Black Friday --

Yesterday was thanksgiving - Happy belated turkey day everyone!

Today was black friday, or shopping day, or bloody pocket day. Traditionally, it was supposed to be a day where we - the consumers spent, and clear out the cash in our pocket, or put on debt; and the retailers take in and smile as their balance sheet and budget turned pretty. But there are so many things that marked this year different from last.

First thing's first of course, the economy, well basically the economic crisis we all are in caused most of the companies to hold back on spending and focus on retaining their cash. Thus they are not as willing to dramatically cut their prices just to get the merchandise out the door ...... so I did not attempt to line up outside one of these doors .... and thus ... I didn't become one of these people.

If you have followed the news, you must know of this one poor temp worker from Walmart who got killed for stand right in front of the door while shoppers were outside trying to get in and in turn broke the sliding door and knocked this guy down and finally killing him while people were going crazy trying to track down what they want to buy while they stepped over him ..... Whatever the fuck is wrong with these so called "people", because obviously I DO NOT WANT TO CATEGORIZE MYSELF AS THE SAME AS THESE THINGS. I really would think that people will stop once they see they broke the door and the guy got hurt because of it. Instead they just walked through as if nothing is as important as their deals, and add to the man's suffering by storming in over him. What disgusted me more was that these things refused to leave once they heard the store was closing and that was because of them.

Hey, can you be any more senseless than this? I really pity for this man because he died for something like this and people did not have a tidbit of remorse over what they did, instead they just wanted their TVs, DVD players, and such for $500 less. This is really ridiculous, words cannot explain how mad I am to these things. I cannot call them humans because they act like savages in this situation.

Walmart, in turn, should have tickets out for their customers and at least prevent this from happening in part.


R.I.P. Mr. Jdimytai Damour

"Technologies and Toys"

This is gonna be a quick post, I just saw the TV ad for electronic monopoly - it's basically monopoly with NO BILLS, but instead a little machine/calculator type of thing which AUTOMATICALLY calculate the differences of your monopoly money before and after you buy something and record it on a card.

Now it's not so bad that we keep up with technology and utilize them to our advantage, but it's totally another thing when people try to apply them onto products, and it can totally go both ways. Take this one for example, to me monopoly has this implied learning of basic math and planning your finance and learning to invest (well to a very limited extent for the last two). Now with a credit card like player card and a "calculator" that does the calculation for you, to me it kinda lost half the purpose to play the game. Sure it would be lots more convenient, but it took away lots of fun as well in terms of the money transaction .... and being in a world where credit cards basically IS cash doesn't necessarily mean cash does not work anymore.

In fact, it's gonna be a lot more awkward for us to play the game with the updated technology because we have no banks anymore. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of fun to be had in becoming the banker in the game, the "commanding" and "middle-man" position of that player has to learn to be a fair, accurate, and rule-binding individual. With a self-calculating calculator went the chance to implicitly teach the player how to abide and enforce the rules of the game, play the role of a mediator, and to learn how "the banker" works - i'm pretty sure that will all be lost when the calculator is used in the game.

I can understand the update, but I think to keep it as it was before was better .... what do you think?

Day 1 of MY new year - my NEW toy

Yep, I am now 12 hours into my new year ~~ well it's been quite uneventful so far ..... i have to say thank you for my lovely GF that got me an ipod touch at this time (I had been telling her about it for the longest time, but thought at this kind of time I shouldn't get one, I am really thankful to her for it), and now that I am taking a break from studying materials, I am looking up for materials to mess with it a little bit. None the less, with all the greetings on FB and else where , I would like to say to people - THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR REMEMBERING ME !!

anyways, back to the ipod. It's been a whole five years since I owned my last ipod, and its battery died on me and that was the end of that one, and then a cheap mp3 player popped up and I got to use it for a little bit. So to my surprise, I did not find any user manual type of publication in the package. Although I do applaud Apple to have the resort and the guts to not include any kinds of publication for various reasons, it still hurt a little when I don't have something to read to get started with (weird huh?) ... so I started going online and look for tips/tricks/guide what not ..... it amazes me that how much you can do with a mp3 player that has wifi capability ... the price (she) paid was well worth it because other than listing to mp3/ watching videos, there are lots more uses for this little music player that is like a phone ...... it's amazing that Apple opened its platform so that most of us can develop apps for them ... whether for hobby or for commercial use ... i'm getting tempted now to get a mac book - IF I don't find ANY virtualization solution to my windows xp that can also run a mac on (I doubt I can) - and if that's the case, that's master marketing move from Apple , where I don't mind because i'm sure i'm getting my bang for the buck easily ... compared to all these PCs out there.

Going to Fry's always makes me think of what I want next as a present or as a little treat to myself - a digital drum set .... crap ..... our material needs is always a black hole ~~

Taking a good look at myself - freelancing

It's certainly crazy times right now, while I am in the market at least to get myself secured for another job (guess that's gonna be a bad move) .... amid all the news amongst companies. It's interesting that individual project works are abundant out there, and I bet people (including myself) are just burying bids over them !! Will this really be a new way of work that's getting more popular soon enough?

It is possible, in a day where job security is increasingly diminishing. Everyone is trying to hang on to something that they will be able to do, and it seems like finding individual project work will be pretty much the way to go for some. Why not you know? Increased control on your time, increased job freedom (though it is going from project to project, your stress may be higher if it's gonna be hard to get a project). The other good thing is that, most likely you can claim the project as your work and post it on your portfolio since you are very likely responsible for the entirety of the project(which is what I like and need the most).It's almost the perfect type of job for most, look i said ALMOST.

But we all have to keep up with the newest technology/ practices that will come up in the trends of the respective industry we will work in, and by not having a office job, we probably will need to find new ways to interpret that trend. And there is always that instability once there are too many people going for that project .... you always have to make sure you can get a job to do to guarantee an income.

What a dilemma this can be. Hopefully I can get to a good start and can keep up with the storm.

Good luck to us all !