Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

This is another compiled list of goodies submitted from the village’s readers. There are few more reader submissions will be featured in the next a few days when I return from my vacation. Thanks to all of you who took the time to send in the goodies.

To find out how you can submit a link or a story, check here.

Potential Serial Killer Material
Although I know I am never a dangerous nor a violent person, I sometimes have the internal rage that I just can’t explain. When I was hooked playing the Grand Auto Theft games, I would wander around on the streets, beat someone to death, take the money and run. I know it sounds terrible even though it happened in a 3D virtual environment. So when Paco sent me this link which tests your serial killer potential, I was pretty curious to find out if I had something hidden that I didn’t know about. I only scored a low 7 and my evaluation was read as following,

The odd quirk in your personality is nothing to worry about, it might even be getting you a few more social invites than the more dull among us. So party on, you’re not a threat to society.

Whew… that’s really nice to know that I am no threat to the society. Take the test and find out your potential. If you score 100, find the nearest boxing gym or lay your hands on the Grand Auto Theft games like I did.

Hello Mama and Papa
This is a no Ha-Ha material. I called my Mom after I watched this slide show titled as To Daughters and Sons. Watch the show, and then call your mom, dad, granny, neighbor, snowman or whoever brought you up and tell them you love them.
(It is a powerpoint slide show. So click on the link, and then click “open”. It will play on the browser). Thanks to Bib for the submission.

Looking For My Fairy
Shirazi from Pakistan wrote a beautiful story “Looking For My Fairy” that takes us to the far- far away Northern Pakistan Alpines. You can find some more of his travel journals in south Asia on his own blog site Light Within. Yes, it is all in English.

Virtual Apple
If you are an Apple addict and old enough to remember the glory days Apple had enjoyed in the late 80’s and early 90’s, you’d remember the old school Apple 2 games. I used to be so addicted to those games that I almost got fired from my lab job. Anyway, Virtual Apple has a library with an entire collection of the old Apple 2 games. Check it out. Thanks to RJ for the link.

Yes, Apple is one hot fruit on the market right now, thanks to the phenomenal iPod sales. How about a pair of $300 shoes that bear Apple’s logo? Interested? I know you are so eager to click that link to check out the hot fruit shoes. According to digg.com’s post, people are pretty crazy about it by throwing all kinds of “cool” “woo” and “wow” in the air. Com’on, Nike doesn’t even charge that much for their best pair of basketball shoes. It seems that anything has “Apple” or “i” attached can be sold for an extra zero, even a pair of shoes that have no chips and zero wires.

I wonder if people still have any HOTs left for Apple’s core products – the Macs! According to Apple’s own top seller list, iMac, PowerMac and eMac are no where near to the top.

I love Apple. I love Apple’s computing technology so much that I poured a big chunk of my work study money ($3200) to buy a Mac that had only 80mb hard drive in 1992. Even 13 years ago, Apple’s internal cards (e.g. a network card) were all snap-ins instead of PC’s nails and screws. Why Mac rocks? People have beaten this topic to death (just google “Mac vs PC”) so I am not going to write a dissertation paper on it. I am happy that after all these years of struggling and begging (Microsoft, Adobe, etc… to write compatible software for Macs), Apple’s fate is saved by its own MP3 player. At the same time, I am worried that the Mac’s future will be lost in the bigger than ever iPodosphere.

Will Apple ever change its DNA? Only time can tell.

When I turned 30 two years ago, I was devastated. So devastated that I went to a studio and asked the makeup artist and the photographer to do whatever they can to make me look beautiful and fabulous so I can keep a few photos to show off to my great grandkids in a hundred years.

I am 32 years, 3 months, 9 days, 12 hours and 4 minutes old right now. After all, turning 30 isn’t as bad as what I thought

Top 7 things I’ve learned after turning thirty:

1. Life is not about pursuing goals and climbing the corporate ladder anymore. There is love, passion and sharing.
2. It’s OK to say “No” to the bosses. Life goes on if I can’t get the design paper ready by Monday morning.
3. Friends and families are no longer the only counseling sources I have, I can counsel myself too.
4. When it comes to personal capability, the sky is the limit. I never thought I could rock climb. Now, I can proudly say that I am a damn good rock climber!
5. Magazine list doesn’t have to be all nerdy stuff like Fortune, Money, Newsweek and Entrepreneur. Cosmopolitan is pretty cool to read too. And I learned to treat myself with a day spa now and then.
6. I learned to be comfortable in my own skin and yes, Confidence = Beauty
7. When I was suffering from blogging depression in the last a few days, I actually TOOK the advice and ditched my blog for a few days.

Although I have a lot more gray hair, got a fattier tummy and my skin may not look as smooth as before, I am FEELING fabulous now more than ever! I am sure when I turn 40, I will go through another aging-shock. But with the right attitude and the wisdoms I keep collecting from other people and life in general, I sure hope that I will feel beautiful and fabulous forever.

Ok, let’s check out a few fabulously aged celebrities… except for Brad Pitt. I still think today’s Pitt is no where near his look in Interview With The Vampire. Thanks to Kimmi for the pictures.

According to USA Today, some areas in Atlanta were selling gas for $6.19 a gallon. Holy Cow!

A few personal observations of the recent gas madness

• I was taking a road trip this weekend (yeah, call me crazy). When I stopped at a small town in Indiana to fill my tank and restock my soft drinks, there was a fight between a truck driver and a store clerk. Indiana is one of the states that has suffered from the severe gas shortage this weekend, therefore, the station started enforcing a 50-gallon-per-customer rule. Apparently, the giant truck needed more than 50 gallons of gas and the driver was not going to let the new rule to stop him from filling his truck. “This is not a pick up truck!” the driver argued. It was a total chaos.
• I just noticed that my piggy bank is losing a lot of weight because of my driving this weekend. The most pricy gallon I ever filled was $3.59 for 87 in Indiana on Friday.



• My usual plane ticket between Denver and Nashville has doubled in the last a few weeks from mid $200’s to high $400’s
• I posted my rock climbing bio on an outdoor website to seek climbing partners in Colorado Springs. In my bio, I think I mentioned that I like to snowboard this winter. I didn’t find any climbers, but I have gotten a few emails from some boarders who are already in the process of finding rides to share. One guy said, “i am not a rock climber but way into boarding, if you are looking for someone to car pool with this winter, let me know, because we may be at 4 bucks a gallon by the time the snow starts falling.”
• To promote this year’s blood drive, my company’s regional office has announced an incentive plan. A lucky donor has a chance to win a $25 BP gas gift certificate. Yo! Give some blood and I will give you some gas in return!

I usually don’t talk about politics but what I read this morning on USA Today upset me a great deal.

Brian Besanceney, head of public affairs at the Homeland Security Department pointed out that

“Katrina and the subsequent flooding in New Orleans caused a level of devastation significantly beyond a terrorist’s capability and the slow response should not be taken as an indication that the government isn’t equipped to handle another terrorist attack. “

He further stated that 911’s impact was only limited to 16 acres vs. Katrina’s 90,000 square miles.

“This is the type of force that only Mother Nature can really unleash, “Besanceney said, “The sheer geography of it would be very difficult for terrorists to achieve. “

I am stunned that not only our Homeland Security agency failed the test right in front of our eyes, but also demonstrated inability to come up with better excuses. A private citizen like myself with zero military background knows that a chemical/bio weapon or an atomic bomb can pull a disaster like this. If it happened 60 years ago in Japan (although we are the one who dropped the bombs), it could happen at anywhere at anytime. One of the reasons we set up such Agency after 911 is to have plans to deal with all scenarios especially the devastations created by massive destructions. At least that’s what I thought.

What frightens me is the attitude of the agency leaders. Under certain circumstances, an Agency functions very much just like an individual. The mind set and the attitude one takes towards a particular matter determines the future outcome. If I think I can get away from saving now since my retirement is 30 years away, I probably would end up broke in the future. Likewise, if the Homeland Security Department has been spending billions of tax dollars on playing hide and seek limited to 16 acres and thinking the worse wouldn’t happen to us, then they are doomed to failure.

So wake up and study some Murphy’s Laws, will ya????

Original article from USA Today: Senators ‘to demand answers’ on slow action

IMDB has a news on Michael Jackson’s plan to undergo a major makeover:

My prediction of the makeover results:

The biggest news in the SEO world today is probably Google’s backlink updates taken place as we speak.

One thing I don’t understand is how the heck Google is so lazy on updating links while their PageRank currently stands as the most important indicator of the importance of a site?! A lot of commercial site’s Ad revenues somewhat depend on the PageRank.

Speaking from personal experiences, I set up yunasville.com in late June. By the beginning of Sept, Google still hasn’t updated a single backlink while Yahoo, MSN are showing hundreds (the last row is Yuna’s Village’s link counts):

It doesn’t really matter to me since I don’t bid for Ads. Yunasville is only a hobby site. But for hundreds of thousands of other folks, 2 months could be a long wait. With Google’s capability, I don’t think making the updates more frequent than once every other months is too much to ask. But again, only the Google guys know what their agenda is.

For those of you who want to check if your links have been updated by Google these days, go to one of the following Google datacenters and type: link:www.yoursite.com
72.14.207.99
72.14.207.104
72.14.207.106

Another good read on why Google counts only a fraction of the links that other search engines found: Google vs Yahoo.

If you ask any rock climbers what the most difficult part of this sport is, you might get different answers. For me, the most difficult part is not mastering the techniques nor dealing with the fear but to find a steady partner.

It sucks that rock climbing is something you can’t do by yourself. So in order to find someone to climb with, I pretty much did all the marketing work I could do to advertise myself. I didn’t even need to try that hard to find a guy.

Initially, I didn’t have any problems finding people to respond to my Ad. But once I started to climb with them and tried to make plans to climb every week, everybody became a no show like a lousy boyfriend. Most of people just won’t climb every other day. Period. I kept on placing comments and ads on websites to try my luck. Finally, a guy named Rick agreed to climb. And amazingly, he stuck around. Not only he stuck around, we expanded the team together by dragging a few more guys from work and absorbing a few more single lonely climbers from the gym into the group. Without making plans, everybody started to show up routinely on every Tuesdays and Thursdays. At one point, I had 8 climbing partners. I was the happiest climber on the planet at that time cuz I never need to worry about belayer shortage.

Happy time didn’t last long. My once rock solid climbing team started to collapse just a few weeks ago. Some left town, some had family issues and some are stuck at work. Even my most reliable original partner Rick is bailing the walls for the dancing floors. He tried to convert me to a salsa dancer too. But I still have the hots for the cold rocks.

Today is Tuesday, I went to the climbing gym as usual only finding myself standing in the middle of the gym with no belayer. Boy, this world changes fast… I don’t usually hit on guys. But I find myself in a situation that I just had to if I wanted a belayer. “Hey!..” “Hi… Do you have a partner? Oh, you do…sorry…” I started to feel embarrassed. Finally, a nice guy named Stan whom I climbed with long time ago recognized me and offered a hand.

Ok, I lucked out today but what about this coming Thursday? The guy I found on the Internet hasn’t responded yet. It’s funny that in the dating scenes, guys are usually the ones who have to knock on every girl’s E-door and sometimes have to face rejections.. In the climbing world, I find myself, a not-so-bad-but-not-so-good climber who demands multipe climbs a week is having tremendous amount of trouble finding a “rock date”.

My friends mountaincurmudgeon and Chalk Abuser have been steady climbing partners for years. They are lucky to be each other’s “Prince Charming” on the rock. I wish one day I can find my own “Harness Abuser” to climb peak after peak with me. For now, I am searching more sites and typing up more Ads…

There is not much choice other than keep trying and keep hoping when it comes to finding a partner. I guess the principle applies to any kind of partner such as mating, life long sharing and even rock climbing.

Thanks to Paco, Kimmi, Liz and Traveling Aussie for the following submissions.

If you have a story or a link you would like to share with other people, feel free to send it to me. Here is how.

• NFL regular season starts tonight with an opening game between Oakland and New England on ABC. Are you ready for SOME FOOTBALL? Check out some greatest actions caught on moving GIF from last season. A few of my favorites: Manning gets a nasty hit, OUCH! ; Cool jukes pulled by Hall; Watch DeAngelo Hall’s unbelievable move to intercept the ball. Thanks to Paco for the link.
• Tired of using your own mouse? Would you like an upgrade? Check out this new mouse. (Turn on the sound and hear the conversation) .
• Travling Aussie argues taht acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen’t mttaer, the olny thnig thta’s iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy. And if Wrod qiut corerctnig my spelinlg,I’d be dnon tpying tihs siht lnog tmie ago!!!
• Ever wonder how large is a large Yo-Yo? Liz (Me Strauss ) has an interesting post on the Yo-Yo topic. And sadly, Yuna can’t play Yo-Yo.
• Having trouble stacking up your documents? Try to use a rubber band. That’d help.
• This is a very inspiring story. A mom with no arms is capable of doing anything with her feet from dressing the babies to holding drinks. Watch this video. It’s a very large file (4mb), so be patient

Thanks to Kimmi for all the video files.

After 2 weeks of wresting with my site hosting company, I finally got the Photoblog fixed. During this time period, I collected about 90+ Katrina aftermath pictures. Some of them are citizen pictures found on different people’s websites, and some of them are from various news sites. I will keep collecting some more so I can eventually have a quite complete album to remember this greatest disaster in recent history.