

  • I suppose being that I’m a movie guy and all, I probably should go ahead and post a list featuring what was my top movies of the past decade that was the 2000s. Going back through the list of movies I’ve seen this past decade, the second half of the decade, when I was the most active in watching movies definitely stood out as the best years for me. However, surprisingly enough, the top two movies came from the first half of the decade, and in part it’s because I had to consider the grades I gave the movies as well as which ones were true favorites of mine. Only two movies got “A+”s from me in the 2000s, so they automatically got the top spots (too bad they were before my blog, so no reviews in xanga from me). I’ve also noticed that 2003 seemed to be the most lackluster year in movies this past decade, which didn’t hold as many stand outs for me as other years. Overall, I thought this past decade was a sort of an unusually exceptional decade in movies, because it had something for everybody, from the indies to the mainstream, the 2000s was just great times watching movies.

    Here you go, my personal top 20 movies of the 2000s

    1. Memento  (2000)
    2. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind  (2004)
    3. Adaptation  (2002)
    4. the Dark Knight  (2008)
    5. the Incredibles  (2004)
    6. A Serious Man  (2009)
    7. Batman Begins  (2005)
    8. Once  (2007)
    9. (500) Days Of Summer  (2009)
    10. The King Of Kong : A Fistful of Quarters  (2007)
    11. Juno  (2007)
    12. Into The Wild  (2007)
    13. Up In The Air  (2009)
    14. The Diving Bell & The Butterfly  (2007)
    15. Thank You For Smoking  (2006)
    16. Shaun Of The Dead  (2004)
    17. Battle Royale  (2000)
    18. A.I.  (2001)
    19. Wall-E  (2008)
    20. Matchstick Men  (2003)

  • Random thoughts and stuff…

    - Yay! My wife is back home from Taiwan! Woot! Right when I finished all the leftovers too. =)

    - You know what the biggest time waster for me was these past two weeks that my wife has been out of the country? My PC. I mentioned that I installed Windows 7 on my PC, and had to re-install all my programs again. That took time, sure, but what caused the majority of all the wasted time? Two problems I ended up having when I installed Windows 7 to my Toshiba laptop, that needed my attention to fix. Specifically, it was the fact that my DVD/CD drive is not acting right, and that the media extender to stream stuff to my xbox360 needed to be reset. Well there were actually three problems (I mentioned that on my previous blog post), but the third one is ignorable. So in comes google, to help me figure out how to solve my problems. I googled, got a link, read the link, looked for another link, read that link, and repeat that for several more hours. Eventually the media extender thing miraculously is working again, kinda, but thanks to my researching I found a software alternative to that problem (TVersity.com) just in case it breaks down again. As for the disc drive problem, I found A LOT of solutions that didn’t work for me, but one answer that involved changing the drive letter is actually working for the time being(changed it to “A:” for now), however it’s quite possibly just a temporary solution. I could have spent all those hours on something else… like other time wasters…

    - I went to get my car’s 100,000 miles service. It was going to take about four hours, so I took the shuttle they provided and spent those hours at the mall. The shuttle picks up at every top of the hour, and I planned to head back at 2PM. I showed up at 1:58PM and waited and waited and waited…. you know what time the shuttle arrived? 2:50PM. I told the driver if there was some kind of delay and he said “not really,” and then I told him how long I waited. All he could say was “oh.” He offered to take me back right away, but I told him that he should probably wait until 3PM before he leaves, because MAYBE leaving early is what happened to me. We waited until 3:02PM.

    - It figures all three of my shoes are breaking down at the same time. There’s the one for work which sole is peeling off, there’s my casual shoe that has a tear on it’s side, and semi-casual shoes where it’s color is completely fading out. So I spent about $200 to replace those three shoes recently. Kinda feels nice to have new shoes, and it’s making me have the urge to buy just one more pair of shoes… hehe

    - Speaking of expenses, it’s come to my attention that maybe young kids don’t realize how much they’ll have to save up just to buy a house. You want to buy a $200,000 or $400,000 house? You’re going to have to save up at the very minimum 10% of that cost for the down-payment ($20,000 or $40,000 respectively), and then afterward pay about $1,300-$1,500 a month to the bank where you got the house loan. The reality is that you should save up at least 20% of the house’s cost for the down payment, even if it means you have to pay about $2,600-$3,000 a month to the bank. That’s a lot of money right? I’m not even including utility costs like electricity or water. I don’t think kids realize how important it is to save money, until they know exactly how much they are saving and WHY they are saving that money. Unless they don’t want to have their own house that is.