I have a 15.4″ laptop. I couldn’t be happier when I used it, ‘cuz it was big and bright and fast. I could run any application I wanted on it. And watching movies was always an enjoyment. Such bright sharp screen! I always get people’s comments about how nice the screen is… That helps to boost my ego.

I was browsing the web a bit tonight and read this from a laptop review:

I sought a computer of this size (12.1 inch screen vs. the more mainstream 15 inch screens) after I watched two guys on a commercial flight. The guy on my left had the 15 inch screen and he had a very difficult time using his computer on the tray table (particularly after the person in front of him reclined their seat).

The guy on the right had the smaller planform 12 inch screen and he was in hog heaven. I thought it was a good object lesson.

Oh my god! It is so true!

Although I loooove my big baby, but after using it for 2 months, I realized I had a problem!

I am 5 feet tall, but that laptop is… so big for me! It’s nearly 7lbs by itself. And when I put it in a backpack for travel, my backpack becomes 30lbs heavy!!

Now I wish I had not envied big nice laptops. I did not think of this problem of “the need to be proportional to my size”…

*sigh

Note:
Quote found from: http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=2500898/id_type=M

This sounds like my work today…

How I love Dillbert… *sigh

If you are a girl/lady, and you have a laptop that you often bring to school or work, you know what I am talking about.

There are just not that many “feminine” laptop bags/cases for us out there!!

I am currently using one backpack style that’s designed for 17″, but I only have a 15.4″ wide screen Toshiba. So it is to be expected that it looks pretty heavy and bulky, and it simply looks humongous on me because it’s even longer than my back…

Therefore, I’ve been doing a bit “shopping” these two days on laptop bags. I got a bit frustrated that there aren’t that many shops that sell laptop bags for ladies.

Here are a few places that I would recommend so far:

• Crumpler - If you are looking for something not so “business-like,” they have some pretty funky bags there.
• Knomo - Very professional looking, yet clean and stylish. The company is based in UK, but they do ship to Europe and USA.
• Life get funked - They have one called “catwalk.” It’s beige/lilic. It looks pretty neat. Check it out.
• Timbuk2 - a few selections of laptop cases. But you can design your own messenger bag, which is really cool.
• ACME Made - Professional looking. Pretty good selection. I would like to know if they have retail stores in US.
• Filofax - The cross handbag looks nice. They have a main uk website that has nicer picures here
• Talene Reilly - You can’t tell they are laptop bags! They just look like handbags, very fashionable, yet has compartment and protection for laptops. My only complain is that the price is on the high side.
• Marka - I simply love their simple color matchings..
• Lin & Leo
• Melissa Beth Designs
• eBags - How can I forget eBags? All my hunting/searching started there. I love the selections there. I especially like the Mobile Edge brand totes…

Resources:
- Shiny Shiny - a girl’s guide to gadgets. Tons of girly stuff there. Superb blog. There’s an entry that talks exclusively about laptop bags.
- Persuing - a blog obsessively covering purses, bags, totes, clutches, and just about anything else you can carry on your shoulder.
- The Bag Lady - Bags, Purses, Belts, Buckles and Jewellery: Life’s little necessities.
- About.com’s list - more professional selections

Just the other day, I found a micro-fiber facial cloth from a Japanese store. I bought it and gave it a try. It was awesome! It is light, has great absorbance, very soft touch, and dries relatively fast. I love it. ^__^

When I was padding my face dry the other day, I noticed a familiar touch to it. When it is dry it has a bit of sticky feel. It is not that kind of glue sticky or sugar sticky feel, but I think it is due to the design of cloth texture so it can create statics to pick up dust easily. Somehow I was certain that I had one JUST like this before, yet I could not remember ever owning one…

While passing by the living room, kitchen, and garage heading to my room, I realized…

I did have one micro-fiber cloth before!!

I got it from Target! It was for drying the body of cars after car wash…

And I was still holding that soft and now-not-so-precious micro-fiber facial cloth next to my face…

I’ve been spending every night doing homework. E.V.E.R.Y… N.I.G.H.T… Is it really that bad? I guess.. not.

I was doing JDBC homework. I was 95% done after 2.5 hours. I was very happy. Then I did a bit more testing on it to ensure no stupid exception was thrown. Oh boii… It took me another 2 hours to trace a silly bug. The day that the homework was due, the instructor sent out a test file. HA! My code failed despite all my testing! It took me another 10 minutes to find out it was partially my code and partially due to a bug in the test cases. It took me another 2.5 hours to trace this bug, get it fixed…

In total I spent about 8-10 hours on it configuring workspaces, setting up mysql, coding, tracing, debugging, refining tests… It wasn’t that bad actually, if I am not taking three classes with every one “soundlessly demanding” at least that much time for JUST homework assignments, not including reading…

*sigh… I miss my pillow.

It actually feels like going back to high school time right now that I am taking all these classes. I stay up to read and do homework the night before assignments are due. And in the class, I do the homework for the next class. Ah… That was how I did it back then. =P

I just realized how far I have drifted away from Microsoft stuff.

I used to looove Microsoft products, no matter it was productivity software or development. I used to like C++ much better than Java. I used to dream about working for Microsoft and I was absolutely thrilled of working there as an intern. Those precious memories.

What about now? I am a part-time Java/Servlet developer. Why part time? Because I have to split that 40-hour work week on Java/SQL/Unix scripting/COBOL. And for the rest of my time, I spend on playing with my servers, different programs, learning PHP/CSS, and reading blogs…

Still not quite far from Microsoft products, no? Then listen to this:

I use PHP/MySQL on Apache Server. I have Tomcat installed on my laptop so I could write Servlet/JSP codes. I use Eclipse (Java-based open source) for development. At work I use Unix platform and vi for coding. My job also includes WebSphere Application Server configuration… No Microsoft.

Ah.. I love Firefox; I was almost going to completely abandon IE if it weren’t for testing. I use Google as home page, actually, Google Suggest. I use Google Desktop Search. I use Google Map. I use Gmail as primary email. I read Google blog…

Hm.. I have shifted my love to Google? O_O”

But I do like Microsoft’s MSN Spaces and their beta search’s query result organization. I guess undying love does not apply to technology, then.

For some reasons (curiosity included) I started taking a few technical classes after work hours. Not thinking much ahead of time, I enrolled in three J2EE classes this quarter.

Three, I thought. Not bad, shouldn’t be that bad. After all, I used to take seven classes in high school, right? Right…

I forgot there are fundamental differences between university extension and high school classes. First of all, smaller classes. Second, much older folks, with one class full of gray hair respectable seniors who have experiences from IBM, to DBA, to VB, to 10 years of Java. Third, homework for each class takes much longer…

I cannot remember how I studied back in the days. I took so many classes, and I am pretty sure that I had at least two or three assignments due each day. Somehow I managed to read and finish all the work. But now, I feel so tired even just after one week of class. 9-5 on Saturday, that was exhausting!

I am not complaining about the classes. I just don’t know how I exactly feel about them right now. They are fun. I feel the thirst to learn everything that the instructors can teach. I guess it is just that the books are… intimidating… scary… o_O” Each one is about 600 pages long… 10 weeks for 1800 pages, actually not that bad. But I still need to figure out the new servers and tools we are using. That takes forever, too.

I am learning log4j and junit now. Luckily we are using Tomcat and Eclipse, which at least I am no stranger to. But I know, with my perfectionism, I will spend much more time than necessary for any homework. I like to not only have functional homework, but with clean codes, documentation, improvement on design, and some testing. And of course, playing with CSS, which I had wanted to master for some time. These are completely unnecessary for the classes, but it is just my habit I guess. My friend described me as an “overachiever,” in a sarcastic way. But I am not trying to be a teacher’s pet. I just love doing those things. How I hate that about myself…

Here are two snapshots of my homework. =)

Oh I even spent time creating that background from scratch, edited from a picture I took. That was fun, too. ;p

How I love playing with stuff. Silly me.

Nowadays there are a lot of toolbars for browsers. The most common ones are Yahoo!, Google,and MSN. They provide somewhat similar features, such as a search bar, block popups, auto fill-ins, links to news, easy access to their emails, etc.

There are alternative toolbars out there, I just found out recently, such as Googlebar for Mozilla based browsers. And here are more:

• Webster Toolbar - allows you to look up words instantly.
• YellowPages Browser’s Bar - fetch business listing instantly
• All Heading News - one click access to news and headlines, and search the news/web
• A9 Toolbar - A9 search, bookmarks, diary, site info
• Alexa Toolbar -site info, site ranking, google search
• Ebay - gives you quick, easy access to eBay from your desktop
• Dogpile toolbar - web search, yellow pages, white pages, news ticker, popup blocker

This is a list from Yahoo Directory

Besides toolbars, there are deskbars and sidebars from Google, Webster, MSN, and other companies.

Which one should you install? Just one note, don’t install too many. You would not want to end up looking like

The problems with having too many toolbars are:

1. they take up a lot of your browser viewable areas.
2. they leave your little foot prints everywhere
3. some of them have similar/redundant search features
4. definitely confuse the heck out of you

My two cents: try to keep them simple and keep your computer clean. =)

I thought Google maps’ new satellite feature would be not well-known. It was quite to my astonishment to find out that not only many people knew about it, they were having quite some fun with it, too.

Here are a few interesting things I have found:

• GoogleMaps Satellite View Real-World-Mix and what it looks like from Google Map
• Another look
• My childhood, seen by Google Maps - a creation of Google Maps and Flickr.com
• MSN’s entry about it

On a side note, Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Flickr is probably the first time making them the leader in the search engine, email, and blog competition with Google and MSN in the past few years.