任是无情也动人

My company is requiring a duo security software that isn't supported on the Android 5 that my old phone is still running. So I am finally pressured into actually buying a new phone.

Now, I'm not looking for a top tier phone. I don't plan on playing games on it since I prefer to play my mobile games on PC using Bluestacks. That said, I would like to have a decent camera and storage space so I don't have to worry about micromanaging junk files all the time.

A quick search on amazon and google, I came up with two models, both in the mid price range.

Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G - larger display, better CPU, microsd slot
Google Pixel 5 5G - starts with Android 11, more RAM, slightly longer battery

Hm... let me ponder this overnight.

EDIT: Decided to go with the Pixel 5. I've had Samsung for the last couple of phones now. Curious about trying out Google's phone.

Note to self: Based on my amazon purchase history of phone accessories, I got my last Samsung phone in summer of 2014, which means it's 7 years old. My tablet dates to the same year, either late Nov (black friday sale) or early Dec.

So my dad was diagnosed positive for COVID-19. He's in the hospital now.

My mom had some mild fever these few days, but seem to be doing ok now. Not sure if she had mild COVID symptoms or if it's "just" a cold.

Me... I've had some mild cold symptoms lately. Bit of a sore throat the first day. Some sniffles the second day. And just a bit of congestion today (third day). I...really hope its just a cold for me.

Ugh.

(EDIT: Starting my time tracking from Dec. 16)

We hit 100 degrees F on Friday, and although yesterday wasn't as high, it was still pretty damn hot.

Then this morning around 5 AM, it was lightning! thunder! and some sporadic rain, all the way til about 8. Weather reports have already revised the high temp prediction for today, though not by too much (still mid 90s F).

Hopefully the clouds are gonna stick around for a while. A few days. *cross fingers*

My old PC should be over 10 years old by now, and I'm feeling the lack in performance compared to my work laptop. Now, with its Win 7 support ending, I'm planning on just up and buying a new computer altogether.

The price range I'm looking for is somewhere around the $500-750 range (not including warranty, taxes, shipping, etc.). I'm most likely going to buy from Amazon, since the prices are decent, and I have around $300 saved up in gift cards for it. And after some searching, here's my tentative list of potential candidates:

( Read more... )

EDIT: Added one with 12G RAM and dedicated GPU, and another more expensive one from Target with 16G RAM and dedicated GPU.

Ah, AT&T, how you make me run around and have to call customer support again and again to get one little thing resolved, and then demand my money like you're entitled or something. Blah. >.< Damn bloodsuckers.

In lighter news - GW1's Winds of Change is finally done. I don't quite find any of the Imperial Weapons skins pretty enough to be worth my effort to do the quest chain though. Not even for the oddball greens (staff-skinned wands & scythes, sword-skinned wands, focus-skinned wands... o_O). New hero is an assassin which...I don't see the need to have 3 of. >.> And a panda pet, which I may or may not get using Zcoins instead (verging on 10 gc atm)...dangit I wanted to get the large EQ pack. :(

Did get three celestial dragons over Canthan New Years. Sold one for 80k. One went into my HoM. The other will go into Aoki's HoM when I get a chance to log both accounts.

Oh! And I got a new computer last weekend. Yeah, yeah, mainly cuz I wanted to try out Star Trek Online and it was complaining about the old computer being too...old. STO is ok, I guess. I've been playing pretty causally my Vulcan Engineer on board the Spark of Genius. Still a Lt. (Jr. grade?) at the moment. Not a very demanding game, and really I'm just in it for the geek factor.

EDIT: Reference for self, potential ship names - kinda like Opaque/Fuzzy Logic, Statistical Anomaly/Outlier, Common Sense

Are dentists hard up during this recession or something? I go to work today to find a voice mail from Saturday morning reminding about an appointment. Same Saturday morning that I got woken from bed by 3 phone calls - once to the land line, once to someone's cellphone, and another one to the land line. I finally got irritated enough to answer the second land line call and told them to schedule it for next Saturday because there was no one home and there's no way I'm rushing over immediately from just getting out of bed. Gah. Normal people after not getting any answers from one or two phone calls just leave one damn message and wait for the callee to call back. What the hell is the point of keep trying to call every number the person has multiple times? That's just annoying. Jeebus.

[/end rant]

In other news - sort of got the next part of the DC fic done last night. It's on my home PC though, so won't be updating until I get home tonight. Will probably edit it into the last entry since they sorta go together.

News the first. I'm getting wisdom teeth (2 of 'em) removed tomorrow morning. I've already put in for PTO Friday and next Monday. So I'll possibly be around online, if it's not too painful to... >.>

IJ - pokes cashew. Um... is it me or is the image on the left side of my journal gone. The one on top is still there. Did the site that host it lose it (looks like imageshack)? You don't have any copies by any chance? (I think I may have backups at home but I'm not going to be able to check until I get back tonight -_-)

Dragonswords - all the new alts are lvl 18 now. Still a little bit to go before they hit where your guys are (22? 24?). One thing I need help on is that I still need 3 ruby gems. The freaking place won't repop.

Incidentally... (1) The amount of wis/prac points that monk needs is insane... unarmed combat is 10 pracs per rank wtf?! and it's only 2 levels away from enhanced damage which is 4 pracs per rank. Even if the race was sprite I don't think there'd be enough to go around. As it is, I'm neglecting training both int and dex to get those two up 10% per level. (2) Why does my knight have such low hp? It's only 50% than the druid. The monk on the other hand is almost twice the amount of druid. She was the one doing most of the tanking even though she had by far the worst AC (due to no pracs to train dex, no rubies for rings, and no secondhand weapon or shield slot).

Gaia - New getup combo *pic uploaded to previous post*. I got the qipao cheap off of auction when I lucked out and caught one that was selling for almost 2k under store price with only 1 hour left on the auction. Muwahaha. Anyway, let me know how it looks and compares to the other two.

Also, signed up for Discover card for the 7k gaia cash. *stares at sky* I figure it's not that different from the Amex card I got suckered into signing up for in front of the Cal student store when I first came to Cal. I didn't actually get around to canceling that card (or using it) until we were moving this time around. So I figure the Discover card can sit there and gather dust until I get around to canceling it. In the mean time, that's about $70 worth of gaia cash. o_O

This is pre-moving in the furniture...

http://yfrog.com/4pdsc00054ljx

I figured I was doing something wrong when just plugging the phone onto the computer with the USB adapter wasn't working. It turns out you have to install software drivers. Supposedly they were to come with the phone, except I don't recall there being a CD in the box... I guess I may have misplaced it. Anyway, I downloaded the software and was finally able to get images off the phone. Hopefully next step is to upload musc.

I'll post some of the images taken off the phone in a separate friends-locked post.

Got up bright and early this morning to get the VISAs from the Nanjing Entry & Exit Bureau, as that was where the officials in Shanghai told us we need to get our VISAs from (as opposed to the Shanghai Entry & Exit Bureau).

So of course the first thing the officials here tell us is that we should be getting our VISAs from the Shanghai bureau.

After much arguing (aka "explaining") back and forth with my mom, the official finally made a phone call to the province headquarters, who apparently gave them the go ahead to do the VISA from Nanjing (even if he kept saying we should be getting it from Shanghai).

We of course also filled out a form for increased speed in processing the VISA, and we were actually able to get the VISA on the same day. Before the lunch break even!

Possibly as a downside to that, the fee for two VISAs was 1900 RMB, which is almost $300 USD. Not sure if the price was high because of the faster processing or if that was the normal price. After all, getting our original VISA in the US was about $100 per person also.

Wonder how much we've been spending on this whole passport mess altogether... I think it might be upwards of $3-500 USD now...