17May
On my last post, I shared some pictures showing student protests against the proposed 10% budget cut to education. I never shared my thoughts on this subject though.
Some background information before I start rambling. Back in January in face of a 17 billion deficit, California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, proposed a 10% budget cut all across the board, including education. In California, K-14 public education is completely free, so 39% of the state budget goes into education, with a law that requires additional money to go into education every year.
I’m not sure why, but only until March did this start to become an issue in our school. Suddenly one day, all the teachers are panicking and brainwashing us that there will be a terrible budget cut and we’ll have less teachers, less staff, no athletics, no fun events, blah blah blah. Obviously, their jobs were at risk. The school staff started to tell students to write letters to the Governor. Heck, they even organized a protest that didn’t happen.
When I first heard of this issue, I already knew what these teachers were up to. Our teachers are hiding the facts from us. All they care about is their job, which is understandably fine. But as teachers, they should be informing us both sides to the issue. People thought that it was all “Arnold’s fault.” Clearly they were misinformed.
If anyone recalls, back in around 2001-2003, because of the dot-com bubble burst, California’s economy went into a short recession. The Governor at that time, Gray David, was recalled in 2003 because people were dissatisfied the way he managed the budget. That was the issue of the recall election, when Schwarzenegger was elected. California spends its money like how most Americans spend their money. If California makes $100,000 this year, it’ll spend $100,000 this year. For most occasions, it has been fine because California is growing at a rapid pace. But when you go into a recession, you have a huge problem because it’s not that easy to cut your budget once you already expand it. So in 2003, Schwarzenegger promised budget reform.
Ironically, his budget reforms never passed the legislature and here again he is faced with the same issue. Students don’t know that California’s budget system is fubar. We have no emergency funds that we can draw from when we have a budget crisis. We look at our budget on a year-to-year basis which obviously tells us that our state legislators are idiots!
So here we are five months later, the Governor is smart. He proposes a revised budget plan that gives NO cuts to education and actually gives additional funding, on the SAME day, my teachers were protesting against the cut. I still can’t stop laughing…
What’s even more pathetic is that NO ONE were informed about the revise the next day. I don’t even know if the teachers themselves know about this. A Facebook group that was protesting against the cut has no updated news about the revise.
What do we have left? Bunch of teachers who are happy they can keep their jobs and a bunch of students who are left believing “everything is Arnold’s fault.” Isn’t the whole purpose of school to teach people independent thinking?
P.S. Three political posts in a row? Something must be wrong with me.. At least the quality is getting better 
Topics: Arnold Schwarzenegger, budget, California, opinion, politics, school, sheep
10Apr
Today, I witnessed the most hypocritical “rule” I’ve ever seen. Our five-years-old school has a tradition of something called a “food festival.” The festivals are held during lunch probably once every semester. It gives the school clubs a chance to come out and sell food. The food itself is not cheap at all, but it’s a rare opportunity to be able to buy fast food and the yummy stuff at school nowadays. So people are usually excited about it; food usually sells out lightning fast with around 20 stalls, but not this year.
This year, we didn’t have a food festival last semester because of our old-school principal but that’s beyond the reach of this blog since people from my school indeed read this blog. We had our first food festival in this school year today, with a catch. All food must be bought with “tickets.” Previously, it was essentially a cash-food exchange. Now they require students to purchase tickets then use tickets to buy the food because of “state law regulation” and “protection of the students.”
The first food festival this year was to be scheduled on Valentine’s Day but was “postponed” because clubs were protesting against this change. The reasons were clear; the change would most likely result in a loss for clubs because no one could predict the effect of the “tickets,” as it would be a hassle for most students. This time, they offered an incentive for clubs to sell food again, with same rules applying: they would advertise the food festival like crazy. Still one more catch, tickets could not be refunded. Though they can be used in next food festival, who is it to say that there will be a next one?
The show was up today. Out of the ~45 student organizations on campus, only seven came forth to sell food. Though all food was sold out, but clearly the clubs ordered less food to sell. The truth remains: tickets are a hassle to the students. Here I am to refute the reasons they gave for forcing ticket sales upon us.
I was walking out of class today for lunch and saw people start scrambling for food while many were turned down because they didn’t know they have to use tickets. Then, the most hypocritical thing popped out and almost made me throw up, seriously. Next to these stalls were the normal school lunch lines, where people could actually use “cash” to buy food. Amazing!
I guess school officials failed to realize the obvious point that people use cash to buy food all the time in schools, without any problems. Our school lunch lines are serviced by students, and so are food festival stalls. What difference does it make? Why do we pay taxes for such intelligent people to work for us.
I love the smell of irony.
Topics: cash, food festival, hypocrisy, irony, opinion, tickets
30Oct
Some people really need to find better things to do.
There was just a fairly shaky earthquake two hours ago here in the Silicon Valley, about magnitude of 5.6. The location of the quake is in fact just a few miles from my house. No damage caused though.
Now… Some of you may know about the national “did you feel it?” survey where they gather data to find out more information about earthquakes. If you do check the survey results of this earthquake, people from a few hundred miles reported that they felt the earthquake. Get a life. I know you have better things to do than that.
On the other hand, whoever wrote the software for the survey needs to put in some fraud detection at least. No way someone from a few hundred miles can feel the earthquake.
Topics: earthquake, opinion
29Jun
Like I was saying a few days ago, I got myself a brand new keyboard, the Microsoft Natural Ergonomics Keyboard 4000. I got the package yesterday and I’ve been using it ever since. Despite a few minor problems so far it’s been pretty good.
In the past I’ve always got the cheap $5 dollar keyboards, but those come with a great price. My hands and fingers would start to hurt if I type on the keyboard too much (over 30 minutes). I’ve been wanting to get an ergonomics keyboard for awhile now, hoping that it will solve my problems. Right now, I can’t say for sure if this is helping.
The keyboard takes sometime to get use to. As you can see, the middle is curved up, supposedly to make you more comfortable. But as someone who doesn’t type the 100% proper way, it takes time for me to adapt the keyboard.
The keys are fairly comfortable and quiet. The keyboard also comes with software to allow you to customize the buttons at the top. I’ve never really used those keyboard buttons before, but I may give it a try this time. There’s also a zoom button but it’s quite awkward to have it right in the middle. The back and forward buttons are also in the middle, which is kind of odd. My Logitech MX Revolution mice does a better job of zooming and back and forward browsing since it has better customizations.
I was a little disappointed to find that my keyboard didn’t come with the 7 degree riser. When I was in Office Depot to check out the keyboard myself. The riser made typing much more comfortable. But hey, I bought the OEM version of the keyboard, which is of course cheaper. Nothing to complain here. The truth is that Microsoft makes pretty damn good keyboards. Overall, I think the keyboard is well worth the money.
Topics: ergonomic, keyboard, microsoft, opinion, review, Tech
26Jun
I am a pretty loyal Bloglines user ever since I started subscribing to RSS feeds. I’ve been tempted to switch over to the new version of Google Reader for awhile. Three days ago, I finally got around to organize my feeds and exporting them to Google Reader. However, Google Reader just doesn’t fit my taste and I switched back today.
Here are the main reasons:
- Scrolling One of the things I like about Bloglines is the ability to just swift through the feeds really quick and take a glance at the headlines. But in Google Reader, scrolling is really annoying because it marks the posts as read one by one, thus making scrolling really slow.
- Sharing Another great thing about Bloglines is the ability to just have a public page where you can show everyone else the feeds you are subscribing to. In Google Reader, there is a similar feature. But instead of displaying a list, it actually displays the RSS items.
- Shortcuts This is the main reason I switched back to Bloglines. Bloglines’ shortcuts are very simple. j is next item. k is previous item. n marks the item. f goes to the next folder. Things are not quite the same in Google Reader. The previous and next item shortcuts are the same, but switching between folders makes me want to scream. First I have to select a folder by pressing shift+n or shift+p. Then I have to OPEN it, again, holding down shift and pressing o. Why can’t I just select the NEXT folder and OPEN it in one press.
- Marking Items as read The is the main reason I actually use feed readers instead of iGoogle or anything of the like. With feed readers, I can keep track of what I’ve read and what I haven’t. One small annoyance in Google reader is that when I open a folder and when there is only one or two items unread(and don’t take up the whole page), I still have to press the “j” button n times, to mark them as read. Of course I can always “mark all read”, but Bloglines makes it so that I don’t even have to do any of that.
- Organizing It’s so hard to organize your feeds in Google Reader. It just plain sucks. I want the ability to just drag and drop my feeds and folders. Double click to rename them. And hold on to control to select multiple of them. I also just want to hit delete to delete a feed or folder. But with Google Reader, you have to make bunch of check marks one by one and then choose your action.
If Google fixes these annoyances, I will definitely give it another shot. But for now, Bloglines it is. Oh yes, meanwhile, checkout what I’m reading every day.
Topics: Bloglines, feeds, Google Reader, opinion, review, RSS, syndication, Tech
19May
Yesterday, I came across a digg story titled “Don’t Bug the Person Who Wants To Be Alone.” The article was a great read. I could totally relate to it. The comments by other digg users are also very good.
Instead of just repeating, I’m just going to quote a few of the comments and comment on it.
I’m sure most Diggers like a little solitude. I certainly do. If I don’t offset my being the center of the universe with getting away from everyone and being on my own for a bit, then I go insane.
This comment basically sums it for me. I like to be alone, and sometimes I need to be alone.
According to the article people with introverted personalities still have friends and have a life, just not the life that an extroverted person would find fulfilling. Loners who keep to themselves are not necessarily lonely, but feel that the time spent alone is more productive and stimulating than socializing with the bulk of society.
This is so true. Sometimes when I hang out with people, all everyone else does is just talk about meaningless things.
Being “alone” is not the same as “being lonely”.
This quote made my day. I want a T-shirt that says that.
Well I’m a solitary guy and I never felt bad about it and I never felt the need to socialize. When I was younger I felt a little guilty about it because everybody was telling me that enjoying things by myself was not normal, I only had one or two friends at any time in my life. It’s not like I’m a reject either, I get along great with people. I just don’t like most people.I’ll talk with my co-workers like anybody else, but it ends there. I had all kinds of less intelligent people (school councelors and such) trying to “help” me in life because THEY felt bad about MY being alone. It usually led to insults from me. I just don’t want to be bothered. I have a better time on my own than with other people, I see most people as an annoyance. It probably seems very egotistical, it is. In my eyes, I’m better than you.
The science of psychology is far from being exact. A lot of people have traits of character that would be considered “not normal” in psychology. But if you’re happy with your particular character traits and you’re not hurting anybody, well that’s it, fuck psychology. It can’t help you because you are not broken. Psychology will be of great help when you are unusually sad or depressed, when you are unusually distressed. But if your personnality is business as usual and you’re happy with it, then you’re fine. The fact that you are outside the norm doesn’t make you sick.
A very long one, but a very good one. However, this one sums everything up for me. At school, sometimes I just want to be alone, and I enjoy it.
I prefer being alone most of the time. But it is not that I dislike people. I hate talking for the sake of talking.
I hope some people here are lucky enough to have those one or two friends that you can hang out with and not say a word to them for hours. Those are the friends I could be social with all the time, the ones that don’t feel compelled to talk just for the sake of talking.
Silence is golden.
This one also nails it. I hate noise and I hate talking about nothing. It seems like in high school, it’s not normal if you don’t talk about anything even when there’s nothing to talk about.
There are many other comments that nailed it. You can definitely check them out. I don’t know about you guys, but these comments just writes out my story.
Topics: alone, Life, opinion, silence
14May
I know it’s been a long time since I updated. After the all the robotics competition, I just had a lot of projects and the AP Chinese exam to handle. So far, I have two final projects left and I’ve already took the AP Chinese exam. The exam was great (never thought I would say that), I’m pretty sure I’ll score a five. As for the projects, I have a very idiotic Spanish project which involves tons of “summary pages” and essays — not fun. The other project is for my Physics class. I’ll be making a mousetrap car. I already have some ideas, but I just need to stop procrastinating. 
I wanted to post about this last week but didn’t have time. I got a new mouse! I got the Logitech MX Revolution. 55 bucks but it’s well worth the money. Now my fingers don’t hurt when I click. I also love the configurations I can do with it.The only thing that sucks is the battery power. There’s no sleep mode either, so I always have to remember to turn it off.
Meanwhile, I’m still planning for the summer plans including the July Hawaii trip. Since I’m part of a “team”, I’m suppose to work with a bunch of pain in the butt parents and hypocritical team members. These people are the stupidest hypocrites ever…
Anyways, other than the usual school work, I’ve been doing some labor for Shane and MQ. It’s also ants season here so after this I’m going to go kill some ants!
Topics: advance placement, ants, AP, Hawaii, Life, Logitech, mouse, opinion, review, spanish
11Feb
A very ugly bug happened on Barack Obama’s campaign social network site. What happened was when you create a group on the site, the example it shows was the last group created. Apparently, someone created a really hilarious association, which sparked this bug.
As you can see, there was some flame war going on. The “New Media Director” made a huge post basically saying how TechCrunch shouldn’t have manipulated the bug and blah blah blah. Honestly, I think that “New Media Director” shouldn’t have made that post. I, for one, when seeing this post, I only looked from it at a humor point of view. There was nothing political or anything.
Plus, I don’t know why any coder would spend the extra time to create a feature just to display the latest creation as an example. Much simpler and 100% bug-free with a static example.
Just chill and relax, doesn’t it make you laugh when you see that picture? Who cares which site the bug was from.
Topics: opinion
02Feb
Today, someone stole my money during my PE class. This isn’t the first time.
Before I go on a rant, I need to make it clear that I did make precautions. After the first time someone stole my money, I double checked my lock every time everyday. Today wasn’t an exception. I double checked twice before I went out of the locker room.
Here’s how I look at this: The person, or people, who stole my money, is obviously a low life. I have no idea why you want to steal other people’s money. And further more, this isn’t even technically my money, it’s my parents’. Whoever stole the money should be ashamed.
Sure, I don’t think anyone hasn’t ever stolen anything at all. But it is very sad to see anyone to be a grownup steal anything. I don’t know what goes on to the minds of my peers today. Don’t your parents teach you ethics?
The next in line to be blamed is my school. They give out crap faulty locks that can be easily broken. Not only that, they don’t really give a crap if you get anything stolen. Like everything is the student’s fault.
Lastly, I need to blame myself. Why? I guess I could say I shouldn’t have brought extra money to school. I should have put money in somewhere else more secret besides my wallet.
This isn’t really about the monetary value. I just don’t understand what goes into someone’s mind when someone take something that isn’t theirs. If you don’t feel shame and pity when you take something that isn’t yours, you are pathetic, sorry to say.
What has happened has happened. I can only admit that today is a bad day. The world would be a better place is people were not so pathetic.
Topics: Life, opinion, theft
