June 2004 Archives

Skype is a free P2P telephony program that enables you to make PC to PC voice calls over the Internet. It has an interface very similar to popular instant messaging programs, but its strength lies in lag-free voice communication, reportedly even over dial-up connections. It is extremely easy to install, and no special configuration tweaking is needed, even if you are behind a firewall.

My brother has a cable Internet connection and I have DSL. When we were testing it out, transmission was crystal clear; the voice quality far surpassed that of regular telephone calls.

Skype is currently available for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux, and Pocket PC.

If you would like to give Skype a try, my user name is firevixen.

I learned a new word today.

schadenfreude (sha-den-froy-duh) noun: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

From Merriam-Webster Online

Starting in July, Hotmail will up their email quota for free accounts from 2 MB to 250 MB.

Virus removal will also be available to free accounts. This service was previously only available to premium account holders. Free accounts were given the option to delete infected files.

MSN Hotmail currently offers an upgrade to 10 MB of storage for $29.95/year. 100 MB of storage is also available for a whopping $69.95/year.

AskJeeves is increasing the storage limit of its free email offerings to 125 MB. Indian portal, rediff.com is matching Gmail's 1 GB.

I must commend Google for giving greedy and complacent web-based email providers a run for the money. It's nice to see innovation and healthy competition on the web front once again. From the sidelines, this game of catch-up is very amusing.

Once you register for a Gmail account, you can be reached at any-variation-of-your-username-created-by-inserting-periods at gmail.com.

For example, if your user name was mollybloom, email addressed to molly.bloom and m.o.l.l.y.b.l.o.o.m will also arrive in your inbox.

Sloyd³ is one of those addictive games with a very simple concept. The object of the game is to move the dots to an adjacent cube face in the lowest number of moves possible. My lowest score so far is 50. Can anyone beat that?

I just booked a flight to San Francisco.

I'll be staying in Belmont from August 14th - 23rd. Friends in the area are invited to keep my schedule hectic; just the way I like it!

Johnny and I are planning a photography expedition in SF. Let me know if you would like to join us!

Early this morning, Hipstomp declared that New York City was the only place where Peter Parker could get around by web-slinging.

Surprise, surprise... several hours later, the BBC reports that Spider-Man India is soon to be released.

More pictures of the dhoti-clad Spidey can be found here.

It's no secret that I like stalking my stalkers. In doing so, I occasionally come across some pretty interesting statistics. Search engine referrals always intrigue me, because people who are directed to my page seldom find what they are looking for.

Here's a thought-provoking entry from today's access logs.

I hope this person was spoofing, because there is something fundamentally wrong about wasting billions of dollars in a pointless war overseas when white-collar workers at top financial institutions in America are so technology-starved that they are still using software from the previous decade. Will no one think of the traders?

If you're wondering how your site looks in vintage browsers, check out Deja Vu's browser emulators.

On Saturday July 10th I will be participating in Race-for-a-Wish 2004. It is a fundraising event inspired by the reality TV show, The Amazing Race. All proceeds will go to the Starlight Children's Foundation, which provides distractive entertainment therapy for seriously or terminally ill children. Before we start collecting pledges, Alan and I are still looking for 2 more team members to form our team of 4. Please leave comments below if you're interested in joining us! We now have a team of 4 set to go! If you would like to participate in this event, go register your own team! We want some fierce competition!

Agatha is my favourite cat in the world. I got to know her while I was living in New York earlier this year. She has a mild demeanour and the softest, most beautiful coat. She's 15 years old, which means she's really a 76 year-old kitty. Al (her owner) has just announced that Agatha has recently become very ill and is almost dying.

Noooooooo...

It's upsetting when the animals around you die.

When my mom was a little girl, she had a pet goldfish for the longest time. My grandmother accidentally scratched the fish with her nail while she was changing the water one day, and the fish died shortly after. My mom was so sad that she cried and cried for days. After that, she swore never have to any pets again. She sheltered my brothers and I from grief by not allowing us to keep pets either.

My mom made 2 exceptions, though. When I was 7, they were giving away free goldfish at Zellers (a Canadian discount department store.) We put them in a giant pickle jar full of fresh tap water. All the fish died the morning after. I was a little bit upset but since we didn't have the fish for long, no one was devastated by the tragedy.

Then about 4 years ago, Hilda and Jon brought their pet hamster to Toronto. Patrick loved it so much that he went out to buy one for himself. My parents agreed to let him keep it on the condition that he would care for it. For some reason, Patrick chose a big fat one. It turned out to be pregnant and it popped out about a dozen baby hamsters a week after we brought the mother home. Unfortunately, all the babies got milk poisoning and died within 3 days. The mother survived the ordeal.

After a year, Patrick grew tired of the hamster and stopped cleaning the cage. The hamster eventually died in its own filth, and it wasn't until I returned from Waterloo one weekend that I pointed out that the hamster didn't look like it was alive anymore. Patrick buried the hamster in the park behind our house, but we think the groundhogs or wolves might have found it.

I don't think I'll ever have any pets of my own. Mike is violently allergic to fuzzy creatures. Plus, I tend to like animals more when they are not my own.

From m00se's blog:
When organic recycling is taken to the extreme, you end up with factories producing soy sauce out of human hair, which I'm sure will go well with human pork buns.

Peter is going to Trois-Rivières for a month in July for a French immersion program. He's going to have to make his own travel arrangements in order to get there. I can tell that he's really excited because it's his first time travelling alone. He's the baby of the family and in the past, there has always been someone else to take care of all the details. I think this trip will be good for him in terms of personal growth.

Speaking of travelling, my last exam is on August 13th, which leaves me more than 2 weeks of free time before my next co-op term officially starts. I'm itching to book a flight out of Toronto while it's still affordable, but I'm afraid to set anything in stone before I find out where I'm working next term. What if they want to me start 2 weeks early? I have to stay flexible.

Since I'm swimming in Gmail invitations, I have donated some to Min Jung's worthy cause. She is helping her friend Jim to raise $225 in order to submit Bloodlines, an extraordinary and inspiring medical documentary, to the FREDDIE Awards. In exchange for a donation, you will get a Gmail invitation.

Apparently, I have 4 aunts and 4 uncles on my mother's side of the family. Up until last week, I only knew of 1 aunt and 1 uncle. All of a sudden, 2 more aunts popped up out of nowhere. Well, not really nowhere... they're from Boston and San Francisco.

Never mind that I have never heard of these aunts in my measly 24 years of existence. My mom hasn't seen them in 50 years. She's been spending the past week catching up with them. I cannot even fathom what it's like to have been alive for more than half a century. I wonder how it feels to reunite with people you haven't seen in five decades. It must be very weird to feel compelled to bond with a group of people who are seemingly strangers, but related to you by blood.

I'm not particularly interested in politics. At least I'm not as adamant about it as, say, Adam or Al, but I'm certainly not apathetic. I've voted in every election for every level of government ever since I turned 18. I was appalled when I heard that less than 25% of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the last Federal election.

Election day has always been an exciting event for me. Perhaps it's because my parents were immigrants and they value democratic principles. As a child, before I was old enough to vote, my parents would bring me to polling stations and let me cast their ballots for them. And then we'd go home and watch the election results on television. I was allowed to stay up late, until the polls concluded and the winner was announced. It was more exciting than staying up to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus (whom I knew was fake from the very beginning) or to watch the countdown to the new year.

In the past, I've shied away from openly discussing my political opinions, as they often clash with the ideals of those around me. (Like the time I voted for Toronto's most famous drag queen, Enza "Supermodel" Anderson in the municipal election of 2000.) I make an effort to appear as politically neutral to others as possible. People will try to sway you one way or another if they think you're undecided, and I like hearing what other people have to say.

I find myself reading a surprising amount about politics. I understand the pros and cons of both the left and the right. Libertarian philosophies appeal to me the most, but this time around, I'm going to be voting for the Green Party (for subtle reasons that I do not care to explain.)

I just ordered a lawn sign from the party's web site. My parents are going to freak out.

In response to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail has upped their email quota to 100 MB and gave their email interface a makeover!

This is a great page about the worst Canadian band ever!

Xanga:
http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=<username>

LiveJournal:
add /rss to the end of the URL.
i.e. http://www.livejournal.com/users/<username>/rss

Who wants Gmail^†?

^†Subject to availability. For a limited time only. Cannot be combined with an offer of your first born. Some restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited.

Other email related news
If you've entered your email address while submitting a comment, it will be automatically excluded from your comment from here on in. I understand Movable Type's motivation for requiring commentators to enter their email address. However, it boggles me as to why they obfuscate URL's for spam protection, but not email addresses! In any case, I've fixed the problem.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Latin filler text generator or deluxe version here.

Some time in 2002, I entered an online drawing contest hosted by Oekaki BBS, a Japanese web site. I never expected to win, so I didn't check to see what became of it. I noticed a bit of traffic coming from oekakibbs.com in today's access log, so I checked what the referring link was all about. It turned out that my entry placed 49th (out of hundreds of submissions.) Nothing spectacular, but not terribly shabby either, I guess. I'm surprised people voted for my drawing at all! The Japanese comments were an especially fun read.

Mozilla Firefox is my browser of choice and I was quite surprised to find that entering http://http in its location/URL bar directs me to microsoft.com.

Why?

When an invalid URL is entered, Mozilla does a Google search and brings you to the page of the top result. It's like having your browser permanently wired to Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. So my question is, how did Microsoft become the top result for "http"?

At 5:30 AM, there was a frenzy of hooting and laughter outside my door. I thought one of the girls in my unit had come home drunk with a guy, but it turned out that they were both delirious from being awake for over 24 hours... poor kids.

I just scored another interview. As far as I can remember, this beats my previous record for number of co-op interviews for a given term.

Speaking of interviews, it was 30 degrees Celsius today. (That's 86 degrees Fahrenheit.) I saw so many silly boys wearing the full suit and tie ensemble, sweating profusely as they waited for their interviews. And then there was Ryan, stylin' in a short-sleeved dress shirt and a pair clean, dark-coloured shorts! If I were an employer, I'd hire him based on the fact that he had the common sense not to wear a wool jacket in the middle of summer.

I asked a couple guys why they had their jackets on and they said that they didn't look professional enough without. C'mon, is that immaculately pressed shirt and designer tie not enough? Most interviewers from tech firms come in polo shirts and khakis anyway! Last week, I even had an interviewer who looked like he just got out of bed -- unruly hair, unshaven (in an unsexy way), wrinkled t-shirt and faded jeans. Yes, appearances matter to a certain extent, but you ultimately have to win the employers over with your personality and intellect. The kids at Waterloo may be geniuses, but they're none too smart when it comes to fashion.

Midterms start on Tuesday. 3 more assignments have been added to my plate for this week. I have two more interviews lined up (Tuesday and Wednesday.)

At this point, it doesn't seem like I'm going to be working out-of-province in September, but that's okay. This means I'll have a bit saved up for a graduation trip to Europe next spring. It also means that a trip to California is in the works. I'll figure out when that is going to happen after June 18th. Hopefully, I'll get to visit more of my friends in the Bay Area this time around. I only saw a couple of them when I visited in February.

On a somewhat more interesting note, it appears that Nokia is interested in sponsoring Robotic High Five. How exciting!

It has been brought to my attention that my brother has been accepted into the Mechatronics Engineering program at the University of Waterloo.

I am very proud of him.

Just like his sister before him, he will turn down tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships from other universities, and work for his tuition. Okay, maybe not. He just informed me that he also got accepted into the Math/Business double degree program at Waterloo, and they are offering him a very attractive scholarship.

School spirit at Waterloo is among the lowest out of all Canadian universities. The campus is ugly. Being a city girl, I find the K-W area boring beyond belief, unless you are an alcoholic. There's always plenty to drink, and everything appears to be aesthetically pleasing when you're intoxicated.

The co-op system is undoubtedly the saving grace of the University of Waterloo. I don't mean the actual "system", but the part where we get to leave school for a breath of fresh air and learn what the real world is like.

I have seen the difference it makes to have graduated from Waterloo. I have so many friends who have graduated from other universities last year who are still unemployed or between odd jobs. A handful of them are only beginning to find employment related to their field of study. On the other hand, the majority of the people I know, who graduated from Waterloo this year already have cushy jobs.

The hardest part about finding a job is getting that first job. It's a particularly nasty catch-22 because no one wants to hire you if you don't have previous working experience. Co-op makes finding that first job a lot easier, and if you don't blow it, you're set for life.