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.