linux street cred

My new work laptop runs Linux. I've had a Linux desktop at work for years now, but this the first I'm running linux at home.

When I'm home, I defer to M for networking "stuff." He had set up our home router, wireless network, and is the one on the phone with the ISP when things break.

This is a conversation between us the first night I was home with the linux laptop:

C: I set up wireless on my laptop. (padding myself on the back.) Now I've earned some Linux street cred.
M: Did you have to hand-edit a config file?

C: no...

M: No street cred for you!

C: (rolling my eyes...)

Since then, I've been trying to get my laptop to talk to the home printer. After approximately 3 hours of research. I finally got it to work tonight. Yay!

C: I got wireless printing to work!

M: What was the problem?

C: I had to hand-edit /etc/group.

M: (shaking my hand) Congratulations. Now you've joined the linux club.

And to sum it all up:

http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/12/16/how-fanboys-see-operating-systems/

Pet or Partner

Sunday afternoon in our car en route to a furniture store:

M: I read somewhere that Americans prefer being stranded on an island with their pets than their partners.

me: That's interesting...(pause) Well, what would you pick?

M: The pet! I can eat the pet but I can't eat you.

Uh...

Chinese Input

The other day, I stumbled across this guy's blog. He's Chiang Kai-Shek's great-grandson, and about the same age as I. I don't agree with everything he says, but I was impressed with his language skills. Considering he moved to Canada when he was 12 and basically grew up in North America, we're pretty equal in terms of Mandarin background. Granted the guy returned to Taiwan after college, but I'm still impressed with his level of writing. Meanwhile, I can't even type.

I've thought about learning how to type in Chinese for a long time. I would really like to learn Boshiamy just because of its sheer coolness, but the software is proprietary and I couldn't bring myself to pay for an input method software. I poked around online today looking for other options.

I downloaded NJStar trial (so much for not paying for input software... this one would cost money too.) The input methods that require the least amount of training are Bopomofo and Pinyin. I know Bopomofo well, but it requires a Chinese keyboard. To try this input method, I had to bring up a keyboard map on the screen and follow along. I get better precision because I know exactly how to spell in Bopomofo but the process of finding the symbols on the keyboard was slow. My experience trying Pinyin was the exact opposite. I don't know how to spell in Pinyin so I relied on the wikipedia Bopomofo to Pinyin phonetic map. It was slow figuring out how to spell, but once I knew how to spell, typing was very fast.

Overall I had an easier time with Pinyin because it was easier to guess the sound->Latin alphabet mapping than the symbol->key mapping. This is the fruit of my labor. Anyone who can read Chinese can attest to the disparity in the aforementioned blogger's writing skill and mine.

你好﹐ 我的名字是呂悅純 。我住在舊金山附近。 我以經結婚了。 我在一家軟體公司上班。我今天在學中文打字﹐ 可是學得很慢。 尤其我沒有注音符號的鍵盤﹐ 而且也不會拼音﹐ 所以特別難。

Maybe I should blog in Chinese every once in a while to help improve my Chinese writing.

On a separate note, now that I know I have to pay for an input method anyway, I think I'll try Boshiamy next.

AT&T

We're remodeling, so the house doesn't need phone service for a few months. I emailed AT&T to see what our options are in terms of suspending the service. Here is their response:

"AT&T offers three types of Temporary Suspension for your telephone service. You may choose to suspend incoming calls, outgoing calls, or both incoming and outgoing calls. All monthly charges, including taxes and surcharges, will still be applicable while the service is suspended. There is currently a one-time charge of $19.00 to make this change."

In other words, I pay a $19 to "suspend" my service, then every month during the suspension I continue to pay my monthly phone bill. Essentially I have to pay them to not service me.

Nostalgia

After dinner M and I usually work on our laptops and watch TV in the background. Exciting, I know. Since the Hollywood writers went on strike, our night time activities have hit a new low. The other night, we worked while watching Duel, a game show where contestants answer trivia questions.

I forgot the exact question, but a part of one question required you to know the number of schools in the Ivy League. I immediately said 13, and so did M. But we were both wrong. Shame on M. He even went to an Ivy League.

So I looked up Ivy League, and there are only 8. Wikipedia had a list of school mottos which is pretty interesting. Outside of the famous Harvard "Veritas." I didn't recognize any other. I thought Dartmouth's "A voice crying in the wilderness" is kind of silly. Why? Why is the voice crying?

That led me to look up my alma mater on wikipedia. Ha! We have a motto too: "The wind of freedom blows." Who knew! I don't get it, though. What does the wind of freedom have to do with the school? It's not like the school is in the South. Or the North, for that matter.

The tradition section of the article made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I was surprised to find this listed as a tradition: "Birthdays: Boys get thrown in the shower at midnight." I turned around to M: "Doesn't everybody do that in college?" M: "Um, no. You guys are weird."

My favorite tradition would have to be the Graduate at Sunday Flicks. Seniors come in their caps and gowns and everybody cheers and groans through the movie. Coming out of the theater, we were greeted by the Stanford Marching Band, which is hands down the best university marching band in the entire world. They're lively, totally outrageous, creative, and the music is awesome. I get emotional hearing them play the fight song.

Oh memoroies...

Bikini Wax

I've always thought that a bikini wax is waxing off, um, extra hair so when you wear a bikini the extra hair doesn't become an embarrassment, but apparently it's a lot more than that!

Samson and Delilah

We saw SF Opera's production of Samson and Delilah this past week. The sets were awesomely elaborate. I thought the first act sort of hit a lull, but the second and third acts picked up. I especially enjoyed the chorus and the dancers. The singing was good but did not make a special impression on me.