Nonsequittal Rumblings

I just ran a quick update of fansub translation log this morning. I just noticed that I’ve hit 301st translation this weekend with the translation of Mahoraba episode 11. 300th was Mahoraba 10.

And I’ve done this many in about 2 and 1/3 years? I need to get out of my house more. No wonder I’m still single.

Kansas legislature is considering a total smoking ban in any public, enclosed space. Finally, it’s about time.

When I visit Charleston, WV, one of the really nice thing is that all restaurants are smoke free. has said numerous times that it’s weird when the waiters ask “Smoking or non-smoking?” at restaurants in Kansas.

All restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, if the place allow any smoking in the building currently. But there are still many places where there are no wall or anything effective to separate the two areas, minimizing the effect of such separation. I’m sure you’ve experienced in the past too – you get seated in a non-smoking section which is still close enough to the smoking section, and you can clearly smell the smoke.

Finally, they’re considering this smoke ban.

I do feel this proposal is a bit extreme. Even banning smoking in the bars? I’m not very sure how wise that choice is to the night life scene. This is where I feel the facility or business owner needs to make their own decisions about smoking policy, not the state… Not that it matters to me too much, but crippling the business economy too much wouldn’t be a good idea.

Still, I can’t wait for the day I don’t have to worry about smoke in restaurants.

I just discovered that my hearing is far worse than I imagined, especially in the high frequency range. My left ear can’t hear much beyond 15KHz. My right ear gives up at around 14KHz! A healthy young ears are supposed to be capable of hearing up to 20KHz. Man, I’ve lost quite a bit already. I think I’m destined to lose all my teeth and my hearing.

Of course, it’s not an official test. I just tested it using heartest.exe that someone made quickly.

Or maybe it’s just a temporary thing from my music…

I just found out that Baskin Robbins is giving out free icecream to celebrate Yahoo’s 10th birthday. What about me? The closest Baskin Robbins from here is 3 hours away. Oh, too bad…

While I was waiting for another dental appointment, I read the news about Steve Fossett’s challenge – first solo flight around the world, non-stop, without any refueling. At lunch today, I read the news about the fuel consumption being more than expected so far. I hope he can still pull this feat off.

The start and goal of this trip, Salina Municipal Airport, is just 90 minutes North of where I live. Along with BTK case, Kansas is making some big national news this week…

UPDATE : Yay! He landed as scheduled!

w.tf – Yes, theoretically, it’s one of the shortest internet addresses that can and does exist.

The other day, couple of us were talking about a possible top level domain (TLD) name, “.of”. Such TLD can create some unique and fun URL’s, just like people did with “.to” TLD. Unfortunately, there is no such TLD exists. “.tf” does – it’s registered to the Southern French Territories. And w.tf is really an registered address, and a site exists (although not much there). what.tf is not registered yet. Anyone want to get that address?

I know I haven’t made a single entry in 2 months. I’ve actually been thinking about dropping LJ. I may go back to my own host to run the blog. I was looking around, doing a lot of thinking, etc to prepare for this migration. But I haven’t done anything about it yet. It’s going to take some time before that happens. So before I forget, I thought I’d say something funny.

I had 3 teeth fixed today – #6, #7, and #27. That’s upper right cuspid, 1st bicuspid, and lower right bicuspid. (I had to look it up.) All within the close region of the mouth. And did they numb the area good. It’s been 2 ½ hours since ,they applied it on me, and my lips are still numb on the right side. And my appointment got done 5 minutes after noon. It was difficult to eat. I spewed some Dr. Pepper on my clothes. I dropped some lettuce out of my mouse. I couldn’t tell if I was chewing on a piece of chicken or a piece of my lip. Oy.

Anyway, that’s all done. Now the next appointment is in 2 weeks. This time, I will finally start having my missing teeth filled with bridges. They’ve been missing for couple years now. I can smile again soon!

P.S.
trying to put some lip balms at this condition feels weird.

Spyware on My Machine? So What? (found through slashdot)

This is a scary notion – people are giving in to the adware products willingly. They’re just giving away their personal informations, online behaviors, and what not… Where did the notion of privacy gone anymore?

As an opensource lover, it’s a pretty painful blow. People are very unaware of the free software that’s really free, with no catches.

On top of that, it’s scary that people are more willing to install these software on their work machines. Not only they don’t care about the privacy, they don’t care about the company confidentiality either? Hrm!

I’ve once used this quote in my blog:

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Now this quote is taking a completely new meaning. Whoa…

I’ve figured out the way to install Firefox extensions on this prototype edition – download the actual xpi file for the extension, unzip the file, modify install.rdf to matching target application version, zip it up as xpi again, and install. That was trivial. I’ve even managed to modify Pithy 0.2 so ctrl-Q will exit out of the application completely.

The version info in question is like this:
<em:targetApplication> <!-- Netscape -->
<Description>
<em:id>{3db10fab-e461-4c80-8b97-957ad5f8ea47}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>0.5.6+</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>0.5.6+</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Now that Firefox has been freed from its nest, Thunderbird is getting ready to follow the suit.

The change since version 0.9 is quite nice. The interface (especially the icons) are polished up. The bugs in RSS are worked out mostly. Yay, for Thunderbird!