Category: Rant

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Misfits

Ever since I was a kid, I felt like I didn’t fit in. To anything.

I was a bookworm between the ages of 9 and 13. Loved maths. And physics. Soon after that, I realized that I was a nerd to the core. And to top that off, I was a geek. With that came my interesting (not-so-interesting to most) habits. Mild ones were like stamp and coin collecting. Doing puzzles was another. More geeky ones were like reading comic books, watching butt loads of anime and scifi TV and movies.

God calls us all to be something and someone. After much struggle at self-acceptance of who I was, I realized that it takes one to know one. Being a misfit helped me identify with other misfits… of most kinds. Misfits appear because of only one reason: unacceptable attitudes of others who follow the norm. Some of the most unaccepting kinds are also liberal and democrats. What gives?! I thought liberals were supposed to be the most “open minded”! (runs to the corner and embraces for projectiles)

Taking the name calling aside, unless you were in the popular crowd, we all have had different and unique habits and hobbies at least once in our lives. If not yet, it will come later in life. Human’s simplest desires are basic, and one of them is simply to be accepted for who we are. Not demanding changes, but simply making the effort to understand and comprehend.

Once you start going calling people misfits, and different, you go towards worse places: prejudice and genocides. That’s what you do towards those that seem out of place in order to make yourselves look better. In the words of Jack Nicholson in “Mars Attacks”, “Little people, why can’t we all just get along?”

Preventing things like Darfur genocide and anti-semitism, and racism all begins at the basic level… learning to accept people who are different from us. And that’s 99.9999%!

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My E-mail & Website got Hacked!

If you get an e-mail from me and I sound terrible (more than usual!) grammatically and all, it’s not ME!  Someone managed to hack into my e-mail account (yahoo one) and sent out spam e-mail to all my contacts with a link to some bogus website to buy stuff!  😡  Erg… it’s my very first time where someone logged into my account and sent out a bunch!!

I’m gonna have to regularly change my passwords now…  🙁  What is the world coming to?!

EDIT: Never mind!!  My website got hacked too!!  😮  WTF?!!  😡

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Biking to Work

So to include exercise and healthy habits into my life, I have decided to bike to work. This also helps in conserving little bit of gasoline as the prices are soaring still these days. When using Google Maps, it estimated my route to be about 5 miles each way.

Well, this wouldn’t be possible without a bike. Much thanks goes to Chung for lending me his awesome bike (rebuilt in the good ol’ Chung fashion) with new tires, brakes and chain! 😀 Both wheels can be removed. So after some purchases at local Academy store, I was set. I intentionally left bit earlier than normal to avoid my biggest nemesis: heat. I left at 7:30 am and it took me about 40 minutes to get to work. While that may sound slow, I do have a bag with me with a change of clothes.

Also thanks goes to Daniel for his tip on getting gloves ’cause otherwise, it would’ve been both my butt AND palms that hurt. My buttocks are still sore but I hope that they will be fine after a week or so. I will be leaving in about 15 minutes (5:30 pm local CST) to avoid heat. I’m starting at twice a week. In less than a month, I hope to increase it to 3 times a week.

The downside is that I can’t fit lunch into my messenger bag. I do have lunch bag but not sure if it would survive the bumpy ups and downs for 5 miles. Any tips from pros?! 😛 Anyhow, this was only possible since my work place has shower facility! Yeah, Boeing! 😀 Here’s to safe ride back! Please, if you see bikers on the road (not motorcycles!), be kind and don’t honk and give us some freakin’ space!!

EDIT: Ok… I just got back… and I have to say… Houston is NOT biker-friendly!!  I know Houston drivers in general are rough, let alone towards bikers.  So at any given major intersections, I get off my bike and cross as a walker.  HOWEVER, after pressing the button to walk across, I waited for not one, not two, but THREE cycles of traffic lights and the sucker wouldn’t change for a human to cross!!  Listen, Texas DoT or whoever owns these lights… FIX your d*** traffic lights!!  Where’s my freakin’ tax dollar going to, anyway?!! 😡

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NY Times: Johnson & Johnson Ticking me off

NY Times Article

Like I was saying earlier, things like this just makes me mad!  Johnson & Johnson taking the easy way out!  They say they did everything right when in fact, they took their sweet time (6 years!) in releasing what they found out about their own product to the public!

Johnson & Johnson will be on my first anti-pharmaceutical list!  If I can boycott their products by buying a different brand I will!  You can go suck an egg and stay in the corner, Johnson & Johnson!

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Talking about Injustice

I don’t know what started it… but we were coming back from our Connection Group meeting from church when we started talking about how expensive insurance is even for us Americans and how you can’t get good medical care these days.

That started a rather passionate and heated talks between Soojin and myself about that.  And then it reminded me of how pharmaceutical companies are greedy b*****ds for taking only money.  You see, while in Ethiopia, and through the book, There is No Me Without You, I discovered and came to realization how greedy and injust these pharmaceutical companies are!  Medication to treat AIDS/HIV has been around since late ’90s yet the company that developed it did not want to let go of its patent(s) and so generic medications couldn’t be made by a 3rd company.  This meant that the price of medication was even too expensive for middle income families of America, let alone the poor $1-per-day income families of Africa!  I was so furious and mad that it brought back that sheer anger and madness at such injustice!

We met an infant at Haregewoin’s orhpanage who looked so much better thanks to the generic medication that is now finally available.  You see, the patent expired few years ago (finaly-freakin’-ly) and now it costs orders of magnitude less!!

Erg… if you know who these pharmaceutical compan(ies) are, let me know…  I want to do something… at the least, to make people aware of these selfish injustice around the world.  To put more value on money over people is not just injust, but inhumane.  I am still mad thinking about it….

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“Interesting” replies between Dell & Me

As my 2 readers 😛 know by now, I have been having some major run-ins with Dell.  I ordered a video card from them nearly TWO months ago and still have nothing to show for it.  Why?  ’cause the dumb-luck company took in WAAAY too many orders and never kept the promise!  They have been delaying my shipped date on a weekly basis.  Last ship date was supposed to be 01/11/08.  Yes, you read that correctly.

That’s last Friday!  😡  Then they had the nerve to delay it again and now it’s 01/29/08!  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!  With more than a month (?) of delay, FTC requires the sellers to notify the buyer and must auto-cancel the order if it goes beyond that unless the customer states to keep the order explicitly!   And this is what I wrote when they sent me the e-mail that it was delayed to 29th of the month…

What the hell is this?!  Excuse my language but I’m getting delayed for two months now?!!
Do you guys call this service?  If Dell was such a great company and excel in service, you would have offered alternate solution in one way or another, even if you had to eat your words and offer other branded solutions at a loss!  If you can’t do that, please just drop my sorry excuse for an order off your list.  I’m not ordering from you guys ever again and I will let the entire world know.

And this is the reply I get from Dell… I just couldn’t stop laughing… and cry at the same time!!

Thank you for your reply.  The response did not clearly indicate whether you wished to cancel this order, or consent to the delay.  We apologize for the misunderstanding.  Please respond as soon as possible, and indicate whether this order is to be canceled or continued in process.

Thank You,
Dell Inc. Notification Team

WTH?!  Dell sucks.  That’s all there’s to it!

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I hate Dell with passion!!

Ok.  It’s now officially official:  I hate Dell with passion!!  😡

I found a great deal on Dell for an MSI 8800GT OC (660 MHz core / 1900 MHz memory).  This was back in late November.  I guess they took one too many orders… ’cause the only thing I started seeing was “Your order was delayed” crap, week after week!!  And now, it’s not going to ship earlier than 1/29/08!  WTF?!!

Great service?!!  Whatever!  Ever since Dell got big, they have been only getting worse and service has only been getting worse and this is my proof… my LAST proof!  Why?!  That’s because I won’t buy from Dell ever again!   If they are such great company, they would have offered a different brand product (but same model) even if they lost money on it!!

Dell sucks!  If companies like Logitech only made and sold video cards!  On second thought, Logitech stay where you are and try not to grow big like Dell and screw it up for eveyrone!

/*Rant*/