The World of Little Little Bird

As what I expected, the negotiation with the apartment went nowhere. Then I took my car to the garage for the window. It was quoted for $100. I left car there and went to work. Around 4:30pm, I returned to the garage, but was told that my car was not ready. The part will arrive tomorrow. I needed my car to go home, man. The workaround is that I drove my car home with the inner side of the back door detached. When the part arrives tomorrow, they will call me. I then go back there again and wait for about 1 hour for them to install the window. Ok, it works. At least I could go home for dinner. See you tomorrow, man.

It is Memorial Day today. Garages are not open. I have to wait till tomorrow for the repair. Hope it won't rain tonight. It rained heavily last night and I even saw hail of 1cm in diameter. I used a target shopping bag to cover the broken window. The bag was blown away when I drove this morning.
The Korean guy and I went to the leasing office for a 说法. The lady there refused to talk with us saying she was just an employee. We will go there tomorrow morning for the manager. I don't hope I can get something, but a negotiation won't hurt.
So, tomorrow, I'll be late for work, after negotiation and putting my car at the garage.

Some stupid axxhxle broke my car window and took my dear CD player last night/this morning. My car was parked in the parking lot right in front of my apartment. The broken glass is all over and I'm so sad. Gone with the CD player is my S.H.E. CD.
I called 911 and was told to call 512-974-5000 to report the case. I spent 10 minutes on the phone with a black mama and got a case number. That's it. What else can I do? I walked around the apartment, and found another car's window smashed too. It belongs to a Korean guy. He had taken his CD player with him into his house. So his loss is not as big as mine. We will talk to the apartment manager to see whether we can get something. But the chance is slim. I need to go to a garage for the window and Circuit City for a new CD player. My day was ruined.
Before that, I was happy watching SuperCop, starred by Jacky Chan on Warner Brother TV. It was hilarious.
Whoever that guy is, I curse you!!!

It's not fun. Surfing on the net, writing my thesis, jogging in the sun, watching TV composed my Saturday. I guess I've got a certain disorder called shopping-mania. I wanted to go to the stores badly, but finally controlled myself. The self-control proecss was nasty.
Spurs are now up by three games. Sweeping Suns is right ahead on ABC Monday night. Spurs did a fantastic job by limiting Steve Nash to only three assists and six turnovers. That was awesome.

It's already the end of May, and soon the first half of 2005 will be gone. Time goes so fast that I don't find much progress in work. I'm working with the Indian intern this week for his algorithm. Today, the whole group went out for lunch together to welcome the two new interns. We went to a Pursian restaurant in which I don't find much to eat. :)
I hope there are some good deals this weekend to lure me to the mall. Thus I can kill some time. Otherwise, my weekend will be all thesis time with low productivity.
DAC is ahead. I booked my flight to DAC this week. Non-stop AA flights are good and fast.

There are two UT Austin students coming for internship in our group. One is a Chinese and the other is an Indian. Now my company is like a UT lab. :P I'll have a meeting with the Indian tomorrow. I was fortunate. When I first came last summer, I got a desk in a windowed office shared with a colleague. Now, with more people coming, those two kids have to stay in cubes at the end of the corridor.

Spurs took the first game of the NBA west conference finals in Phoenix. Cheers!
I got a HP flatbed scanner from OfficeMax today for 9 bucks. A pretty decent deal if I can get the rebate.

It is scorching today with high temperature over 95 degrees. Getting into my car is a torture. I went shopping in the morning around 10am. It was already very hot. I waited to 5pm and took a jog. Oh man, my energy depleted so quickly under the sun. I bought another bottle of sun shade with SPF 45 and a big watermelon. The friged melon I ate just now is the best thing for today. I checked tomorrow's local weather. The high tomorrow is gonna be 98 degrees, and the ten-day forecasts are 98, 94, 93, 90, 91, 90, 88, 87, 86. Whatever, it is going down.

I watched Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith this afternoon. US people, kids and adults, are all crazy about the film. My colleagues arrived at the theater 90 minutes before it started to get good seats. I saw dozens of fans sitting outside an auditorium waiting, 1 hour before the show, when another movie was still on.
It is a great movie. It looks familiar to me. Many episodes are somehow like a Hong Kong gangster movie. For example, when Chancellor ordered to excute the councillors, I find it so much resembles the Infernal Affairs II. The effects are so great that you must feel them in a good theater. There are two parts that I didn't get. First, when Master Kenobi knew Padmé was carrying Anakin's baby, he said "I'm sorry." Some audience laughed. I don't know why. The other part is when Padmé died from laboring, she was put on a cart with flowers. However, her tummy was so big as if she was still pregnant. :)
In the previews before Star Wars, the trailer of Mr. and Mrs Smith was shown. It looks like a good movie, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie starring the Smiths. They are in love now, which makes the film very interesting. :)

I went to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area last Sunday. We had planned to go there in Saturday but put it off due to rain. It is 85 miles west to Austin and about 2 hours drive.
On the way there, we were stopped by the police for speeding. Damn. The officer said that we were driving at 77 mph on a freeway with limit 70. I was like, man, are you kidding me? I was pretty sure that we didn't reach 77. Maybe it is because the police car was driving toward us, which introduced the error. Fortunately, the officer was pretty nice, and just gave us a written warning. Thanks, God.
When we arrived there at 11:30pm, we found there was no restaurant. Asking the staff, we were told that the nearest restaurant was 17 miles away. Holy crap! Anyway, we brought some apples, chocolate, beer, Gatorade. After the simple lunch, we started climbing to the top of the rock with altitude of 1825 feet. Then we took a 4 mile long loop trail around the rock. The weather was nice and the view is awesome. I had a lot of fun. The two photos below are the views of Enchanted Rock.

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It expires on May 15th.

Cell phone users are being hit by new taxes as state and local governments scramble to replace declining tax revenue from traditional phones.
The new charges are adding $2 to $10 or more a month to cell phone bills on top of existing federal and state taxes and fees for emergency 911 communications. Sigh~~~
FYI, cell phone taxes in some states:
state/local federal total
Calif. 13.18% 6.05% 19.23%
Pa. 13.52% 6.05% 19.57%
Texas 14.17% 6.05% 20.22%

It is not a day of Rockets. They trailed double digits for most of the game. Sigh... Now I can focus on my local team, Spurs.

From last weekend, SJTU bbs blocked all posting rights from IP's outside the university. As an alumni, I can only be a spectator now. 2202 is the final post count that I achieved.

After a fantastic start of 2 wins on road, Rockets dropped the following 3 games in close scores. When T-Mac missed the final shot, my heart was broken. If T-Mac hadn't missed the early layups in the first half, if Yao hadn't missed so many free throws, if Rockets had had more time outs, sigh... There are no such if's in the real world. We have to face it. Wish Rockets can get a home win on Thursday.