Tired Of Using Technology
August 6, 2009 § 2 Comments
Recently, almost every piece of technology that I own has been malfunctioning. This has caused my blood pressure to spike to abnormal levels due to the immense irritation.
1. The display on my iPod has been broken for a few months now [I think I dropped it one too many times]. It still plays music, but the screen just has a bunch of lines like a barcode. I used to be able to fix this problem by holding down the Menu & center buttons, but a few days ago this stopped working as well. So now my iPod is literally just a big Shuffle. I don’t particularly mind, but the unfortunate thing about using Apple products is that they can’t be fixed, they can only be replaced. Since my iPod is no longer under warranty, the guy at the Apple store could only offer me 10% off of a new one. I guess I’ll wait until this one dies completely…
2. Speaking of my iPod, the charger now looks like this:
This is just not right.
The morning we left Boston for Canada, I left my laptop on the bed while my iPod was charging to go downstairs and fill up some water bottles for mother. While I was gone, my idiot brother jumped from the couch onto the bed, knocking my laptop over the side and bending my iPod charger in the process. Amazingly, it still works, but I’m certain it will not last any longer than my poor iPod.
3. The week before we went on vacation, I took a trip with my church college/career group to Starved Rock, where we had a picto-scavenger hunt. My group used my camera for all of our pictures, but somehow right after we took the last picture, my camera gave me the error message, Please reinsert memory stick. I did this about 30 times over the next few days but to no avail. Since our precious pictures were on it, I could not try to reformat the card, which is what I believe I need to do to fix it. So I bought a new one and am waiting to try the broken one on my friend’s card reader.
4. One of the first days we arrived in Boston, something happened to Firefox and it crashed. This isn’t unusual, but when I reopened it, my bookmarks were all gone. WTF, I thought. I reopened it a couple more times with the same results, so I deleted it and re-downloaded Firefox. This time, it wouldn’t even open. I had no idea what was going on. Frustrated, I decided to go back to using Safari, which I like infinitely less. After that crashed on me multiple times as well for no reason, DC suggested I try Camino, which is what I am using now. He described it as “like Safari but it doesn’t crash.” The former is true but the latter is not, unfortunately.
The only thing that hasn’t failed so far is my phone. I’m waiting for it to explode when I least expect it..
This Made My Day
August 5, 2009 § Leave a comment
After a long day of traveling for a total of 9 hours by car & plane, my family finally arrived home. As I walked up the stairs, I noticed a package by the front door, and figured that it was just more parts for the computer that my brother is building [AKA the computer he is paying my cousin to build for him]. When I came downstairs later, though, Larry had taken the package to the kitchen and was asking my dad what it was.
“I don’t know,” my dad replied. “This has my name on it, but I’m not expecting any packages.”
A bomb? I thought idly as I loaded laundry into the washing machine.
Dad read the return address, perplexed. “San Francisco baking company?”
He told Larry to stand back as he cut open the packaging tape. I vaguely imagined the box blowing up in our faces as mother picked cucumbers out in the backyard. What a way to die…
Upon opening the package, we were faced with another box.
“It’s upside down,” Larry said, observing the This Side Up arrows on the side. Dad flipped the box over and out dropped a flimsy cardboard box of…pastries.
After I ravaged the contents.
I suppose the “baking company” was a hint, but we couldn’t help but wonder who the hell would be sending us a box of cookies without any notification. They looked delicious, though, and I blocked out thoughts of poisonous baked goods as I reached for a chocolate chip cookie.
On the lid of the inside box was a name, address and phone number. The intended recipient of these cookies turned out to be Yanling Yin from Downers Grove; my father’s name is Yanling Li.
Too bad, I thought as I munched on a blueberry muffin. These are mine now…
For food that was 6 days old, everything inside was surprisingly delicious. Mother ended up calling the phone number, but it was apparently the number to an office, and Yanling Yin was out of town until the 10th. I’m not exactly sure why this package ended up at our house, but I am enjoying the spoils nonetheless.
On Vacation
August 4, 2009 § 1 Comment
We’ve never driven to Canada through the Vermont before, where the curving mountains touch the underbelly of the grey sky and tendrils of clouds cling to the trees.
As we pass the lush landscape, I muse about all those who explored these lands before we built these highways. What was it like to carve a path through these forests without the protection of a car and the knowledge that food could be obtained at the nearest exit?
//
I’m always waiting for my brother to show signs of maturity, but so far the only indications I’ve noticed are a deepening of the voice and hair growth on his legs. The petulant teenager has been nothing short of a little demon on this trip, and there are times when I have literally thought about strangling him to death, mostly while dealing with his exasperating antics in the backseat.
His sinful nature is at work, but I also blame my parents. The older I get, the more I can see the flaws in their parenting — I was an easy child to raise, but they messed up on Larry. My mother, who spends the most time with him [while I am at school and my father travels], spoils him incessantly, which I have already detailed rather exhaustively.
Larry was not in a good mood when he found out that we were visiting the Newport mansions in Rhode Island, and he truly did his best to make everybody in the family hate him for the few hours that we were there, lashing out both verbally and physically.
The Ugly Proposal
July 25, 2009 § 1 Comment
On this rainy night, I went to see The Ugly Truth against my will — well, I agreed to see it only because I didn’t have to pay for my ticket. Many movies at least somewhat intrigue me, but I had literally 0% desire to see this one. I despise romantic comedies, and I only watch them if they feature actors or actresses that I really like, which is why I actually wanted to watch The Proposal [I love Sandra Bullock, and Ryan Reynolds has a smoking hot body].
I am relatively neutral about Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, but I knew from watching the trailer that I would not like a movie about an abnormally high-strung woman who pathetically can’t get a man and has to resort to following the advice of a crass maybe-misogynist, and somehow they end up falling in love. Aww, how predictably predictable.
The Ugly Truth is similar to The Propsal in some ways. I don’t know what is is about successful women that makes screenwriters want to portray them as such desperate and lonely individuals. Bullock plays an editor at a publishing company, while Heigl plays a television news producer. Both are uptight, unable to function properly in a relationship, haven’t been laid in a looong time [11 months, ohmygosh], and only manage to end up in a relationship when they resort to desperate measures.
What annoys me the most about this movie was how embarrassingly desperate Heigl’s character is. I know the scene in the beginning with her on that date with that man is supposed to be funny, but really? It is so unbelievable that anybody could act like that; some characters are charmingly ignorant about relationships, but Heigl was unbearable. Her little celebration dance and reliance on Butler’s character [among other things] made me sad because of what they represent.
The second most irritating thing about The Ugly Truth is its predictability. Although the characters might be somewhat original, the formula is not, which is one of the reasons I barely laughed at all during this film. The scene in the restaurant with the underwear incited much laughter from the audience, but they were cheap laughs.
I did find myself caving in a little to the emotional porn. It was difficult not to imagine the guy I like in the driver’s seat as we drive along the scenic hills of San Francisco, and I hated myself for it. In the end, there were some valid bits of relationship advice that could be gleaned from this movie:
1. Don’t be in a relationship if you can’t be yourself.
2. Confessing love is terrifying.
3. I’m not exactly sure how to phrase this the way I want it, but here goes: it is important for a man to proclaim his feelings for a woman, otherwise she will never know whether he is actually committed.
auradis 