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Have you been in a no-win situation? I have. While they are not life-or-death type of no-win situations, I’ve managed to Kirk my way out from my Kobayashi Marus, mostly through luck, occasionally through some funny cheating of the system. Increasingly, I adhere more and more to the “I don’t believe in no-win situations” mantra. Today, after . . . → Read More: No Win tech·no·gasm /tɛkˈnɒgæzəm/. n., pl. -gasm·s. 1. a form of ‘orgasm’ or intense pleasure that is derived from technological gadgets and gizmos galore; this pleasure is mostly experienced by nerds, geeks or other related stereotypes: I am having a technogasm over device X. Okay, so the definition was mostly copied from Urban Dictionary. Feh. But I do indeed . . . → Read More: Technogasm/Realisation · Awesome In this world, there are 2 kinds (I’m lying, but for simplicity’s sake) of people – thinkers and doers. I fancy myself as a Thinker, with a capital T (you know, to make a difference between normal people who think, and people who think professionally). I like to think of myself as a Figure-Outer, the guy who sits and think, and figure out solutions to a problem, whether real world or theoretical. Well, this would put me in a category people usually associate with dusty old tweed-wearing professors – a theorist. This puts me at odds with people who consider themselves realist1, who upon hearing a reasoning with a theoretical framework (typically a model of some sort) immediately cries “reality is much more complex than that!”. Ah, that is where I suppose I am different. Although I consider myself a Thinker, I don’t consider myself Platonic. You see, once upon a time, there was this guy, he was called Plato. He used to think that just by thinking alone, one can solve the mysteries of the world, and he’d stay away from the real world as much as possible. While that is true, and it is in fact, the power of human imagination that came up with E = mc², that equation would be absolutely useless without any evidence that it works in the real world (and yes, it did work, with 2 very shocking and horrifying displays of power known as Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It is for this reason, I heartily support efforts like evidence based medicine. Continue reading I, Thinker; I Tinker
And a new theme too! Tell me if you have any issues Edit 1/7/2010 (yes, it’s Commonwealth date system, dear American readers. Deal with it): LaTeX installed. Now I can do things like: which you should know is the formula for the p.d.f of a . . . → Read More: WP3 Upgraded Telstra sucks. Don’t get me wrong. I’m on Telstra (I was on 3, but I churned to Telstra because they had the HTC Desire, which I had desired for some time already). I spent the last long weekend in the cold1 collecting data, and here’s why. So my girlfriend got on Telstra too, seeing that I had just switched to Telstra, and Telstra-to-Telstra phone calls are cheaper. She had wanted a Blackberry for quite sometime now, her previous phone being a Nokia E71. So, the decision was to get on Telstra’s Blackberry plan – the $49 cap to be exact. Now, she’s not a stupid girl (I mean, how could she be, she’s my girlfriend), and she knows a fair bit about Blackberries. So 2 Mondays ago, she went to get her phone – the Blackberry Bold 9700. When she came back, she found none of her apps were working. Why? Because she had no BBpin. And after 2 days of troubleshooting, she discovered that Telstra sold BB data plans separately from a cap plan – a fact that she wasn’t told before hand. So she went back to the Telstra shop that sold her the phone plan. She clearly wasn’t informed about that, and guess what, neither were the people in the shop. The people from the shop didn’t know that in order to run Blackberry apps, you need a connection to the Blackberry servers. And to connect to the Blackberry servers, you need a Blackberry data plan. 2 days into your new contract, and you discover that on your own accord, spending countless hours worrying and fretting and troubleshooting the phone, my girlfriend was understandably quite upset about it. So, the Telstra shop people offered to put her on a Blackberry data plan and then immediately cancel the plan once she has downloaded all the apps and activated it. Hereupon, a second mistake was made. You needed a constant connection thru the BB data plan to get your apps working. It doesn’t just activate once and works. Neither the shop people nor my girlfriend knew it at that time. Needless to say, by the end of the night, her apps were not working again. Naturally, everyone was upset. So, the very next day I went to the store with her, and tried to get things working. Here’s basically the summary of what happened in conversation (the Too Long; Didn’t Read edition is here):
Has it really been two months since I’ve written anything here? Hard to believe. The truth of the matter is that life, as always, has been hectic these days – hang on, I’m not Metrodad, why am I writing the same exact sentence as he did? Most readers know I don’t like the concept of countries. It’s an outmoded concept of sovereignty over a piece of land. Anyway, before I get derailed into explaining why the very idea of countries are dumb; the thing about countries is that they have stupid little “permission to travel” documents, known as passports. It’s with these little pieces of papers that countries protect their sovereignty. And passports expire. Mine did a couple of days ago, and so I had to renew my passport. Now, for most countries, one can renew one’s passport online, or via mail – you know, like civilized people in the 21st century do. But in my case, I had to go all the way to the High Commission in Canberra to renew my passport (because the Malaysian government doesn’t allow online renewal). As soon as I realized I was scheduled to physically be in Canberra, I rubbed my hands with glee – because Honeysuckle Creek is in Canberra. And for those of you who do not know what Honeysuckle Creek is famous for – the technicians at the tracking station there were the first people to see Neil Armstrong on the moon. Of course, I then found out that Honeysuckle Creek tracking station is no more, and it’s been relocated to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. First up, a little about what I’m currently doing. I moved recently after getting a new job – I’m now an economist in an online advertising company. What does an online advertising company need an economist for? Same reason why Google hired Hal Varian I guess (hint hint Google Sydney, if you’re ever looking for economists…). Now, . . . → Read More: If I Could Start Over |
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