Still Sick

I just can't shake this cold. It was a pretty easy week for my kids cause I could not talk for more than about 10 min every class. Set up a game or an excercise and watch them work. I plan on taking it easy all weekend. Hopefully it will get better by next week.

Don't this at home

Not everyone wants to convert.

US Election

In honor of the US election let me present this little gem.

Warning: Its about 4 megs so be careful if you have poor bandwidth (Mom)

Jesswein's in the news

Apparently Lisa can't get a date, Tim is losing his job to a pothead and I have a cold. Can't a Jesswein catch a break?

Those freaky Japanese

Today's freaky Japanese segment is brought to you by eggs and their purple cousins.

New computer.

Well my old computer was acting up again this weekend. I was so frustrated with it that my wonderful wife felt sorry for me and took me computer shopping. Of course I am a bit geek so I could not just buy a computer off the shelf with the things I want in it. My last computer was custom built and shipped to me. This time I decided to go whole hog and build it my self.

So off to the store we go to get parts. For the geeks among you (Jason)the parts are as follows:

AMD 64 3000
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
ASUS V9999GT GeForce 6800GT
Seagate 120G SATA HD
Kingston 3200 512x2
ASUS DVD Drive
Coolermaster Centurion Case w/ 350W PSU
and the totally archaic but still necessary Sony Floppy

So Saturday afternoon I start to wire it all together. There are a million wires to connect all over the place, especially the dozen or so tiny wires that go from the case to the Mother board. Not to hard though as long as you only think about the wire you are working on now and ignore all the rest till it's thier turn. Took about 3 hours to assemble but now that I know what I am doing I could probably do it in about 30 min.

Got it all together and I am ready to install windows. Boot and....Can't get to the DVD. hmmm, ok maybe the wires are wrong. Check it all. Nope thats ok. Ahhh, must be the BIOS, yup change drive boot order and all is well.

Try to boot again. Now the XP install cannot see my Hard Drive. No problem I was expecting that cause the new SATA drive confuse XP until you install a special driver. Go on the ASUS CD and find the SATA driver. Try again. Nothing. argggg.

So are the connections ok? yup. Drive ok? Go to the Seagate site and download thier boot disk diagnostics. Run them. Drive is aOK. hmmm OK, maybe its something in the BIOS. Eeek. I am not real keen on messing with the BIOS, bad things happen when you do that. I've heard the horror stories. Decide to head to the net again. End up leaving messages on 3 tech forums.

I kept getting advice. Try "this" they say. So I do. Now trying "this" is not as easy as it sounds cause I only have one keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Everytime I try something I have to power down the old machine, swap all the wires, try it on the new, fail, swap all the wires again, reboot old machine report failure to the boys on the web.

This goes on for a few hours on Saturday night and all day Sunday. I try dozens of different solutions. Then Sunday night I finally find the answer. Simple but strange. I was using the wrong driver. To set up the SATA drive I needed to use the RAID driver, not the SATA driver. Even though I was only using one drive so I could not have a RAID. oh well, once I switched drivers I was off to the races.

The new box is amazing. I had gotten used to waiting for a few seconds for anything to happen on my machine. It was almost as slow as moms. Now stuff just happens. It almost does stuff before I even ask. Tasks that too 40 minutes (like a full virus scan) now take 5.

WOOT.

It will take a few more weeks to get all the bugs out but that's fun for the nerd in me.

Gotta run,

cya

Earthquake

We had an earthquake at noon today. The news is saying that it was the biggest quake since the big one a few years ago but I think we have had bigger ones, at least bigger here in Taichung.

The one today was not even all that noticeable unless you were sitting down. I was in the teachers office when it hit and one of the teachers was sitting at the computer and saying that there was a big quake. The rest of us were standing and did not really believe him till we sat down. Then we could feel it too. It was relatively weak but it went on for a long time and that is usually a sign that it is big somewhere else. Turns out it was a 7 off in the ocean where it happened. A 5 in Hualian (which always gets the big ones.) a 4 in Taipei and a 2 here.

They never really bother me but it can feel a bit odd.

Tests Tests Tests

Pretty normal week except that the kids were doing tests all day Thursday and Friday. The have a crazy love of tests in this culture. Students write little tests almost every morning and big tests 6 times a year. 4 sets of midterms and two finals, one each semester.

It's harsh but it prepares them for the rest of their lives. Everything has a test here. They write a test to get into Jr High, a test to get into HS and a test to get into University. Once they get out of university they have to write a test to get just about any job with the government. Want to drive a garbage truck, write this test. I even had one of my kindergarten kids miss a day of school cause she was off writing the test to get into elementary school.

The really sad thing is that the tests the write are so pointless. They are purely bases on memorization of useless facts and they are totally arbitrary. An example of the arbitrariness. One of my boys showed me his test from the Taiwanese English teacher.

1. Put the words in order: name, my, tom, is.

What is your name?

My name is Tom. = full marks
Tom is my name. = no marks

Another example is the test for a drivers license. There is a written test and driving test. The driving test is easy but the written is really hard, but only for foreigners cause we foolishly expect the test to be about driving. Here are a couple of the questions that caught me off guard when I failed the test. :(

74. When carrying out registration procedures for stop riding the motor cycle, the stop riding term can not exceed.
(1) 6 months (2) one year (3) three months.

79. Motorcycles using cell phones while riding on the road.
They will be fined to (1) 1000NT (2) 1500NT (3) 2000 NT

Now you may be wondering why I have the exact questions. That's because I now have the study guide. Now a Taiwanese study guide is a bit different than a Canadian one. In a Canadian guide you would find all sorts of useful information about driving and road safety. You would have to figure out what was important and study that. A Taiwanese guide is just a list of 1000 questions and the correct answers. No need to understand anything just remember that the correct response to question 500 is (b)

Of course some of the questions are quite amusing. Here are a few of my favorites from the "Driver's Morals Multiple Choice" section.

6. A motorcyclist follows traffic rules because (1) he is afraid of being punished (2) he has a sense of responsibility, honor and safety. (3) there is someone to supervise him.

10. If a motorcyclist wants to be honored, happy, safe on traffic, he should (1) have a sense of morality and follow the laws. (2) have good riding skills. (3) not smoke and drink.

And my personal favorite from "Drivers Morals True/False"

11. A riders without traffic morals is a misfortune both for himself and others.

True / False?

There are about 20 more that always give me a good laugh. I should add more later.

A long over due post.

It’s been a while since I posted so here is an update with a fair bit of news. Well not news exactly but stuff, anyway.

Had a nice 4 day weekend last week. September 28^th was Teachers Day. Believe it or not teacher’s day is a national holiday in Taiwan. We all got the day off school. J This year it also corresponded with Moon Festival. Moon Festival is kind of like the Chinese equivalent of Thanksgiving. Teacher day is Confucius’s birthday so it is the 28^th every year. Moon Festival (or Mid-Autumn festival) is on the Chinese Lunar calendar so it is different every year. This year they more or less corresponded so in a rare burst of administrative generosity the school gave us Monday and Tuesday off.

It was very nice. I can sure tell the difference between working in a cram school and a very rich private school. At the cram school I our Teachers day reward was not a holiday. The boss would order pizza. At the school I am at now it’s another story altogether. First we got the long weekend. Basically the only holiday we get except Chinese New Year so you know its important. Then there was the banquet and the gifts. On Wednesday when we got back from the long weekend the school gave every teacher in the school a hot plate. Not really useful so I gave it to a fiend of mine who doesn’t have a kitchen but nice all the same. Many of my classes also gave me little gifts, ranging from cards to a few gift certificates. The cards were cool.

Then on Thursday night we had a banquet at one of the big 5 star hotels. This was a banquet for all the teachers and a bunch of the rich parents. There were about 1000 people there. 200 or so teachers, 50ish staff and then assorted parents politicians and hangers on. (No family though so Jenn did not go L)

There was a little band that sat behind the stage and played traditional Chinese music the whole time. Fortunately they played fairly quietly cause traditional Chinese music can be kind of harsh to the western ear. There were a few mercifully short speeches then they started to hand out red envelopes. Red envelopes are the traditional Taiwanese gift for weddings, funerals, birthday, and well any occasion really. Eminently practical they are just an envelope stuffed with cash. The perfect gift. They gave them out to all the teachers with 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years of service. There was even one guy with 35 years. The whole time they were making speeches and giving out gifts the audience was talking away. I am always surprised by that. I found it kind of rude at first but I am slowly getting used to it.

After the main ceremony they started to bring the food. It was fairly normal Chinese food that just kept coming in about 15 courses for about an hour and a half. The whole time they were brining in the food there was a guy up on stage doing a draw. (I found out later he was one of the super rich parents) When we got there they gave all of us a ticket stub. ( all of the teachers and staff, not parents) It was not like any draw I have seen before though because I am pretty sure that everyone won something. That’s right, everyone.

They had a ton of different prizes. The top prizes were a laptop, a fridge, and a washing machine. There were toaster ovens and VCD players. There were about 20 mountain bikes. There were little radios and big stereos. The draw just kept going and going. At the very end everyone who did not get a good prize got to go up and they got the booby prize. I think it was an iron but I think there were only about 50 of those. About 150 of the prizes were pretty good. For example, at my table of 8 teachers we got 3 mountain bikes, 2 stereos, 2 VCD players, and a toaster oven. I end up with one of the stereos. It was a pretty nice evening.

Other than that there is not much going on. Jenn is off to China for a few weeks at the end of the month and I am just working away. School is getting easier now that the kids are getting used to me. We are all getting into the groove of things. I’ll try to do the next update sooner.

Freaky Sleeping Cat III

Sorry that the regular Friday edition of Freaky sleeping cat was late this week.

Test (and a joke)

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person which almost went unnoticed last week.

Larry La Prise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey", died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin.

They put his left leg in..... Then the trouble started.

School Lunch

Just hanging out at school waiting for my next class. I just had lunch at the school teacher cafeteria. The food was pretty good today. There was a slightly spicy tofu stir fry. Some steamed sprouts (a bit oily) Some deep fried chiken pieces and a pork dish. The pork was kind of strange but it's a meal we get often. It's a kind of traditional Taiwanese dish.

Basically it's bacon without the smoking. They take that same cut of meat and boil it with some spices and some bamboo. It turns into a kind of savory stew with the pork and the bamboo. Not a very good discription but good to eat. I am sure it is making me fatter though.

It's starting to get cooler, especially at night. By cooler I mean 25 or so but that is much nicer because the humidity is getting better too. It will be nice to be able to walk around outside happily again. Maybe we can start going for walks in the park again. It was way to hot to do that in the summer, even at night.

BBQ squid

ahhh, Wednesday. It's the mini Friday. I made BBQ squid and corn on the cob for Jenn tonight. It's not exactly good old home cookin but you adapt as best you can.

The picture is actually an old one of my friend Nick and I at the harbor with some delicious squid on a stick. Oddly enough its really good. Much better than my poor attempt tonight. Of course theirs was fresh.
(click on the image to blow it up)

Japanese TV

Japanese TV is just plain strange. In fact almost everything about Japan is strange. After living in Taiwan for almost 4 years I have discovered that anything truely bizzare that I see here is actually something Japanese.

One of my favorites is a Japanese TV show where little kids do these crazy skits. Now I am not sure what you are thinking when I say skit but I am sure that it is not this.

That was one of the good ones. Most of them are just plain dumb. That said they can pass an hour or two if you have a few beers first.

Nerdosterone II

bahhh, opened up the old beast and it was worse than I thought. Turns out I have a 256 and a 512 not 3 256's as I thought. To make matters worse my motherboard is a crappy design. You have to take out the video card before you can get at the Ram. yuck.

Take out GPU (video card), take out ram, put ram 1 in slot 1, put in GPU, restart machine to test.

Wash rinse repeat with both ram in all 3 slots.

The final word....

The 512 is dead.

Oh well. I if can just get it to limp along for another couple of months I will get a new machine. This time I will try and build my own. After reading my butt for the last 6 months I figure I am ready to give it a try.

Freaky Sleeping Cat II

You turn your back for a second and....

The Family Blog lives

Well the family blog is up and running at http://sandmaier.blogspot.com/

Head on over and take a look. If you didn't get an email inviting you to be a member so that you can make posts and upload pics let me know and I will set you up.

Family Blog Name

Well there seems to be some interest in this Family Blog idea. All I really need before I can set it up is a name.

I figure you guys should send a few emails to the rest of the clan (I don’t have many) and give them the address for this one. That way they can see the kind of thing we are talking about and get everyone to leave name ideas in the comments to this post.

Once we have a name I will set up a new site at a new address and give everyone access so that they can all post.

A New Blogger!

I want to extend the warmest welcome to myself as the newest member of The Ruptured Duck blogging staff. Please do not be alarmed, this is only a test.

Of course, if I can come up with anything interesting to say, this could become a regular thing.

A Family Blog??

I have been thinking that it might be nice to set up a blog like this for the whole Sandmaier clan. I know that it looks like it would be hard for people to use but it's actually really really easy.

I could set up the web page. Once that is done leaving Blog entries like this one is as easy as sending an email. In fact the screen that I am typing this on right now looks almost exactly like the hotmail screen. It might be a nice way for everyone to keep in touch, share pictures and pass on info about important dates like xmas.

Let me know what you think.

Nerdosterone

My poor old computer is sick again. Jenn keeps telling me that's because I feed it too much. As usual, she is probably right. Seems like 2 of my 3 memory chips are on the frits so I have dropped from 768M down to 256. Ouch.

The chips are probably just loose so I can probably fix them by opening up the case, taking the chips off the motherboard and reseating them all. A relativly easy procedure except that my computer is a big mess of wires under the desk. Actually getting the thing from under the desk and on the table so I can work on it and then hooking all those wires up again when I am done is a bit too much effort for today. I will have to wait till I build up a good supply of nerdsterone and try on the weekend.

(Nerdosterone = nerd testosterone)

Anonymous

Hey guys, I'm glad you are reading and leaving comments but please let me know who you are. Of course I can usually guess but a few names might be nice.

Don't worry about signing on or anything like that, just put your name at the bottom.

Thanks all.

I love Wednesdays

I love Wednesdays. I finish work at noon and I usually have lunch with my buddy Kris. Today we decided to try out my new BBQ. Kris is a fantasic cook with no kitchen. I am a fantastic eater with a kitchen and no skill. Its kind of symbiotic. :) We are blogging this while we wait for the meat to marinate. This is a picture of Kris at a BBQ from a few months ago.

Rain Rain Go Away

Man did it ever rain today. It started about an hour before I finished my last class and kept it up all till after I got home. It has rained so much this year.

Normally the great thing about Taichung is that it just never rains but not this year. It has rained a few times a week all summer long. Last year it only rained a few times a month at worst.

Oh well. At least I still have my duck suit.

The Pajama Patrol

Poor John Kerry. He spent a few weeks in Vietnam dodging these guys and now, 30 years later, the pajama patrol is back to get him. It's not all bad though, turns out some of the pajama gang likes him.

Magical Trevor

A story of Magical Trevor and his amazing cow for Kari

Freaky sleeping cat I

The first of a seemingly endless series of pictures that prove that my cat will sleep anywhere.

Wedding Pix 2

Not surprisingly I could not find a good picture with me in it but here is a great one of my smiling bride.

Wedding Pix 1

Mom's beautiful yard the day before. Too bad we had rain.

Dodging the hammer

A few people have asked me what we did in Vancouver. Well, mostly we folllowed the hammer. :)

Life is Good.

This is probably not a sign of things to come that my first post is inspired by a new BBQ and a bottle of red wine.

I just bought a new gas BBQ at the local B n'Q. That probably does not seem like a big thing to you but I am the only person I know in Taiwan that has one. ( I know lots of people must have em but no one that I know does.) Just finished BBQing on my deck. Felt just like I was home in Canada on a warm July evening, except for the palm trees that is.

New BBQ, new job, wonderful new wife, new life. Ahhh, life is good.