Vinh Pham

The other day, I met a guy that made me question the way I choose to live my life. This guy was very outgoing and positive. When someone walks in the room, he gives a big smile and goes to greet them. He does not seem to have any preconditions about who he will greet, he treats everyone as though they are all equal and interesting to him. He takes the time to learn their name, what they do for a living, and what their interests and hobbies are. He also introduces himself, what he does, and proceed to give them his business card in a very natural way. He was very receptive to new ideas, and does not use a lot of negative words in his speech.

I am not like this. I am usually very hesitant to say hi to people I do not identify with. On top of that, I usually dismiss people who I find uninteresting, and I almost never take the time to learn anything about the people I meet. Basically, I am horrible at networking. To make matter worse, I am always very negative. I am known for my cynicism and some people in my life has completely stop talking to me because I am always being negative and complaining about things.

Anyways, watching this guy network, made me realize that my attitude towards people is completely wrong. There is much to be gain from having a positive attitude. This is especially important to me as I build my business and need to find new customers through networking with people I meet. I also find that if I am more positive in my speech, the conversations I have with people will be less hostile, and will make people feel more comfortable speaking with me.

I am going to try this new outlook I have. Wish me luck.

The arrival of the “recovery manager” on new computers is heaven sent. Very often it becomes an extremely good idea to just wipe everything and start brand new (geesh, don’t you we wish we all had “recovery manager” for other aspects of life). But the problem is, many companies are still not embracing or implementing the technology properly. It can often be a pain the arse to figure out when, where, and what to press in order to load the “recovery manger”.

I spent a good three hours today trying to figure out why the hell the F11 - Recovery Manager button on my Compaq does not work.

All the instructions on HP sites said it should load the “Recovery Manager” when you press it, but for mine it did not.

Finally I found instructions here.

Instructions are as follows:

I know how to activate if F11 does not help to start recovery.
If U can access to START > Control Panel > Administrative tools or shorter way:
START > run > compmgmt.msc and press enter
then Disk management
Find which is recovery partition
Make Mark partition as Active
Then restart pc.

Thanks to mindas22.

These instructions are a workaround. You are basically running the hidden recovery partition as a main drive. What the hell happened to the F11 function?? I don’t know.

Ever been to a Jewelery store on Valentine Day? You should go check it out when you have a chance…
You see all these sad looking guys hovering over the glass cases looking all confused like a girl in a Kragen (In all fairness, I myself get hella confused and look really stupid when I am at Kragen).

You can almost see this look on their face, the look of someone who just got yelled at all night for NOT getting a Valentine gift earlier. This, of course, is a make-up gift. So it has to be big, shiny, and expensive, or else…

The minute I stepped into the mall, I saw this tough looking guy dressed in a mechanic suit. In his hands was a tiny little bag that says “Kay” on it. Obviously this man has been through a lot, and him being at the mall in his work clothes on Valentine Day is no accident.

I raise my mug to all of us men who have been there and done that.

And for all of you who think, “I don’t have to do shit, I got my woman in check.” Enjoy beating off alone for the rest of your life.

I am a pretty dumb guy, so when politicians or smart people on TV starts blabbling off about important issues, I never really understand what they are saying. So here I will try to dissect this “health care” issue, so that anyone who is like me, can understand it too.

Laundry List:

Universal Health Care
1) Everyone deserves equal health care regardless of age or income
2) We cannot trust companies to be fair and just when our lives are at stakes
3) Corporations serve the stock holders first, the patient second

Privatized Health Care
1) Lazy people who do not work are bankrupting our health care system by getting care they do not deserve or need
2) Corporations can provide better health coverage than a government run bureaucracy
3) Competition among corporations can lead to faster advance in medical technology, cheaper prices, and better health institutions.

Typical Stories:

Universal Health Care: Shannon was a healthy, constitution loving, non-smoking, hardworking American who recently got cancer. Her health insurance company found a “t” on her paperwork that was not crossed, so they denied her health coverage. Now Shannon has to sell her house and first born to get treatment.

Privatized Health Care: Jane is a mother of four, but she does not know who any of the fathers are. She smokes three packs a day, lives on welfare, and has never paid a penny in tax. Yet she has a car, cable television, cellphones for her and each of her babies, and a brand new Coach purse. One day she ate too much french-fries from McDonalds and got a heart attack. She got taken to the hospital, put in ICU for weeks, and when she left the hospital, she also left her bill for you to pay.

If I am being honest, I have no idea what is the right thing to do. Universal Health Care seems to work very well in other countries, but regardless if it works or not, is it really fair for us to be paying for people like Jane to sit on their a$$? But we also can’t let the insurance companies weasel their way out of providing care to people like our friend Shannon.

However, there are probably many things that we CAN agree on, and should definitely become part of our thought process about health care. ( I got these ideas from other websites )

1) Give incentives to people for loosing/maintaining a healthy weight. Reward good BMI? - We all know that obesity is a “big” problem. If we can reverse the obesity trends, we could potential save “tons” of money. Not to mention, countless lives.
2) Control Tobacco use - I read somewhere that 30% of the cost of our health care system is because of people smoking. If you want to smoke, pay for it yourself!
3) Eliminate unnecessary procedures - In fear of being sued, many hospitals and doctors make you do a lot of frivolous things to make sure they covered all their bases. Who do you think is paying for this?
4) Hold the insurance companies accountable - This is debatable, so I put it last on my list. But the point is, there are TOO MANY stories about people being screwed by their insurance company. I live with this fear everyday of my life. Why do I have to live in fear and I pay my insurance every month and on time?

Last week I was in a heated “debate” with my friend Chris about the availability of WiFi internet. I suggested that maybe the reason why we do not have WiFi internet available in any major city is because the big corporations lobby hard to suppress the building of such infrastructure.

Free WiFi internet would mean the end of Cable/DSL connections, translating to billions of lost revenue. It is not hard to believe that Comcast and ATT would spend millions of dollars shooting down the idea of free WiFi internet available to everyone.

A couple weeks prior to that, I was talking to Nghiem about why is it that we still rely on “undersea cables” to transmit internet/phone connections. In my mind, that is the technological equivalent to using a typewriter. Nghiem explained that “undersea cables” are the best option we currently have.

Today I read this article: Japan launches Internet satellite.

It really excites me because it is the answer I was looking for. Satellite internet will eliminate “undersea cables”, and satellite internet means affordable and fast internet connections for everyone!

Bravo Japan, Bravo.

I think going to the dentist is God’s way of reminding us that no matter how great you think your life on earth is, it really ain’t that great.
The pain and misery of being in total control by a man who makes you hold your mouth open while he pokes you with a needle should be something reserved for prisons, not something you have to pay for.
As I was sitting there getting poked and proded, I dreamed of a way to just replace all my teeth with fake teeth. Seriously, I would not mind having ALL fake teeth that I do not have to worry about. As long as they are reliable and don’t have any strange health effects, I would without hesitation, replace all my real teeth with fake teeth.
I would even consider covering my entire mouth in some sort of protective barrier like gold or something. If someone tells me that covering my teeth in gold would mean no cavities for life, I would consider it. Although, having gold teeth does make you look like a dumbass.
Teeth…some kind of cruel joke from heaven…

The more news I watch, hear, read, the more I get worried that there is really no such thing as “news”. In this world, no one wants to just present the facts. Or when they do present facts, it’s only the facts that proves their point.

When I go to this Japaneses place for lunch, they always have FOX News on. It makes me sad. It makes me wonder how much of the crap that is spewed out by FOX News is taken in by these people. I bet they don’t even realize how bias and misleading FOX News is. To them, it’s just the “news”, so they watch it.

For now, I trust NPR for unbiased news, and I read blogs and web comments to see differing view points.

I guess it comes down to your core morals and values. Regardless of what happened, or how others choose to interpret the events, it is up to you to decide between what is wrong and right.

Although I admit, it is hard to know what direction to head in, when you are drowning in a sea of misinformation.

This is by far, the most enlightening commentary on penises I have ever read. It is scientific? Probably not. It is true? I sure hope so.

Credit to: Whoever this is

The chart also doesn’t take into consideration the various size preferences among different races. For example, asian women tend to be shallower and would scream in pain from having her cervix pounded by a big guy who doesn’t know how to use his tool, while african women tend to have a greater vaginal depth and just will not be vaginally aroused by a guy who is not long enough to hit all the right spots.

Though it is taboo to discuss, the relative difference in penis size versus vaginal depth among the different races is why asian men are the least desirable men in America while black women are the least desirable women in America in terms of attractiveness to the opposite sex.

Also, you will see asian women dating just about every race but you will almost never see asian men dating outside their race, not because they don’t want to, but because white women, black women, and latino women won’t date them. Furthermore, you rarely see black women dating outside their race, while you see black men hooking up with anything with a pulse.

Last but not least, with respect to Latinos who are of mostly siberian asian descent, the same racial preferences apply as with asians in that you will see latino women dating all races, but rarely see latino men date outside their race (though it is more common than with asian men since most Latinos have some European ancestry).

Fortunately, the standard deviation in size differences across various ethnic groups is only about an inch. Asian men on average are about 5 inches in length while African men on average are about 6 inches in length. Caucasians lie in between at about 5.5 inches in length so the perceptions of penis size among different races is vastly larger than the reality. If a guy is unhappy with his size, he can easily add an inch or two or sometimes even more through a dedicated NPE program (NPE == Natural Penis Enlargement). However, due to it being unbecoming of a man to walk around with a bulge in his pants to show off his manhood while women where tight shirts showing off their boobs, it is kind of hard for an asian guy with a larger than average package to show off his stuff so many women will automatically assume he has a tiny weiner while thinking every black guy has a 10 inch thunderbeast.

Unfortunately due to porn where surgically enhanced penises, camera tricks using a wide-angled lens, as well as genetic freaks of nature, have pushed the penis size myths even farther into the mainstream than anything else in history and sadly many men are judged by women of all races in terms of their potential prowess in bed by the color of their skin. Yes, there are statistical differences in penis size among different ethnic groups, but the differences are small enough that asian men would likely be shunned far less often by the opposite sex if not for the gross misconceptions about their penis size.

We live in a world filled with technological magic. I say magic because not many of us actually know how the technology we use everyday work. If something was to happen to all the smart people in the world, the remaining people would be no better off than a caveman with a rock. Actually, they’d be worst off because at least the caveman knows how to use that rock to kill something.

Seriously, think about it. If lets say you traveled back in time to the middle ages, what could you possibly share with those people to make their lives any different? Can you show them how to make a telephone? Help them build a car? Hell, would you even know how to teach them to make soap?

Honestly, you’d be pretty damn useless.

Today I was reading about undersea cables. It is freaking amazing to me that the information gateway of our society, the internet, is nothing more than a mess of cables laid across the world’s oceans. Seriously, have you ever wondered about that? Have you ever thought that the reason you can go online and chat with some random chick in China is because there is a fat cable somewhere out there running across the ocean floor??

It’s extremely mind blowing… we’ve sent a man to the moon, cured countless diseases, and build a snowpark in the middle of the desert (Dubai), yet we rely on cable laid across the oceans for communication…..

I just don’t get it.. How does the cable survive the forces of nature? sea creatures? vandalism? How long is this cable? Does it break often? Why can’t we use satellites instead? I thought that’s the reason why we have satellites? Isn’t that how our cell phones work?

Cables… under the sea??? wtf… I would make a horrible engineer… I’d fall off my chair every time I learn something new about how things work…

The stock market in going down the tubes, people’s houses are getting foreclosed on, millions of Americans don’t have health insurance, payroll is declining, global warming threatens the planet, and gas is $3.20+

YET…. the oil company is reporting record profits: Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company.

I am not saying that making a profit is a bad thing. In fact, I am happy for them, that they made money. But… record profits?? It’s like kicking someone in the nuts while they are down…

I understand that there may be several factors contributing to this number, and I have no evidence that there is any wrong doing here, but come on… there has to be some kind of balance in this world…

The Bush administration tells us its because of terrorists and illegal immigrants.

Sigh… I don’t know why CNBC keeps showing live coverages of Bush making speeches. I literally TURN OFF my TV when they do that. I cannot stand listening to that guy.