After owning the Scion XB (Jack) for a good 6 months, I finally had to change the oil.  Luckily in November I picked up a good Mityvac 7201 Oil extractor and a hydraulic jack which made everything super easy.  I was able to setup the extractor to extract the oil from the dispstick in a matter a minutes.  The extraction process to take out 4+ Liters took a good 20 mins or so, but I did not get dirty doing so.

After it was done, jack up the car and replace the oil filter.  That took only 10 mins or so including jacking up the car, putting supports under the car, and getting a tarp underneath the car to change the filter.

The cool thing about the extractor is it has a mode to dispense too.  I was able to discard all the dirty oil back into the oil containers without much of a mess…

Overall, it’s TOTALLY worth it to go this route as it is cleaner and much easier than the traditional drain plug route.

On the BMW it will be even easier as the oil filter is reachable from the top of the engine bay!

Most people have Microsoft Office installed either through school or through work as we can not get away from it.  It’s actually one of the few products that Microsoft makes that is absolutely necessary even in a Microsoft free environment (that’s why you absolutely NEED alternatives like Open Office or even Office for Mac).  Everyone is of course familiar with MS Word, MS Excel (god how I dread thee sometimes), and of course Power Point.  The one application that secretly got snuck in that NO ONE knows about is Microsoft OneNote.  It is perhaps one of the greatest applications created in recent memory that I can not believe people do not use.

The application is very simplistic in nature, you have a virtual notebook with sections in it (remember your 5-Star notebooks in school with subject separation?).  Each of these sections can have as many pages as you wish and everything is searchable.  When I say everything I mean EVERYTHING.  Any text on an image will get OCR’d internally and become searchable.  Hand written notes (provided you have a wacom tablet or a tablet pc) are also searchable as internally they get converted to text.  The best part about this is the pages are non-bounded.  You can literally write, copy and paste, insert, etc any where into the page.  OneNote also has hooks into Windows where a Windows Key+S will provide snag-it like functionality.  You can also write/type over anything you can import (which pretty much everything is either in PDF, Word, or can be “printed” into OneNote with a virtual printer).  In essence this is literally the notebook we use and write in everyday when we take notes during meetings, classes, or “todo” lists.

For a tablet pc this of course is indispensible, most of us write notes everyday.  Heck, it’s much easier to write short hand than type generally and god forbid you have to quickly scribble a quick graph or algorithm/formula.  Having all of that inside in a searchable format is truly heaven.  If any of you are like me, you’ve likely saved your college notes somewhere and wouldn’t it be nice to have them in virtual format as well?

As far as I know, other than EverNote there is no comparison to OneNote.  Sadly, OneNote is likely the only program that would keep me from switching over to any other operating system as it is THAT good.  There are other programs LIKE OneNote, but nothing remotely compares.   When Open Office one day creates an alternative I’ll be the first one to test it out, but that will be unlikely as sadly Microsoft is the only company that offers complete support of tablets.

Having purchased my first home recently, I’ve finally realized how resource intensive full size desktops can be (not to mention how HOT they make my office).  My main computer is a water cooled custom-built Q6700 while I have an older AMD x2 4800 (Optimus) running downstairs as my server.  The main computer (Behemoth) is used mostly for VM images and running Skype, Netbeans, etc for my day to day job and my entertainment.

Since the x2 is always on yet often underpowered, it doesn’t make sense to have to power two server grade computers up to do something 1 computer can do.  I’ve decided to gut out Optimus and replace it with Behemoth.  Up the ram, and Behemoth can run my coding desktop (VM) allowing me to code/test/compile from anywhere in the world.

Doing so will of course leave me “desktop less” and my netbook can only do so much as it is severely underpowered.  I’ve since decided to purchase a Thinkpad x201T with the dock.  This will allow me to keep my dual 1900×1200 monitors when I’m willing to work at my desk, yet I have the freedom to bring my work anywhere with me.  I’m sure the Thinkpad will be great, having used them exclusively for the previous 4 years at my company I know they are nearly indestructible.  My current work T60 has been with me for 3 years and has been through hell and back.  That bad boy has been through multiple drops, airport security, multiple airlines (traveled 100+k miles with this thing), and still keeps on ticking.

Having said that, my NC10 which has been with me for the previous 2 years has served me good as well…but it’s time for some consolidation.

So long Samsung, you were the best traveling partner I had, even better than the Macbook Air and UMPC.

I will review the x201T as soon as I receive it.  I’ve been longing to go back to a tablet since my UMPC days, but performance/lag has always held me back.  Now Lenovo is actually putting some fast enough processors in these things along with having an excellent battery life.  I’m actually excited and can see this as my desktop replacement for the next 3-4 years.

Having used Windows Mobile for 4 years (both the smart version and the touch version), Palm OS for 3 years, iPhone for 2 years, and soon an Android, I think I’ve been through the “mobile revolution” for quite some time.  As I’ve been researching the Android platform as of late to get rid of the crappy service known as AT&T, I’ve come to the conclusion that people who’ve never used all the flavors do not “get” what each of the companies really offer.

First off, a smartphone needs to be able to make calls and receive calls stably.  This concept seems so obvious that “hackers” just seem to forget about this.  When I used Palm OS (4.5) and Windows Mobile (6-6.1) it was almost expected of you to run “cooked” roms.  These alternate firmwares will always add and remove features of the stock rom, thus making the bland phone OS faster, prettier, and more functional.  The caveat is, it almost ALWAYS made the phone unstable in some sort of way.  I can’t begin to even count how many times my phone would reset for no reason, drop calls because the phone locks up, or just plan crash due to memory errors.  Couple this with the fact flashing your phone is no quick endeavor along with having to replace apps, contact information, setup your app configs, etc it gets irritating fast.

I bring this up because it seems the majority of folks are claiming that Apple NEEDs to open up their phone to beat Android.  My question is why?  Other than a few hackers wanting to “customize” their phone,  what purpose will it serve? 

The Apple SDK is miles ahead of the Android SDK/NDK at this point.  Heck Android runs ALL of it’s code in an interpreter.  The Android NDK is far from complete to allow access to all of its hardware acceleration, specifically audio/video which is what the majority of the people care about as it pertains to games and such.  So the big question is what will you gain from the iPhone when it’s opened that you can from Android?  It certainly isn’t the ability to “root” the phone as the majority of the Android phones now are still not rooted and all iPhones/iPads/IPod Touches have been jailbroken.  It certainly isn’t from the apps as we’ve already seen the iPhone kick ass with some of the most intensive and amazing graphics on ANY smartphone in that territory.  So I really don’t get it.

At what point do we stop “hacking” and just use the phone for it’s intended purpose?  Maybe I’m getting older or just finally seeing the light, but I’d venture that the majority of phone users don’t care about all that mumbo jumbo.  If my phone can make and receive calls, execute code that I’ve written or someone else has written, and integrate smoothly with the internet I’m a happy camper.  I don’t want to have to hack my OS, I just want to use it for it’s intended purpose.

In the end I honestly don’t care if I’m running an iPhone or an Android at this point and look forward to the Sprint Evo as I’ve had nothing, but good service from Sprint all these years.  The Evo will give me the SAME functionality of an iPhone including the apps that I use often at this point as a phone.  The only thing I will miss is the music integration with my car and home, but I’ll likely still keep an iPod around for that (sorry no other phone/media player/device has as much integration power as an iPhone/iPod).

So Android community, stop trying to be “better” and just be better with actual useful and fun software.  You can complain how “closed” an iPhone is, but in the end does it really matter? 

I’ve spent the last two months or so working on websites for various endeavors  and I’ve gotten to REALLY enjoy CakePHP.  So much so that dare I say that web development is now fun again!  In the olden days (about 5-6 years ago) we had to code up our own libraries to connect your website to MySQL and create queries, headers, etc.  With a good PHP framework, we can now spend more time coding and less time dealing with the intricacies of just getting your DB connections working (ie: more fun coding the working pieces vs the supporting pieces).

I’ve evaluated both CakePHP and Symfony and I liked both for various reasons.  I have found that the Symfony framework is just overly complicated when building a website that isn’t necessarily enterprise level from the get go.  To add insult to the injury, the framework isn’t thoroughly documented.  I found it extremely difficult to find something as basic as options for methods and the associated values that the options can contain.  Asking the forums just got overly redundant and thus required me to manually go through the framework code.  This isn’t too bad, but just took way too much time.  Isn’t time saving the reason why I chose a framework?

CakePHP on the other hand is very well documented.  In fact, the documentation is so good that you can get up and running in a few hours.  While the ORM isn’t as detailed as Symfony, I didn’t have to learn a whole new language in order to create simple queries.  CakePHP, to me just, just fits the PHP mindset better.  If you understand the MVC model and PHP, you probably can get the ball rolling in CakePHP within the hour.

Having said that, the testing utility in Symfony is amazing and the fact that you can develop offline using Symfony by using the built in models works really nicely too.  CakePHP is still faster for me for developing and creating databases and tables in MySQL using PHPMyAdmin is much more intuitive than hand coding everything in Symfony using Doctrine.

Apparently the early gripes with CakePHP were about HABTM tables, but those are now fixed in at least CakePHP 1.3.  The documentation in CakePHP as well as the support community on IRC is much more complete than Symfony.  This leads to a much faster development time and less downtime when you are stuck for an answer.

Overall CakePHP 1.3 is the clear winner in my book for development of the majority of the websites out there.  If you need enterprise level code Symfony might work for you, but I’m fairly certain the majority of the developers will develop from scratch to accomplish complete security and thorough code auditing.

A few years ago I came up with a small essay to help a fellow Asian male friend with his women issues, specifically how to “woo” a particular woman.  This essay unfortunately never got finished, but it’s worth a read.  I’m not implying that everything I’m saying is 100% correct, but it’s definitely a good start. 

I stereotype a lot (lol) and I make some bold statements/assumptions, but hey it’s worked for me.  Don’t take this to heart, read it as entertainment.

On a side note as soon as I wrote this, about 1 year later I discovered a book from a friend called “The Game” which a professional pick-up artist (yes apparently there really are people that can are professional women pickup artists lol) wrote.  I read a bit of it and interestingly enough his book documents some of the things I say in my essay except he uses evolution to justify it. 

If people actually like my essay maybe I’ll finish it one day lol…

Click here for the link to the essay.

You know it’s always funny when someone evaluates themselves based on others.  I believe this is why a lot of people have confidence or jealousy issues.  Personally I’ve noticed it’s also a cultural thing as well.  Things like house warming, baby showers, etc all are used to technically “show off” if you think about it.  I mean why invite people to your house just for one day?  Wouldn’t your friends, family, etc come over anyways over the course of the year if you were really close with them anyways?  Same goes for your pregnancy since you see these people ALL the time.  Why couldn’t they just give you a gift without the shower?  These things baffle me sometimes.

So back to self evaluation.  I have been evaluating myself every spring for years since it always brings back the best memories to me.  Last night I was able to just take out the garage queen and drive around under the evening stars in the town that defined my childhood.  My confidence level has always been high, but just seeing how far I’ve come in the relatively short time since High School is reassuring.  Now I’m not talking about all the materialistic things as I’ve always been blessed in this department.  The mental progression, career progression, and my place in life right now is good.  Just to be satisfied is a tough task for me as many know..

Speaking of materialism, do people really also evaluate themselves based on things you can not take with you to the grave?  I’ve never understood this one either as possessions are the things that change the most in life.  I could remember when I was in my teens and the only thing I wanted was a car and I would modify it until it was fast.  Sadly I did get to that point, along with losing my license as well at some point.  Regardless, as I grew older that desires has changed.  Of course I still love cars, but honestly I’m content with my Scion and very appreciative that I was able to purchase the M Roadster. 

Neither of these cars I would be sad to see go as I originally wanted to sell my TL for a Honda Fit or a Ford Flex as they seemed the most practical.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that your desire/wants will subside for what is practical and necessary over time.  You can’t evaluate life based on possessions since your possessions and desires change so often based on what is necessary at the time.  Since materials depreciate over time, it REALLY doesn’t make sense to judge yourself or others based on physical possessions.  It’s actually the opposite of what you want since you’re essentially saying that over time… you’re worth less lol..

So I noticed lately that several people are having a hard time with the opposite sex (primarily males).  What I don’t understand is why is something that is supposed to be “fun” so difficult for some individuals.

I formally would like to blame everything on the media.  The media has basically convinced most women that males have to be the most romantic guy on earth in order to be worthy.  This also makes most men feel inadequate around their interest and second guessing themselves quite often.  No longer is it OK for a male to just be themselves, they now have to say the right things, do the right things, pay for the right things, etc.  This never ending list seems to make most “nice guys” a nervous wreck.

It sure sounds retarded when I point it out, but next time you’re single think about it.  Also statistically, there are a LOT of single women out there in the USA.  Actually, more women are likely to be single for the rest of their lives than men in the states.  That is unless you’re hot/rich/awesome/etc.

iTunes in itself isn’t a bad media player or organizer, but the lack of FAST folder scanning and auto-updating really makes it unusable for a large collection of music.   MediaMonkey fixes ALL the short-comings of iTunes and then some. 

Since MediaMonkey bases it’s entire library on ID3 tags FIRST, changing filenames/folders/etc doesn’t affect the library at all.  Once you set the software to monitor a folder, it will scan/update itself upon startup.  This is VERY helpful as I have folders setup as sorted and unsorted.  My unsorted folder is for discs that I have not had time to create all the tags yet, but sometimes I want to listen to the song right away.  If I later change the folder in which it belongs to (to sorted) I don’t have to worry about breaking/not finding the songs on my player or even playlists!

Synching with the iPhone is quite simple as well.  You’ll still need to install iTunes on your computer for the drivers, but that’s it! Like in iTunes, all I do is synch my MediaMonkey playlists to my iPhone and it’ll always synch/update itself.  This is great as my playlists are always updated and updated.  Unlike iTunes, if the filename of the song changes/etc I don’t have to worry about iTunes removing the music off my iPhone.

Lastly, the speed of MediaMonkey is simply amazing.  It searches, organizes, caches searches so much quicker than iTunes that I’m not sure how I lived without it previously.  It seriously is the ultimate music media player for Windows!

Is the internet really a good way to express emotions/feelings/comradery?  I understand the importance of finding an outlet, but isn’t it easier to just talk to people instead?  Sometimes I feel that in this information-era we lose the touch of human interaction.  Think about it, online dating, online chatting, online SOCIAL networking, etc.  Some of this stuff is great for interacting with people that are all over the country, but when someone lives down the block from you isn’t it just another layer for us to have to break through?

Often I find it really funny how people like to text, chat, twitter, etc instead of just giving someone a call to talk.  Maybe it’s because I’m a people person, but I feel our generation started something that is so bad that our future generations will suffer in the end.

I believe this problem stems from parental guidance.  I really can’t remember much of my parents talking to me about anything in regards to relationships, friendship, etc when I was younger.  I’ve received excellent moral standards from my parents as well as the pursuit of excellence, but never the emotional support.  As much as parents succeeded in bringing me up, I’m fairly certain they failed in that part.  Sadly, I know for sure I am not the only one to have been raised like this as none of my friends that I’m aware of has gotten the proper support or even had less support than myself.  Sadly this seems like the norm after having talked to many people.  You can tell already by how often you have family dinners where you and your family sit together in a room without the TV on.

So now, that we are a generation of emotionally detached individuals we need to find a way to express ourselves without feeling embarrassed.  What better place than the internet where you can hide behind your computer and post anonymously about how emo your life is.  Sad really..

Luckily, I broke this invisible emotional barrier with my parents in my late teens.  This really strengthened my relationship with my family and in life.  At that point I realized that I’m finally not embarrassed to talk about how i feel, I’m not embarrassed to make an ass out of myself, I’m just not embarrassed period.  I’m above all of this because you do NOT get what you want by NOT talking about it.  Best quote I heard in a long time, “a closed mouth doesn’t get fed” which seems very suitable. 

So man up people, the internet is a good outlet…if you are a coward.  Talk to someone!