There are so many sites that require signing up for an account and creating a login that I have a spreadsheet just to keep track of them all.  It kind of sucks to get stuck in this trap of login after login, especially when you’re not on your personal computer and can’t always remember the usernames and passwords you use.  It’s hard to create a standard set to use too, since each site has different requirements on length and complexity of the username and/or password.  Plus, if you always use the same one, if someone hacks into one, that could compromise all your accounts.  It’s a bit of a lose-lose situation.

I’ve also found that people are very averse to creating accounts, which is why it often comes with an enticing prize, like a chance to win a cool gadget.  I suppose the nice thing is that many tap into Facebook, so you can sign in using that account, but then comes the issue of compromised privacy.  Now the company knows your Facebook account and can find out more information about you, since you have to agree to share some of your personal information with them to connect using Facebook.  It’s a battle of convenience vs. privacy.

It can get overwhelming because SO MANY sites want you to sign up with them and unfortunately, it’s often unavoidable if you want their service.  Can’t they just use that fingerprint scanner some computers have and send the scan to the site so I can be let in without typing out all possible passwords I use?  In the future, I expect someone to invent a faster way for our identity to be confirmed and access to be granted to these sites (in a quick, painless, electronic way).  For now, I guess we’ll all just have to put up with creating a slew of usernames and passwords.

I hate receipts.  They take up space in my purse, clutter up my wallet, and rarely get looked at afterward.  I have more than I’d ever like of ones I’ll never use and never can find the one I need when I want it.  Why bother?  I mean, initially they were a good idea, but now that technology has developed so far, it’s time for an electronic receipt to automatically send to your credit card and/or email account.  No waste of paper, still keeps a record, and it’s so quick and easy to keep them on file electronically!

Plus, the benefit of being able to organize them better and make them searchable will make retrieving that receipt you wanted so much more convenient.  You can file by company name, by price, by date, by category… the possibilities are aplenty!  I can’t believe we’re still relying on paper sheets that get lost, turn black with heat, and generally are never put to the good use they were designed for.  It’s time to update this habit and digitize the entire process.  So one of these days I am going to start a company to take care of just that.  Until then, don’t steal my idea!  :-P

Well, today started off kind of rough with a bunch of things I needed to take care of.  For some reason I was feeling really cold and shaky as well, which didn’t help my concentration.  I also realized that I really couldn’t find my voucher for a set of beauty services (a hair cut, hair coloring, manicure, and microdermabrasion) that I had bought at a steeply discounted rate.  Bad news, since I hadn’t even used the microdermabrasion, which is the main reason I bought the thing.

Then Panda came online from the East Coast, where he is for a couple of days and he had a rough day.  He didn’t really want to talk, which made me sad, because all I wanted to do was hear his voice.  It made me sad that he was unhappy and not fully enjoying himself over there.  It was also frustrating because he couldn’t tell me all the details of his day.  So not only am I far away, I have to be distanced in other ways too.

When I returned to campus, another counselor was using Panda’s room for meetings with students, so I spent my time in the lounge and occasionally the hallway.  Things can get awfully lonely though, and all I wanted to do was rest and chill.  The hours dragged on slower than they ever have and I found conversation where I could.  I didn’t even have an appetite to eat most of my dinner.  It’s been a tiring day.

At least towards the end I had some fun hanging out with The Legend and some other counselors.  Now my legs are achy and I just want to rest, but all I can think about is whether or not the salon will still let me get the service on my voucher if I can’t find it anymore.  :(  I’ve checked my desk at work, my car, the room, and emptied out my purse multiple times.  No luck.  My last hope is that I somehow took it out while at home one weekend.  It’s really not likely though, yet I haven’t a clue where it could have gone.  How unfortunate.

And tomorrow is an early day.  I’ve got to get up an hour earlier than usual.  At least soon Panda will be back.  :)

Have I ever mentioned my office supply fetish?  Well, I call it that, but it’s really more of a deep desire to own all the cool stuff I see in the office/school supply section.  Usually it’s pens, but sometimes erasers and notebooks and even colored staples catch my attention.  So because of this obsession (mainly with writing instruments), I love to write.   I don’t love to write for the words.  I do enjoy to write/type for expression, but to physically write I am driven by a completely different need: I love to write for the feeling of ink on paper.

I write for the feeling of how smoothly the ink glides onto the paper to make a mark.  I write with colored pens to brighten up my day.  I write with scented pens to amuse me with their smells.  I write with thin .05mm pens because they are the perfect thinness.  I write with .07 or .09mm to be bolder and make an impact.  I write with metallic and/or glittery pens to shine.  I write with milky pens because that was the fad.  I write with Sharpies to mark my territory!  I scribble and color in and draw random lines, just to fill the paper with ink.

I know it’s wasteful, but I get a certain pleasure from using up all the ink in a pen, so sometimes I will waste it just to make it happen faster.  I also love to completely scratch out things I’ve written that are outdated because they’re an action item or reminder that I’ve taken care of.  That adds another level of satisfaction to the satisfaction of ticking something off my list.  And because of all this, I can’t help it – I’m a doodler.  After all, that’s a great way to use pens when you don’t really have anything to write.

So there.  I admit it.  I am absolutely obsessed with writing.  Just not for the reasons most people might be…

My phone slipped yesterday, landing on the cement floor at work.  I’d never had a problem before, but this time I picked it up to find the glass had cracked.  Dismayed, I immediately began to research whether or not that was covered in my warranty, and eventually found and article that gave me hope.  It talked about how Geniuses are now allowed to replace the screen in store, so there was hope of getting it done for free!  This was confirmed in a CNET article:

We’ve received reports from some readers who had success having their iPhones with cracked screens replaced free of charge by geniuses at the Apple Store, but don’t count on it.

I immediately booked an appointment at the closest Apple Store for after work.  The guy who helped me told me it would normally cost $199 AND it would void my warranty to get it replaced.  But lucky me, he was in a good mood and we had a good rapport going, so he decided to replace it for me for free.  :)  It was a quick fix in the back, taking about 10 minutes.  I signed some paperwork and was out the door, brand new screen in tow.  Now I’m super paranoid about dropping it and I admire the smoothness of the glass all the more.

It’s a good thing I was able to get it fixed so easily (and for free)!  Otherwise, I would have spent much of my time running my finger along the cracks, which would have inevitably given me a cut eventually.  The top part where the cracking started is actually higher than the part with the cracks.  If it weren’t for that, I’d be ok with not fixing it, but it had become a bit of a hazard for someone like me who likes to fiddle with things.  I was lucky the cracking was in a rather unobtrusive place to begin with, and even luckier to have gotten the whole thing replaced!

Last night I was describing the Huntington Gardens (at the Huntington Library) to a friend and realized that I’ve never heard of a German garden, or a French garden, or a Spanish garden.  Why is that?  Instead, there are Japanese gardens abound, and a fair amount of Chinese gardens as well.  Other than that, there are themes based on plant type or ecosystem – rain forest, desert, wetland…  I find that Japanese gardens tend to focus more on the features – zen gardens, bonsai trees, and bamboo – whereas Chinese gardens have a slightly stronger focus on architecture – pagodas, stylized gateways, and small buildings.  Both definitely have a water element present (particularly a lake), which isn’t always the case in other gardens.

Western gardens seem to be more about flowers, an open field of grass, and greenhouses.  But in terms of a country or culture having a particular type, I can’t say that I’ve heard of any.  Is it just me or do Asian cultures have greater cultural identities than Western cultures?

Go check out this TED video and if you’re not interested in the beginning bit, skip over to about 20 minutes in.  I find it fascinating, the way he’s describing how our lives are going to resemble a game more and more.  And it’s true!  I mean, it’s already so prevalent – think of all the things you’re signed up for to earn points.  Credit cards, store member cards, search engines, and really just about any service these days are using points to entice you to use them more.  I mean, I search with Swagbucks.com because I want to earn Swagbucks.  I use only one credit card (my Chase Sapphire) because I like racking up points on it.  My mom obsesses over getting frequent flyer miles every time we travel.  I never forget to enter my Ralph’s customer card number when I buy food there (not only to get the discounts, but also to collect the rewards).

I think it’s pretty brilliant.  When you make life into one massive game full of a series of mini-games, people have greater motivation to get things done.  Even better is when things are transparent and these accounts are linked to your social media account, so your friends can see how you’re doing.  People like to win, so seeing someone else did better than them encourages them to spend more time and effort to get a higher score.  Then with sensors, just about everything you do can be tracked and have consequences.  If you don’t have healthy habits, your insurance premium will go up – there’s a strong motivator to just fit in that quick half hour each day!

I think it comes down to accountability.  When people are easily able to hide what they do (or don’t do) and lie to themselves about how well they’re taking care of themselves, they’re more likely to continue with those bad habits.  But the moment everyone knows if you’ve flossed today, or had too much to drink, or didn’t get enough sleep, you want to do what you can to improve yourself.  Plus, having some friendly competition to egg you along doesn’t hurt.  If you see on your friend’s profile that they worked out every day for the past month and you haven’t done squat, it makes you reconsider, doesn’t it?

In a way, it’s bad though – if companies and the government can track you so closely, they’re going to make assumptions about you that may not be true.  Just because you don’t eat healthy doesn’t mean you can’t appear perfectly healthy in a physical and feel great.  There have got to be certain controls put into place protecting people’s privacy so insurance companies can’t rip people off because they don’t have the healthiest habits.  After all, the whole point is to protect against the unknown.  Trying to make too many predeterminations can lead dangerously close to a sort of eugenics and determinism.  But overall, I think turning our lives into games would lead to better results.  Let’s see how long it takes to happen!

I enjoy working.  The month started off slowly for me, with my workload dwindling, and after a week and a half, I had just about taken care of all my emails from the past month, followed up on as many things as I could, and caught up on some random tasks.  I had my reports done, emails answered, and time left over to get distracted.  It felt weird.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve never considered myself a workaholic, but when I’m working, I like having plenty to do, always more than can be finished that day.  I don’t like finishing everything and twiddling my thumbs.  So by the end of two weeks, I mentioned to a coworker that I had some free time on my hands and could help if he had something for me to do.

I can really get into the zone when I’m hard at work, zoning out people passing by and other distractions.  At times, it’s hard to tear myself away for lunch, but once I do manage to (if I do…), I can let go and enjoy my meal.  And when things are slowing towards the end of the day, I can tie off loose ends and save some of the work for the next morning.  I don’t generally need to stay late and have rarely stayed beyond half an hour more than usual.  I can leave work at work, but gosh, when I’m there, I do like to actually work.  Maybe because being productive makes my time feel worthwhile.  Maybe because it makes the time fly by.  Or maybe just because I really do enjoy the work I do!  It’s a great feeling and I’m really glad I came across a job that is such a steal.  I don’t mind getting buried work during the day.

It’s wonderful to have a job like this, that I can work hard at and feel good about, with no complaints.  I really can’t think of anything I dislike about the job.  I remember anticipating full-time work and the horrors of getting up every day at the same time, not getting a summer break or the various other vacation times, and a whole slew of other things that people hate about the daily grind.  But I’ve got a great deal – I don’t need to get up earlier than 8:30, I don’t have to shove down lunch in half an hour (unless I want to), and I have fun coworkers and supervisors.  It’s no wonder I like to go in to work (though I admit I still have trouble waking up in the morning) and be a good, productive employee.

So yay for the new opportunities that are filling up my schedule once again.  A slow day or even a slow week may be nice once in awhile, but I’d rather be busy getting things done.  I don’t think I’m a workaholic in the strictest sense, but in many ways – healthy ways – I can be.

I spend much of my time alone with my thoughts, and to fill the air with something other than those thoughts floating around, I like to watch videos online (either TED.com ones or some TV show that isn’t airing) or play games.  But sometimes, the quiet of the night catches up with me and I begin to anticipate the day when Panda has to go to the east coast for work and I really will be alone.  Then I will no longer have someone to look forward to seeing at night or on the weekends.  It’ll just be me and whatever apartment I eventually end up living in.  Maybe I’ll start Facebooking again, or maybe I’ll spend more time on this blog.  Maybe I’ll even get around to reading more books.

By the time I get home from work, it’ll almost be time for him to hit the sack, so most of my nights will be void of his presence.  I suppose I could try sleeping earlier and working out to kill some of the time, but the rest of it… well, I wonder what I’ll do with myself.  The good thing, at least, is that I know that the anticipation of it is far worse than actually doing it.  After all, we’ve been through this before – and back then, we were still so fresh in our relationship.  Now we’ve solidified some things and really made room in our lives for each other.  And at least this time around the place he’s going isn’t as inaccessible as Singapore was.  There is no $1000+ plane ticket standing between us.  Just one for a couple hundred bucks, maybe even only in the double digits if we get a good deal.

It just sucks sometimes, having that sort of a void at night, when he’s busy doing something and I’m sitting there, bored of all the games I’ve been able to find and tired of watching video after video.  Then what do I do?  There is no Panda to share my day with and talk about random things with.  I hope I find a place with a gym, so I can fill my time with getting in shape.  I guess I’ll also start to figure out where the local library is.  Then again, I do have some books at home that I’ve been meaning to tackle for awhile now.  I hate when I get to thinking of what I’ll do when the time comes though.  That’s the hardest part.

Cats control.  Perhaps that’s why I like cats.  They like to be in control, just like I like to be in control.  Here’s an interesting video on how they use purring to get what they want.  They know how to get what they want and I generally do too.  And they love to nap!  I think more than that, it is their independent lifestyle though.  I don’t like dogs because they’re too needy.  I can leave a cat alone for days with no issue.  A dog would probably destroy the house and find a way to hurt himself.  Plus, cats don’t smell the way dogs do.  One of my greatest peeves is when a dog tries to lick my face – I don’t want to be anywhere near that, because their breath just reeks!

I think it’s fascinating that cats only purr for people.  At some point, they learned that doing so would make us happy, so now they know how to use it to get us to give them what they want.  I respect their smarts and love that they present a challenge.  They don’t always do what you want, but when they do, you can bet something went right.  I feel like you really have a relationship with them – some give and take and learning how to work with each other.  Dogs, on the other hand, just follow you around and give you all the attention and love you could ever need.  It’s suffocating.  I like pets that also can leave me alone.  And I like knowing that I’ve earned the good treatment I’m getting, rather than getting it because that’s all my pet does.  I suppose I prefer the depth of personality versus the unconditional love.

Cats are really misunderstood and it’s unfortunate.  They make for richer relationships.  Not to say that dogs don’t have personalities, but they’re not as complex as cats are.  And they certainly aren’t as clean.  It’s much easier to maintain a cat than a dog!  No walking, no barking to deal with, and so much less energy required.  It’s perfect for me; low-key and laid back, just the way I like it.  I can’t wait to get my next cat.  All my childhood ones have passed on.  :(  I miss that sort of companionship and nothing is more soothing than hugging a purring cat.