One could argue that my trying to review ghost data is cheating also. I don't think it's the same since I would still have to complete the course myself. Also, it's not cheating to watch better people play, otherwise we'd have to avert our eyes every time someone is playing a game.

I was discussing with a friend different ways of working out that would be more fun. One idea was belly-dancing, which I heard was great for abs. Instead of paying for a class when I already had a gym membership, I checked out the Group X schedule of the nearest 24 Hour Fitness. They didn't have a belly dance class, but they had something called 24Tease. Here's the description of the class:

Jeff Costa, creator of Cardio Striptease introduces 24Tease, an electrifying 30-minute striptease aerobics workout exclusively at 24 Hour Fitness! 24Tease provides a safe environment for members to get in touch with their inner stripper, while taking off pounds, extra clothing and even some inhibitions to reveal a healthier body and stronger self-esteem. 24Tease is low-impact contemporary movement that makes you sweat and feel good.

I think the class lives up to the description, except for the part about taking off extra clothing. I mean, I wear minimal clothes anyway when I work out because I get so hot.

I had wished I could drink some alcohol before taking the class to loosen up but since I had to drive home afterward, it wasn't an option. The second time I went, I did a few minutes of cardio on the treadmill, with a cool down period. I think it helped me to be more relaxed mentally and have the blood pumping through my body so I was not so stiff.

I've taken step and aerobics classes before but would quit after one class due to frustration of being unable to follow. I figured I would get the hang of things if I went on a regular basis but I wasn't motivated enough. At least a stiptease class teaches a useful skill. You know, for sexy dancing in a club.

It's a pretty low impact way to exercise, but I was sweating a lot. It made me wonder how professional strippers do it. Not that I've seen a live stripper. Despite it being low-impact, it's a fun class that at least gets me into the gym at a specific time.

One drawback is that the room in which the class is held is right in front of the cardio machines, where people can see inside the room through glass windows. Fortunately, since the class has so many people, I don't worry so much about it. If I were one of a handful of dancers, then I'd be a bit self-conscious.

Although the Logitech Harmony 890 cost about twice as much as the 720, the ability to use RF to control devices sold me on it. After using it for a few months, I have no regrets. Being able to use RF means that I no longer need to point directly at the devices. Since some activities like watching TV involves turning on multiple devices, some devices might fail to get the infrared signal if the remote control is not pointed correctly toward all of the devices. Now, I don't have to worry about where I point my remote as long as the extenders that the system uses are in place.

Additionally, some appliances and electrical adapters can work with Z-Wave technology. What I did was replace the regular light switch with a wireless-compatible wall switch that my remote could control remotely and wirelessly. With the wireless controlling of lights, the Harmony 890 has a concept that its non-RF brethren like the 720 didn't have, scenes. For example, I like to watch DVDs with the lights out. When I click on Watch DVD, not only does it turn on the TV and dvd player, but it turns off the lights. That is because I created a scene with no lighting and assigned it to the DVD-watching activity. I have created "activities" that just control the light so that I can turn on or off the lights using my remote, independent of what I'm doing with my home entertainment system.

As awesome as this system is, it took some time and effort to get it set up. There was minimal documentation on how to get my remote to communicate to the Z-wave device(s). I'm pretty techy so I'm not sure if I would recommend this to someone who doesn't have a lot of technological know-how and patience. Once it is set up, there is minimal effort extended. I might tweak a setting here and there, but they are usually so low priority that I don't bother to sync the remote until there is something that I really need to add to the remote.

Another useful thing about this remote is that it makes it possible for someone besides myself to be able to use my home entertainment system. They just need to go to the Activities screen and select the desired activity.

Here's a photo of the remotes for my home entertainment system, with the Harmony posed horizontally above the five remotes. The idea to have a photo of the remote controls that were being replaced was what inspired me to write this post.

I am again going to be an organization administrator to coordinate Coppermine's participation in the program. The student that I mentored last year not only continued to work with Coppermine, but signed up to be a mentor and organization administrator this year.

I decided to make use of Google Sites to have one place where interested students can learn about working with Coppermine in GSoC. There is a thread in Coppermine forums to post public questions about Coppermine in GSoC. For non-public GSoC correspondence, there is an email address: gsoc2008@coppermine-gallery.net. The email address is specifically for Google Summer of Code communications and isn't necessarily going to forward only to me (that means no love letters! :D). For anything else, please use the other means of communication.

I was checking out my site's analytics and saw that my first name continued to be the top keyword that was getting people to my site. I did a Google search for my full name to see how the results were. The first one was for my blog so that's cool. I scrolled down and saw a LinkedIn profile for Thu Tu, and it wasn't me!

That's when I decided to sign up for LinkedIn and establish a profile for myself. I even got a custom url with my name, which surprisingly hadn't been taken yet: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ThuTu

Update: One week later, my LinkedIn profile is showing up in a search for my name. Go me!

Valentine staples like chocolates can be delicious to us humans but toxic to pets. Certain flowers can be poisonous to cats. My favorite flower is the oriental stargazer but as a lily it's a no-no for my cats. Oh well, the flower does not live as long nor provide the same cuddling benefits my cats do.

This month's ASPCA newsletter contains an article with some tips and additional links, including alternatives, on ensuring a safe and enjoyable Valentine's Day for humans and animals: ASPCA Guide to a Pet-Friendly Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

What was the response of Lunarpages, my former webhost, to this? They wrote a blog post accusing Dreamhost of robbing their customers. (They've since changed the title, content, and tone of the post to be less accusatory and libelous since I first saw it. The permalink url remains to prove the original title and intent.) Hmm... call me crazy but I think stealing is when someone intentionally takes something belonging to another person with no intention of returning it. Dreamhost made a technical error with an unintended consequence, and refunded customers for the overcharge, as well as any fees incurred by the customers. They're even letting people cancel web hosting accounts and refunding them.

It seems Lunarpages lacks its own moral compass to recognize right and wrong and so couldn't figure out that what happened at DreamHost was not theft. What Lunarpages did with the spammy 404 pages it imposed on paying customers was an actual unethical act. Lunarpages has not officially acknowledged this error in judgment nor apologized for it. They just quietly reversed what they did. It would be hard to do otherwise since they did not tell their customers what they were doing behind their backs. They also banned helpful/long-time forum members who spoke up against what they did and deleted/censored attempts at exposing the truth. That alienated other long-time forum members, like myself. Now there's one LP moderator who impresses people at how prolific he is at responding to forum posts. If they hadn't banned nor alienated so many people, that one person wouldn't have to be responsible for answering so many forum threads.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out/recall Lunarpages misdeeds to people who want to take up LP's $40 offer to move from DreamHost. Both web hosts made mistakes but the manner in which they handled mistakes are completely different and tells me how trustworthy or not they are. If you still want to leave DreamHost, be careful about choosing to go with Lunarpages. Also note that the Lunarpages blog is very one-sided in the comments. Dreamhost's blog and forum have both sides of the situation, regardless of how bad the negative comments made Dreamhost to appear.

Update:

Here's a well written detailed post about this story:
Lunarpages Lies About DreamHost’s Billing Fiasco

Update 2008-01-20:

A former Lunarpages employee wrote about the current situation and provided a behind-the-scenes look at LP's tactics:
Dreamhost and Lunarpages

A former customer of Lunarpages shared his thoughts on the differences between Dreamhost and Lunarpages:
Dreamhost, Lunarpages, $$$, and integrity
It seems the reason my account wasn't affected was because I have a two-year contract so that it wouldn't have been up for renewal in 12-2008.

If you still haven't been able to find a gift for the person who has it all, consider donating in their name to a cause that is near and dear to them. It's a gift times two since there are two recipients and gift-matching could increase its benefit even further. This results in a gift that's valuable and won't take up space. For example, as an animal lover I would love to see a donation to a cause that has to do with animals, particularly to animal shelters.

I learned about the following sites in a mailing list thread that discussed sites for donation gifts.

Charity Navigator provides a listing of charities from which to choose, categorized by cause.

Changing the Present is a "nonprofit website offering gifts that change the world. Browse [its] causes to find gifts that make a difference, or search for your favorite nonprofit to make a donation."

JustGive "is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect people with the charities and causes they care about and to increase overall giving."

Today, I came across an animated video from Harvard on The Inner Life of the Cell. It started out pretty slow, and the technical jargon of the narration was a bit overwhelming since I hadn't been in a bio class in a long time, but once it showed more of what went on in a cell, I was just in awe. It reminded me of why I studied biology. It was also a visual reminder of how amazing our bodies are. Here I am just sitting in front of my computer, but trillions of cells in my body are going about their business to keep me alive and comfortable, or processing the visual inputs my eyes are sending to my brain so that I can comprehend and appreciate what I'm seeing.

There are times when we as individuals can feel insignificant when facing the world. If we can look into ourselves and fathom how we are even alive and cognizant, it's hard not to say "Wow!"

I had came across the video from a Slashdot thread entitled Creationists Violating Copyright, where a creationist institution repackaged the video for its own agenda. Watching the plagiarized video that the post referenced disrupted the peaceful feeling I had after watching the Harvard one so I couldn't endure to watch more than a few seconds of it.

My current routine is to do 30 minutes in Workout Mode in the morning before work. Since it is quite cold in the mornings now, this routine has the additional benefit of warming me up. The time limit prevents me from losing track of time.

The following may be too much information for the people who don't want to know about female issues so you can stop reading now.

If one of the symptoms of PMS that a woman experiences is breast tenderness, it makes certain exercises, like jogging, quite painful. DDR is no exception due to the jump steps. However, unlike jogging on a treadmill in the gym or outdoors, dancing in the privacy of one's home has the benefit of making it possible to minimize the cause of the pain in a way that would be inappropriate to do in public. I remember going to the gym during the days before my period... ouch! In DDR, there's an option to turn off the jump step but I haven't tried it yet since I want to maximize the health benefits to the best of my abilities.

Not believing the Facebook application, I found another Which 'Hero' Are You? quiz. The questions were totally different, but to my horror, the second quiz again determined me to be Suresh. sigh.

On that page, I saw a link to an article entitled "Heroes" Creator to Fans: I'm Super Sorry. I'm glad that the creator is cognizant of the issues with the show this season. I've been pretty disappointed with it at least until before the last episode this week.

The biggest complaint I have had with the show during the first few episodes of the second season are the romantic story lines, particularly Claire's. Her love interest, West, annoyed me to no end so seeing the two of them be lovey dovey made me want to gag. Concerning this topic, the article stated:

YOUNG LOVE STINKS Kring regrets sticking Claire (Hayden Panettiere) with a super-dud boyfriend and forcing Hiro to moon over a cutesy princess. ''I've seen more convincing romances on TV,'' he admits. ''In retrospect, I don't think romance is a natural fit for us.''

I've been feeling all along that the love stories did not go well with the series.

What was more remarkable about this shopping trip was that at the checkout stand, the cashier was asking each customer if they would donate $1 to help fight cancer. In return, Safeway would give a free reusable grocery bag.

I don't have the funds to donate to every cause I see. This one resonated with me, though. I realized that not only could I contribute to a cause that helped my gender, I could help the environment by using the reusable bag instead of plastic or paper bags. In addition to that, it was one less bag for my cats to try to eat. So I agreed to make the donation. The reusable bag accommodated my purchase perfectly. I wondered if I would remember to use it. I got the idea to hang the bag on the door knob so I would remember to take it with me to leave in the car.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. It's time to remember to do a self-examination and/or get a checkup, and if possible, donate to research to fight breast cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among women.

When I volunteered to make dinner reservations due to my being a local, there were less than 10 people. By the time I was to make reservations earlier in the week, the number made it challenging to get reservations on a Friday night. Fortunately, someone at work helped me out by getting me in touch with the owner of Don Giovanni in Mountain View. He said there would be no problem accommodating a party of 25 since they had a second dining area. When I called him the morning of the dinner to give the menu selection, there were 43. When we got there at 7, there 12 people, so we thought maybe fewer people would show up than had signed up. Eventually, 53 people showed up. The staff was great about getting everyone to fit. Initially, everyone ordered individual dishes. It turned out to be too difficult for the chefs to prepare such a vast variety of dishes and ensure that everyone would get the food at the same time. So we were given four choices to pick from. That ended up working well. It was pretty clever how they kept track of who ordered what; they gave each of us a poker chip that represented

What we noticed and discussed was the percentage of women at dinner. Out of 53 people (although not all were GSoC participants and not all participants were there), there were two women, including myself. What's interesting about that is the approximate 4% representation at the dinner is the same percentage of GSoC students who were women. It's one thing to see statistics on paper but it's even more striking to see it in person. I don't remember Google asking my gender in my mentor "paperwork" so I don't think they have stats on percentage of female mentors. That would be interesting to know.

I have been a customer since 2003. I left my previous host because I didn't like having to email someone when I wanted to make changes to my account. Lunarpages used cPanel, which gave me a lot more control over my site. I was really satisfied with them and they were the first paid host I stayed with after leaving two other hosts.

The following year, I discovered and joined their support forum, Lunarforums.com. That was the beginning of a very long and prolific involvement with the community. I enjoyed helping out other users, learning from them, and participating in off-the-wall sometimes inane chats. Their support staff were great, too, with quick response times and competent handling of issues or requests.

Then in the past couple of years, support quality made a noticeable turn for the worse. When I submitted a ticket, I got a request for verification although I had included it in my initial request. The careless reading of the message resulting in me having to go through the queue again. That's annoying but not horrible. What was horrible was when I requested them to change MX records so I can have my email handled elsewhere and they somehow messed up the settings. That resulted in my email going into a blackhole during the hours after they made the change and before I discovered it. Fortunately, I was able to get quick help from someone outside of the official support system. So that was just one of many examples of why I became hesitant to ever ask for support from their technical support staff. This has been going on for over a year, but it wasn't enough for me to think about leaving.

A few months ago, they changed their affiliate policy so that people got paid after three sales. (I was going to link to the thread discussing this change in the forums but they either deleted it or moved it to the moderator-only forum). Yes, I was an affiliate since I had really believed in the company and was happy to refer them to others. It didn't hurt to recoup some money to help pay for hosting. The thing was that I made one sale a year. That would have meant I wouldn't get paid for three years after the first one went through. It felt like a slap in the face toward people who had been their biggest fans. A lot of people complained about this. Lunarpages refused to listen to feedback. I decided that I wasn't going to help them make money while I might get a delayed payment or maybe never get it. The incident also reminded me about their declining support quality and I could not in good conscience refer people to them any longer.

The last straw was when it was discovered that Lunarpages had changed the server settings so sites that did not have a custom 404 would display spammy advertisements. Fortunately, I had custom error pages already so this change didn't affect my site. It did affect me in that I lost trust in Lunarpages. Unlike other big changes they made, there was no announcement. The worse part was that the spammy pages included the domain's name, as well as a section called the domain's Favorites which linked to sites like online dating. There was no link for the lost visitor to return to the site. They would only get whisked away to other sites that had nothing to do with the site owner.

In the forum thread that started in response to this change, there was a lot of customer outrage. The reason why people got paid hosting is so we don't have to put up with advertisements or the host's intrusion into the site. Lunarpages' justification for the spam pages was that their free hosting for US K-12 schools was getting expensive so that they wanted to use the money made from customers' error pages to help pay for costs of the charity program. If one can believe that explanation, it can't be argued that it's not noble of them. However, it wasn't enough to calm down all upset customers. Lunarpages did this behind customers' backs, and not all customers would have chosen this particular cause, especially those outside the US. I'm for helping to improve the US education system but honestly, is web hosting the answer to helping schools when there are so many other things that could be improved?

Lunarpages started to censor forum posts that questioned what they did. News of this spread around and Lunarpages customers went elsewhere to vent their frustrations since their voices were being silenced by Lunarpages. They even banned longtime and beloved members of the forum.

Web Hosting Forum: Lunarpages client's 404 error pages issue. The discussion went on for 16 pages. It was closed by a moderator after Lunarpages scrapped the program. It was pretty sketchy to lock the thread. It made it appear as if WHF was either in bed with LP, or in its pocket.

Merlin's Minute: When a Web Host Goes Bad. Particularly, check out a comment written by a Lunarpages employee, a.ka. LP Fan. It's not an official proclamation from the company, but it gives insight into the disregard and hostility directed toward their customers possessed by staff.

Unofficial DreamHost Blog: Free Hosting to Lunarpages Refugees. This includes some more details on the fiasco, as well as a screenshot of one of the pages, which had a lot of templates.

DreamHost Web Hosting Blog: Robbing Your Customers. DreamHost offered to give free hosting for a year for Lunarpages refugees. Too bad for me that I had signed up the day before this promo was announced, but I had already saved money from one of their affiliates. As many commenters in the blog post bashed Lunarpages, someone representing LP finally added this:

ok, so here’s the deal. what was well intentioned turned out to be ill thought out. if ANYONE thinks it is sleazy, we want no part of it. It was meant to come out of testing tomorrow and go live with announcements on Friday.The 404 error program has been scraped.

That was good news for customers who were still with LP. However, it's still a BS answer. We had already told them in the forums that what they did was unethical. It took public shaming outside of their bubble to finally back down. They had never told us that it was a test. Why would they not say that if it were? Since then, there has been no announcement in lunarforums nor the company blog to let people know what they did and to apologize for it. It's kind of hard to apologize for something when a lot of customers weren't informed about it.

After all this badness, it worked out well in the end. It made me look around for another host, which turned out to be so much better. With its control panel that was built in-house, I could do even more at DreamHost without having to contact support. Speaking of which, here's the exchange when I requested LP unlock my domain in order for me to change the nameservers to DreamHost.

From me:

Hello,

Could you please unlock my domain: takethu.com ?

Verification:
{snipped}

Thank you.

Support:

Hello,

Are you trying to transfer your domain, it seems that takethu.com is resolving for me, please shed some light to your query.

Thank you for your time and patience.

Me:

Hello,

I don't have any issues with the domain. I would like to make a change that requires the domain to be unlocked. I'm sorry, but I don't see why I need to explain the reason for my request when unlocking a domain is something I can easily do with any other registrar.

Thank you.

Doesn't that show a quota system that results in people responding with unhelpful replies in order to inflate their numbers? Finally, a veteran staff member unlocked my domain, no questions asked. Despite my unhappiness with current state of Lunarpages support, I still respect the veteran staff members, whose names I am always happy to see in my support tickets because I know they will do things competently.

Whew! I think this is one of the longest posts I've written, if not the longest.

BTW, you'll probably see my DreamHost ads in the sidebar and maybe question my credibility or motives. I didn't post this to make any sales. I provided information on how to get an even better deal from DreamHost's promo.

When I got home, I did a search for the Death Star litter box and found out that its name was actually Litter Robot. After reading several reviews on its site and on Amazon, I decided to give it a try since there is a 60 days satisfaction guarantee return policy. The $300 price tag made it a tough decision. I was also concerned that Mr. Darcy might be too big for it and end up touching the inside surface and get litter on his fur. Then I figured I could buy it and see how he fit in it before putting in the litter. If he didn't fit, I could return it. I would have to eat the cost of shipping but I figured it was a gamble I could take if it meant not having to scoop litter and replacing it completely after a few weeks due to it not clumping as well, etc.

I had it shipped to my work address, but I should have had it shipped to my apartment. The box was so huge it didn't fit in my Honda Accord trunk, even after putting down the back seats. I ended up opening the box and putting the individual parts in the car.

I let my cats get adjusted to the Litter Robot in stages. I was concerned about the adjustment period since not only was I introducing a new litter box, er sphere, I had to switch from Swheat Scoop to another litter due to compatibility issues with the Litter Robot. I put the new litter in the old litter box so my cats would get used to the litter. I left the Robot unplugged without litter for a day or two to let my cats feel comfortable with the Robot's presence. I put it through the cleaning cycle so that they can get used to the motion and sound.

I eventually put in litter, but my cats didn't use it still. I left it off so I would know when they used it. Meanwhile, I left the old litter box unscooped, to discourage them from using it. Eventually, I saw something in the Robot and ran the cleaning cycle manually. It took half a week before my cats used the Robot.

After making sure that the cats weren't using the old litter box anymore, I was able to get rid of it. Yay! That reclaimed some space. The Robot takes up space, but it is in a less obtrusive location.

It's so cool not having to scoop anymore. I still have to empty the drawer that contains the waste products but that takes much less time and effort to do. Now my cats have clean litter all the time. This is one less thing for me to worry about if I ever have to go away for a few days.

Here's an animated demonstration on how the Robot works:

Although the Litter Robot has a high upfront cost, it does help save money in the long run:
- I no longer have to buy those more expensive litter box plastic liners. I can use regular garbage bags in the waste receptacle.
- compared to the regular uncovered litter boxes, there is less litter that shows up outside of the box.
- it saves time, and time is money.
- it reduces the amount of litter used. I haven't had the Robot long enough to personally confirm it, but I can see that it does a good job of not wasting the litter, as long as I don't overfill it. From the web site:

The Litter-Robot saves you even more by wasting very little of the clean litter. The patented litter sifting process keeps the litter very clean, eliminating the need to frequently dump all of the litter because of soaked and loose clumps contaminating the clean litter.

Customers have reported litter savings of up to 40% with the Litter-Robot as compared with traditional litter boxes or other self cleaning litter boxes. With the Litter-Robot, a bag of litter lasts a long, long time. It saves you on trips to the pet supply store, and it is friendlier to the environment.