Thanksgiving

So you know the story too: pilgrims get devastated in harsh winter and the Indians helped them survive. So they thank them and heaven. This is classic American story that we sing praise to every year.

Ok, some pilgrims came for freedom of religion. Many came for gold, silver, and shorter route to India and China for exotic items such as silk. The name of the game (same game today) is to make money. If these ancient pilgrims do some farming they probably won't suffer as much.

The native Americans who helped the European settlers later got genocide, got pushed to reserves. Their arrows are no match for European guns. The winners write the history, IF you find it mentioned on your history text.

Generations and centuries have past. We can only let Judgement Day take care of justice.

Meanwhile, let Americans go frenzy at the airport and at stores, and have some poor taste turkeys.

Why can't stores offer more sales another day?

Astronaunt's drinks

Being an astronaunt is many kids' dream job. (Not me, I STILL don't have one) There seems to be no job more exotic than astronaunt...

Few kids think about practical aspect of it, such as how to survive in space.

Here is what to do when you run out of water:
link.

I hope this machine never gets broken!

Transformers Animated

Transformers Animated is a new cartoon of the Transformers. I havent' seen it and probably won't be going to... I saw some advertisements for these DVDs.

Oh my, look at those drawings! The Transformers should be robots not muscle guys like Hercules cartoon. I am not sure if the cartoons will be any good. The new movie... the characters are like scrap metals. TF has lost its coolness.

Western cartoonist can't draw mechanical cartoons.

TF was fun 20 years ago for a previous generation. Kids today should watch something new and even cooler than their parents did. Unfortunately there aren't anything better.
Top blockbusters movies are about X-Men, Spiderman, etc, which are fairly old... How about some new inventions? But kids today probably don't read comics on paper now.

Bad Economy News within last couple days

1. Unemployment rate at 6.5%
1. Circuit City Bankruptcy
2. DHL layoff
3. Emergency aided need to Auto Industry

Just to name a few. Numbers are not looking good.

What's alarming is this: the trend is every industry is asking the government to help. What happened to Laissez Faire?

For the auto industry: perhaps we should ask why aren't people buying GM, Ford, Chrysler?. If you have friends talking about buying a new car, chances are they are considering Toyota or Honda. AND, their Toyota and Honda are probably built right here in North America. Customers want reliable, fuel-efficient, affordable car. We need a silver-bullet American-made effective hybrid car, in other words, better than the Toyota or Honda built right here in America. Can the American auto industry provide that?

If not, pumping money to a failed industry only hurts more.

鹿死誰手

鹿死誰手 is an interesting 4-word phrase: http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/1/11/14/c6928.htm. Oh so the deer means "the country", or the world to the ill-informed ancient Chinese.

A long time ago I read Street Fighter comics, in an exciting fight between Akuma and Urien, both have executed their most powerful attacks! including the Instant Hell Murder! The author wrote: 鹿死誰手?! 鹿死誰手?! as he lures me to buy the next issue. I anxiously waited throughout that week for the next issue.

Well Election 2008 is finally here. Who will win? This is probably not going to be a landslide victory. I predict a slight margin win. Perhaps 51%-49%.

To the winner who gets maybe 51%, ask yourself, why did 49% didn't vote for you?

What I don't understand is this: was Bush doing that well in 2004? How come the challenger Kerry didn't win? How come Bush can be a two-term president?

Grant Park is right under my workplace (I can view from window), a celebration party is setting up. Is a celebration somewhere in Arizona set up too?

鹿死誰手?! 鹿死誰手?! We will find out today.

"Do you know C Hash?"

I was asked this question one day during a visit to the nearby bookstore with a colleague.

"No, it is C SHARP, as in the musical note".
"Oh".

Apparently this colleague is not into music. This "#" symbol has many names, the number symbol, pound sign, or hash. How does your computer science pronounce "#include" and "#define" during your C lessons?

I have actually never had a formal C lesson in college. I had "AP Computer Science" with Pascal and skipped intro classes, and in college I was expected to already know C. I would suppose most say "pound include" and "pound define".

Now when you actually purchase stuff in pounds, you most likely will see "lbs" in your package.

Why is fried potatoes called hash browns? Ok, some are shaped like #, but not the ones in McDonald's breakfast menu.

Your cellphone has "*" and "#" as special keys. I have never need to use "#"

Ok, C# is a very ingenious name. It is says to be improvement from C (yeah right, actually it is just Microsoft's java). That sharp is half-step increment... Calling it D won't be so cool.

Anyway, back to the C# question. The answer is: I think I do. Sorry, no actual work experience, but I know Java... and I also know Delphi (at least a long-ago version of it), which is also created by the same guy who created C#. C# is basically java-like syntax of Delphi... I am sure I'll get up to speed quickly if someone hires me.