Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm

Meaningless ranting, just like everybody else.

Monday, May 24, 2010

My kitchen faucet I

My white Moen pull-out kitchen faucet came with the new house. I liked it at first because it was white and that meant it could stand up to water stain. But problems soon ensued...

About a year later, I found water dripping below the sink. I traced the problem to the pull out extension connection - the gasket was bad. I replaced it, no harm done.

Another year later, the switch from stream to spray was basically stuck at spray. That was fine, I liked spray anyway, thought it had never been all the way at spray. Another ill, the lever had started to get harder to open and shut. Sometimes it would completely shut off. I had to check for dripping every night.

I used to pry out the cap and unscrew the lever handle to clean the inside, but by this time, the screw is worn out and I could no longer get to the gap between the handle bar and the column.

Years has gone by, scum buildup and the white paint peeling off has made it look more and more hideous.

Last year, the control component finally broke down. Probably due to hard water built up within it, lifting the lever took a hard jolt and water pressure has dropped. I tried to soak it with vinegar and lubricate it with cooking oil, it helped but very little.

I don't know why I've put up with it for 10 years. But boy, it's time to rip it out.


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Monday, May 10, 2010

Chrome speed test?

Recently Google published a shooting potato Google Chrome speed test video that attracts a lot of attentions. I surfed around and came across a number of videos made by individuals "show casing" how Chrome is a faster browser as well.

I went through some of them, and became really doubtful. First of all, many of these test results are well within margin of errors. Others are obviously using Chrome for day to day browsing and had not cleared their cache before capturing their videos.

Here, I offer my speed test. It's done on http://maps.google.com - Google's own web site. The result is very apparent and you can try it yourself, no stop watch needed.



Embarrassingly enough, my day job involves fiddling with browsers a lot nowadays. In my technical and unbiased opinion, Chrome is obviously a better browser than Firefox, in so many levels and aspects. However, even though causal users may not realize, Chrome is simply not there yet as a complete, viable browser. There are so many holes (SSL renegotiation, Cookie management, respecting HTTP cache headers, a long list!) in its implementation that I cannot possibly recommend using it seriously. Oh well, maybe one day.

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Monday, May 03, 2010

Instructions to a bank job

Do I need to spell it out for you? Boost yourself a semi, lose the trailer, then ramp it into an armored truck pulling out of a vault, and then you bag the bank rolls pouring out when the back doors swing open. Even kids would know that.

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