Looking Back at 2011

It's that time again!  That time when videos pop up everywhere looking back at the top things of the year.  Below are three of them.  Posts resume next year!

Bing


Youtube


Zeitgeist

Convenience Fees

Move over Federal Universal Service Fee, there's a new strange fee!

I'm usually not a fan of so-called "convenience charge" imposed by companies (who actually is?), and the latest one by Verizon is no different.

If you haven't read about the outrage on the internets today, Verizon plans to charge an extra $2 to customers who make those one-time payments using a credit or debit card on their website.  Those who pay online using their bank accounts or through an automatic bill payment system, write physical checks and mail them or pay at one of their retail locations are exempt from this fee.

What gets me about this fee is that how is this considered convenient?  From the looks of it seems that some of the fee exempt methods are actually more convenient than the one-time payment way.  What it really is I think is a credit card convenience charge.  Companies get charged a small percentage whenever someone uses a credit card by that credit card company.  I guess Verizon is tired of paying that fee and is now passing it on to its customers.  You might be wondering now: "But what about those who sign up to auto bill pay with their credit card?"  Well, the percentage the credit card companies charge for each transaction is so small that the $2 more than makes up the charges for those coming from the auto bill pay folks.  I wouldn't be surprised however, if somewhere down the road Verizon will add a brand new convenience fee to them as well.

I guess the execs were busy playing with their shiny new iPhones and didn't see the outcome when Bank of America tried to impose a wildly unpopular fee.

Funk Smell of the Day

At the 6/J/N/Q/R/Z subway entrance on Centre St, there always seem to be some sort of smell as one walked down the stairs to the turnstiles and to the platforms.  Funny thing is that smell is only noticeable during the evening rush hours.

It's hard to describe the smell exactly too as it changes daily.  One day it smells like a sewage, the next like human excrement.  It's kind of suspenseful if you think about it.  You never know what kind of smell you're going to get for the day except that it's not going to be good.

Extra Load

With one of my colleagues going on vacation, I have assumed a big portion of his responsibilities until he returns.  From the looks of it, it's not terribly difficult.  I just now have to keep an eye out on some extra stuff and follow up on things he used to follow up on like scheduling and project management.

Not more than thirty minutes after he left however, two things already went wrong due to a typo in the paperwork and a mess of schedule conflicts popped up.  I tried to minimize the damage, but because it was already the end of the workday, the other party involved has already left and nothing could be done until tomorrow morning, including how to reschedule everyone.

This is going to be a challenging and interesting two weeks.  Just like when I first started working here I was thrown right into the fire after very minimal training.  Looks like it's happening once again.

Holiday or Not?

Today was one of those weird days where it's a Monday following a holiday that landed on a Sunday.  In most cases because the holiday was on a Sunday, it is observed on the following day.  For others though, only the actual day is celebrated and the next day is back to business as usual.  For me and probably several others, it was the latter scenario.

I don't mind going to work on a day like this, but I don't need to be constantly reminded by everybody around me that they have the day off!  Also, the trains running on a weekend schedule didn't make things any better either.

Holiday Surprise

Aside from the fact that this is a cell phone commercial, you can't help but feel a bit warm and into the holiday spirits after watching this.

Catalina Surprise

Usually at a supermarket when I'm checking out random coupons would spit out from the Catalina Machine.  It was usually grocery related or something else I wasn't really interested in.  This time however it was different.

Right before I was about to shove it into the grocery bag with my receipt I took a quick glance at it and it read "FREE $15 ITUNES GIFT CARD."  At first I thought it was a typo or one of those situations where I would have to make a $50 purchase before getting this offer, but after having read the entire coupon front and back it seemed like there was no strings attached.  A free $15 iTunes gift card and that was it.

The next day I went back to the supermarket, picked up a $15 iTunes gift card from their wall of gift cards and proceeded to the checkout line.  I was expecting the cashier to say it was invalid or that I had to make a purchase first, but nope.  I simply walked out with a free $15 iTunes gift card.  Nice!  I have to start paying more attention to these Catalina coupons!

Printer #4

With my new Brother printer arriving today, it will mark my fourth printer in such a short span of time.

The first one refused to print whenever one of the ink cartridges allegedly ran out of ink, even when I wanted to print something that didn't involve that "empty" cartridge at all.  Then the second printer had constant mechanical problems and often would jam or spit out the paper all crumbled and messed up.

Finally the third printer's fax and WiFi functions broke.  Having to connect to it using a printer cable was a hassle because the cable I had was not long enough and everytime I had to move stuff around to connect to it.  There was still Bluetooth, but its success rate was 50/50.  It was great when it worked, but when it didn't work, the paper would get stuck halfway with the print job hanging in the print queue.  To reset it, I would either force quit the print spooler or restart my computer if the first option didn't clear it.  Once restarted, it's again a 50/50 chance that the old print job would be completed.  If it failed again, the printer would spit out that stuck, half-printed paper, load a new piece of paper and get that stuck halfway.  I now have wasted two pieces of paper!

I have chosen this printer after reading some reviews.  They were mixed, especially when it came to ink cartridge (or in this case toner) life, but it seems that every printer has this problem.  I was a little put off that this printer was one of those printers that refused to print whenever that "out of ink" error message appeared, but thankfully users have found a way to override that message.

I won't be using this printer for a while as my old one still have some ink left in its cartridges, but I hope it works better than the first three!

What Keys?

Having lost the bathroom keys several times and having to pay exuberant prices to have them replaced because they're a special type of key, today we were on the other end and found someone else's key in the bathroom.

We could simply return it as I have suggested, but after having been burned so many times, my coworkers think otherwise.  Their reasoning was that no one has bother returning our keys when we lost ours, so why should we be so nice?  One time a coworker saw someone with our key, but when confronted about it, the person flat out denied it in front of her face.  So much about being good business neighbors.

So now the plans is to hold the keys until someone asks for it.  Coming from their point of view I guess this is justified, but still this doesn't sound right.

Autobiography via Facebook

Facebook last week debut it's Timeline feature where details of an user's life going all the way back from when they were born is displayed in a timeline format.  In terms of appearance, it's well laid out and appeasing to the eyes. As you scroll down it highlights major points of interest in each year in the form of pictures, posts, or announcements.  In areas where information seems sparse, users can manually enter in missing stuff themselves.

Looking at all the blanks I feel like I should add more information to make the timeline look more complete, but do I really want to share that much?  It's nice to have everything in one convenient place to refer back to in the future, but how much detail of my personal life should Facebook have about me?

I do like this idea of creating a timeline for my life, but I wonder if there's some offline alternative (doesn't have to be from Facebook) where I can freely enter all my details without having to worry about people mining my data to target ads for the sake of monetary benefits.

Nickels and Dimes Worth of Metrocards

With the current fare structure of the Metrocard, most riders will end up with some small change when purchasing Metrocards with that added bonus.  Some will just simply keep refilling that card and add the new amount to the remaining balance.  Others however, seeing as how the remaining balance is so small, don't want to be bothered with that and just throw it away.  This is where people like me come in to pick up and refill them.  It might be small, but they add up!  These past two months I have picked up $5.85 worth of Metrocards.

Someone has suggested that I bring them all to a booth and ask the staff to combine them all together.  Rather than bother him with this trivial stuff, I grabbed a bag of dimes and nickels, brought them all to a vending machine at my local subway station and refilled each of them myself with enough money for at least one ride.  I knew this was going to take a while, so I deliberately waited until Sunday to do this and at the rear exit of my local subway station where there's not a lot of foot traffic.  It took me a good 15 minutes entering all those dimes and nickels into the vending machine, but thankfully no one was waiting behind me to use the machine next!  I now had six Metrocards with at least one ride in each of them!

Keep those Metrocards with small balances coming in!

Redeeming Them Coupons

I finally got a chance this weekend to redeem two McDonald's coupons I purchased from living social earlier this month. I'm always a little hesitant using these "free" coupons because the stores usually give a hard time with them. They'll make me jump through loops by saying all sorts of things like they don't accept it, it's not for this particular item, I have to get the manager to approve it first and other limitations in hopes to deter me from using the coupon at all. With these McDonald's coupons however, the entire transaction was surprisingly smooth. They had to ring that order up separately from my other order to charge me the tax due on the Big Mac and fries. Other than that it was business as usual. Now I don't have to worry about redeeming the remaining coupons!

For those of you who are criticizing my eating habits or looking at my coupons with disgust, give it a rest. Like you don't eat some other kind of junk/fast food, hm, Mr./Ms. Perfect Health?

PokeAwesome

Some of the Pokemon get a little too real.  Language NSFW.

End of the Unlimited (For Now)

Today is my last day on my 30-day unlimited Metrocard and after this one I will not be buying another one until March next year when the weather gets warmer once again.  The weather this time of the year is too cold to go out during the weekends on those little excursions.  Since I'm not taking the subway/bus on the weekends now, it wouldn't make economical sense to purchase a $104 unlimited card when I'm only going to use it on the weekdays to get to/from work.

So what am I going to do now with all that time on the weekends?  Finish some video games (just barely started on Zelda: Skyward Sword), back up all my files (it's that time of the year again), clear out the junk on my room (I currently look like I'm a hoarder), edit/upload pictures I've taken this past year (been meaning to do this) and most importantly catch up on some sleep (very needed). 

Unfavorable Position

Today while chatting with a colleague, the topic about our roles at where we worked came up.  He told me he wouldn't like to have my position.  I believe this was the third or fourth time someone told me that they disliked my job.

Is it really that bad?  Sure there's the occasional irate customer or the endless paperwork trail to follow, but every job has their bad points.  If one can look past these points then it's not that bad at all.  It might suck at the beginning, but then you develop your groove and everything works in sync with you (most of the time at least anyway).

It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it can't be no one's cup of tea.

Who Are You Again?

Early this morning I attended a meeting where I had the chance to meet certain managers in person.  While they were all very nice it seemed that no one was able to get my name right.  I was called all sorts of other names before each of them fit it right.

That wasn't the only thing.  Although I didn't noticed it myself, my colleague said that the managers while talking spent most of the time staring at one person and not the other two people (including me) that stood there.  Was it because they didn't know who I was and were shy, or that I had something on my face?  I hope it was the former and not the latter!

In any event I wonder why I was that unnoticeable this morning.  I stood there just like my other colleagues, yet it felt like I wasn't there at all.  What I got basically were quick general glances.

Being semi-invisible isn't all bad.  The way I see it, the less recognizable you are the less susceptible you are to being asked to do countless favors or other unfavorable tasks.  Someone else with a more familiar name would come up first before yours would.  Also, you can get away with certain things others can't because you're under the radar.

It's good to know people, network and whatnot, but at the same time the less people you know the less problems you'll encounter.

Hot and Cold

My office gets quite interesting when the weather gets cold outside.  Like most places in the northeast, the heater kicks up once it gets cold enough.  However, the table with the computers is placed right above the heater.  I don't know whose idea this was as I'm sure heat and steam don't mix well with computers, but apparently it has been like this for a while.

So because the computer is on this table I usually sit here with my legs right next to the heater while I work.  Every time the heater turns on, my legs would be warmed up to the point of making them feel real dry and itchy.  As the heat is traveling under the table and out the sides, my hands are on top of the table typing away on the computer.  I now have a hot dry legs and cold stiff hands situation going on here.  My upper body is feeling cold while my lower part is warm and toasty. This is feels quite awkward and uncomfortable.

If the risk of getting Carpal tunnel syndrome from typing too long doesn't get me up and out of this seat, then the heat most certainly will!

A New Way to Internet

Now that I got my parents a tablet, maybe they can enjoy the internet a little better.  For non-English speaking people like my parents, finding stuff on the net is hard.  Since they speak Chinese they would have to know the pinyin, or Romanized versions of the characters and type that into a search engine.  Unfortunately they're not experts in pinyin, let alone the Roman alphabet, so this was not an option.

The next option is to have some sort of writing peripheral attached to the computer so they can write the character and it would transcribe on to the screen.  This seemed like a good idea, that is until I actually got those peripherals.  They were very janky and worked with certain programs while refusing to cooperate with others.  One even came cracked!  Aside from all these problems, they weren't cheap.  They averaged about $100.

With them costing so much I figured I should just get them a good tablet.  I finally got them a really nice one and currently in the process of teaching them how to use it and whatnot.  The most important feature is that they can now search the web by writing out Chinese characters.  Sure it's slow that you have to write one character out at a time, but it's better than nothing.  Once they get the hang of it I'm sure it will flow much smoother.

SantaCon 2011

Today while I was shopping at the new Apple Store in Grand Central, which by the way is quite spacious but hard to navigate around because of all the tourists, the annual SantaCon happened to roll on by to the area and all convened at the concourse level.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of people dressed up in Santa costumes and walk around the streets of NYC in this annual tradition.  There's no real history behind this event except that a bunch of people "get into the holiday spirit," some more than others (i.e. drunk), and spread joy and cheer around.  If nothing else, this is a great spectacle for everyone else.

Brunchables

A new concept for you brunch fans!

Analog Afternoon

With the internet and fax being down pretty much all day at the office today, I had to resort to doing all my paperwork and other tasks offline and (gasp) the old fashion way of pen and paper.  It felt a bit awkward not having the internet at my fingertips to instantly look something up or reply to emails.  Certain things that could've been done in 10 minutes now took twice, and in some cases thrice as long.  By the afternoon I finally got the rhythm of this whole analog way.

It was amazing to see how much I relied on being connected to these devices and to the internet.  The former way of doing things before the internet seem slow and inconvenient, but at the same time felt like more effort was put into it because of the manual labor involved.  It's sort of like to compare typing an email to writing a letter.  Feels more personal with a letter.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Today was one of those days that seem like everything was going wrong and I couldn't get anything done.  First I get reprimanded for following orders that turned out to be incorrect.  Next, I couldn't get something resolved at the city agency and have to take the long way to get it done.  Then when I got back to the office the internet and fax were down and was with Verizon tech support while crawling under tables switching wires around.  Finally as I was about to leave someone came up to office about a discrepancy in some records and I had to stay late to pull out all the files.

Man, I think I get these days quite often.  I bet if I did a quick search in this blog I'll find a post not too long ago venting about similar things.

It wasn't a total downer today though.  I did pick up about $4 worth of Metrocards this afternoon in the subway.  One free ride, woo!

Too Simple

Someone today told me that I'm a simple person.  Not simple like I'm stupid, but rather someone that is straightforward.  Unlike others that may have complex relationships with others intertwined in a delicate network that the slightest stir can cause a great ripple effect of sorts, I apparently have relationships simply based on face value.  Was this a compliment or an insult?

I suppose I am a simple person in that regards, but not totally.  I do have intricate networks based on years of interaction and trust, but I also admit it's not as a tangled mess as others have.  I guess I'm actually kind of lucky to have a network mostly free of drama and other problems.  I don't have time for this nonsense, so I try my best not to get involved in such situations.

So to the person that told me I'm simple: Yes, I guess I am a fairly simple guy and I like it exactly the way it is, thanks.

Gameless 3DS

I finally caved in a bought myself a Nintendo 3DS yesterday.  What pushed me over the edge in buying one was a Best Buy deal where they gave a $50 gift card with the purchase of any 3DS system.  Add that to another $25 gift card I will be getting from using some Coke points I saved up and I now have $75 worth of gift cards to use on videogames!

I really want to buy Super Mario Land 3D and Mario Kart 7 (and another game for free since Best Buy has a "buy 2 games get 1 free" promotion going on this week as well), but the $25 card from Coca Cola has been delayed (probably due to the overwhelming demand).  I want to wait until I get that card so I can use them all at once, so that means I currently have no games for my new shiny handheld.

I guess I can play some old DS games in the meantime, or take random 3D pictures with that built-in 3D camera.

New Can Same Coke

Recently the folks at Coca-Cola has temporarily changed their normal red Coke cans to a white/silver for a campaign to raise awareness and fundraising for polar bears in the Arctic.  While this is a good idea in principle, people unfortunately got confused with the new can and some mistaken them with Diet Coke.  It may seem like a minor annoyance, but for diabetics this can be a huge problem.  That's not the only problem though.  Some also claim that the Coke in the new tastes differently than the ones in the old red cans.

As someone who has drank Coke since he was a little kid, I can say that the Coke does not taste differently in the new can.  These people that claim it is different... could it be because the whole idea of a new colored can is so overwhelming that it has somehow tainted their perception of the Coke flavor?  As for those who mistaken the cans for Diet Coke, I understand the "blind grab" defense, but you're also partly to blame for not actually looking at the can.  Doesn't it sound a bit silly to not read something before we put it to our mouth and into our body?

Now that they have changed the cans back to the regular red, does that mean these white cans are now a collector's item?  Time to stock up on them!

Browsing DeKalb Market

No real plans today, so I decided to check out the DeKalb Market in Downtown Brooklyn after a friend recommended it to me.


The market is located conveniently near the DeKalb Ave subway station and is steps away from Fulton Mall.  Before heading to the outdoor market, I decided to take a lunch break at the famous Junior's restaurant.  I was really to eat one of their delicious cheesecakes, but changed my mind later after the dish I ordered was much larger than I expected.


The DeKalb Market is located in an open area which I believe was the former site of the Fulton Center with the Toys R Us and that sketchy food court below in the basement level.  A cool thing about this market is that it is surrounded by cargo bins you usually see hauled by those big rigs on highways.  Some of the bins are even carved out to make a little store with windows and a door!  Aside from the many craft stores, there are also a large open area for folks to sit down and enjoy the several dining establishments.  While you're eating, there is loud indie music blaring from a nearby beat box/music store for you to listen to.

All in all, I think the DeKalb Market is a cool little place to hang out and take a break if you're in the area.

Street View Travel

An awesome trip using Google Street View that makes one want to go "Aww..."

Self-Spit

Today after work I noticed someone while walking down the stairs to the subway platform spit right in front of his own path.  I'm not entirely certain, but I think he got some of his own spit on his jeans because he was walking quite fast down the stairs.

It's one thing to spit onto the floor, but do you have to spit right in front of where you're walking?  Was it that bad that you couldn't wait until you had clearance?  Oh yeah, you look real cool spitting on yourself.

I'm totally against spitting in public, but this self-inflicted shot was actually a little hilarious.  Maybe this is the way to teach spiters how disgusting this habit of theirs really is.