Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

There is much debate going on whether our cellphone’s radio frequency (RF) energy will damage our health or not. Nobody can really draw a definite scientific conclusion (or maybe we just don’t know about it so they can keep selling these phones to us). But there is one fact that might get your attention: For a phone to pass FCC certification, the phone’s max SAR level (specific absorbed RF level by the body) is 1.6W/kg in US and 2W/kg in Europe.

Ok, that at least tells you something about the danger of RF energy. Otherwise, why do they go through such an extend to cap a limit and test every single phone?

Anyway, here are the 10 models that carry the highest SAR:

And here are the 10 lowest.

I have a Sanyo PM-8200 with 1.01 SAR. I guess I am more than half way to be brain dead if 1.6 is the max.

To find out whether your model does any harm to you, click on the following manufacturer:

Audiovox/UTStarcom

Other Manufacturers

Thanks to RJ for the Links

I was taking a flight back home from Austin last week and got to the gate kind of late. I had to stuff my bag in the overhead compartment and might squash somebody’s duffle bag a bit. Since the duffle bag was pretty loosely packed, I didn’t think it was a big deal. But when the plane landed, the duffle bag owner started to yell at my face, “You are the stupidest bitch I have ever seen. See what you did to my BAG!” Of course, I wasn’t happy to hear the B word. But trying to be polite, I asked him if there was any damage so I could pay him some money. He kept on screaming, “Just stop being an idiot!” and stormed out of the aircraft. I wanted to cry. Actually, I did cry on the way home and even at home. I couldn’t understand why people would say such mean things to me when there was apparently no damage done to that person. I even offered to pay the damage if there was any. To be honest, it was hard to let it go. But finally I convinced myself, “Well at least I am not an angry miserable unhappy person like that guy.”

We hit bad luck here and there. We all had to go through some terrible experiences somewhere in life. Even the worst experiences have their bright sides. Take that airplane story as an example: at least I know I am not a crazy angry bitch.

Embracing all of your life experiences - even the really painful ones - with the knowledge that something good inevitably will come out of them is what optimism is all about.” It helps minimize fears about the future and could otherwise become debilitating, allowing you to move past them more quickly and ultimately lead a more carefree life, ” says Baker.

A classic study from University of Massachusetts found that accident victims who had become suddenly paralyzed were more hopeful about the future than lottery winners. A possible reason: The tragedy allowed them to see that most of the stuff that gets us down isn’t really worth fretting over.

So how to be a “Glass Half Full” thinker? There are many ways, but what worked for me was trying to approach a bad situation with an open mind and try to find the upside of it. So far, I have found the “bright side” in everything, good or bad.

I still believe that being happy is a personal choice: whether you choose to stay in a bad mood or let it go; whether you choose to step out the bad situation or sink in; whether you choose to do something that is meaningful and productive or be lazy and worship TV all night long; whether you choose to get out of the house and meet other people, or sit at home and feel lonely and sorry for yourself.

Research shows that people who describe themselves as autonomous and self-governing are up to three times more likely to be satisfied with their lives. These individuals know they have the power to opt out when a situation no longer suits them. So when they are not happy with their current situations, they make the active choices to change matters.

It was a while ago that I had to teach myself a simple exercise to feel happier:
Whenever the bad mood strikes, I consciously make the decision to let it go and look at the brighter side. I know it sounds dumb. But after all, everything is related to what we decide to do. When my brain decides not to feel grumpy about whatever I am feeling grumpy about, my attention shifts to something else and before I know it, I am happily doing something else.

I am sure a lot of us know a few things about the true happiness. It ain’t money, it ain’t big house.. and it certainly won’t be the 15 min fame on a Reality Show. So what is it? What are these magic ingredients that truly make people happy?

I saw an article on this month’s Redbook and I am going to turn that article around and run a 12 day series to make a Happy List.

So here they are:

Happy List Day 1: It’s a Choice
Happy List Day 2: Optimism
Happy List Day 3: New Experience
Happy List Day 4: Finding Humor
Happy List Day 4: Finding Hobbies

It’s sad to see the snow go, but Spring is finally here! For the first time in 2006, I packed up my climbing gear and headed over to Turkey Rock area to climb with my team this past Sunday.

I always thought rock climbing is a sport for human and survival skill for squirrels. But wait until you see this:
Eiger, a black Lab named after a climbing site and owned by one of the climbers came with us this time. One of our climbers made a joke with Eiger by putting his favorite stick in a small cave about 7, 8 feet above the ground. Eiger, an absolute stick lover was determined to get this stick. He first analyzed the situation by stretching his body. “Ok, I am not tall enough.. “.

He then tried to jump a few times. Check out this video. That didn’t do him any good either.

His owner Mike and our climbing team lead Doug started to show him how to use the extra piece of rock to get him higher.

Then, they showed Eiger the basic climbing techniques: Get your legs up first! Boy, this smart dog is really learning.

Check out this video too.

After 20 – 25 minutes of struggling with the climbing techniques, he finally got his body up on the rock and reached to his favorite stick.

WOW! I don’t know if Eiger realized it or not, he just climbed the hardest part of a 5.8 route! High 5 for Eiger!!

This is no laughing matter. It happened in the 30’s when America suffered from the Great Depression. As the result, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans got deported, 60% of them were US Citizens and many of them were children born in the US.

Now, if the Congress passes this bill to align the illegal aliens with the murders and rapists as criminals, then the horrifying history is going to repeat itself. Those American kids would either be forced to live in a foreign land where they have no ideas about, or check into orphanages.

Keeping our border safe is one thing, but kicking these people out who have already had roots here is just totally wrong! Forget about the American Value, the congress better start funding social services ‘cause they are going to need a lot of orphanages to house those kids without parents.

When I took the new teaching job back in Jan this year, I was fully expecting to work as a low key technical trainer and just do my teaching.

Just 2 weeks ago, my role and responsibility suddenly changed. Now, I am appointed as the new education manager of the new organization we are building as the result of the recent acquisition. So forget about staying at home and teach. I have been flying non stop in the last 2 weeks to attend summit meetings to lay out plans to build this new organization. Like a few years back when I worked on a high profile DC job that nearly destroyed my mental heath, here I am again, sitting with a full room of execs and VPs throwing big words at each other and demanding big dollars without the politeness.

I was much younger then, less mature and was very much afraid of these big boys. 4 years have passed and I noticed a huge difference between me now and the me then: I don’t give a fuck of what’s going on… Last week, I booked a 5pm flight to come home. The partner who owns the organization suddenly asked me to stay for one more day for a meeting that I was never invited to. I flat out said that I had to go home tonight. In front of all the VPs/Execs, he yelled at me, “Christine? Do you want to get fired?” Crap! What do I care?! I quit once remember? So I threw my hands in the air, “Great! FIRE ME!” Everybody busted in laughs and continued with whatever they were doing… I ended up delaying my 5pm flight to 7:25pm, attended the meeting for 2 more hours, gave my opinions and flew back home.

One thing I learned from these Big Boys in the last 2 weeks was that these guys all have big nasty attitude and have “I am the Boss. Don’t mess with me” written all over on their foreheads. As opposed to the file and rank employees like myself, we are used to the concept to “perform well” and to “please our boss and others”. The more we try to please others, the less respect we get. It’s week 2 into my new job and I have been putting on a big nasty “Don’t mess with me or no education for your people” banner on my forehead too. It’s been working quite well and I have networked with quite a lot Partners and Execs in the last a few days to talk about Value-Adds and importance of getting their people trained… I know.. I know.. It’s all corporate buillshit… Even though I am working in a cut throat environment right now, nothing is like working on a fucked up slavery client project. To be honest, I don’t think these big guys jobs are that hard. The consultants who are working on the fields truly have the hardest jobs. So my hat’s off to those of you who are still out there busting your asses everyday. It’s a great job to start your career with, but don’t stay out there for too long… I know I will never get back to the consulting career again…

Yes, the original Yuna’s Village is suspended and got moved over here as my historical museum collection now. If 500 years later our future great great …great grand kids want to build an Ancient American Blog Museum, I know I can contribute quite a bit.

Anyway, I finished the design work last night to migrate this site into Free The Cow Project to have a new fresh start. Yes, it is a sequal of my beloved Yuna’s Village…. It’s also a new chapter of the next phase of my life.

• new job
• new city
• new side gigs
• new home (soon)
• new friends….

Gosh, I am starting from ground up again and live my life in a totally different way. Although everybody is seeking for stability, but this change might not be a bad idea… it could be a turning point…

So here I am , Yuna is turning into a cow and trying to fight a way out of the barn. After running the Free The Cow Project for 3 weeks, I truly believe that I can succeed one day. When you really put your foot down and do something, everything is possible. See! I have made about 40 bucks already from the side gigs!!

If you think Mac is a better safer operating system, check out the following story and let me know if you still think the same way…

On February 22, a Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set his Mac Mini as a server and invited hackers to break through the computer’s security and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications.
Participants were given local client access to the target computer and invited to try their luck.
Within hours of going live, the “rm-my-mac” competition was over. The challenger posted this message on his Web site: “This sucks. 6 hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got defaced”.
The hacker that won the challenge, who asked ZDNet Australia to identify him only as “gwerdna”, said he gained root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes.
“It probably took about 20 or 30 minutes to get root on the box. Initially I tried looking around the box for certain mis-configurations and other obvious things but then I decided to use some unpublished exploits — of which there are a lot for Mac OS X,” gwerdna told ZDNet Australia .

We all got the illusions that Mac is safer than PC ‘cause nobody is hacking it. Exactly! Nobody was hacking it until Apple made such a star of itself and invited all the attentions. Now, as Mac starts to gain shares in household computing market, the little Mac might be a whole lot worse than PC systems.

The other reason why I dropped nearly $1700 beginning of this year on a Mac system was because of its relatively stable performance. At least that’s what I heard, read and believed. Turns out, my little Mac froze every now and then and there is no damn “Control –Alt –Delete” to bring up the task manager to kill the hung process …Incompatibility is another issue. Although there are many Mac compatible software out there, there are tons don’t make for Mac users. For instance, none of the software I use for work supports Mac. I have to have a PC to get into my company’s intranet to check emails on Lotus Notes, book flights and do my expenses. Uggrrrr… I am glad I didn’t buy the iMac, instead, I spent half of my money on the ass kicking cinema display, which will very likely be hooked to a PC some day.

I was real excited to learn that my 4.5 hour Denver to Boston flight which departed at 4:21pm last Sunday had meal service. “Finally.. “ I said to myself, “I am on a long enough flight to get something to eat.” Turns out, it wasn’t exactly what I hoped for. I was given a box of junk food from cockie, crackers to chips after paying 5 bucks!

“Do you have any sandwich type of food?” It was dinner time on a Sunday and all I wanted was a damn turkey sandwich… The flight attendant smiled and directed me to the “in-flight” meal page on the Hemisphere magazine. After scanning through bunch of big words like “Newman’s Own Organic raisins” and “Fino Selections Gouda cheese slice”, I gave up the thoughts of biting a turkey sandwich.

Once upon a time in those good old days, we had hot pasta, salad and desert even in the economy class. Now I have to dream about a lousy turkey sandwich on a cross country flight during the dinner time.

United isn’t the only one selling so-called meals now on long haul flights. Pretty much all major airlines have started this trend. But to keep the cost down, they try to stick with easy packaged food such as my lousy “minimeal” box.

I won’t be surprised that a year from now, I will have to pay for the soda and the pretzel too. Till this day, I still can’t figure out why the airlines keep going bankrupted while the airports are busy as hell… Obviously, we are still flying. So where did the money go?