Test from Blackberry

Is this centered?

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

edit -
Well it looks like this blackberry camera is not going to be replacing my 8 megapixel any time soon, blech. Maybe there are some settings I haven't found, but my hopes aren't high for it.

Let's see if I can modify picture upload centering with an uploaded pic? :P

Blackberry camera

Just checking out the quality of the picture and if its convenient for blogging or not.

Allen.
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Sent using BlackBerry

How much sugar is in a can of Canada Dry?

I bought a case of ginger ale on sale today, and while drinking one just now, I read the label on the side. It said it has 34 grams of sugar in it. It occurred to me that I didn't really know how much "34 grams of sugar" actually was, so I measured it out on a scale. Amazing.

That's a heck of a lot of sugar isn't it?

For you coffee and tea drinkers, that's roughly 8.5 packets of sugar, assuming an average 4 gram sugar packet.

That's actually lower than a Coke at about 40g (10 packets of sugar) as googled on the net.

There's blogs out there that have lots of pictures showing how much sugar is in food, such as this one:
http://www.sugarstacks.com

Check it out and shock yourselves. :D

Allen.

Private Numbers / Unknown Callers / Phone Scams

One of my pet peeves is when people call you but the call display says "Private Number". I mean, they are calling you, but they don't want anyone to call them. Hypocrisy, isn't it?

Usually, I just ignore the these calls, but this morning, some private number called my home number, and hung up before we could even look to see who called. Then my cell rang with a private number. I ignored it and went back to sleep, they can leave a message. Then it rang again, private caller, and I got kind of irritated by it. So I answered it.

The woman on the line claimed she was calling from the hospital and had some sort of appointment change. I told her that if she is really calling from a hospital, that her caller id should identify her as from the hospital, not "Private Number".

I mean, any yahoo can pretend to be calling from the hospital and reschedule our appointment, esp if its some other patient trying to score our time slot. These things are pretty easily overheard when booking the appointment after all.

Anyways, this person told me that this is how the hospital works, that it should be "Unknown Caller". I think that is terribly unprofessional of the hospital. It should display their hospital main line number if they dont want people calling their extension, right?

Jeez.

Anyways, the appropriate thing to do here is to confirm the appointment myself by calling the hospital and checking if anything has changed.


Never accept what someone tells you over the phone if they call you. Always say you will call their company/organization back to confirm what they are claiming, and source out the company phone number yourself, don't take any phone numbers they offer you.

Here's the classic scam - someone calls you and says they are your bank/credit card company calling to verify a purchase, say $4000 at some website. Since you haven't bought some $4000 item from soandso.onlineshopp.com, you want to know more and get this sorted out. They need your card# and/or PIN number etc to confirm. Once you give them the info, they clean out you account cause you have given them all the keys to access your account, basically.

This is why you can't trust incoming calls telling you to trust them. Always confirm it yourself, independent of the incoming call.

I should just see if I can make my phones not ring on private number calls.

Allen.

Tai Chi's over now

The old year has ended and so have the Tai Chi lessons I've been going to since the fall of 2008. I've learned a lot, though I wish I could have learned more in the time I'd spent there.

The 3 basic Chen courses were really enjoyable I learned a lot and it was fun.

The advanced level was a bit difficult for me though. Not so much because it was difficult physically, it was cause of a language barrier. It was taught in Cantonese, with various students picked to translate the lessons into English for the benefit of us non-Cantonese speaking students. (with varying degrees of success, depending on who was available to do the translation) So I feel that I've missed out on a lot of the context and nuances of the lesson. Sure I asked questions when I didn't understand something, but often, I get the feeling that I've missed hearing or learning something, and I don't even know what.

Anyways, I plan to continue to practice it whenever I have a bit of time. The tricky part is where do I practice? The routine actually covers a considerable bit of space if we're talking about a living room or an office cubicle, which is why I guess so many people will go to the open spaces like the park, and practice there. I'll figure something out.

Allen.

Gingerbread Cookies

Did you know that savoury spicy taste in gingerbread is not ginger? it's the ground cloves that give it that distinctly sharp taste.

How do I know? I am guessing this because I made a batch of gingerbread cookies without the cloves and the distinct taste is missing. :P

I'll have to make another batch when I have ground cloves, to confirm this guess.

Allen.