Online shopping?
If you see a space asking for coupon code, google it before you check out.
Rent or buy? (When you have the choice of course)
Before you buy, estimate the life span of this item and the time period of you willing to use it, divide the price of this item by whichever time is less. If it turns out more expensive than renting, rent.
Credit card, savings or cash?
Cash is preferred for grocery and everyday shopping if you feel like you are spending too much, as you don't see the money gone if you are using a card, you hand that card out, signed your name/keyed the pin and the card came back with one more receipt! When buying something big though, you might want to use the credit card to avoid seeing your money go.
Assignment due days...
Divide the word count by the number of days left til the due day, and aim at writing that much per day. If it's tomorrow, ask for extension...
Planning ahead?
In my case this never worked. If a plan is made to be broken why even waste time on it?
Making your bed?
Waste of time! It's gonna get messy anyway when you get back on it tonight.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Laptop
My laptop is failing.
It'd been through a lot with me, and I liked it a lot and at the moment I was running Ubuntu on it and it is jut kept in the lab as I've already got a desktop for my gaming and multimedia needs. After three years of my intensive use it's actually about time that this Dell XPS M1210 retire. The graphics had failed before but I was under warranty so I was able to change the motherboard. Now I can't seem to do anything to it and in fact I don't actually know where the exact problem is. It might be the graphics or the cables that connects the screen and the motherboard. The display is either running at normal colour depth but very shaky or it downgrade to the ugly 256 colours. Switching off special effects worked for 10 minutes and the problem returns. More problems are following up in this old machine and the network proxy suddenly stopped working and I lost access outside of the uni website. I need to replace it.
I knew I don't need much of computing power and I know I am after a cheap stuff. All I require it to do are processing spreadsheets, writing reports, showing presentations and surfing the internet. A netbook is the first choice although I also considered an iPad. The iPad would've been too late given that it wasn't even accepting pre-orders in Australia when I had to make a decision.
There are worries about netbooks, most notably being too low of a resolution for those small screens will cause hardship browsing the internet, and in my case, also affects the powerpoint slides as I've noticed before unless I set it prior.
i've seen those 1024x600 screens, awful. There are only two HD screen (1366x768) model available for 10" netbooks, one from HP which I can't even see the full specification in their crappy internet store so I went for the Dell Mini 10z (Yes Dell again). I don't expect much from it but the review looks quite good, and 10hr battery life is just an extra that I would gladly accept although I'll almost always plug it in in the lab anyway :P The choice between mobile broadband compatibility and TV tuner actually took me a while to decide. I chose TV tuner but still a bit nervous not knowing if I should. It didn't matter that much actually cos I am using mobile broadband on a USB 3G modem and my desktop uses a TV as monitor. The justification that I gave myself for choosing TV tuner is that if I am away from home, I can always take my USB 3G modem but the TV is not so easy to carry... I don't actually watch TV btw... The colour is another thing that is too hard to choose, definitely not purple or pink, red is not bad, I got too many black stuff, I don't like blue, green is nice and so is white... I got white at last, and I'm actually thinking of getting a skin for it anyways :)
Now all I have to do is wait, and track online occasionally to see how are they working with it before it reaches me.
It'd been through a lot with me, and I liked it a lot and at the moment I was running Ubuntu on it and it is jut kept in the lab as I've already got a desktop for my gaming and multimedia needs. After three years of my intensive use it's actually about time that this Dell XPS M1210 retire. The graphics had failed before but I was under warranty so I was able to change the motherboard. Now I can't seem to do anything to it and in fact I don't actually know where the exact problem is. It might be the graphics or the cables that connects the screen and the motherboard. The display is either running at normal colour depth but very shaky or it downgrade to the ugly 256 colours. Switching off special effects worked for 10 minutes and the problem returns. More problems are following up in this old machine and the network proxy suddenly stopped working and I lost access outside of the uni website. I need to replace it.
I knew I don't need much of computing power and I know I am after a cheap stuff. All I require it to do are processing spreadsheets, writing reports, showing presentations and surfing the internet. A netbook is the first choice although I also considered an iPad. The iPad would've been too late given that it wasn't even accepting pre-orders in Australia when I had to make a decision.
There are worries about netbooks, most notably being too low of a resolution for those small screens will cause hardship browsing the internet, and in my case, also affects the powerpoint slides as I've noticed before unless I set it prior.
i've seen those 1024x600 screens, awful. There are only two HD screen (1366x768) model available for 10" netbooks, one from HP which I can't even see the full specification in their crappy internet store so I went for the Dell Mini 10z (Yes Dell again). I don't expect much from it but the review looks quite good, and 10hr battery life is just an extra that I would gladly accept although I'll almost always plug it in in the lab anyway :P The choice between mobile broadband compatibility and TV tuner actually took me a while to decide. I chose TV tuner but still a bit nervous not knowing if I should. It didn't matter that much actually cos I am using mobile broadband on a USB 3G modem and my desktop uses a TV as monitor. The justification that I gave myself for choosing TV tuner is that if I am away from home, I can always take my USB 3G modem but the TV is not so easy to carry... I don't actually watch TV btw... The colour is another thing that is too hard to choose, definitely not purple or pink, red is not bad, I got too many black stuff, I don't like blue, green is nice and so is white... I got white at last, and I'm actually thinking of getting a skin for it anyways :)
Now all I have to do is wait, and track online occasionally to see how are they working with it before it reaches me.
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