extra

Flying back to Minneapolis is not a must, so it is an extra; life is an extra; God is a must.

Revert back in time to my last blog entry, I went off at Atlanta airport, waiting for the connection flight. Then I met my boss at the gate. Both in shorts, we talked something that's not so business,

(to be continued, oh God I am not patient enough for blogging. But I will update this entry from time to time. I have a lot to write about for my 3 days in Minneapolis, my memories, my conversions.. those kind of extra things not so necessary but matters to me)

haven't updated it for a while. I was tired, then I kept reading the Bible, then my energy has been filled up again.

In short, going back to Minnesota make me have this feeling like never before: GOD, you are there, you are here, you are everywhere.

I almost drove through everywhere I have been to in the whole city. Memories.. like motion pictures, flushed over and over in my brain, like I have never left before, like I have left forever. Time, i hate you, you make me so sad, you make me feel like a shit; and then i love you again, you make my memories sound so sweeeeeet.

I played soccer with my buddies. Lots of hugs, smiles, i love y'all. I had a dinner with Yuejian, in a chinese resturant. We talked until 11PM when the servers literally beg us to leave. When driving back to MSP from St. Paul, oh my God the twin cities are so beautiful I felt. Thanks God, you gave me again the ability to appreciate, which is quite different from what i have been.

(to be continued)

a new record

right now I am sitting on the floor in the Jackson airport, flying to Minneapolis. I just played a DotA game online, in the airport. Yay!! It's more awesome than I playing DotA on my toilet, really. My next challenge would be playing DotA on a toilet in an airport.

you can't beat free

So I have moved to a large apartment in Flowood, MS. It's further from my work place, but everything is ten times better. Hey I got free internet again, and at the moment when I discovered the free internet, my conscious told me tian you should not keep doing this crap, but then then my conscious was beaten so hard by my cheapness.. So here I am, typing again on my blog using again the free wifi in my bedroom. And I have made up my mind so that every criticize on my behavior will be countered by a warm "i love you".

I will be back to U of M from June 11th to 14th. I have a lot of swee~~~t memories in Minneapolis, 3 days is definitely not enough. I chose my hotel in Roseville, the place I spent 5 years. What I will do? I will persuade Yuejian to treat me, my soccer buddies to treat me, and of course go to the Rock and enjoy the free drink and cookies.

You can't beat free, don't even try.

a come back in casino

so this long weekend we went to a casino resort in a small town 70 miles away. The last night, before we head back, I sticked my last five dollar bill into a slot machine, ding ding ding, w00t w00t, it becomes 203 dollars!! Then I felt my luck was turned and went back to the blackjack table and won back my 400 dollars. I go to casino only once per year.

When I walked out of the main gate, a blonde girl, sleeping by the water fountain, asked me if I saw a curly haired guy. I said no, are you waiting for him? Yes, I AM waiting for him, apparently a little angry. There were a lot of mosquitos by the fountain. If I was alone I would have offer a room for her. Even though I would be rejected but that would still be a nice try.

On the way back, I silently repented: When I was in school, I was a better person. I need to come back in my personality.

a little prayer

At Christmas 2002, I was in New York City, visiting my dad's friends. A little more than one year after 911, I arrived at the place, with my heart bleeding. The scene just makes you want to cry. There was a lot of flowers, and a huge flag reads in God we remember this day. I was in awe and prayed, even though I was not a christian.

For the earthquake in China, I only donated 100 dollars, yes maybe I should donate more with the income I make. But I don't want to feel like it overdone. I contributed and showed my love and sympathy, that's it. I don't want to make it sounds like a disaster for China, or for a specific group of people. But if you gonna pray for the asia part of Earth, today is the time.

LORD, please show mercy to us. Amen.

scored 4.75

My employer gave me 4.75 out of 5 for the performance of the past half year! *^_^*

As you may know, China is going through a terrible time, tens of thousands people died during the earthquake at 5/12. When I saw the photos online, my heart was soaked in tears.. I am gonna donate a little money to them.

moving

I am moving to a MUCH nicer apartment in one month.
"My apartment is killing me, literally. after my roof fell i mean."

Can't wait to go back to MN to see my advisor and my old friends.
"I am coming back to the hear~~~t of wor~~ship"

sticker on my monitor

There is one sticker on the bottom of my monitor, saying

"(at least) RESPOND!"

as a remedy for me not being a good people person. Sometimes I got an email and didn't respond because I thought I didn't think of a good way to respond yet. Then people began to think I was ignorant and rude. It should have been better to drop an email to say please give me extra time to think, just to acknowledge it. Believe nor not, I learned this through playing DOTA the computer game, when some other player told me this. Who said computer game can not change people's life?

Now I have another one added to my sticker:

"Think from other people's perspective and needs, not mine. Ignore my own redundant thoughts."

This one came from last Friday I brought a guest to lunch. I definitely should, but I thought a while before I did. Hell!

2 old precious videos

In a retreat to Will's cabin in 2006. Today I found them in my computer.

Nicole's baptism


Guys diving in an ice hole

I like the way they lined up and posed for photographs like a world champion team before dive. Priceless.

my work

my current work is about evaluating flood force on buildings, and we are building our software now. Lawyers, government and insurance companies would be interested in this information. Someday I will start my own business and become a multi-millionaire.

ps. I said I would learn google KML language and add flood to google earth. I did. I can create a movie on top of google earth if I want.

This is no longer image overlay. 100k polygons are drawn on the fly.

st louis bay, ms

so I am at gulf coast in MS now. I am going to NASA Stennis Space center near here for a 2-day workshop about hurricane simulation. I applied for this workshop in March, and got rejected for some reason at first, then I send a long group email, copy to staffs at NASA Stennis, questioning the decision. Then she let me in. Sometimes people reject you not because of rules, it is just they are lazy and don't want to go extra miles. So you have to push for it.

After 3 hours' drive, I am here, in a motel just 1 mile from the beach. This motel is the best I could find in this area. After hurricane Katrina, everything is being rebuilt. This afternoon I went out for a scenic drive, but what I saw was very depressing. I could not even find a good place to eat, I mean my GPS shows a lot of restaurants which turned out to be no longer there.

How to spend the nights here? This is a bar, a casino and wireless internet here. Maybe I just do all of them.

This is tian logging off from st louis bay in MS.

tornado.. and my roof

Haven't blogged for a while, after I lost my stolen wifi in my bedroom. There were two errors in my previous sentences: 1. I can't use "my" before the word "stolen", if it is stolen, it is not MINE; 2. if it's not mine, there is no way to "lost". Anyway, let's forget about philosophy for a while.

My blog is officially pulled off from my facebook, which should be one of the major events of facebook history. just kidding. I found my blog too rated R, which might mislead some innocent kids. BE PREPARED! my blog reader, if you find some harsh words in my future blog, just install a mute button plz.

episode 1.
----------------------
If you meet me on street during one of these days, and ask "was up?" I would answer,
"Fine. My roof has fallen."

Yes, the roof of my living room was fallen. And this is not a joke.

Before I explain, let's revert back to 3 years ago, in 2005. In Jackson MS, when Katrina came, there was no power, no food, no gas in the whole city. The day when Katrina reached Jackson, Dr. Tu, one of my coworker, was still working in the office.
This is a well kept joke in my lab now. We are still wondering how he came to the office when there was no gas. And the day Katrina came, one of my other cowork called the office to check if anybody was there. To her surprise, Dr. Tu answered,

"What's up?"


episode 2.
------------------------
Several days ago, during work I was running computer programs, while chatting online. Then my workers came and told me "Tian, there is a tornado caming, let's shutting down the computers and go downstairs."

"Ok." or I should have said "roger that". Just a random day of my life in Jackson. If you want surprise with a dose of disaster, come to Jackson.

"You see, the trees are moving." My coworker added.



episode 3.
-------------------------

So nothing happened...yet. On that night, I drove to a Bible study. On my way all the traffic nights were off. It was a mess.

During my sleep on that night, I was awaken by some noise in my living room. Well dreamed, I was toooooo lazy to get up to check. I thought it was some thief. "Take whatever you want," I murmured, "But I will beat you up if you wake me up".

The second morning, when I get up for a shower. TO MY SURPRISE, the roof of my living room was fallen!!!

Welcome to the real world, where roofs are not neccesarily on top. Like man is not necessarily always on top, woman can too.

interesting images from google earth

the coordinates are shown in the images, you can use "Fly to" in Google Earth to check them out.

that's the result of slow play your A-A hand

4 of A's
once in a life time. so i took a screenshot

Toby Mac -- Made to Love

nice song

photo diary 2008-03-30

bored

i am seriously bored. Only a mantis like this doesn't fail to amuse me, :)

hoorai!

MY LIFE FOR THE HORDE!

Shaman is the most depressing class in the World of Warcraft, and people who play as a shaman will constantly ask a philosophy question: "What the hell am i supposed to do?"

My character in WOW:

The Wingmen

The funniest show I have ever seen, "The Wingmen". It is about several guys starting their dating advice and service. YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS ONE! IT"S VERY FUNNY!



episode 2, 3 are on youtube too.

episode 2



episode 3

stfu

This blog is intentionally unrelated to real life. Coz real life sucks. What do i type when I play DotA, when people are bitching at me?

STFU, biAtch!

pet

Back to the days in Minnesota, one of my friends is a chinese post-doc in the Bio-department. His research is all about flurting with a monkey. He will do a lot of stuff to keep the monkey in good mood, otherwise he would not get research results. A year later, the monkey broke up with him and he changed lab.

Do you believe people have cockroaches as pets? I found a video on youtube about researchers doing studies on cockcoaches. Lost the link though.

Have nothing to blog about. Here is a japanese dog to make up for the content.

photo diary 2008-03-23

Lighting makes all the difference.
Definition of color: Objects' response to lighting.

photo diary 2008-03-22

from now on I will start my photo diary once in a while, using my new camera.
Today Lily, her roommate Haimei and me went to a local theatre for an afternoon movie. We picked a movie called "10000 BC", and during the movie they were talking about how handsome the main actor is. The actress is hot too.

After the movie, we went back to their apartment and cooked together.

Here is Lily.


Haimei.


me


Their apartment


my apartment. Don't want to explain, but you don't want to see this in real life, :)

wheel of fortune

"Wheel of fortune" was the favorite show of my first roommate in the US and myself. In July 2002, when we had nothing to do, we killed time by watching this show on a tv that was definitely older than us. Why this show? because that tv only had signals of 2 stations, and the other station played golf 24/7. The lady in the show seems will be there forever.

I don't remember a lot of my first roommate. He farted a lot. Actually, the fact that he farted a little more frequent than usual didn't bother me, what bothered me was when he farted he pretended that I didn't hear it. I don't know what he will say about me, maybe "tian spits in the shower"? well I don't spit anymore, to clear things up.

ps. time flies. sigh. if I was teenage i will be a mother-fucker.
ps2. speaking of memory and mom, when I was in elementary school, I found my best friend's mom hot. I didn't know anything, but I could tell I was attracted. Nothing happened though.

7 habits of effective people

1. do it
2. just do it
3. WTF let's do it
4. do....it
5. OMG i have to do it
6. so do it
7. let's do it!

the 100th post

FROSTMOURNE, an epic sword in the lore of Warcraft, is wielded only by the death knight, Arthas, a holy-paladin-turned-evil. I want this sword, but have to wait because right now it is only available for auction. It will be a perfect Halloween gadget, and can be a good showoff in the living room for my future house. I hope it brings some mystery to the building.

ps. There are other swords, blades, whips for sale as well. LOTR, Star Wars


ps2.

what does it even mean?

Lily is a graduate student at Jackson State University from Beijing. We are working on a same project, and the way we communicate is through Microsoft Messenger (a.k.a MSN). One day she asked

Lily:"Are you a christian?"

Me: "Yes."

Lily: "Yeah you look like a christian."

Look like a christian..hmm..After 5 years of believing, someone finally gives me credit. So thank you. But I didn't ask the question in my mind "but wait, what does it mean by saying "look like a christian?""

I don't know. I am not even confident of the fact that I "look like a christian". You don't know my struggles, but, hey, thanks for telling me that, that helps my spiritual growth a lot.

Last nite Lily, a non-beliver, invited me to a Bible-study. After the Bible-study, I was humbled. My heart is like a floating balloon, if it rises too high it explodes; on the contrary, if a balloon sinks in the water too low, it explodes as well. The Bible study calms me down. I have nothing to be proud of, however.

Lily and her roommate will only be in US for two years. They are in a government exchange program. If I was allowed to ask them to take back to China only one thing, I would say it is your belief in God. Three things on the top of the list being in US: christian, national parks and AMC theatres.

I will guide them through all these three, of course.

ps. The next post will be the 100th post of my blog. I didn't think I could make this far. This blog started at 2005, when I never thought I could keep it till 2008. I guess I am just a natural blogger.

me

I like this picture of myself: it's accurate description of me -- confident and silly. Confidence and silliness always go together.

first class

Today I taught my first college class ever. I murmured a lot, thanks students for not throwing chalks at me. I finished my prepared material half an hour earlier, but I can't dismiss the students, because students paid for their time. So I have to fulfill this "massage" session by teaching something that I wasn't prepared, that's for sure a challenge but I will take it.

Car maintainance check at 45000 miles. I will definitely drive more.

Obama came to Jackson State University today. Mississippi is absolute crazy for him. No matter him or Hillary takes presidency, US history track will be changed a bit.

winky

"..If you have problem, you can connect me."

This is an email I got from a girl at work. Hint: her English is not good. CONNECT?? winky smiley

ps. sometimes typos are sexy

You are not prepared!!

my first video podcast "you are not prepared!!" is in the making.

content: me demo-teaching a college class.
actor: me
narrator: none
editing and cutting: none

My boss asked me to teach 3 classes starting next week, for the time he is traveling.

thought of the day: I might buy a condo in Jackson this year. Or I can wait till next year. Depends on market, who knows. If I move to another place I can rent it out, so be able to rent it out in future is the key.

world of warcraft trading card game tournament

I am not a huge fun of trading card game. Trading card games are strategy "duel" card games when two players use their own monster cards, spell cards, trap cards, etc to fight against each other. If you spend more money, you can buy more cards and build more powerful deck and win. That's the part of the game I don't like, you have to invest more money to be able to win a card game, which totally misses the purpose of card games: for fun. The only trading card game I have played is two years ago on my computer, a Japanese trading card game called "Yu-ki-wo".

That been said, I am a huge fun of warcraft and its mother company Blizzard Entertainment Inc.. Speaking of loyalty, I started to play Blizzard's game since junior high in China. It was "Warcraft I" and "Warcraft II", and it was the time when Blizzard and warcraft wasn't huge, but I was like "this game was so different that it had real stories behind it" when even now most games are still mainly killing and fighting. Blizzard's games have a culture, which is the key for their company culture and binds the players and employees together. "They will be huge" I thought like a farseer back to the days. A little bit more history, in 1997 they published a game that changes their company's fate, "Starcraft" which wasn't surprised to me. I wasn't addicted thought, after entering college I have tons of schoolwork to do. I only played with friends in pubs once per week. What totally got me addicted are the "Diablo" franchise series they published. They are the first ever real-time role playing games, they are so new and huge. Then the warcraft III in 2001, then they realized they can do a lot more in warcaft. Then the World of warcraft, a game that change the game industry and create a genre called "massively multiple online" role playing game (MMORPG), that has 50 millions active subscribers and that Blizzard's mother company, Vivendi Inc. wrote in their business plan to ask Blizzard "to make games in type of World of Warcraft".

Well that's way off, I am getting there. Now warcraft has come to trading card game, and it has worldwide tornuments very often. $20 dollars for a starting deck and fun is not too bad. If there is one in MS and within 2 hours drive I will certainly attend.
here is the information:
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/default.aspx

fighter against computer virus

so my windows laptop was infected again. I didn't go to any bizzare website, actually I rarely surf on that machine, as it is in my office and sit on the other table. I use it to plot data only. The virus puts a big red button in the windows tray and a floating dialog saying "The computer has virus". I guess it needs some attention. My anti-malware software, "superantispyware" doesn't work now. The virus is so vicious that it blocks anti-virus software to start, and this virus is starting with Windows, before anti-virus software starts.

Then I came across a software, avast (www.avast.com), which scans virus at windows boot screen, a.k.a. the big blue screen. Ha, it catches virus at their nap time. Wow, this is like good vs. evil, good always wins. I guess when virus goes one step further, like infects computers at boot time, there will be software scans at BIOS time; if there is virus infects at BIOS time, there must be virus scanner detects at machine power-off, say, a laser beam shoots at your hard drive, maybe?

Avast has a free version, of course.

what a bad morning

This morning I wake up to find I run out of food and toothpaste.
so I went to macdonald's to find their credit card machine was down.
no breakfast,I went to Kinko's in downtown to fax a document, to find there is absolute no parking place.
Then on my car radio, the topic was about "double dipping", ie, dip a potato chip to sauce, bite, then dip it to sauce again. He talks about like 10 minutes about how bad this habit is. "eww.., whoever does double dipping literally rape-kiss the whole room." I thought.
Then it started to rain hard, and I came to my office with all my cloth wet.
Bad morning.

items in Dota

Back to days of my doing my phd, I was addicted to games: Diablo II, world of warcraft, warcraft 3 and Dota, in that order. Addictiveness is not necessary destructive, as long as you can get out. However, even though I only play like 1 hour per week now, I won't say I will get out. Games give me a lot of inspiration. They are arts, they are stories that tell you that people have created so beautiful world so that you should go out and enjoy it, and they are aims that I keep in mind for achieving the same quality when I do my study or work. Yes, I play for inspiration, not for fun. I wrote many small pieces of stories in chinese when I play world of warcraft from 2005 to 2006. They are too "chaos" and emotional, instead of telling plots, today I went through all of them.

There is an item called "Perseverance" in Dota, which replenishes your life and magic points over time. I wonder what it means the other day, and found:

Noun 1. perseverance - persistent determination
- the quality of being determined to do or achieve something; firmness of purpose; "his determination showed in his every movement"; "he is a man of purpose"
2. perseverance - the act of persisting or persevering; continuing or repeating behavior; "his perseveration continued to the point where it was no longer appropriate"

so it could be good and it CAN be bad. over-perseverance can be a bad thing. I will check Bible when I get home, to see what it says about this quality.

logmein rules

ok, I was looking for a tool to remote control my work computer for 3 months now. So what has been the problem, you ask? The problem is, my work computer's ip address is blocked by a firewall, and if the firewall blocks every signals sending from that computer as well. I tried many free softwares, hacked a bunch commercial software that claims connection from any place even behind a firewall. None succeeded. Then I found a solution:

www.logmein.com

which has a free version. The holy grail is that it allows you to control your computer throught your WEB BROWSER. holy shit, web browsers use port 80 of your internet ports, which firewalls never block if they allow you to surf.

now it is all set. install a host agent on your work computer, and from home you log in to their website and you are in full control!

Happy V-day.

2d is so 10 years ago. let's make it 3d baby

here is the baby


here is the satellite video from youtube:

hack to learn

Don't learn to hack..
hack to learn
-- online underground community

ps. look at babies. they don't learn to walk, they walk to learn instead.
disclaimer: The blogger won't be responsible for consequences of believing, following or challenging the content of the quotes. Have caution, try at your own risk.

satellite data + computed data

a whole night of photoshopping

maybe a work journal?

so I was looking for a work journal solution that will allow me to track the progress of my work, serve as a database of my past experience, have a calendar planner. Then I found an open source replacement of Microsoft Project, called open workbench. It is a windows based project management software, after download and installation on my mac station using crossover, I find it too advanced. How can I say "too advanced"? Well, the software uses a whole lot of graph-based analysis to show the progress, as if you go slacker for a day or two the GDP will be affected a lot. I am not at that level, I am just looking for some work journal and planner. I havn't decided yet, so kept doing paper-journaling.

computer graphics of nature

Here are some scenes I generated using computer graphics. Photorealistic RENDERing and Animation of hurricanes have become part of my research interest. Don't ask where did I get my Maya software.

yo

Today on my way to work, I saw a car was towed. There was mud covering the tires of the car, and on the back of the car there was a banner says: YO HATE IS THE FUEL TO MY FIRE. The whole scene was so funny and I couldn't keep from laughing.

This afternoon when I was programming, I came across a function called "mktime" which caught me into deep deep thoughts.. Time, one of the few things money can't buy, when I say hi to time, time has already traveled the whole world.

p.s. my friend Yuejian has been back from the trip to Japan and China, and he posted a lot of amazing photos on his blog, check time out yuejian's blog

byproducts

financial gains are simply byproducts of a good process improvement.

-- wikipedia, "six sigma"

similarly, children are byproducts of "in the moment" sex.

thoughtful

I have been interested in "scripting language" since 2005. scripting language is a computer programming language which computer use to interpret text files. For example, google uses PERL and PYTHON to interpret and manage search results and streamline the whole search process, manage websites, etc. I am interested in it because in my research I need to process computed data as well, and my favorite is PYTHON. Here is a poem that is written in a python book, which I found thoughtful. And of course, thoughtful is better than ignorance.

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than RIGHT now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea - let's do more of those!

- Tim Peters, "The Zen of Python"

car dealer again

after 2 weeks, the engine light of my car went on again last night, so today I drove it to the dealership near my work place. After 2 hours, it is fixed. This time the problem is called "evaporation system leak", OMG, this sounds a little serious. So I did a little research after i got at the work place to find

Evaporative Emission Control System Incorrect Purge Flow

The "EVAP purge flow" faults are issues between the carbon cannister and the intake. The EVAP leak detection generally concerns the fuel tank to carbon cannister plumbing.

A little background. The EVAP or evaporative emission system is a control system to keep vapors from evaporation in the fuel tank from getting into the atmosphere. The fuel tank is not vented, but rather the vapors are piped to the carbon cannister (usually located behind the pass. side front wheel) where the charcoal element absorbs the vapor. This is actually a vapor "storage" device. Under certain engine operating conditions, the ECU activates the Cannister Purge Valve (N80) which opens and allows the engine vacuum to suck the fuel vapors back out of the carbon cannister. This purges the vapor, allowing the cannister to absorb more vapor. This evap system has been on vehicles since the '70s.

As part of the OBDII standard effective for 1996 cars and newer, it was mandated that leaks in the systems must be detected and reported as a fault which will set the Check Engine Light (CEL). To detect leaks, the system is pressurized by a pump so that leaks can be detected by a lack of appropriate pressure in the system. If there is a leak, such as a cracked vent hose, loose (or leaky) gas cap, poorly installed or defective O-rings on the fuel level senders on the fuel tank, etc. a code will be set. On the cannister to intake side, leaks are detected by deviations in the idle control system. If you have leaks in the lines from the carbon cannister to the intake, intake leaks, a defective purge valve, etc you will often get purge flow faults.

My first recommendation is to closely inspect all the small vacuum lines connected to the intake manifold. The corrugated plastic lines are often the culprits, as well as the fabricate covered vacuum lines. Also consider replacing the gas cap.

OK, nothing too serious. The first car that I drove for 3 years has SMOKE keep coming out, sometimes with a weird sound from the brake. I donated it to an institute that I found online, before I moved to MS. But I miss that car, as she taught me how to drive and helped me move between 3 apartments. How have you been, HONDA?

NINJA

NINJA - No Income No Job or Assets

-- online forum

restroom graffiti

The only way to achieve greatness is to remember that everything you do will be forgotten. And not care.

-- restroom graffiti in the Cups coffee shop

marriage

It's not fight that causes divorce; stopping fight and shunning away from communication do.

-- radio, "intelligence and music for your life"

requirements for a success

Success is a function of talents (inborn abilities) and skills (acquired competencies). No amount of emotional self-control can turn a person into a successful musician, football player, or trader. Once individuals possess the requisite talents and skills for success, however, then psychological factors become important. Psychology dictates how consistent you are with the skills and talents you have; it cannot replace those skills and talents.

-- Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D.

Minneapolis in google earth

Tian's apartment

in google earth. If I have time I will learn the google language KML to add flood to my apartment
plz don't sniper me

Kia has the best warranty

My car is a 2006.5 Kia Optima V6 Lx model. It's called "2006.5" model because it is the 2nd model Kia manufactured in 2006. It comes with a basic 5yr/6k miles warranty.

Today when I drive to lunch, the "check engine" light turned on, and I was freaked. "What? I just bought it for a month, and now what?" Then I told myself, this problem was not caused by me or any accident, so the warranty should cover. Then I drove to a Kia dealer very close by. An hour later, I got it fixed -- it's just a pressure sensor. If I bring it to a garage, it might cost me a day to fix it.

Save a day on fixing car, $hundreds,
Save an engine repair, $thousands,
knowing that you are covered, priceless.

When my car reach 6k miles, I will buy extended warranty or trade in for a new car.

Mark Twain

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
-- Mark Twain

2008 resolution

make some friends, do good in job, make money