Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

I went though all the console games I have played in the past 4 years and here is my top 10 game list.

I didn’t care for those PC modified games. So Sims is actually my least favorite game on Console. Want to play simulation games? Ditch the controller and get a mouse.

The top 10 list doesn’t include any of the PC games I have played. I simply didn’t play enough PC games to form my own opinion. I probably played/scanned through about 100 console games; however, I only sat by PC when War Craft II and III came out. This kind of strategy games won’t work on console platforms in my opinion. I am glad Bizarre didn’t try to make a PS2 version of it and ask you to use the controllers to “click” your brains out.

Hey, if you are tired from working on the computer, take a break and give your eyeballs a fun game to play.

This is actually very similar to the perception experiments I have done for my mother when she had to write a lot of vision research papers. I used to get $7 hourly rate to be her lab rat by looking at hundreds of confusing colors and patterns for hours. Anyway, I am glad I have contributed to the science research in some ways…

Thanks to PACO for the link.

Here are 2 sites I had ran across during my internet surfing days, I thought they were kind of funny, so I thought I’d share them with y’all.

NaDa - You won’t get Blue Screens Of Death with this one

FU-FMe - For all y’all pent-up cyber worms (WARNING: Explicit Contents),
because of the nature of the site, and in effort to keep Yuna’s site clean, I have redirect this link to Google, just do a search and you’ll find this site.

When I started my first snowboarding season last winter, my fellow boarder urged me to get a helmet. Little did I know about this sport, I pretty much assumed that a helmet is a must have protection gear all boarders should have.

Later into the season, I noticed that the better the boarders are, the less chances they will wear helmets. Now if you turn to the pro magazines or the competitions, majority of the boarders don’t wear helmets at all. Rather, they all opt for some cool hats to look hippie and skillful like the one in this picture. I do admit that when I saw somebody wearing a helmet on TV, I automatically assumed the guy is wimpy and he is going to suck… It’s another kind of perception I guess.

But I do wonder if all the boarders are stupid enough to trade their lives for the looks if helmet is indeed that important.

I came across a story in this month’s Snowboarder magazine that talks about this topic. And guess what, these pros are refusing wearing helmets because, “It doesn’t feel right..’ or “It doesn’t look cool…” Another argument is that it doesn’t really matter if you travel on a speed of 30+ mph. The consequence is that they are sending this little message to the public, “Hey Yo! Taking safety precautions is uncool.” I flipped through the 200+ page snowboarder magazine and only saw a hand full of pictures with boarders wearing helmets.

As much as I hate my helmet which probably out weights my own head, I know it could save my life if accident ever happens. I remember clearly how the helmet saved my head one time when I was at Beaver Creek a few years ago. A teenager on a snowmobile came right at me and knocked me down. The first thing hit the icy ground was my head. I was blacked out for a few seconds and then realized that I twisted my neck. But thanks God that I had this helmet on and I didn’t surfer any head injuries.

Although I do feel like a very uncool mama bear when I am wearing my helmet, I am not willing to trade my life for the look yet. I know the difference between a smart vs a cool decision - my wellbeing.

If you are going to visit the Snow Mountains this season, I hope you bring a hard shell helmet too, for the sake of your skull and the people who love you.

Some of the following news are genuine and worth reading (or not) and some are just phony baloney Onion news I made up (Noop, no copying from onion.com). Pick out the Onions among the real news. Oh, some of them are half/half, take a guess which part is real and which part is fake.

Game rule: The only asset you can use are your eyeballs to read and your tired brain to think. No cheating with yahoo or google please.

1. Sony developed a new police robot dog to protect your neighborhood
After the success of Sony’s Aibo, the robot dog that could interact with the human owners, Sony has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a well-equipped police dog Aibo K9, model 350. Aibo K9 is much larger in size (See photo) and has a highly intelligent sniffing system that can detect almost anything from a missing person’s scent to heroin. Another breakthrough is Aibo K9’s speed. Although still running on battery, the K9 model can reach 40+ mph chasing speed. With it’s built in laser shock gun weapon system, the robot can nail any target in close range. After field training and testing, the first team of 2 dogs will be distributed to the Philadelphia police station in the next 3 months.

2.A dog owner accused of exposing phone sex to its under-aged dog
After having phone sex for number of hours, Dick, a pet dog owned by a Minnesota resident passed out in its bed. See Photo. The owner of the dog, Mr.Niles was accused of exposing explicit contents including pages of 1-900 number ads to the 8 month old dog Dick. Dick was later treated by the vet for dehydrating and heart issues. The owner was fined $399 by the county court and banned from storing any type of porn related materials in his residence until Dick turns 2, an age believe to be the start of a dog’s adulthood.

3. The New York City rats are gathering donations to help the starving Colorado rats.
Aug 1, 2005. Mr. Black Fatty Jr.(left), the underworld rat city mayor of NYC made an emergency announcement to gather donations to save the starving Colorado rats. Due to the human world’s “Leave No Trace” campaign in Colorado State, the rats are not able to find sufficient amount of food this summer. All garbage bags are stored in bear proof trash cans and the human are not tossing any trash on the trails. “As proud New York City residents, we have been lucky enough to find food everywhere in the city, especially in the subway tunnels. I urge all fellow NewYorkers to start picking any food you can find from subways to hallways. We can not let the Colorado starvation continue.” , vowed mayor Black Fatty Jr. It is reported that New York City’s Rat-Cross organization has sent 200+ lbs emergency aids from cigarette butts to rotten chicken bones to Colorado in the past 2 weeks.

4. The bone wedding band
This spring, five British couples went to a hospital for a quick jaw biopsy to retrieve bone cells, not to cure any diseases they have, but to retrieve samples to grow their wedding bands. Mixing with liquid nutrients, the bone cell can grow fully around a ring-shaped bioactive ceramic scaffold. Whala! There you go, the everlasting symbol of love of two that is worthless to anybody else.

5. The frog slaughter’s story
We have received report that the site owner of yunasville.com used to be a frog slaughter when she was 10 years old. 1984, Christine, aka Yuna, was attending an elementary school in Shanghai China. During a biology lab, all the students were required to cut half of the frog’s head off and then test the frog’s spinal and nerve system. Christine was trying to hold the live frog in her left hand while working on the cutting. Before the frog’s head came off, she squashed the frog to death spitting its guts all over the place. Apparently, she squeezed the frog too hard. The teacher had to give her a bigger and stronger frog to work on. It was her first and last animal slaughtering experience (excluding flies and bugs).

6. The first person to make a living as a full time photo blogger
Mark Hunter, aka the Cobrasnake, the 20-year-old nobody who is able to snap celebrity’s drunken party photos has been the first person to ever make a living by running a photoblog. He gets himself into the exclusive private parties and start shooting pictures of Paris Hilton, Beck, Johnny Knoxville, Andre 3000, etc… He then publishes the exclusive photos on his site TheCobransnake.com. The gig has won him a book deal, and he is talking meetings with the producers from The Real World and The Simple Life. Nobody knows how he played the tricks to get himself into these awards shows and the private parties. Using his own words, ‘I am the marketing genius.”

See comments section for the correct answers.

I wrote first two parts of the story in July. Check them out if you want to know the background.
Part I : Dealing With 500 Pages On One Weekend
Part II: Still Got Hammered

Now, here is part III:
During meetings round 2, I sat down with the operational manager for 3 hours trying to convince him that there are ways to arrange the schedules more effectively so people can have at least 2 weekends off before they need to work another weekend. I showed him my proposal, sample schedules to prove my point. But the guy just wouldn’t get it. My team lead even stepped in to express his support of my ideas. After 3 hours, there was still no agreement. I had to drop the ball and told him that I am not going to work more than 2 weekends in any given month.

I went up another level in the food chain with my proposal the next day. Finally, the guy agreed to part of my proposal and suggested his idea to the other. I find that if you want to convince managers to change something, complaining won’t get you anywhere. Always have a Plan A or Plan B to suggest to the managers. If they like what they see, you get what you want. Most of the time they would like to show off their authority, so they will add or delete a bit from your original plan, but that’s not a big deal, you still get most of what you want. The point here is that, have a solution before you negotiate.

I finally got the Aug on-call schedule last week. Guess what, I am only working two weekends and 4 nights. In July, I was on call every weekend and had to work on 15 night shifts in addition to the regular day job I have. I don’t know if it was because of the big loud noise I made in July or they simply don’t want to deal with me anymore. I got myself off the hook from the heavy duty oncall crap.

Want a work/life balance? You have to fight it yourself because when the employers tell you they can help, they are just doing it to beautify the HR newsletter.

Oh, one more note, you also have to make damn sure that you are indeed in demand by your employer. If they have been thinking about cutting you loose, the best strategy is definitely to lay low and shut up if you still want the job…

I am going to take a break from writing today… feel guity for being a slacker in the office lately…
Check out today’s Photoblog - Feeling Tired… . Thanks to Kimmi for the content feeds all the way from Australia.
I also loaded some pictures from my Japan trip.

Have a great day!!!

Having a mother who holds two Masters and one Ph.D means I should at least get something out of a graduate school. Growing up in an academic environment, I’ve never given a second thought about going to a grad school. In my junior year, I did all the tricks my professor Mom taught me and got myself into UPENN’s Computer Graphics and Human Modeling research lab as a Ph.D student. So this question has never crossed my mind until just recently.

Now, it’s been nine years since I graduated. (I walked out of the door after getting a Master.) Did I gain anything out of a graduate degree? Well, yes or no.

• It was darn easy for me to grab a job after I graduated. The Wall Street firms and big fortune 500 companies flooded the campus. I had 8 interviews and 4 offers including Goldman Sachs, ADP, AT&T and IBM. Graduate degree or not, I believe it was the school name that got me on an easy start.
• After I started working, I don’t think anybody knew my educational background. I worked with co-workers who had 2 year associate degrees from community colleges and they performed just as well as anybody else. A piece of paper from a college is usually good enough for majority of the positions in today’s Corp America.
• I did notice that majority of the people who are at higher technical positions having graduate degrees. But they all share the same characteristics – they are the real go-getters and self starters. In my kind of field, as long as you keep the customer happy and deliver the solutions and results, your job is done. A lot of folks go above and beyond to publish white papers, appear as conference speakers, invent new technologies and create patents. Those are the folks who sit on the top of the food chain. I don’t think it is the graduate degree itself helped those people to advance; rather, it is the research skills, principles and self-disciplines they’ve learned and practiced from the graduate schools that get them to where they are.
• My company has many research centers throughout the world. These jobs are usually only open to people who have at least a Master degree. So if you want to work in a research lab banging your head trying to invent something cool, go back to school and get yourself a graduate degree, Ph.D preferred.

So, it is a personal choice I guess. For me, I am not really into inventing anything or busting my ass trying to become a CTO one day, so a graduate degree doesn’t mean too much to me. One thing I did learn though is that if you think a graduate degree can get you a better job or a better position, you might be disappointed. Bottom line - it is the performance and effort you put in that could make a difference, not a piece of paper from a grad school.

Note: The graduate school degree I am referring to in this post does not include professional degrees such as M.D, MBA or J.D. These are totally different animals.

Well, things didn’t go well for Acie on ABC’s Hooking up. (See my previous post : My Project Manager Is The Reality Show Star). But I am sure the publicity he received by showing his face on ABC will help him to get a lot of winks, emails and attentions. Actually, people are digging him from all over the place already. The guy went hiding again after last night’s show.

We all heard good and bad stories about online dating experiences. However, my two real good friends found their matches on match.com. One pair got married last year and another pair is going strong after dating for a year. I only have a handful of good and close friends. Therefore, TWO is a pretty high hit ratio so I think this online stuff has to work somehow.

Beth (alias used) is a happy goofy girl who loves the outdoor life. She started talking to one of the guys who is also a hard core hiker and mountaineer. With the same interests and personal values they share, their relationship just took off. It’s been a year and it is still going real strong. Rob and Cathy(aliases used) met on match.com 2 years before they got married. They don’t really share the same interests but they have the identical life style: both are home bodies. I attended their wedding last fall and it was a heart melting sweet ceremony. The couple just brought their new home together and well on their way to live happily ever after.

I have to admit that both of my lucky friends are quite attractive and very much in shape. I also have a real close friend who is not so fortunate to have a six-pack ab. He is sweet, knowledgeable, well-educated and make some real good money. But because he doesn’t fit into the “hot stud” category, he hasn’t had much luck with match.com.

I am not really experienced in the online dating scene so maybe I don’t know what I am talking about. But people have great opportunities to get to know each other online before they reveal their physical appearances to each other. Shouldn’t that increase a chance for those not-so-hot guys/gals to meet someone who digs the inner beauty? After knowing how wonderful the person is, maybe the lack of 6-pack issue won’t matter anymore?

More readings on this subject: Frustrated by online dating? More answers for you from ABC.

Half of my climbing group went to Boulder Canyon this weekend to climb some serious rocks (check out the photos). It was also my first time trying a 5.9 all-crack route. Usually the regular climbers don’t feel comfortable with cracks since you can’t hold on to the surface rock; rather, you have to stick your hands and/or toes in the cracks.

Anyway, I wasn’t really sure if I could do it. When I hit the spot where everybody got stuck, my seasoned climbers started to give me instructions on where I should put my hands. I normally would try a few times before I start to ask for some help. Since the instruction was already given, I didn’t bother to try my own way. Instead, I tried to do what I was suggested to do – jam my hand inside of the crack to hold on.
“My hand is too small. I can’t jam my hand in the crack!” I responded to my fellow climbers after my hand kept on slipping through the crack.
“Christine, stick your hand deeply in the smallest crack and try it again.” I did find a smaller section of the crack. “Boy, that really hurts!!” Despite the complain, I gave it a shot anyway. WHAM! My hand slipped again and I fell off the rock with a scratch and some loss of skin. OUCH! OUCH! F#&@ IT! I am doing it my way!!!

Ever since I started climbing regularly, I developed a habit to tilt my body 90 degree and climb side ways. I also like to pull the hand holds and stick my feet up to gain some balance while I am doing side climbing. Guess what, it works great on cracks! Looks like trying my own way isn’t a bad idea.

Sometimes the advice from experts can’t fit all sizes. We may have to add our own ingredients to make things work. Although I will never turn down advice and suggestions from the experts, I am not afraid to try my own signature moves either. (Same principle applies to anything from blogging to bedroom activities. )