judyonthenet

A little after 8PM yesterday, South Bay got a nice shakeup in the form of a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, centered near Alum Rock. It started off kind of slow, making you wonder if there’s an earthquake or a large truck passing by. Then it got violent, and I bolted from my desk to the doorway instead of, you know, going under the desk. A lot of good those duck and cover drills in elementary school did me :P I felt the 3.7 aftershock today at home.

So I worked from home today, as I’ve caught a cold. I’ve gone to work feeling worse and sicker, but I’ve got some nasty stuff in my throat. I don’t think my coworkers wanted to hear my wet coughing and gagging, so I stayed home. I finally got my laptop to work remotely, and I was actually semi-productive. Still need to be more productive tho.

On a random note, some kid showed up at 4 something trick-or-treating. “There’s no rules against going early!” I hope not too many kids show up this year. I don’t have that much candy. Edited to add: Well, nevermind. Aside from that one kid, nobody trick-or-treated at our place! I thought there was an elementary school near here. Weird. (Maybe we should have left a light on in the living room or something.) Now I have all this leftover candy I have to eat…

New thing I learned today: A doorway is only a safe location to stand in during an earthquake if you live in a dirt hut or something. In modern structures, doorways are just as vulnerable as another other location in a building. Apparently, duck and cover is still the best thing to do during an earthquake.

Last Friday, Kelvin’s brother and family were staying at the Four Seasons in (East) Palo Alto for some sort of conference or corporate event (which is kinda silly, since they live a few exits down from that place). He asked us to watch Naomi for the 3 or 4 hours they’d be at dinner. Not a very long time, plus the parents were just downstairs in case of any emergencies, so totally easy babysitting job. In return, we got to chow on room service and spend quality time with our favorite niece.

And by quality time, I mean watch Dora the Explorer and Totoro videos with Naomi. Having experienced babysitting my cousin when she was two a long time ago and hearing stories of people babysitting Naomi, I was pretty sure she was going to freak out once she knew her parents weren’t around. So we let her zombify in front of the television as a distraction. And it worked pretty well, since she didn’t once get stressed out or start crying for her missing parents. With all her TV watching and brain rotting, she probably thought her folks just left the room (which was pretty true anyway).

The only task we had to do is order room service and feed her food. Our lone task was pretty difficult: if she watched TV, she wouldn’t eat, and if she didn’t watch TV, she was all over the place. Feeding her was quite a challenge. The room service food was okay, but overpriced of course. And instead of giving us apple pie a la mode, we somehow ended up with a banana split. But this turned out to be a good thing, since it means feeding Naomi more bananas and less sugary fatty desserts.

Halfway through our babysitting, we noticed Naomi was starting to smell not-so-fresh. Despite reassurances from her mother that she had gone twice already that day, she still managed a third one. Without checking her diaper, we text messaged Susie asking where the wipes were, and instead of answering the message she just came straight up. When she arrived, we asked Naomi if she pooped, but she kept saying no. Then she reached into her diaper (probably wondering what was so soggy), got her hand slimy, and slimed her mom with her… stuff. Her mother freaked out and ran to the bathroom to clean up, while I ran with in the corner to hide with Kelvin. After she freshened up, Susie went through the daunting task of changing her diaper, and boy was it a doozy. From the corner of my eye, I could see she had an explosion in her diaper. How could she not know she did that?? Susie cleaned her up real good, but she said that’s one of the worst she’s seen. And Naomi getting her mom with her poop was apparently a first, too. Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready for parenthood anytime soon.

New thing I learned today: Highway 101 is not the border between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. The Four Seasons we went to was on the Stanford/west side of 101, yet it was still The Four Seasons of East Palo Alto.

Apparently so. And no, we’re not doing a Lego themed wedding (sorry). We interviewed with a wedding coordinator on Wednesday. Even though my wedding will be relatively small, I’m probably going to splurge for a day-of coordinator, just because I don’t want to delegate it to a friend or relative, and there’s just no way I can do it myself without having a nervous breakdown. I’m talking to coordinators early in case they can also offer small consultation services (particularly with vendors) as I’m planning stuff. I’m not going to talk about how the interview went or if we’re going to use her since we still need to talk to other coordinators. However, I will say that I think it’s cool and savvy that she has a blog that’s somewhat regularly updated. I think it’s a great way to advertise and display your work.

Her most recent post was about the last wedding where she worked as a day-of coordinator. The couple, who also have their own blog chronicling their wedding planning adventures, worked hard at organizing a Lego-themed wedding. Now, that sounds really nerdy and tacky, but it actually turned out quite nice. I mean, check out their bitchin’ cake (from Cake Expressions)!

Apparently, the groom is some sort of Lego nut, so they managed to incorporate Legos into their wedding in several places. Their save-the-date magnets were a Lego bride and groom pair, their bridal portrait at the reception was done in Legos, their table with number placards had a Lego centerpiece, yada yada. They also had other random fun elements, like a photo booth and lion dancers. They’re not the first people to think up this idea, but I’m really impressed with how tasteful theirs turned out. If I had their same Lego obsession and (I’m assuming) much larger budget, I would totally rip them off. I’m certainly reading their blog for insight, as I need any help I can get!

It’s stuff like this that really makes me dig blog culture. You can learn so much from strangers or help other internet wanderers just blogging about whatever. I’m feeling more motivated to be more organized. Look, I even started a “Wedding” category!

New thing I learned today: ML-CAD (Mike’s Lego-CAD) is a freeware CAD (computer aided design) software for Legos. It has a large database of Lego parts with official part numbers, making it easier to order pieces from places like BrickLink, an online hub for Lego buying and selling.

I’m lacking in the post department this week. For some reason, I can’t think of anything to talk about, so I guess I’ll just have another random post about… randomness.

A couple notable Capcom games came out this week in the US. One is Phoenix Wright 3, which I already have, but I figured I’d order another copy to get the cheap-o preorder bonus and trade the game off or something. As crappy as it looks, I still want my own little plushie Phoenix… and I’m apparently not the only one. The other one is Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros Treasure, a new adventure-puzzle game for the Wii. It probably would have been an overlooked game if it weren’t for the entire gaming news industry hyping it up. The reviews are in, and they’re good, and now I really want this game. Like, I want to play I want to play it this weekend. Which kinda sucks, since there’s no major deals and I can’t stand buying stuff at retail. Luckily, there’s a 10% off Gamestop coupon floating around, so I can at least get tax covered AND still get instant gratification.

Not much else going on, aside from television watching and wedding planning. My mind is too preoccupied these days, so I think I’m not going to be able to come up with any sort of cool Halloween costumes. Ah well, maybe I’ll just be a ninja again. Anyways, I need to get to bed…

New thing I learned today: To frog a knitted item means to take it and rip it apart, usually because of a mistake or to use the yarn material for another project. It’s called “frogging” because frogs say “ribbit”, like “rip it”.

Ravi’s gf Jessica mentions frogging in her knitting blog, and she explained it to Ravi, who explained it to me. Apparently, knitting is a popular blog topic… at least that’s what people at Bloglines seem to notice.

We checked out a second venue on Sunday, which was Byington Winery. Pretty place to get wine, tho I’m not sure about it in terms of a ceremony venue.

Kelvin’s been whining about getting a new HDTV for a while. I’ve been very against it, since 1) they’re not cheap and 2) I’m not sure what we would use it for. We don’t have cable or a next-gen gaming system that uses HD, so getting one is kind of pointless. My main response is to him is that we won’t get one unless we have some immediate need for it or if there’s a good deal. And it has to be one of the (generally considered) top 3 brands: Sony, Samsung, or Sharp.

Lucky for Kelvin, Slickdeals posted that Circuit City had on sale online the Sharp Aquos LC42D64U for $1199, with various ways to get an additional 10% off to get it down to $1079 + tax (~$1180). This TV just came out a couple months ago, and not even its predecessor (LC42D62U) can be easily had for $1199. Plus I had ~$230 in Circuit City gift cards from credit card rewards. A brand new 42″ Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD HDTV with 3 HDMI inputs for < $1000 out of pocket? Yep, I’ll bite. I got in on the deal early, so I was able to order online and pick it up with Kelvin (who splitting the costs with me) at my leisure after work. Very simple and easy.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for deals. Now it’s home and set up, we still have no use for it. We impulsively bought upconverting DVD player (Panasonic DMR-EZ27) since I’m really not gung-ho about getting a 360 (considering their hardware issues, later the better) or PS3 (waiting for MGS4) right now and I don’t want to commit to an HD format and we couldn’t find the right cables to connect Kelvin’s laptop to the TV. The DVD player had an SD card slot and supports DivX, so we could just transfer downloaded shows on an SD card and watch it on our nice TV. Or not. Apparently, the SD card is for pictures only, and even when we burned a DivX file onto a CD, it wouldn’t read it. It upscaled DVDs just fine, but it was pricier cuz it supposedly had more features. We’re returning it and ordering an OPPO ASAP. (Specifically, the DV-980H, which accepts USB memory sticks as a video source. Sweet!) The OPPOs tend to get a lot of raves on Amazon.com and AVS.

So what are my impressions so far with the new TV, despite not really having any sort of HD application for it? Honestly, I think it’s a really sweet TV. It’s very slick looking, and the SD-DVD video looks really nice (and big!) on it, even without upscaling. Incredibly bright, takes some getting used to. And it’s so easy to move! No threat of serious injury moving that thing up the stairs. I’m very disappointed with how crappy SD games look on this thing, though I was very much expecting this from past reading about SD games on HD in forums. I could have sworn there was some response lag on Halo 2 (the video was definitely lagging the audio), but maybe I’m paranoid since this TV is supposed to have a 4ms response time. No noticeable defects, didn’t see any obvious signs of the banding that plagues Sharp LCDs, but I wasn’t looking. btw, these are all impressions from a non-videophile with not-that-great vision :P

Overall, I’m happy with the purchase. It was a very good value; we just need to set things up so we can use it more. Also, now we need to get a new coffee table, since our $30 Ikea coffee table was the only reasonable surface to stick the TV on. Actually, the table looks really appropriate for the TV, which is good since I don’t want to buy a stand or mount right now. Though, a lift-top coffee table (because Kelvin’s legs are totally inflexible, he hates eating dinner on the floor with Ikea coffee table) isn’t cheap either. *sigh* At least I won’t have deal with the Black Friday battles at dawn to get a decently priced HDTV now.

New thing I learned today: OPPO Digital, Inc. is based in Mountain View, CA and specializes in region-free, upconverting DVD players. Because they tend to be cheaper and have as many and as good features as their name brand competitors, their products are popular amongst videophiles for their value.

I was subscribed to both Gizmodo and Kotaku, a couple blogs under Gawker that talk about gadgets and games, respectively. They’ve been making some inane posts the past few days about kicking each other’s asses in Halo 3 or something. Okay, whatever, I don’t give a sh*t, next article. Apparently the Halo 3 smacktalk had gotten pretty heavy, as Gizmodo decided to play a prank on Kotaku. This prank turning out to be going into the Kotaku blog (Gawker editors have access to each other’s blogs apparently) and posting on the frontpage the famous offensively-disgusting shock image Tubg*rl. (If you don’t know what that is, don’t uncensor the word and Google it. Seriously, don’t. You can look up “shock site” on wikipedia if you’re that curious.) I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Tubg*rl until today in my Bloglines. Luckily, I was scanning it quickly, so I only caught a glimpse of the image as I scrolled along, but I recall my thoughts transitioning from “What’s that?” to “That’s not appropriate.” to the final conclusion of “That’s insanely offensive and disgusting, and I want vomit the Subway sandwich I’m currently eating.”

Seriously, wtf? Of course, Kotaku quickly took it down when they found out and apologized for the image (even though it wasn’t their doing). However, I’m pretty sure during the 20 minutes it was up, there were quite a few pissed off readers who may not have understood it wasn’t them, but Gizmodo folks that pranked them. And it’s not just a blog… it’s a blog with tens of thousands of readers (at least) regularly checking them, some at work, some probably underage. A blog with paid writers and paying advertisers. The image was just… really not appropriate, prank or not. It’s not even funny (except for maybe 12 year olds). And whose idea was this? The editor of Gizmodo, Brian Lam. The one who’s in charge of keeping Gizmodo content relevant and professional. After initial backlash, instead of apologizing, he commented to readers to “bathe in the afterglow of a wonderful retaliatory prank” and “Thanks for having a good sense of humor.” It’s like he totally doesn’t understand what he did or the consequences of his action. The image wasn’t just not safe for work: it was not safe for ANYWHERE. He really couldn’t find a more work-appropriate picture for his prank? I personally think heads should roll for this, but whatever… Engadget was a much better resource for gadget news anyways.

Leave it to Halo 3 to bring out the 12-year-old out of somebody.

New thing I learned today: Gizmodo was co-founded by Peter Rojas before he was recruited by Weblogs, Inc. to found Gizmodo’s main competitor, Engadget.