Category: Rant

Great things; sucky things; boring things; stupid things…

Email Bermuda

It used to be that when you send someone an email, you get a reply. But it seems like people are taking emails for granted more and more these days. I’d send someone an email and not hear from that person on the subject matter ever again — no replies, no thoughts on the subject, not even a quick one liner — as if the email has gone to the abyss of the Internet.

I haven’t decided what the proper etiquette is for replying emails (though one would think actually replying would be a good start). But now I’ve adopted the same etiquette for those who never reply — I simply read their emails and sit on them until inquired about. This may not be the best way to communicate. But I just don’t want to be the sucker who replies every time there’s a request for something while mine go unanswered. Sorry, jerks… 😉

When Another Parent Physically Disciplines Your Child

Something unthinkable happened this week…

Grace took Bryan to hang out with a couple of other mothers and their children earlier this week. Kids being kids (god, especially boys), they are bound to get rough with each other from time to time. And when they are as young as two, their lack of impulsive control simply overwhelms their feeble minds and their bodies sometimes muscle over their intentions.

So what happened? While having fun with a younger girl at the play date, Bryan bit her. When the girl screamed and started her flood of tears, Grace took her time and tried to find out what happened and attempted to pull Bryan aside to talk to him about this mischievous behavior. This was when the little girl’s mom swooped by Bryan’s side, yelled at him for being such a bully and heavily smacked Bryan by the arm — all without even finding out what happened or giving Grace a chance to take control of the situation.

Needless to say, Grace was really pissed. But she chose to hold back on the anger and came back to discuss the issue with me. And quite frankly, I was dumbfounded and shocked to hear that someone would go as far as overstepping another parent’s authority and spank someone else’s child like that.

We are very disappointed and frustrated with this individual and her lack of understanding of early childhood development (though she claims she knows a thing or two and brags about it [ahem, see my previous entry]). Does she have an EQ of a toddler or something? Brian offered the explanation that maybe she was overstressed and that was the tipping point for her. Brian argued that maybe she felt remorseful about what she’d done.

But later we found out that this woman has been announcing to everyone we know, well, basically about how Bryan, a two year-old child, is a prick and bullied her sweetest, most lovely, wonderful and adorable, sugar pie angel. Now, to be fair and to put things in perspective, with Bryan’s other regular play dates/play groups, Bryan’s considered the “calm” one — the one who gets picked on all the time. But let’s suppose Bryan was the “excitable” one, what gives the right to one parent spanking someone else’s child?

I wish her good luck with her own child with her involuntary spanking and frequent threats to spanking her (at barely one year old). And one can only hope that her daughter will never ever bite, scratch, kick or hit another child, EVER. And of course, constant threats to spanking and physical discipline always improves moral, self-confidence and repress violence. That’s why death penalties work so freaking well against crime, eh?

Too Much Personality

Before I got married, an uncle of mine taught me to categorize friends into a few distinct groups and weight their importance and influence in my life accordingly. The idea was to maximize my limited resources and don’t waste any time with those who aren’t meant to be my friends over the long haul and spend more time with those whom I care as much as they care about me. I thought the idea makes sense but never really thought much of it. In reality, everybody does that already anyway whether one likes it or even knows it or not.

We’ve come to know quite a few friends in the Bay Area in the four years we have been here. But there’s one type of friend I can’t help but noticed — the kind that has too much personality. It’s the kind of person who fills the room whenever s/he is around; the kind of person that dominates conversations, commends (and sometimes demands) attention and refuse to shut up about him/herself. Now, if that person was Bill Clinton or someone of significance and great charm, I probably wouldn’t mind so much. But when a self-centric person just blabs on and on about how wonderful him/herself is (or his/her child/ren are), it makes a very annoying party.

Sometimes I feel like telling them: “Wow, don’t ever stop. My pathetic life is just so uninteresting compared to your adventures. Do go on. Do make me admire you that much more.”

People like that obviously can’t stand each other. And I happen to know that these two acquaintances of ours also hate each other’s guts. Most people can take these type of personalities in small doses. Too much of it can cause headaches, diarrhea, involuntary vomiting, and an urge to tell them to shut the hell up.

This begs the question though… Would I rather gamble on a bag of Made-In-China potato chips or having a small party with one of those personalities? It’d be a double whammy if the person in question has a party and serves chips imported from China… D’oh!

Updating Windows — What A Joke

Because of the previous post on having to debug Javascript for IE, I’ve had to run Windows Update. I was shocked to see no less than 85 “high priority” updates directly coming from Microsoft’s server… This is on a fairly updated install of Windows XP running on my Parallels virtual machine… The last time I ran an update was a couple of months ago.

Running Windows Update

How can people tolerate this kind of B.S. from the largest software maker in the world? Don’t they spend billions a year on R&D? Here’s an idea, spend more of that resource on better software… I can’t believe I am writing two entries on Microsoft in one day…

Javascript Debugging for IE

In 2007, the year when the word Web 2.0 is taking over the world of Internet and seen as the resurgence of the another wonderful dot-com era, the world’s favorite web browser, Internet Explorer, still does not have a proper Javascript debugger. You’d have to go through hoops just to get one working by alternative means. How can developers working with IE’s framework love its technologies I guess I’ll never understand…

Some people claim MS is all goodies under the hood for developers. Com’on, where are the goodies? I haven’t met a web developer who doesn’t hate IE.

People who continue to use IE by choice are idiots. There. I’ve said it. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. Start using better browsers from companies who care so that the World Wide Web can be a better place!

Ok. I feel better now… Back to dealing with crappy IE for idiots who prefer it.

Microsoft should change their marketing tag line to: Your Misery. Our Passion.

Who Are the Idiots Running the US Department of Homeland Security?

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to get the college to which I was accepted for their doctoral program to issue me an I-20 (student visa). But it seems like the Department of Homeland Security has some rules in place making the whole process even more painful than it really has to be.

One of the stupid rules (really, an idiotic one) is that a student ABSOLUTELY MUST have his/her permanent address from his/her country of origin in order to have the student visa issued. Now, on the surface that sounds pretty fair. But for us International nomads, it highlights how the current (Bush/Cheney) administration are really just a bunch of monkeys children running the show… Think about this scenario: A family was originally from Taiwan but later immigrated to Thailand, making Bangkok its permanent home. I was told I can’t use an address in Thailand as a permanent address because it’s not my country of origin. How idiotic is that? Doesn’t someone get paid to think about scenarios like that in the great Department of Homeland Security? Whoever came up with this rule probably has never traveled outside of the United States or met someone who’s an international student!

Sure, maybe this rule is to better protect the US “homeland security” in some way. But I just fail to see how it can even be relevant in anyway for security purposes. First of all, that supposedly “permanent address” can be fake. Why? Because where the student visa is mailed to can be different from the permanent address. I know because I’d requested the college to send it to my address in California. Secondly, let’s assume providing a valid permanent address in someone’s country of original somehow does enhance the security in anyway, there’s no way any of the agencies under Homeland Security or immigration related departments has the resources to check for EVERY SINGLE address provided. I mean, seriously, how do they know?! Do they have the home addresses of all known terrorists in the world in a database somewhere to check against? Do those terrorists even go home to those addresses? Even if that’s the case, does anyone think they’d be dumb enough to use those addresses to apply to a US school with? Com’on… Let’s be practical. Someone needs to start using their brains in the Bush/Cheney government.

But then again, seeing how they’ve done pretty much everything without thinking about alternative scenarios in the past 7 years, I don’t know why I am so surprised and upset about this kind of idiotic decision. The lesson I take away from this ordeal is, it’s easier to be illegal. No wonder 12 million of them are doing it.

Firefox Gaining Ground and OS Rant

I read somewhere today that Firefox has been gaining a lot of ground at the expense of IE, especially in Europe. It’s weird that Europe and Asia are always at the cutting edge of things even though some (if not most) of those technologies are often originated from the other side of the pond. As a web developer, this is a welcome news. And it should force Microsoft to do some introspection (if that’s even possible) on finally adhering to some industry-wide standards and really innovate. There are days when I can’t believe I still argue with people as to why they are still using IE if they are not being forced to use it for compatibility reasons (i.e. “my bank only supports IE”… my answer would be, “what kind of idiotic bank is that?”).

In other news, it seems like people are running to the Macs these days. Jason is at the brink of getting one pending certain conditions are met (though AJ already has my old PowerBook G4). Many friends who used to laugh at the idea of using a Mac are now hardcore Mac users (albeit some are using the hardware to run Linux). But overall, just within my own sphere of influence, people are getting fed up with having to install multiple virus scanners (seems like ONE just doesn’t cut it anymore), 3rd party firewall software and still getting their computers ruined for one reason or another… Just within the past 3 months, I’ve already heard multiple instances of people getting their Paypal/bank accounts exploited, files infected and OS blue screened, all happened behind the comfort of those so-called virus/malware/spyware scanners. They must make tons of money from those licenses. I almost want to think that THEY are the ones coming up with them… 😉

In comparison, it’s comforting to know that there still isn’t a single spyware/virus in existence for any version of the Mac OS since 2000. With the addition of Little Snitch on top of Mac’s built-in firewall, my Mac is in good hands even if there were any written for the Mac. I found it funny that some people tried to argue about certain exploits found on the Mac… but little did they know the context in which they were found — because the sponsor had to lower the threshold (un-checking some out-of-box preferences) in order for those exploits to even work. In other words, straight out of box, Mac OSX is rock solid against those exploits (which have since been patched anyway). Nothing is water tight… But at least it’s tighter than the leaky bladder that is Microsoft Windows….

Some people buy cheap PCs with Windows for the “biggest bang for the buck”. But the way I look at it, even if I had to reinstall the damn OS even once (or to put Linux on it), my time spent doing that already far exceeds the cost of the stupid hardware (let along its inferiority being a bargain basement hardware). As a freelancer, my time is money… In the 6 years I started using Mac full time, there was no time I’ve had to reinstall the OS for any reason. And I’ve only experienced kernel panic, at most, 3 times. When Grace was still using XP, I’d easily have to reinstall the OS every 6 to 8 months despite all the protective software I’d installed for her….

Enough rant on Microsoft today….

Two Weeks in Flash Actionscript

This is my second week coding full time in Flash Actionscript. Sooner or later I’d have bumped into things that would drive me crazy… And here’s a small list of what I’ve encountered:

1. XML feeds, masking, embedded fonts, css styles (for the XML feeds) and scrollable areas is a combination for hours of fun headaches. One can easily spend all night trying to figure out why something doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to… Certain things are very poorly documented by Adobe (formerly Macromedia).
2. Flash is most useful when used with Actionscripts… Some designer/coder wannabes try to do Actionscripts but instead have code littered all over the place… It’s just NOT cool!
3. Sometimes what seems easy can be more than a handful when you try to code for it… Simplicity can be deceiving in Flash/Actionscripting….
4. Components are your friends. Use them whenever you can. Customizable ones are totally worth every penny if you had to buy them. Just weigh the time you could have spent on it if you had to code that biatch yourself…

I also learned a couple of client-management tips from Jiann… Even though Brian tried to warn me about some of these things, I’ve had some pretty pleasant clients that I didn’t think running into one of “them” was in my Karma…

1. Clients are always right even when they give you some of the worst designs, features and requirements to work with.
2. Trying to beautify, improve upon or enhance anything this type of client gives you only will give you more grief later… because he’s just going to ask you go fix it back to exactly the way he had it… never mind how stupid, unusable, ugly or impractical the design elements or features are.
3. It’s all about ego, pride and control. Some clients want to feel they are in control and will ask you to do crappy stuff even though they knew your solution was better.
4. Stand up to unreasonable requests and demand overage. Or else feature creeps will never stop if the pay is on project basis. Some clients think they own you if they are paying you… Just say “NO” to abusive clients…
5. Being over-confident in your ability to pick up new programming skills can make you lose valuable sleep and family time… 🙁
6. Never mind that you have just achieved miracle doing something nobody thought was undoable given how short the deadline is. This type of client will always look for the smallest fault and overlook the fact that you just completed some of the most important features of the site.

Ok… now I feel better….

Back to coding…

One Week Developing Flash Actionscript

After having developed in Flash for almost a full week, I can honest say that….

1. Flash rocks.
2. Actionscript is not too shabby.
3. Flash can truly do some wonderful stuff.
4. I am looking forward to seeing what Apollo and Flex can do…
5. If inherited from the wrong hands, Flash/Actionscript is a bitch to maintain and extend… All you Actionscript code “litterers”… you know what I am talking about…. Please freaking code everything in ONE FRAME! Take advantage of Actionscript’s Object Oriented design. Damn it…

Again, I can’t thank Murdza and lynda.com enough for bringing me up to speed so quickly on this…

Doors

Every month I wonder if I’d made the right choice by staying in the United States with my ongoing battles with immigration issues. As legal as we’ve been, it seems to get tougher to stay that way as time goes by. They say when opportunity comes knocking, you better be prepared. So I’ve been prepared for quite a while now, but where is that “Opportunity” guy? He and I need to have a little chat.

Doors

Removing that Skunk Odor

Thank goodness for science. There is a way to remove the stupid skunk odor.

Skunk Odor Remover

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…