According to BBC, US home sales are at the lowest level since September 2001, and affecting American economy. Read on...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6266470.stm
Posted: July 3, 2007 2:34 pm | 0 comments
Tags: article, bbc, home
There are a lot of sayings in Japan and I thought I share some of them with you.
* If your second toe (a toe right next your big toe) is longer than your big toe, you are going to be more successful than your parents.
* If you lay head pointing north, it'll bring you bad luck.
* When Swallow fly low, rain ahead.
In America, when things are really easy, you'll say "a piece of cake", but in Japan, we'll say "before breakfast".
More to come...
Posted: July 5, 2007 5:16 pm | 0 comments
Tags: japanese
Did you try to upload an animation icon and noticed that pretty animation is no longer there and turned into a still image?
Here is how uploading an image works in your profile. When you upload an image, the program checks 2 things. 1) size of your image in kilo bytes and 2) dimension (width x height) of your image in pixels.
If image dimension is larger than specified, it automatically calculates new width and height of your image and re-size it. During the re-sizing process, if you uploaded an animation gif, it'll be come a still image gif. Trick is to upload an image that is not triggered by re-sizing image program, that is an image less than specified dimension and size.
To upload an image for this site, current requirement is 48x48. If you have an animation gif that is 47x61 (example), your animation should still be there when you upload it. However, if your animation gif is 49x50, your animation wont be there when you upload it.
Posted: July 9, 2007 11:03 am | 0 comments
Tags: faq, icon tips, tips
Sprint PCS recently sent about thousand of letters to customers stating that they've used too much of customer service time and they should not be Sprint PCS customers no longer.
I am not sure what to think of this. As a customer there are pros and cons.
Pros:
* When I have problems and need to talk to customer service, I like to get through. According to spokeswomen from Sprint PCS, those people who received the letters often (like 100s) called customer service for the same issues. Sprint PCS's motivation was to give other customers access to customer service also. That means if I call customer service, I can get through without much of waiting period, right?
Cons:
* Now, I am not sure if I want to call customer service. I feel like I'll be put on a black book of people who calls customer service.
After reading various situations, sounds like customer service is not fixing what they need to fix so people are keep calling back customer service to get their issues resolved...
Either way, I am start having second thought of renewing my contract with Sprint PCS. I know as a customer of Sprint PCS service for over 8 years, I had my share of customer service calls that wasn't fixed at first or second time.
I am not sure if I want to have service from a company that terminates its service because you've called customer service many times.
May be this is a good time for me to move on, also since my contracts ends soon...
Here you'll find scanned copy of the letter to customers
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/07/sprint_dontcall.html
Posted: July 11, 2007 2:21 pm | 0 comments
Tags: cellphone, sprint pcs
My husband and I are going to Japan soon so I have been researching about potentially climbing mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan. It stands about 12,388 feet according to wikipedia. We've been hearing about how mount Fuji is ready to blow at any time, so we thought it was important that we do so BEFORE it blows.
To get to mt Fuji is not an easy task. I know some remote locations are not so friendly to foreigners and city people. Bus does not run all day and you have to know where to go. It was good idea to think of potentially climing Fuji san, but how are we going to get there?!?!?!
I start to dig for some answers on-line in Japanese & English. I found a great site that had directions on which train to take where and which bus to pick up. Problem was it did not say what time and name of station was in English, not Japanese.
I didn't wanted to ask my father fear of dissing me not able to translate them (shame on you!), I decided tour bus is a way to go. There will be other people. We wont get lost and ended up in international news - my husband getting lost because of me will be - if we are with bunch of other people, right? Think of headline, "Japanese wife loses her American husband in Mt. Fuji.", may be followed by "Japanese wife could not read Kanji and got him lost!" That'll be bad.
Now, there are so many tour buses to choose from to mount Fuji around the time we are going. There were rates from a bit over $100 per person to $900 premium (they carry all your stuff for you!) - ah~ Luxury. Also I was a bit concern about giving money to unknown tour company, showing up at the meeting place, and nobody shows up... So I've asked my father's guidance since he has been to the top of mt. Fuji before.
Soon we'll depart.
Soon you'll know what we've decided ($100 vs $900!).
note: For those of you who never seen Japanese, we have 3 different types of writing and one of it is Kanji (Chinese Characters). Kanji can be written multiple ways for one sounds. So just because written in roman alphabet, it could be written in multiple ways and could potentially have multiple meanings.
Posted: July 19, 2007 1:07 pm | 0 comments
Tags: fuji san, japanese, mt. fuji
Hello, everyone. I am a web developer here at Simmons College. You probably know my work which you may use daily bases including this blog application. I love programming in php and Java. I sometimes write shor...
