User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: The Life of a Programmer 2: The Work Piles Up

Right Wingnut, you work fast!

Posted on: The Life of a Programmer 2: The Work Piles Up

John should continue emphasizing the little grammar tips in lessons about Chinese. I now realize that there might be a set 5 or so grammar tips that John should emphasize at EVERY level for EVERY lesson. These 5 or so grammar tips might be so basic, that they help 90% of the time you hear someone speaking Chinese. For example,

- When modifying a noun, everything comes before the noun. Not just colors (the blue box), but also descriptors (the gift I bought for you).

Posted on: Can You Help Me Move?

Many moons ago, after I bought a 4WD Toyota Xtra Cab, I was told by other pickup truck owners to be careful about who knows you have a pickup truck. This is why.

Posted on: Chengyu By the Numbers (Part 2)

FWIW, for people that are into chengyus, the Chinese translation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone had 3 chengyu in the first 3 paragraphs or so. I'm only almost completed page one of the translation. I'm afraid that this means that the translation is riddled with chengyu. Not good, although I think 一无是处 can be used in an amusing way.

Posted on: The Life of a Programmer 1: Staying Up Late?

They're probably salesmen. Clean cut, suit wearing, shaven.

Posted on: Registering for 3G Service

FWIW, while here in the US temporarily, I bought an AT&T prepaid phone for $20, then tried to put the prepaid phone sim card into my China Mobile iPhone 4S. It turns out that my China Mobile sim card is a mini-sim card, and so the prepaid phone sim card was too big. I wasn't willing to use a sim card cutter on it to cut it down to size because I might be able to use the prepaid sim card in the China Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note while in the US.

Posted on: Sina's Microblogs

actually baba, I was thinking you were thinking of installing the QQ application on your desktop. If you're just going to a website, that's relatively easy to check, as you've already done. But I'm still not seeing the QQ app is not showing much in the way of virus alerts or malware alerts.

Posted on: Sina's Microblogs

yes, those casual 30-50 are either already fluent, or not in danger of learning more than they already know. Only a few of us use WeChat. I do use it, but I avoid using the shaking function in the office (I work with immature guys).

Posted on: Sina's Microblogs

"Am I right in assuming that you mean because of a malware threat?"

yes, you're right about that. Interestingly though, as i've searched around the internet, i'm not seeing the kind of statements/postings from McAfee/Symantec/Norton/Kaspersky et al, that I would have expected to see around QQ if QQ was blatant malware. Maybe at this point, the international version is ok. I could understand why you'd want QQ, if indeed your plan is to constantly speak/write Chinese with native speakers. But I'm not installing QQ on my machines, and I don't know any foreigner in China that uses QQ. (I haven't surveyed all 150,000 or so foreigners, but the casual 30 -50 I know don't use it (maybe it helps to say that i'm over 30, so that I'm not sure what the cool, hip and trendy people are doing these days :_0)). The skilled IT people I know have nothing good to say about it, but they are not skilled on the security side. If I was back at my analyst firm, I'd walk down the hall to one of the security analysts and ask what they thought of Trend, then ask if they thought that if a program was malicious, how would Trend let me know.

Posted on: Sina's Microblogs

Ok, a heapin' helpin' of anti-malware links:

http://www.malwarehelp.org/freeware-open-source-commercial-website-security-tools-services-downloads.html