Trick or Treat? What are you guys doing tonight? Anybody going to Castro? For me, I only started to get into Halloween when I came over here, so I don’t know much about this day, except that people dress up, carve pumpkins, watch scary movies, kids go out collecting candies from neighbors, etc etc. I do like the Halloween animals though, particularly rats and spiders.

We have lots of treats here at the office, but no one’s dressed up. I’m wearing an orange T-Shirt though. Does that count? As a Retro Pumpkin Girl?

Remember I told you that I desparately need a new phone? I got it! Toyed with the thought of getting the Nokia N-Gage, but … nah, its too expensive. I wanted a camera phone, tri-band GSM, small and lightweight, and looks really cool - so the Sony Ericsson T616 by AT&T seems just the one, and its only $49 too.

I took Otter to the vet yesterday for a tooth trim. Yet another $20 bucks. It’s quite a simple procedure, and the vet tech at Adobe Animal Hospital did such a great job. I need to bring her (Otter) in next month for the same thing, coz her teeth are misaligned and she is not able to grind it down herself. As you know, rat’s teeth does not stop growing throughout their lifetime, and they have to chew stuff to keep it down.

Today the Sun (yes, THE Sun) unleashed a third most powerful flare in recorded history, and a storm of charged particles is coming straight towards earth!

The article mentioned that U.S. residents can expect to see auroras on Wednesday. I hope power doesn’t go out. sigh … we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read more …
Sun shoots monster flare at Earth
Sun erupts in biggest storm in years

Yep! This morning, the Fedex guy came into the office and passed me a box … I knew it was here - Panther! You know what I’ll be doing tonight

DOUG!

Remember not to go to work 1 hour earlier - its time to turn your clocks back by 1 hour!

I know this might be old news, but do you know that Taikong Corp, a Taipei-based pet fish breeder turned biotech firm, has genetically engineered a type of glowing fish called “Night Pearl”, hoping that the fish would be a big hit in the aquariums stores? Instead they were criticised for their work by concerned environmentalists who were worried that, if released into nature, might pose a threat in the ecosystem.

I personally think this fish is not good looking at all, and the glow makes them look fake. They look like zebra danios. I’d much rather buy fish with natural colors which are much more pretty than these. What do you think?

Read more:
Genetically-modified fish seen making big splash
Frankenfish on Sale in Taiwan
GM fish glows in the bowl
Pet Fish that Glow in the Dark Confiscated

Just a reminder to ALL of you, Apple’s new OS X, Pather (10.3) is going to be released tonight at 8pm. See it for yourself!

I just couldn’t wait. I know that we could probably get cash back from our played games, and use it to get SSX3, but that would have to happen during the weekend, and I really want to play it now, so last night I bought the damn thing.

Went home, D and I fired it up. I must say, the graphics was impressive, I love the new “icy” look and feel to it. We are great fans of EA Sport Big, and have all the SSX games (SSX, SSX Tricky, and now SSX3). 4 new characters - Allegra, Nate, Griff, and … forgot the other one. Anyway all the other characters had a makeover, and Elise, looks really hot. I can’t remember if they had Brodie and Marisol in there.

Gameplay was almost the same as the other 2 in the series, I’m not too crazy about the new soundtrack - the previous ones had better up-beat and catchy tunes that gets you in the mood - most of the songs in this version are slow and “airy”, kinda makes you wanna sleep. Oh, now you can also change the rider’s head gear, tops, bottoms and boots, and you use money that you earn from your races and challenges to get new gear for them. Every time you do a trick, or collect stuff while in the challenges, you earn money, and to advance to the next level you have to collect the specified amount of money - for example, to unlock Peak 2, you need to earn a total of $100,000.

All in all, a great improvement from the previous versions, though I was disappointed about the music. The rating I give it is 8 out of 10.

Visit the SSX3 Website
Buy the Game

If you step outside today, you wouldn’t have thought its Fall already. 85 degrees! When I got into my car, it was baking. Good thing I had the sun roof open just a little bit, or I would have been baked hahah …

Finally got things squared out with DMV, so that is a big check off my to do list. Lots of stuff to do still - especially for the wedding. Sigh .. time’s a’tickin’.

Yeah, Apple has finally got rid of G3, and made all iBooks into G4s. My iBook has become an antique, and if electronics were valuable, it would have become a collector’s item (too bad this ain’t true). I really want a faster system, but just don’t have the money to do that right now, which makes me really frustrated. But I’m definitely going to get me a new phone (maybe T616) - my Nokia 3360 has been with me for 3 years, and its about time I upgraded. Come to think of it, my iBook is close to 3 years old too. Gawd, I’m the owner of old aged electronics!

Utterly Preposterous! That was the situation I was in this morning - you guessed it, bad traffic. I’ve been in bad traffic jams, but this one takes the cake. Imagine driving at 5 mph all the way from Mountain View to Redwood City (that’s like 10 miles?). The minute I got in from 237 all I could see was a sea of cars. But I kept my hopes up (ever optimistic) - maybe it was the Mountain View people trying to get in. But NOOOOOOO, this crawl speed kept on one exit after another - we were still crawling at Palo Alto! What’s more, it was past 9am and the car pool lane was open, even so, that lane became the worst of the lot. I was safe in the second lane, but it was still really really slow. It took me an hour and a half, almost 2 hours to get my car from San Jose to where I work. Argh!

The cause? Turns out some truck spilled sand or something on the freeway and the police and tow trucks were there blocking traffic!

Took my car to the car wash yesterday, and now he’s clean as a whistle! Fortunately it didn’t rain so I still have a clean car today. And yes, he’s now parked in the garage and not on the curbside. heh.

Today is Mom’s Birthday. Well, technically it was yesterday in Singapore … erm … yeah … HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM! Also, my Dad’s birthday was a few days ago - 17th Oct, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD! October is really THE month for birthdays.

DREAMWEAVER IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!

(sorry .. I just had to get that out of my system)