It snows again! The large-sized flakes danced in the lamp light, elegantly and fairily. It was just a beautiful picture for me when I was waiting for the No. 386 bus. I like the snow. But at the same time, the snow totally hid the moon up. Yes, it’s Lantern Festival today. The moonlight should be very nice if the sky was clear.

The coming of Lantern Festival indicates the ending of Chinese lunar new year celebration. So I can hear that firecrackers popped here and there, although it has been forbidden within the 5th ring road by the government. And some of the burglar alarms of cars were raised, making noises along with the firecrackers.

Binbin bought us sticky rice balls at the No. 10 Daoxiangcun sales department. It’s amzing that all the kinds of stuffing are my favorite ones: black sesame seeds and walnut, creamy coconut paste, sweet-scented hawthorn…

P.S. Differences between Yuanxiao and Tangyuan:
They look similar regarding to color and shape. Actually Yuanxiao comes from north China. Tangyuan comes from south. Yuanxiao is usually made by rolling in a bamboo sieve, while Tangyuan is folded with bare hands, and tastes much softer than Yuanxiao.

Long time ago I took a personality assessment for the sake of knowing myself better. The result for me turned out to be INTJ. And now it seems unchanged.

INTJ - “Mastermind”.

Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, not very altruistic, not very complimentary, would rather be friendless than jobless, observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private, not much fun, hidden, skeptical, does not like most people, socially uncomfortable, not physically affectionate, unhappy, does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things, pessimistic, not spontaneous, discontented, guarded, does not think they are weird but others do, responsible, insensitive to the misfortunes of others, orderly, clean, organized, familiar with darkside, does not value organized religion, suspicious of others, lonely, rarely shows anger, punctual, finisher, prepared

favored careers:
scientist, dictator, forensic anthropologist, systems analyst, philosopher, nuclear engineer, political analyst, researcher, statistician, scholar, research scientist, computer scientist, software designer, curator, computer programmer, aerospace engineer, electrical engineer, paleontologist, english professor, philosophy professor, chemical engineer, epidemiologist, forensic scientist, museum curator, research assistant, mechanic, astronomer, figher pilot, librarian, systems administrator, neurosurgeon, book editor, biotechnology, archeologist, lab tech, bookstore owner

disfavored careers:
advertising executive, job in entertainment industry, performer, singer, art therapist, childcare worker, bartender, dj, even coordinator, hair dresser, wedding planner

Personally speaking, surfing the Internet via Google search results can be a frustrating thing, coz quite a number of websites have been blocked by the so-called Great Firewall of China. The actions taken by China censorship are mostly reasonable(I mean FLG), while sometimes are arbitrary. You know, we could not visit blogspot(Blogger.com(Google)) directly here in China, while this site might be the world’s largest blog service provider.

Here is some thoughts dealing with this:

1. Proxy: This is useful for those directly connected to the net. But it’s insane for me to use a proxy server to access another proxy server;
2. Google cache: It used to be blocked by the firewall too. I’m happy to see the restriction is gradually loosening;
3. Online RSS aggregator: This is a good idea. At least we could read now, since not write;
4. Anonymous web surfing software: Haven’t tried yet.

Most programmers might have experienced the vexation after losting hundreds of lines of code, without saving to files. The causes can vary from unexpected OS crash to hardware failure, or even a naughty cat.

This morning I just found Wikipedia, likewise, also placed such a placard on its website:

Power corrupts. Power failure corrupts absolutely.

We’re currently recovering servers from a power failure in our colocation facility. This means backing up 170gb of database on several servers and running recovery. Back soon…

Wikipedia uses InnoDB. A sudden power failure often corrupts some data files and sets the database state into unrecoverable. Sure they have backup and redo log files. But it still takes time.

With an eye to the accidents with LiveJournal and Blogsome a few days ago. My suggestion for you guys is definitely DO MORE BACKUPS. And take care.

…
white headlights and red rear lights of cars and trucks on the North 4th Ring Road;
…
slippery sidewalk with a thin layer of snow on it;
…

This entry is trackbacking to http://www.blogcup.com/read_joanna2008_28309.html.