Thursday, September 13, 2012

Generic brand not so "Nice!"

Department stores and now pharmacies like to put products along with their own generic version side by side to lure you buy their cheaper version. They often make it look similar. But they should still be distinguishable.

Now Walgreen came up with its own brands too. "Nice!" brand, and oh my, I tried some "Nice!" food and it tastes pretty bad.

And look at this cough drop, looking exactly like Halls. They copied even the font and color! Deceptive! I am going for real brands.

For not food items... I usually go with generic brands. Sorry GLAD, I haven't bought you in a long time after I saw the generic Target brand. Sorry Kleenex, I haven't bought you in a long while either. Will you still be able to stay in business?

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Can Nokia stand a chance?

That new Lumia is out. Some people are impressed with it, but won't buy. See here.

I haven't seen one myself. I am sure that camera is good. I am sure that display is sharp. I like the unique page flipping animation. I also like the clean Windows 8 font known as Segoe.

But alas, I don't like the tiles. Why tiles? Did someone patent icons?

That hundreds of bucks people already used to purchase that iPhone and Android... are people simply going to dump their old phones?

Teacher Strike

Teachers in red ON STRIKE shirts roamed across downtown yesterday as they start another strike. I am a bit confused. What are they striking about? Is it money? is it shorter hours? or is it something else, such as evaluating them base on their student's scores.

It is probably all of the above.

Well the lessons the teachers teach here is this: let's try to get as much as we can get and do as little as possible. Teachers should not focus on me-me-me, but should be kids-kids-kids!

Ok, first, give them the $ they deserve. Waita minute, the average is 75K! Nowadays they make good $ now. And I am sure some of them don't deserve this much. But alas, there are so little money there to make everyone happy. Look at how much $ we spend on education and how much we spend on war! Perhaps something should be adjusted.

Second, only the best can be teachers. Those lazy and can't teach ought to be doing something else. Sure! evaluate them! Why we test test test the kids and not evaluate the teachers? But perhaps not just base on students scores. If even the best teacher in the world got put into a school full of problems such as kids beat up by parents and drugs all around it is hard for them to get good scores overnight.

Education in Chicago (and in America) is not a simple problem that can be solved overnight.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

How fast can you type?

Here is a fun game. Typing test.

http://www.keyhero.com/typing-tests-wpm. OMG, records on this site has something like 199 words per minute??

I can type more than 80 wpm!

I thank early DOS programs for teaching me typing. The QWERTY keyboard, though weird, is here to stay.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Obesity in America

Interesting statistics http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html.
  • Over 1/3 American adults are obese (35.7%)
  • No states has obesity rate less than 20%
  • Mississippi has obesity rate of 34.9%! and Colorado is least with 20.7%
Oh my. Americans are fat to death and much of the world starve to death. Some even predict by 2030 it will be 42%.

People keep eating high fat food and don't move. I am not sure if there is anything that can be done about this. You can't put a surgeon warning label like cigarette on that fries.

But I rather see people fat to death than shot to death with reckless shooting.