Origin XT Blog

The link I gave shows the 500 MHz laptop, with flash NAND flash memory storage devices, rugged design, and hand crank. I love the hand crank idea. Then I can stay outside without having to come in to charge the batteries. The storage device sounds good.

A separate news link (http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4491&Page=1&pagePos=11&inkc=0) says that the laptop will come with 1GB of memory. Pretty nice for a sub-$100 laptop, especially since memory is like 50 bucks for 512 MB.

Screen? Ability to be turned black-and-white? 35 bucks each? How come LCD monitors are like 300 bucks a pop? Why is this only 35 bucks?

Made of rubber? Good idea. Let’s drop it just to see what happens.

But best thing of all, it’s linux. They’re going to market it to developing countries like Brazil, China, and India. It’s funny they think children with no previous knowledge of even the existence of technology will be able to effectively use linux.

But a good start indeed, and for that I commend them.

I’ve been pretty “busy” with schoolwork, and was unable to post on this for a few days. During those days, my mom brought home a new rabbit (It’s brown-grayish… and FAT), given to her by one of her coworkers, who had just recently bought a puppy, and loved it better.

This one, like I said, is FAT. In fact, it’s sooo fat, it makes me look normal. So I put this rabbit (in its own cage) right next to my old rabbit’s cage, and they were just staring at each other. It’s hilarious. I wonder when I should open the alleyways…

So Jinghao gave me the opportunity to post here, and I guess I might as well do so because I have the power right? As this is Jinghao’s blog, I’ll go along with the flow and be very nerdy.

I went to this celebration of China’s 56th anniversary today. You see, China’s 56th anniversary of becoming the “People’s Republic” is coming on October 1st and they decided to celebrate with a flag raising down at the County office and then a dinner at the Dynasty restaurant at Valley Fair. I thought some of the comments were pretty cheesy and quite political to make everything seem very toned down and neutral. But one quote–quoted not verbatim but close, caught my ear:

“China is not an economic threat. It is purely a part of our economic engine”

I’ll let you digest that for a few seconds. Read it a couple times more. This is the supervisor of district 3 saying this mind you. Read it another time. And again.

Do you realize how moronic that sounds?

Someone obviously hasn’t been paying attention to the world lately huh? While Ron Gonzales deals with Garbage Contracts and the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team moving out of town and this guy has to deal with that, millions are getting their jobs outsourced overseas to a person named “Johnny” who only learned english last week. And that guy is saying that?!

Read that quote again. And don’t vote for the guy when you get a chance. Because he sure has no idea what he is saying. (Of course, when you are caught in the emotion of a Sino-American celebration, you have the tendency to say something stupid.)

-Albert
Visit me on the web at http://alblurt.thespazz.net/myblog.php

Not much to say. My mom left the garage door open while my rabbit was running around at like 1 PM when I came home today. I didn’t realize it was absent until around 6 PM. I looked around the back yard, then I noticed the open garage door. I searched the garage, and it wasn’t there. And then my mom came home

So I looked at the front yard, and there it was, lazily munching on the high-cut grass of our neighbor’s lawn. How lucky we were that it’s a lazy rabbit… Poor rabbit.

There was this one fly that was bothering me while I was typing my precis today, and I decided to use my fly-swatter and kill it. After chasing it for 2 minutes to no avail, it got itself stuck in a spider web, and kept on buzzing and buzzing until its wings got completely tangled in the web, unable to move.

Then the spider moved out (Yes, I observed the whole event) and spun webs all around the fly. And then it just dragged it out of the way.

All the while, I recorded it on my mom’s camera (video clip mode), albeit it’s extremely blurry. I just need to find the USB cable..

I’m good at remembering technical and factual information, such as dates and computer function names (etc), but when it comes to remembering to keep all my stuff, I have much to improve on.

I lose stuff constantly. It’s not just an eraser or two every once in a while, but it’s calculators, books, pencils, and even … pets… So I’ll compile a list of all the important things I’ve lost (or cannot find lately):

1. Graphing calculator: I lost it near the end of last year. I don’t know exactly where, but the day I had the math final I realized I didn’t bring my calculator (Sidenote: imagine taking a 60 question math final without a calculator at all… ), and so I thought then that I left it at home. I went home and I could not find my calculator in the near premises of my backpack, so I deduced that I left it at some class at school.

   But school ended.

   So when school began, I asked all my teachers, but (obviously) none found one, and even if they did, it was already claimed. The school’s lost and found doesn’t have it, I don’t think. And the mexican janitors probably took it to auction off to feed their family.

2. Scientific calculator: I thought not having a graphing calculator for Calculus (Graphing calc REQUIRED for Calc BC, too) was bad. Now I lost my scientific calculator. One simple error caused its loss…

   I KNOW (I even have the visual memory of it) I dropped it on the ground in K-4 right when I came in for the midterm (First one, the only one yet… the one I almost came late for), since having a square-like block on my pocket wasn’t very comforting (Yes, I do have a calculator in my pants the whole day). I just forgot to pick it up when I left. And you know how Holmes’ 2nd period is all full of retards from regular World History (Sophomore year), right? They stole my calculator cover and now this, I am sure.

   I realized I didn’t have a calculator when I entered my math room, but I decided to wait till lunch to go and ask Mrs. Holmes, because I didn’t want to be late to math (Sitkewich isn’t very leniant, as you can see) Terrible mistake… Holmes said no one turned anything in, and she said she was “busy”. Darn.

3. My Glasses: Simple mistake. I left it in Washington DC the only day, the only 4 hours I was there. Damn it. So I was walking back to the vehicle, and I took off my glasses to look for my mom with my binoculars. Apparently when I was running back to the car, the glasses fell out from my pocket. So I was essentially blind for a 2 month interval.
4. AP Reader: Well, I lost it but Jankowski found it in her room.
5. Chem notebook Same as above, but I apparently left it in Holmes’ room
6. Papers/documents/HW I leave those home all the time. Damn it.
7. Much more stuff I don’t feel like listing right now Money, etc but no one cares

So you see, I need a psychiatrist for losing up to 500 bucks worth of stuff. So, anyone willing to teach me the ways of a normal teenager?

Yesterday, Holmes gave back the content-checked lecture 4, and I saw that I didn’t do very well on it (Close to failing, specifically). The primary problem is she couldn’t read it… Recurring theme, isn’t it?

So I went home and retyped all my large group lecture notes (and questions), which took me quite some time (Approximately 1 hr and 30 mins, but 4 hrs officially if my dad asks). I didn’t get much out of it since every lecture as I only took 2 pages of notes (including the question and answer)… The primary part of that wasted time was used to decipher my chicken-scratch, which, pathetically, not even I can fully read.

But maybe, just maybe, that “wasted” time wasn’t wasted at all. I got a 42/50 on the midterm, which, after curved, is an A+ surprisingly. The curve was pathetically low. What kind of a curve is 88%??? Missing 8 problems sound pretty messed up. HOW DID I MISS 8 PROBLEMS!?

But as Tiffany says, I’m an “outlier” (I think she was referring to Holmes’ classes). Mmm, “outlier” reminds me so much of “box-and-whisker” plots, from back in Freshman year. Oh the good ol’ days. Back to Holmes, she apparently did the worst, despite my earlier conviction that the new teacher (McClellan?

According to Wikipedia:

1. The Chinese lost approximately 3.22 million soldiers. 9.13 million civilians died in crossfire, and another 8.4 million as non-military casualties.
2. Property loss of the Chinese valued up to 383,301.3 million US dollars according to the currency exchange rate in July 1937, roughly 50 times of the GDP of Japan at that time (770 million US dollars).
3. In addition, the war created ninety-five million refugees.

Wow, that totals to 21 million deaths and 95 million refugees. And 50x Japan’s GDP? Damn, Japan owes China 200-250 trillion dollars today… plus interest. (With 5% interest it’ll be too large for me to write. Let’s go without interest then)

Second part is even more scary:

The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek struggled on from a provisional capital at the city of Chongqing; however, realizing that he also faced a threat from communist forces of Mao Zedong, he mostly tried to preserve the strength of his army and avoid heavy battle with the Japanese in the hopes of defeating the Communists once the Japanese left. Chiang feared the Communists more than the Japanese as he famously quoted, “the Japanese are a disease of skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart”.

It’s scary because it sounds so treasonous. The Nationalists were focused on their party power, and less on the defense of the country? The defense and safety of the nation is the most important part of governments. Focusing instead on preserving power to defeat your political opponent and allowing the mutual enemy to scrape away at your nation is just treasonous.

Did everyone at my school absolutely enjoy the fire alarm going off? High-five 5th Period AP Chemistry! In case anyone was wondering, the alarm wasn’t triggered by a malfunctioning fan as Mr. Woo said but by a combination of other things…

First off, we were vaporizing Ammonium Chloride (NH₄Cl), which has a sublimation point at approximately 500 degrees Celsius. Imagine the amount of smoke-like vapors given off by setting that on fire. Good thing we didn’t ionize it beforehand. Ammonium isn’t very pleasant to the nose, and Chlorine is just plain poisonous.

Those were not enough reasons for the alarm to go off. The vents not functioning was why. When I began vaporizing the compound, we began to notice a large accumulation of white cloud-like smoke collecting at the top of the room, and so, I asked Mr. Woo, “That’s a lot of smoke; shouldn’t we do something about it?”, to which he replied “Don’t worry, the vent will take care of it.”

And moments later the alarm went off, and Mr. Woo said “Oh, whoops, looks like the vent’s off… Ok kids, get out of the classroom for a while!” and we did. Immediately after doing so, he yelled, “Wait, go back in and turn off the bunsen burners! We can’t leave burning Bunsen burners in class unattended.”

While “evacuating” the building, I somehow was carrying one of the lighters/sparkers and people began questioning me about that. I swear, I had no connection with the alarm!

Anyway, we’re continuing the lab tomorrow with 2 people going at a time. How exciting!

If you take a look at http://www.china-fpa.org/english/china/nationality/yao.htm, you’ll see the following:

Yao nationality distributes in six provinces, and majority of them live in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. They have their own language and they can also speak mandarin. Their oriJing can ascend to Qin Dynasty. The recordation was getting more in the Song Dynasty. The relationship with other nationalities became close in their developing. There is some difference among the branches.

Was that a typo, or does that just affirm the stereotype that Chinese people suck at English?