Google office

Google has this new wordprocessing and spreadsheets function. Tried it out, was skeptical at first coz it’s online but turned out Google has truly lived up to the public’s expectation and the critic’s review of : “possible replacement for Microsoft Office suite”. Great interface, cool Google appearance throughout, functional shortcuts, and it can be shared online with multiple collaborators… I can even publish it so anyone can see my private schedule for the day (for example).

Try it out, people, and leave MS Office behind! Waiting for the presentation tool to come out….

Read Full Post »

Superdrive woes

As a die-hard Apple fan, I was a bit disappointed when my hard disk failed last year. After spending hundreds of dollars for repair, I expected to use my Powerbook for at least another two years.
What did I know? My disappointment grew TODAY, when the superdrive failed to rotate… it simply threw up the DVD that I fed in. Arrrrggghhhhhh…… why? Why do I have to end up with a one-in-a-million defective Apple? Why? *sob sob*
*SOB*

(Curiously, when I was upset, I suddenly remembered my last post about anger and sadness… so I MADE myself to start feeling sorry for myself instead of being mad at nothing… and I felt a little better already. 🙂 )

Read Full Post »

dark secrets, blogging, and king midas

I've just read a post by Mena, the founder of Six Apart on weblogging and its intricacies, here. She wrote a truly long entry, which I honestly didn't really read carefully, but one thing DID catch my attention.

She wrote about her audience and her writing. How she reached more than 10,000 readership. She wrote about popular stuff and sure enough, her efforts were rewarded. But one day came the backlash. Her humor didn't get through to people, and the comments they made had her to rethink her focus. She didn'at actually want to be read widely, she wanted to have close-knit web-bonds with her friends and family.

That reminded me. I once wrote that I don't care about publicity. Because I want to write about who I am, about what I think, about what's new in my life. And that kind of stuff doesn't appeal to the popular masses.

It may be fun sometimes to be a different person. And the cyber world DOES provide that opportunity. But it's tiring to always be "fun, sarcastic, extroverted, or critical"–if those are not your true characteristics.

I LOVE writing. BUT if I write about my dark-kept secrets, I might not want the whole world to know about it. I'd write to PostSecret if I want to shout it out loud and relieve myself of the burden.

But for me blogging is more like King Midas' hole-in-the-ground, which he used to keep his secrets (but the sprout in the ground spread it out to the winds and et cetera… until the gods punished him). That is, when I DO write about my secrets… but mostly my writings are cryptic, even to those close to me… ^__^ (You may ask, "The what's the point of this whole discussion??" To which I would answer, "I don't really know….")

Read Full Post »

Got hot laptops whoot whoot!

Hahaha I'm still heady from the hot deals…
This morning I browsed Fat Wallet (I forgot what I originally wanted to look up), and found a thread for Sony Vaio, 1.6GHz Centrino, for $612 at Office Depot. So I was hooked, but couldn't really find any justification to buy myself a brand new notebook coz my dear PowerBook is still working 'okay'… After some reasoning, I decided that I could by one for my sister instead, since hers is dead anyway ^o^ (The length that girls would go to to avoid missing out on a good deal…. *sigh*) When we went to OD, though, we found ANOTHER deal: HP 1.73GHz Centrino, 1GB memory, 100GB HD, for $689… (the Vaio was out) But the only unit left was the display.
So we went home.
I checked every OD store online, LA area and SF Bay Area, and still I couldn't find any left. But then I found out that the displays are actually for sale. So I called up 3 stores around, and finally found one 6 miles away that still has one each. It was first come first serve, so I took my chance, went there, and came back home with two brand new laptops and a HUGE silly grin on my face ^__^
It was my lucky day… the employee had told a bunch of customers that the displays aren't for sale. I felt bad… but…. WAHAHAHAHAHA I'm so happy….

Since I only need one, I think I'm selling the other one off… anybody interested?

Read Full Post »

keeping up with technology: yes or no

I considered myself quite knowledgeable in the area of technology. Especially if I tag myself with the categories that I belong to: female, Indonesian (generally the two sub-species don't bother with technology). Of course, I'm being stereotypical (people tend to look favourably towards stereotypes only when it benefits them); and I didn't add my other tags: foreign-educated, intellectually curious (although lazy), financially able to afford gadgets, etc.
But recently I find myself increasingly left behind in terms of up-to-dateness. I own an ipod (and I'm quite proud to say that I'm not one of the late-bloomers who adopted ipod only after Apple's stocks soared and ipod became a lifestyle), but I didn't catch up on podcasting until recently. I have a blog (not a late-bloomer but not a pioneer either), but the words "RSS" and "tags" haven't really registered an impact on my dictionary. I look at 3G phones and I'm awestruck. I was suddenly transported into a new age when I found out that the techs I picked up two years ago are now almost obsolete. I can feel now what our parents must have felt in the turn of the century, when almost entire dictionaries sprang up on technical jargon and internet replaced almost everything else. Dizzy, confused, overwhelmed…. and kinda lonely.

I used to say a fervent "NO!" to computers and internet, mainly because they create whirlpools that suck up human relations and digitized conversations into mute expressions. I thought it silly and ridiculous. But then I came to the States, and found the internet indispensable. After the internet, the gadgets. Laptop, MP3 players, Broadband, Wi-Fi, satellite radio, GPS, digicam, videocam, portable media storage, MSN Messenger, MMORPG, etc. With them came the jargons. Ttyl, brb, lol, gtg, etc. Unintelligible language a few years ago, daily vocabulary today. I still find most of them annoying sometimes, as they wrench one person from another, and they confine the human being into his/her own cell. Of course, the itnernet also provide a universal bridge that connects everybody on the face of the earth, but it is limited and false. You can be anything; a farce, a comedy, a realist, a romantic, nobody would know which is the real you.
Now I say a feeble "no", to ward away the negative effects of technology, but I have to admit that it IS knowledge, and as man have to know that he knows nothing, I feel compelled to learn as much as I can of this vast territory of the unknown called technology.

But enough of that. I'm back at Bay Area now, still trying to accustom myself to the life here, funny how I seem to lose motivation to do anything the past three days.
I had wanted to write about the novel Da Vinci Code (I even thought of a title for it: "Da Vinci Code, heretical fiction or fictional heresy?") and about my recent travel to Russia and Scandinavia, but the mood just hasn't kicked in yet.

'Til later.

Read Full Post »