You're Better Than Me

About a week ago, I had the following conversation with Michelle on gchat (slightly edited):

Michelle: Hey, I try to be open. But when I'm not good enough to talk to someone . . . I get really irritated.
Me: Awww. I never got that sense from her. Maybe I'm just oblivious, idk.
Michelle: No, you fit into a different class of people than me. This is most certainly not the first person I've experienced this response from in our class.
Me: Lol, what do you mean by that?
Michelle: You're better than me. I'm overweight, and I don't look like I have money . . . so I get relegated to a lower class. Plus a myriad of other factors. But I'm judged on the first two sooooo quickly.
Me: How am I better than you? And how do I not meet those criteria too?
Michelle: You're more peppy than me. More positive. People like you. I don't know anyone who doesn't like you.

I was rather taken aback by her statement. While it's true that I don't know of anyone who overtly dislikes me, I'm not exactly best buds and close friends with most people in our class either. I tend to hover outside near the fringes of most social circles. It's a rather weird place to be, tbh.

Maybe I am peppy, though I don't really feel it. I try to be positive, but sometimes that's difficult. In any case, I certainly feel no better than anyone else (and very much the opposite compared to some people I know). If only personality is everything, hehe.

---TANGENT---
1. I got an iPod Touch a few days ago. We need one for use in the hospitals and clinics (apparently). I had the option of getting an iPad but I turned it down. Before you shriek, here's why: it's bigger and less practical to carry around in the hospitals. True, it fits in my white coat, but it's just this big bulky thing that I don't want to have on me at all times (and we'd be required to use it and have it with us at more or less all times). So yeah, I've been fiddling around with this iPod for the past few days. I resisted for a while before getting the Grindr app. I still don't see what the big deal is about it . . . Anyway, any "must get" apps?

2. Landyn's back (sorta)! Go read his update on his blog, Stuck In The Middle.
---END TANGENT---

The License

I thought this was a poignant YouTube clip. Granted, it may be a bit offensive to the religious out there, but it's still thought-provoking and the message is clear.

Anyway, in other news, there isn't much going on in my life now that I'm not going to China. The only things worth noting: I now have a roommate and almost certainly an apartment for med school. So in that respect, hurray! Oh, and my dad got me a 500GB external hard drive today (specifically this one except 500GB and not 320GB). W00t!! That's right MSTPBound, I've got a 500GB external hard drive now too. ;-)

Mission Accomplished

Today my friend SP-M came over. I was set to move all of my files onto his external hard drive and then reformat my laptop to get rid of that damn file.

Then he told me to download a program called "Unlocker." Amazingly, it deleted the undeletable file! It was so simple. Wow. After this, he showed me how to make my Windows XP look basically like Windows Vista, which was pretty cool. I actually rather like the Windows Vista theme - it's rather sleek. Also, he directed me to a download that allowed me to change my boot screen and logon screen.

Now my boot screen currently looks like this:

And my logon screen looks like this:
Pretty cool eh? (No, my real name isn't Paul, that's just the pic the site had.) It's good to have friends who're good at things you aren't. SP-M: 3. Technology: 0.

And here's a funny pic my friend SN-F sent me:

Oh Frustrations

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Sometimes technology just points and laughs at me, I'm convinced.

About a week ago, YouTube stopped working for me, as well as anything else that's streamed be it audio or video. I didn't think much about it at first. Could've been many things. Could've been a side-effect of my internet being slow for a while. Could've been due to a buggy issue with Firefox 3 that I had just downloaded, or this nifty add-on that allows me to download YouTube vids to my laptop. But as one day became two, and two became three and four, I became more convinced that something was indeed amiss. Every time I'd try to stream anything, it'd run (without sound) for about 2 seconds then stop. Nothing I did seemed to work. And then my add-on stopped working. Well, I was talking to Hish about this and he suggested that I re-install Firefox 3. That I did yesterday, and guess what? It works again!!

Last night my mouse stopped working. It's been giving me the red blinking light of imminent death for a few days. Well, I open it up to take out the dead batteries only to find that one of the two AA batteries had leaked into my mouse! Where the battery acid contacted the surrounding area, a white crystalline powder formed. It also corroded the two metal plates on either end that touch the battery. I spent a good half an hour to an hour scraping out all the battery acid crystals (or whatever it was). My dad gave me a tool that his dad used in the dentist office. So I was using some weird dentist tool to scrape the solid thing from the tiny corners and edges. My grandpa might be turning around in his grave right now - I know my ears were shrieking at the metal on metal scrape. Anyway, in the end, I got the vast majority of it out. My mouse still works and I think the left-click button might be better. It's been twitchy for quite some time, as in it would think I double-clicked when really I only clicked once and held down the button. I guess I know why now.

Now, this next technological frustration I haven't yet resolved. A while ago I downloaded a pic from an email. Whenever pics or videos download from the internet, they download as 2 files: the actual file, and this other mysterious file. The "mystery file" only exists during the actual download process and merges into the actual file upon completion of the download, thus disappearing. Well, the pic downloaded and I could open the file. But I noticed that its mystery file didn't disappear. I deleted the pic and tried to delete its mystery file with it. All it would give me was something like, "Error in deleting: Cannot read from source or disk." Okay, I've seen that before, no big deal right? Well, I tried pretty much everything I knew or had on my laptop to delete the little fucker. I used 3 programs, I rebooted my laptop several times, I closed down program files one by one that I wasn't sure of (perhaps not the best idea). Nothing. I Google'd it to see if I could find an answer. I tried this MS Dos deletion thing, but failed at it because I don't know how to find things with MS Dos. So after being hell-bent on deleting this thing for over an hour this morning, I gave up. It won. Sigh.

Oh, I just found the email with the original pic in it. I re-downloaded the pic, hoping it'd replace and fix whatever went wrong. Well, that didn't seem to work. It still remained in 2 parts. Grrr. I can delete one file or the other, but not both. It looks like I may need to enlist the help of someone who's more computer savvy than I am for this. And this is why I would never be a computer science major, or most engineering majors.

Now lastly, my cousin from Chicago is coming to visit us tomorrow. He's going into his senior year of high school. I feel bad for him for coming. You see, the real reason he's coming to visit is so that my brothers and I can "help" him improve his SAT and ACT scores before he takes them. Honestly, he does suck. He's around national average right now. Funny thing is that my brothers and I didn't used to even like him. When he was younger, he was really ADHD and had quite a temper - he was rather violent sometimes. Now he's mellowed out a lot and is actually rather pleasant to be around, though a bit too quiet. So yeah, he's coming here basically for SAT/ACT boot camp. I hope he doesn't become an academic vegetable when we're done with him . . .

What also sucks is that I twisted my right ankle a bit yesterday. So while I could have ran earlier this morning, I don't think it would've been the best of ideas. I predict soreness and inflammation later if I were to do that. But perhaps I'm jumping to excuses too readily. Running alone is so boring!! Also, when my cousin comes, he'll be sleeping in my room. Which means I'll be displaced to my brother's room because he has a larger bed. Which also means masturbating will be difficult, if not nigh-impossible. 2 weeks of no relief . . . I don't know if I'm going to survive. To be sure, I'm going to work my cousin for this, and I'm going to bring him closer to the Asian standard.

Oh, apparently I failed to realize July 14th was my blogoversary. It turned 1 year old!! XD