Asian failings

23/11/2008

Death of a motherboard

Having purchased a terrabyte of extra storage yesterday, I did what normally follows and plugged it in.  Well, maybe not everyone uses a crude-looking 3-to-1 various hard drive interfaces to USB converter but it didn't give me any trouble... until now. Firstly, the computer froze. Then it wouldn't boot up - no display, no POST beeps etc. CMOS reset did nothing. Quite lame. Taiwanese-designed motherboard killed by USB device from a Hong Kong shopping site. Let's see how this 3 year warranty works (still got a year left). And later I tried the whole process again on a nearly 9 year old laptop... it didn't die. hmmpf Though it did look really strange opening it up after all that time. Wasn't quite real... hopefully it doesn't implode and take the house into the next dimension.

I suppose this will be a good opportunity to remove all the dust from the insides.

Chinese satellite ACA/TT programs

A young mother begs for money for a bus ticket home with her sick, young children on her back. After a few days she's still hanging around at the same location. TV presenter lady tracks down woman and starts screaming at her and even handling her for neglecting the kids and other stuff. The mother starts sobbing and TV host rounds them up to get the children looked at a hospital. Turns out she doesn't want to head home because the children's father is a wife-beater... Still, I thought the host was pretty bad. Plus they drag it out to a whole 30 minutes.

NOT recommended viewing. But a welcome change from those marathon 2-day dramas that I end up recording the middle bits for the parents at their request, but they watch on from whenever they get back anyway.

Still it got me thinking about where these false [no this isn't asian self-deprecation] notions of asians being smart/doing well in school and all come from, as well as asian pride etc. Well, I suppose asian pride can exist in the absense of rationalism. Perhaps it's just those that escape/migrate are ever so slightly brighter/trying harder for doing so and leave a larger proportion of bogan equivalents behind. Then those are left with 5 minute TV ads [really loud ones] about how a pillow will improve their child's studies and the like... Though I know TV isn't that great an indicator of things.

herrm