Take this Mac fanatics!

This is a hilarious spoof of the ad for the new MacBook Air (which shows the MacBook fitting into a manila envelope, giving the impression that all you need fits into that one thin envelope).

For the not-so-technically-inclined, the MacBook Air is the thinnest laptop ever. In order to achieve this feat, it does not include a CD/DVD drive and only has 1(!) USB port. If you need to do anything more than basic with it, like rip music from a CD or hook up an external mouse and camera, you need to carry around a lot more of accessories as well – all of which would definitely not fit into a Manila envelope =P

Original MacBook Ad:

The spoof:

A collaborative dinner

This insane amount of food (for 2 persons) was a collaborative effort by me and my roommate. Ok, it isn’t truly collaborative… we each made different parts of this dinner separately and put everything together in the end.

Clockwise from the top left:
Butter and garlic clams (this was the only dish that we cheated on… its a microwave pack bought from Costco)
Grilled marinated chicken thighs
Pasta dish (bottom two plates) consisting of – spaghetti in a clam tomato sauce (stewed tomatoes, garlic and white wine), long beans in a vinaigrette sauce and spring green salad in a vinaigrette dressing.

Another day of good weather

Saturday was another day of nearly perfect weather (this was promptly followed by a gloomy and rainy Sunday – Seattle likes to taunt us like that). 70F/21C and sunny most of the day. The breeze was slightly chilly and it was cold in the shade (hence, the nearly perfect weather). Hopefully we don’t have to payback with snow and hail again next week. =P

So what do you do with such great weather? Play tennis. Lots of it.

I really like playing tennis here, or do any sort of outdoor activity for that matter. The temperature here usually stays under 86F/30C, and the humidity within a very comfortable range such that I don’t sweat unnecessarily. Back in Singapore, I would just start sweating profusely just walking from the train station back to my home (a 7 min walk at a slight incline). I hope to be able to get in more of the outside this year.

Sorry, no photos… was too busy enjoying the weather that I forgot to take any. =)

Seattle Weather

As an evidence to how temperamental the weather around here can be, I present the following:

Saturday, 12 April 2008 – Perfect weather, the type Seattlelites endure 8 months of gloom for. 29C/84F (and even higher out in the sun) with clear skys but with a low enough humidity that it is not uncomfortable. The best day so far for the past 6 months. Unseasonably warm temperatures.

Saturday, 19 April 2008 – Near freezing temperatures. Rain, snow, hail, sun, followed by more rain, more hail, more snow, some sun, then more hail and more snow and more rain. 6 inches of snow 25miles up north. Unseasonably cold temperatures. Payback for the awesome weather from last week.

Snow, snow go away.

Question of the Day

Why do all U-Haul trucks have Arizona license plates?
(For the uninitiated, U-Haul is a company which rents out moving trucks for do-it-yourself moves here in the US.)

What do you do when nobody’s looking?

“Everybody always says that the definition of character is what you do when nobody is looking. And when we were up there, we didn’t think anybody was looking. And so everybody did pretty much what their inner person, the real them, the exposed them, would do.”
- Beck Weathers, who was left for dead during the 1996 Everest disaster 

What do you do when you don’t think anybody’s looking?

Ever wondered what a dead cactus looks like?

Deflated.

Thank goodness for dumb criminals

If you are a criminal who has gotten your hands on someone else’s credit card information, how would you use it to ensure you manage to steal the most amount of money before the fraud is detected and the credit card account closed? I guess, for one, you wouldn’t make big, glaring charges that would trigger suspicion.

Lucky for me, the dumb criminal who stole my credit card information wasn’t so smart.

I received a call yesterday morning from the security department of my credit card company. They had detected suspicious activity on my card and was calling to make sure the charges were authorized by me. It was a $8700++ (!!!) charge to my card. This went over my credit limit and sent up red flags all over my account. The bank rep then continued to read a whole bunch of other transactions ranging from $700 to over a few thousand made over the course of the last few days, none of which were authorized by me. Since there were more than 3 fraudulent charges on my card, they closed the account immediately and arranged for a new card to be sent to me.

I had logged in to my credit card account online during the call. As most of the fraudulent charges were made in recent days and were rejected by my bank, they did not appear in my online statement. However, I found the following two seemingly innocuous transactions made a week ago nested between all my other regular transactions:

I’m guessing ARG and CHL refer to the locations of where my credit card was used – Argentina and Chile. I’m guessing that these were the "probing" transactions used by the perpetrators to check the validity of my credit card information.

Ironically, these two transactions might have very well slipped under my radar. I do check my credit card statements at the end of every month, but I had bought a few things online this month and could have easily missed these two transactions. Furthermore, many online retailer use third party companies to handle their transactions and an unfamiliar name on my statement wouldn’t be overly suspicious. If not for the outrageous $8700+ charge to my card (and also the numerous thousand dollar charges), my credit card’s account protection might not have been triggered and I would have been no wiser that I had been a victim of credit card fraud.

Anyhow, my bank has a good customer protection program for its credit card customers and I’m automatically protected and not liable for any of the fraudulent charges. The only inconvenience to me would be that I would be without a credit card for the next few days till my new one arrives. Ahh… back to carrying cold hard cash

Funny Photos

Sign seen on a bagel slicer.

A 40min flashback

I had my life flash before my eyes today. Literally. For 40 minutes. Yeah… I had a long life

I recently decided to ditch Microsoft Digital Image Suite as my photo cataloguing/editing software and try out Adobe Photoshop Elements instead. Digital Image Suite didn’t scale well for a large photo collection and simply couldn’t handle my 60GB of photos. Plus, its what we in the software industry call an “end-of-life” software. That is, Microsoft isn’t actively developing new versions of it. It got kind of abosorbed into the Windows Live suite as the Windows Live Photo Gallery, which in my opinion is a step backwards in functionality. IMHO, the whole Windows Live software + services offering is a big branding/marketing disaster. But that’s another story for another time.

Anyway, I found Photoshop Elements going for a discount on NewEgg, on top of a $30 rebate, so I got it. As part of the installation, Photoshop Elements scanned through my entire photo collection (all 26263 pictures) to extract the necessary metadata. As it went through each picture, it showed a small snapshot of what the photo looks like. Each picture was only shown for a split second. Hence, I sat and watched as my life flashed in front of me.

It was a very interesting experience. Most of the photos were of the last 7 years from when I got my first digital camera and taking photos became essentially free, and I became trigger happy . I saw everything – road trips (there were many of those), backpacking trips, camping trips, dorm living, apartment living, college life, army life, drunken nights (not me, my friends ), family vacations, graduation, farewell parties, Christmas parties, Chinese New Year feasts, Thanksgiving feasts, feasts for no apparant reason (there were many of those too) etc. It was a very interesting 40 mins. Every photo triggered a memory and an emotional response.

I never expected to get so much out of a software installation . Now, hopefully it lives up to what it claims it can do…