The New Life

Outlook

2009-08-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I should just shut down this blog and make a new one just for tech stuff or something. Either that or just turn it into a tech-only blog. Not much about life to write about as of currently.

At any rate, for those of you who know my habits, I don't check the UCSD email using their provided email client, SquirrelMail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrelmail, http://www.squirrelmail.org/).

Instead, I use Microsoft Outlook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/default.aspx). There are a few reasons I insist on using Outlook instead of the school email client.

Firstly, SquirrelMail leaves much to be desired. In my experience, it is very error prone. In fact, just a few moments ago, I tried logging in so I can put post a screenshot here to show everyone. After trying to log in, all that shows up is some error saying that I must be logged in to view my e-mail. I just did that. Awesome.

Secondly, Outlook is much more professional. Some of you have worked with some sort of desk/administrative job know that Outlook is very often the email client of choice. Knowing how to use Outlook might be something valuable to put on your resume as well.

I know some of you are itching to go like OMG APPLEMAIL!!!!!!!111ONE!!1! I use Windows, thank you.

By the way, if you're a Mac user with Entourage, that's equivalent to Outlook for Windows.

Lastly, I would probably be a little hesitant using Outlook if it was extremely expensive, and not easily accessible. However, Outlook comes with pretty much every single Microsoft Office suite except for Home & Student. I trust most the people reading this probably have MS Office. I know very few people who don't use MS Word on a regular basis.

Now some of you might just not care at all. But for those of you wanted to play around with Outlook to check your e-mail, it's really easy to set up! You can also set it up to read the stuff you have in pretty much any e-mail account, including Yahoo and GMail. Also, if you don't have MS Outlook, you can still use other clients, such as Windows Live Mail, Applemail, and Mozilla Thunderbird.

I'm a bit lazy at the moment. But if someone actually requests how to use the set up an email client, I might make it my next post.

Until next time.

[ting]

Technologic

2009-08-13T01:28:00.000-07:00

As promised, a blog entry that will be a little more than worthless.

Today, I used Skype for the first time. Quite a big difference in sound and video quality from most webchat I've used. Either that or most the people I've chatted with before have just have low quality video stuff.

And no, it's not because they don't have a Mac. Anyone can purchase a nice microphone and webcam, and still pay less.

At any rate, earlier today I was cleaning out some of the files on my computer to make some room for installing Skype. Then I came across some ISOs of Final Fantasy 7. For those of you less informed, an ISO is a CD image file. It's pretty much having a copy of the CD inside your computer, and you can burn it later. I vaguely recall borrowing the game, playing it for like an hour on my PlayStation, then just ripping the images onto my computer so I can return it ASAP. Not sure of the laws on this, but seeing as they don't sell the game anymore, and a copy costed ~$60 on eBay at the time (which is amazing for a game 10 years old) , I did what I did. As a result, I currently have a copy of what is arguably the greatest game of all time... and now I want to play.

However, there were two problems. First off, I don't have any blank CDs to burn the images onto. That can be solved with a simple trip at Wal-Mart, but being the car deprived man I am, that will have to wait... but I cannot wait. Secondly, even if I did have CDs to burn, my PlayStation is in Cupertino collecting dust next to more frequently used Wii. So I came up with the easiest and fastest solution I could think of. Emulate.

Except, it wasn't exactly easy or fast at all. Most of you have probably seen emulators in some way shape or form. It's possible you went over to a friends house and seen them play Pokemon Ruby on their computer before it even came out in the US. I figured I would take a jab at using a PSX emulator, something I've never used before, and I never thought I would have to work so hard just to get a game to work.

For those of you who are familiar with emulators, the ones you probably most commonly see are GBA and SNES. Those cause no problem. Download the program, load the file, and play to your heart's content. But for PSX, it's a whole new ball game. You have to worry about CD emulation, finding video plug-ins, sound plug-ins, etc. By the time I got everything figured out, there was just one last thing that bothered me to no end. My computer cannot handle it. (!)

I was apalled. I bought this machine less than a year ago. It's running a Core 2 Duo at 2.27 GHz (yes that's relatively fast) with 4GB of RAM (yes that's a lot). Integrated graphics would hurt performance of course, but it's a laptop. I would rather save my battery life so I can take notes in class.

There's probably a lot more settings I need to figure out, but until then, it's just more technology to play around with.

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it.

[ting]

Different from me

2009-08-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

I had a whole thing of "poetry" written out here. BUT I really hated it. So I deleted it. There goes 15 minutes of my life. And here's about to go 5 of yours.

At any rate, the me you once knew is different than me.
Don't ask why.
The words you are reading belong to someone different than me.

Yeah I know right? What the hell is he talking about?

Don't ask questions. What you don't know won't hurt you.

I have a feeling this random ass post is going to keep the only three people who read my blog from coming here ever again.

I promise to write something worth reading next time.

You stay classy, San Diego.

[ting]

Let there be blog...

2009-07-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

What is it that prompts someone to create a blog?

Why would you bother me about that? Go ask someone who has one.

I am torn between the decision of making this a straight out comedic blog or jutting down the deep thoughts that cross my mind. Yet again, I seem to have lost a sense of humor these past few years, and as of currently, my deep thoughts are none too pleasing, neither are they close to being eye-opening.

In lieu of that, I'm just going to write whatever the hell I want.

So shut up.

And have a nice day, dammit.

[ting]