Lloyd Leung

Month: June 2005

  • Simple pleasures in life

    Yesterday was such a beautiful day.
    I accomplished so much in the span of the day.
    Had good food, panzerroties from the local pizzeria and grilled chicken on a greek salad.
    Sat in the sun, smoked a good cuban cigar, having some fine jamacian rum and vanilla coke while read a book by Philip K Dick – The Minority Report.
    The Minority Report, is just one of the short stories that are in that book. It’s a compilation of serveral short stories.
    After all that lounging I decided to wash my car and driveway.
    That got me in a productive mood, so sat down and nearly finished writing the adminsitration backend for my client. Just need to tweak a few things, and all should be good.
    All in all, a very productive day. Hope the rest of summer can be like this.

  • Over priced Apple stuff?

    I’ve been having a ongoing debate with Sam and Alice, in regards to how I believe that Apple stuff is expensive.
    One would argue that you are paying for quality, design, and innovation. While I will argue that it’s over priced, well designed, but innovative? Maybe when they first started as a computer company. But now, I don’t think that they are more innovitive than their competitors.
    I found that their want-to-be-monopolistic ideals prevented them from reaching critical mass early on. Such as preventing 3rd party manufactures from producing compatible hardware for them or along side them. So most people just went for the IBM PCs, and IBM clones. Though, now they’ve changed their turn, as their market shares are in the single digits.
    How does Apple compete? By pretty packaging.
    I’m serious. They’ve made white cool. I look at the products, and I find them pretty. Look at the iPod, the iMac, the iBooks. They’re all well designed, functional units. Whoever their designer is, is a genius. Not to mention their marketing team.
    While Dell has awesome deals, and if we compare feature to feature, Apple is more expensive. And lets not forget about Wal-mart USA, where you can get a computer with lindows/linsphere for the same price as a few cases of good quality beer.
    Alice added, that I at least have the option to buy from someone else other than Apple. I could pay Apple some insane amount for ram, or go to a reputable third party, and pay about 1/8th the price. Just as long as the pinout and timing is the same.
    Still, I consider it price gouging. But hey, Mac people are strange.
    Sort of like how Saturn, and VW people have a cult following towards their cars.
    A car salesman at a GM/Buick/Chevy dealer, said that if GM said to have a picknick, maybe 5 people from their thing may show up to the picknic. Now where as a Saturn dealership held something like, they may have hundreds of people. The same would be true to VW folks. It’s a different type of person that buys those cars. It’s NOT bad, just different. And of course not ALL will be like that as well, but a greater amount would be.

  • Open Ofice 1.9b2 impressions

    I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of Open Office . org (OO.o).
    OO.o is much quicker than MS Office. I never used the scripting features for any of the office products except for Outlook, to sort my email based on subject headers (group mailing lists, etc). Since Firefox runs circles around Outlook for mail handling, just ditched Outlook.
    Firefox is able to handle the type of sorting I need with ease, so why use something that takes a ton of time to just _load_, let along search for anything of importance.
    I highly suggest to my peers, to drop MS Office, and just use Open Office . org. How fancy do you things? Do you really need the cheesy word-art of word? or whatever bloat that comes with it?
    My requirements:
    – spell/grammer check
    – columns for text
    – spread sheet (with standard fuctions, and perhaps some analysis funtions)
    I’ll have to find the site that did a indepth look at OO.o.
    I’m sure there will be hiccups with OO.o, but
    1.) it’s free.
    2.) it’s faster than MSO.
    3.) All major features that are required are there.
    So… hmm… Cheaper, faster, does the job the same… or pay for something that does the same thing?

  • Rant on Apple, Microsoft, and Via.

    GAH!!!!!!!!
    After a few days of not being able to connect my HP Apple iPod 20gig 4th gen. I got feed up.
    I tried my iPod on Alice’s firewire port, and it worked fine. But not USB. I couldn’t get the stupid iPod to work on Alice’s iBook, Mags computer, my computer, or my laptop. My conclusion, iPod’s USB dock thing, broken.
    Works perfectly fine on 1394/1394a/firewire. Stupid iPod.
    Now to rant on Microsoft. GAH!!! Why can’t they release a proper driver. My VIA VT6306 chipset Firewire card, wouldn’t work out of the box with Windows XP SP2 installed. I had to go in a round about way to get it to install.
    STUPID VIA and stupid MS for not releasing PROPER Drivers. Alright, I shouldn’t expect miracles from MS or VIA, to work out of the box. But damn it! Release some drivers that work!
    Instead I had to download some shady drivers from somewhere on the net to get the damn 1394 card to work. Now I just need to remember to backup those drivers, otherwise I’ll have to go through hell again and back to get the IEEE 1394 card to work again.
    Here’s hoping that my iPod will REMAIN working with the firewire.

  • Who do you support?

    As the customer, I want the best product. As someone that isn’t making billions of dollars, I also want the best price. This is the point of view from the consumer.
    How do you make the happy medium between buying dosmestic or import?
    My options where as follows:
    Purchase the items made in India, from an US discount online merchant.
    Purchase Japanese, or European made, from another US online merchant
    Purchase the items made in Europe, from a local supplier.
    Price difference, significantly differed (increasing down the list). Quality, significant as well.
    Now, I couldn’t have bought anything made in Canada, as this kind of product isn’t made here. Nor would I know the quality, or price of such an item.
    At anyrate, I broke down, and spent the big bucks. I paid pretty much double. Stupid? Maybe.
    But how do you make that happy medium? Quality versus cost, or support for local versus foreign.