Everything was slow. Home screens takes forever to load. Google Navigator stopped working at the most inopportune time (trying to get out of NYC). And any JS site was slow to a crawl.

Today, Android 2.2 brought my phone back to life. Just when I nearly strayed into the iOS4 camp, I am proud to own a phone that now runs as quickly as iOS4 AND completes phone calls.

I don’t know why it took Google so long to implement Just in Time for Java, but I’m glad they did. And if can make an old Droid feel like new, what will Froyo do to new hotness like the Droid 2 or Droid Incredible?

Congratulations, the Envy 15 delivers a Windows notebook with Intel Core i7 and a Radeon 4830HD for about the same price as a Macbook Pro 15. It will probably another year until Apple can deliver something of equal specs. On paper, there is no question you are the better notebook.

Then I went to Best Buy to check out the Envy 15 in person.

It’s obvious your company took a lot of cues from the MacBook while designing the Envy. I’m okay with that, because Macbooks are quite attractive. Now I wished you would copy not just its looks, but it’s function.

My biggest pet peeve is the Envy’s trackpad. Sure, it looks like a MBP trackpad. But it sure doesn’t feel like one. From my brief experience with the Envy, I felt its biggest failing was to separate the trackpad into two distinct regions. Great if it were a mouse, but I don’t see why certain multitouch functions are limited to a certain region. Maybe I haven’t discovered everything yet, but it doesn’t feel good.

Speaking of feeling good, maybe it’s the aluminum body, but using the MBP trackpad is orgasmic. I am not kidding, my fingers tingle when I use the MBP trackpad. Try emulating that, HP.

I’m sure I will eventually buy an Envy, but I’ll be forced to buy a lot of peripheral along with it, like a Razer Orochi mouse or a Saitek SFIV edition fightpad. Because I will be forced to avoid the trackpad unless the software for it improves towards the same level of a MBP.

I’m rooting for you, HP, and any other notebook manufacturer building a, let’s face it, a reasonably priced MBP-killer. Even with the superior specs, I just don’t the Envy 15 to be that machine.

Sincerely,

A poor web developer and gamer.

Now comes GPS, you don’t need to memorize directions either.

While no one ever disagrees with the phone numbers in their cellphone, people do disagree with the directions offered by their GPS. Different people in a group disagree over the direction. As a result, this conflict between GPS and self and among passengers makes every turn a ticking-bomb situation.

That was the case during the family trip to Toronto. Once the GPS start leading us into crappy neighborhoods (outskirts of Syracuse and the American side of Niagara), there was great conflict among the family. Thanks to the last minute voice commands, we missed quite a number of turns. A combination of indecision and traffic (only in Toronto can one get stuck in traffic at 10 PM) turned an 8 hour trip into a 10 hour trip.

Next time, Google Map it.

As a new part-owner of GM, may I propose the continued development of a sub $30K RWD sedan with V8 engine built on the zeta platform? Call it an Impala SS. Gas mileage be damned, I’ll pay for it.

It will fun to see the Federal Government try to teach GM how to be efficient.

I think it has to do with keeping your goals in mind. Mine is master the Chinese language. How do you measure that?

Another thing is that perhaps I’m beginning to hit a limit on apps like smart.fm. Sure, I can read, understand thousands of words and phrases, but I am having trouble string them into a sentence.

Despite these issues, there is no excuse to not chug along. I got an entire 2nd half of lessons to do. Let’s make July my target date for completing them.

加油, boy.

My brother sent me the other segment on “Hong Kong guys”, which classifies us as video-game-playing, manga-reading, socially-inept introverts. I was more interested in the above segment on Hong Kong girls, which classify them as brand-name buying, gold-digging, vanity-oozing princesses.

While I’m pretty sure neither stereotypes are true for everyone, I like how all the boys and girls acknowledge them but blame it on the other gender. Watching the married woman asking her man to fork over all of his earnings to her made me cringe and reflexively reach for my wallet.

Both segments are interesting to watch as a neutral observer. Maybe someone should port a Hong Kong version of Beauty and the Geek.

nciku deals with exclusively Chinese-English (and vice versa) education. So many of the features deal with organizing all the Chinese characters.

My favorite has to be the character recognition feature. It allows me to write a character with a mouse (or in my case, a wacom tablet) and it will try to match the word. Great if I’m trying to read print articles (it’s also a browser toolbar)

Another important feature is the ability to create conversations. What is good with knowing all the characters if one cannot string together a sentence. There’s a big collection of conversations, or you can create your own.

I haven’t used all of the features yet but I definitely recommend this site for Chinese-English education.

Here’s my typical approach to an unfamiliar character

Session One: I just learned this, I’ll get it right.
Session Two: What the hell is this? …
Session Three: Okay, I got this. Damn! Wrong accent! Mother…
Session Four: Got it. Who’s the man? I’m the man!
Session Five: Alright, this is for 100% completion … oh shit I blanked! Mother…
Session Six: Woosh! Booyah!

See, this is how I learn. Sometimes I get an answer wrong on purpose just so I can get it right the next time. While I won’t be practicing conversation or grammar, this is by far the best way to master the characters. And I can curse freely at the app.

So I’ve been passing the time by practicing reading Engadget Chinese. I learned that Taiwanese like to make every word in Chinese. Not just homophones like 索尼 suoni (Sony) and 柯達 keda (Kodak) Some are like 平果 pingguo (Apple) and 三星 sanxing (Samsung) where they translate the literal meaning of their name. 微軟 weiruan literally is Chinese for micro & soft (Microsoft).

These are just some of the tidbits I learned just spending a few minutes in a Chinese website. Once they get their issues fixed I can’t wait to keep learning. Did I just say that?

• My Facebook account of nearly 4 years has 49 friends.
• My AIM account of nearly 7-8 years has a grand total of… 15 people. I talk to maybe 4-5 of them regularly.
• I’m following… 10 people on Twitter. Mostly people I know and Congresscritters.
• The only thing I find overwhelming are the 101 blogs I subscribed on Google Reader.

I’m sure I’m missing out a lot of things, like what people I used to know or care are doing. But at least I won’t let my online persona dominate my life. Online gaming on the other hand…