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Category: Day to day life
Updates on what’s going on with us
Removing that Skunk Odor
Thank goodness for science. There is a way to remove the stupid skunk odor.
We got a bottle of “Nature’s Miracle Skunk Odor Remover.” So far it’s not quite close to the claim of being “miracle” yet. But it’s removed about 90% of the smell. I am still trying to figure out where the remaining 10% is coming from… Even if the smell is completely gone, I have a feeling that psychologically we’ll always be able to smell it…
What Stinks Around Here?
I had to install Bryan’s car seat back to our loaner car after coming back from Los Gatos in Jason’s car on Saturday. But as I was installing it at around 1AM, a terrible smell of burning electric wires rushed through my nose… I stopped for a moment and looked for the source of the smell; nothing.
After I secured Bryan’s car seat, I continued walking around the backyard looking for the source of the foul smell — a strong and unique mixture of burning electric wires, badly burned onions and rotten eggs. Not able to pinpoint the source of the odor, I went back to the apartment and told Grace about it. But then the odor was RIGHT INSIDE the house! Then we both panicked and started sniffing carefully for the source.
Five minutes later (small apartment), we decided nothing was burning inside the house. So I took the flashlight and started sniffing for it outside. Still nothing. Curious and baffled, I questioned if we should call 911 and get the professionals to weigh in on this.
Sitting on my desk, Googling a short description of the smell, I noticed a couple of white spots on my pajamas… EWWWWWW — that was the source of the smell! And man, my head started to spin when the source of the odor was only inches from my nose.
I dashed outside to look for the true culprit and how it got on my pajamas… That’s when Grace and I saw the REAL mastermind behind this criminally intoxicating smell — a skunk. It slowly crawl from hiding on the other side of the car in the carpool…
The damn skunk must have been frightened and sprayed me when I unexpectedly showed up with Bryan’s car seat. Our neighbor has been leaving tons of cat food around in hopes to catch some stray cats (she’s been on a mission to rescue all cats). But lately animals of all kinds have been lining up for her generosity. This kind of act has to stop when it starts to negatively impact other people. So further actions will be taken on that for hygienic, safety and health reasons…
As for me, I threw away everything that was sprayed on except Bryan’s car seat. I am still looking for effective solutions to deodorize and sanitize it. It may very well be that we have to ditch the car seat and just get another one for the sake of hygienes. Maybe our neighbor should help pay for it…
Vegas, A Family Unfriendly City (for Now)
While most of our stay at Vegas was pleasant, there were a few annoying attributes about the city that was quite disturbing:
1. Smokers die hard — literally. Coming from a relatively smoke-free state like California to the Sin City is like I died and fell to smoking hell (no puns intended). There were free second hand smokes on every square inch of the Las Vegas Blvd.
2. Liquor anyone? — Beer bottles were everywhere on Las Vegas Blvd, from one end of the strip to the other. Coupled with clueless college kids with cigarettes, who are out to prove themselves, that’s formula for trouble (and super, super annoyance, especially when they are in groups of three or more).
3. Relatively terrible food — Las Vegas is famous for extravagant buffets. But if you are not into sirloin steaks or meatloaf, the veggie stuff is all pretty much the same. Besides, how many kinds of food can they really serve up in buffets? Let me just say they didn’t even try at places we went to. Ironically, the fatter the people we saw eating the buffets, the less we felt like eating. And then there’s the “Bryan factor.” Whenever we were eating relatively expensive food, he started getting cranky and became Mr. Choosy on what he wanted. But this one time when we decided to grab a quick Panda Express, he was the happiest child on Earth. The upside is, now I know I can make Bryan happy on the cheap.
4. Sex Sells — The free pirates show outside of Treasure Island used to be decent. It was a show about pirates. I mean, how else could “Treasure Island” be interpreted? But I guess some idiot in the TI management figured sex was the next big thing and changed the whole theme with a hidden sexual connotation to it (get it?). Half of the pirate crew was now a bunch of barely dressed, sexy, foxy dancing young girls (not that I am complaining). But that made the whole show stupid and pointless. People actually started leaving about 1/3 into the show.
5. No show (but 2 stupid ones) would allow kids 5 or younger to attend. Com’on… that’s the whole point of going to Las Vegas for non-gamblers or people who aren’t there for businesses!
6. If you have a baby that requires a tub to take bath in, good luck finding a hotel with a tub. This really ticked me off.
7. The air in Vegas is as polluted as those mobile chimneys I talked about in point #1. Some pictures I took have tonnes of dust particles caught by the flash of my camera. I don’t know how anyone can live in that city without getting some kind of respiratory problems.
I took Grace and Bryan to Vegas forgetting there were all these things attached to an adult-oriented themes in every corner of the city. Come to think of it, I think Vegas would make a great vacation spot for bachelors who can’t get laid anywhere else, newly weds looking for a different experience and gamblers who don’t know what else to do with their money. Whatever Las Vegas is, it’s no place for family vacations. That’s for sure.
Sick Days
Grace and Bryan came home from Vegas with a fever. I was okay until the next day… Then I became so sick that I could barely get out of the bed. But then I still had to finish my Java homework and attended my Java class with a 102° fever. And let me say this — listening to programming lecture with a mild fever is a terrible experience. But then I just hate to miss out on the classes I’ve already paid for…
Bryan seems to have recovered already. Hopefully we’ll all feel better tomorrow.
Photography
James Nachtwey is one of my favorite journalism photographers today.
I went to SCAD to study photography because I was deeply touched by images from photographers like Sam Abell, W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Galen Rowell. Not that I started my journey in photography ever to become one of them, but it was this incredible urge of wanting to share the beauty of the world through my camera.
Is It Wrong?
Sometimes I wonder: Is it wrong to tell your friend the woman he’s marrying brings out the worst of him as a human being?
But I guess it’s too late now. She turned him into her long before they got married.
FedEx Headaches
WARNING: Endless ranting ahead.
I am not sure if any body’s noticed the deterioration in service from providers like FedEx and UPS in recent years. Ironically the USPS has become more and more reliable in comparison. I remember the days when it was just so easy to blame the USPS for everything…
But now, almost every other package I send and receive through those “premium carriers” is in danger of being lost. Not too long ago, drivers used to ring the bell and wait for someone to answer before leaving a notice on the door. And they almost never left anything of value by default unless explicitly asked to. However, it seems like both FedEx and UPS “conveniently” altered their policies, at about the same time, and decided that waiting for customers to answer the door takes too damn long. So now everything is assumed “signature not required” and can be left by the door. Some drivers don’t even bother to knock on the door or ring the bell to at least acknowledge the recipient that a package has arrived.
Technology is supposed to improve things, but as a customer, sometimes it seems to only make things more stressful when working with FedEx or UPS on package tracking. By far, in my experience, FedEx has been the absolute worst nightmare. To date, my record with them is: one lost package, one lost-scare and one missing package (as of today, they have NO idea where it is). Everybody just assumes that if something is not in “the system”, it doesn’t exist (much like if you can’t Google it, it’s not there).
I printed a shipping label using FedEx’s own online software (which is buggy; what kind of stupid email notification system assumes no dash exists in domain names?), and I dropped the package off at a local FedEx sorting center myself. But soon it became suspicious to me that the tracking number that FedEx had generated doesn’t seem to be valid for tracking. So I called customer service, whose system showed no record of such package (even though it is showing under my tracking history under my FedEx account on FedEx’s own freaking website). Then customer service transferred me to Internet department where they were supposed to know more about web-based tracking: Nothing there either. Then Internet services transferred me again to Billing, whose system, clearly pulling data from the same source, was also not showing the package being available. He then transferred me, guess where…., BACK TO customer service.
Again, no luck. So now I have a package that part of FedEx’s giant computer system knows about but is unable to find its whereabouts. Can they still be held responsible if the package was lost under such circumstance? Unlikely. Now, I haven’t read the fine prints in those long-ass end user agreements; but I have a feeling it’s written against me, the customer who’s paying for their very existence.
Then there are all kinds of different surcharges they add on to maximize their profits. For example, what the hell is a “fuel surcharge”? I mean, the freaking premium I am paying them to delivery my packages, isn’t that, in part, paying for their labor, time, expertise, and, oh, FUEL? And then they charge small businesses for using their website to print labels — HELLO? Isn’t that making everyone’s lives easier if their ground personnel don’t need to manually process each package? Shouldn’t all this be SAVING them money? So why are small businesses charged $11.50 for every week (or was it month?) that the online shipping label system is used? It’s just insane!
Now coming back to USPS, its website is not as fancy, and tracking information sometimes takes days to appear. But as soon as one gets used to those facts, the site is easy to use, reliable and has never failed me (yet). On top of that, USPS gets it — if I print a shipping label and ship via its online system, I actually get a small discount! Considering how much mail USPS processes, how much lower its fees are, and how much nicer its employees are (they always knock, ring and wait), it’s amazing UPS and FedEx are still making so much profit every year as much as they abuse and mistreat their customers.
Forget it… enough rant for today. The lesson here is: Multi-national corporations are inherently evil given enough market share, cash and power. Which is why publicly mandated systems that deliver services to the public under the law should always have a place in humanity — education, postal services, health care… etc. Anyone who’s trying to privatize them just aren’t thinking long term. Remember, corporations answer to investors and maximize profits, not to do what’s good for the general public, and certainly not to do what’s good for humanity.
Aw, damn it… I’ve got to end this here….
Depression
Walking to the parking lot after my Java class today, I was a little surprised the back lot was actually jam packed at 9:00 PM on a weekday. People are really making themselves stay ahead by taking classes these days at the UCSC Extension.
And seeing a parking lot full of nice cars made me feel a little dispirited about where I am in life. I dragged my sorry-ass self to the car, which isn’t even mine (a loaner from Michelle), which was probably the only car on the lot older than 10 years. I sighed, opened the car door, and slouched in the seat for 10 seconds reflecting on our troubles with the immigration, unemployment and life. But thankfully, as I thrust my left foot into the clutch and turned on the engine, the sounds of BBC News on NPR took my mind away from it all.
Coming home to Bryan cheered me up though. How can anyone stay depressed in the presence of little angels?
Why I Ditched Opera (Again)
When Opera 9 came out, I decided to give Opera another shot. After all, it is among the most lightweight browser with one of the faster rendering speeds in the Mac universe. It also has something that most other browsers on Mac OSX lack, good memory control.
Unfortunately, after months of dedicated use, I’ve decided to switch again back to Firefox. Firefox is slower, but at least it’s reliable.
Here’s a list of the reasons I decided Opera still sucks on the Mac:
1. Unstable. And I don’t just mean that it crashes often, but some of its features simply work only sporadically. Take, for example, spell check works only some of the times. Other times (and usually when I needed it the most), the option is just grayed out, unavailable for use. Restarting the browser usually fixes the problem but not always.
2. Weird bugs. This is kind of an extension of the first problem… There are some bugs that show up for no reason; and then they just go away automatically. One of them has to do with clickable links. Sometimes links simply become unclickable for no apparent reason. This is extremely annoying.
3. Not so good ad blocker. In terms of ad blocking, I think Firefox, coupled with GreaseMonkey and Adblock Plus, is still the king — they block out 99% of all my unwanted ads, including those inline underlined ads. Opera has a nice implementation. Unfortunately the execution is still pretty behind in comparison to Firefox. One time it blocked out ALL of the images on Apple Store page, which kind of freaked me out for a second.
4. Opera is still not accepted by some unfriendly sites such as Peerflix. That means I’d have to fire up another browser just to browse those sites and quit again.
Yeah, I know. Four reasons don’t seem like a big deal. But the first 2 reasons alone have annoyed me for a pretty long time. And today when the spell check refused to work again, it was the last draw for me — Opera had to go.
So I am back on the sluggish Firefox. I read the next version is going to be optimized for OSX for sheer speed. I can’t wait!!
GRE Test Nazis
I finally got GRE out of the way yesterday. The whole damn exam lasted just a little under four hours. While the experience wasn’t terribly exhausting, I definitely didn’t enjoy it, espcially when the test center was more or less a exam concentration camp…
Let me explain why… First of all, I had to read a piece of paper with a bunch of disclaimers. Then they made me write, word for word, a long ass statement on I was who I claimed I was and that I would keep all parts of the exam confidential… blah blah. Then I had to sign the damn thing, read the back of the paper (yes, yet more disclaimers) and turn in the paperwork.
Then I had to literally empty out EVERYTHING in my pockets and lock them up in a locker (thankfully it’s free). When I said everything, I meant, EVERYTHING! They wouldn’t even let me keep my chapstick… But damn it, I needed to have moist lips to work properly…
During my 10-minute break after the Issues and Arguments essay, I asked if I could take off my wriest watch and leave it on the desk so that I could keep track of the time. But nooooooo.
So isn’t that just like some kind of concentration camp or what? 😉
I am not too happy with the results of the exam… And then after talking to my cousin, I realized my scores still have room for improvement.
Maybe I’ll have to take it again in March…
Did I mention I hate taking GRE?
Save the U.S. Economy. Ruin the World.
The United Nations released a study on climate change a couple of days ago. The paper, an effort by over 2,000 top scientists from all over the world, claims that recent climate change “likely” caused by human activities.
What a shocker.
Unfortunately the Bush Administration is a bit too busy trying to protect its economy than to think about what his policies are doing to the, um, WORLD! So it begs the question, where is the U.S. economy going to be WITHOUT the world?
Damn I can’t stand dumb presidents.