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It took me a little while to figure out a problem I was having with Windows Live Messenger today. In the interest of perhaps saving people some time if they have the same problem, I’ll list here the simple solution I found.

A small minority of people who are using Windows Live Messenger signed up using a non-Microsoft e-mail address. I am one of those people. I originally used a free, web-based e-mail account to signed up for what was then called MSN Messenger. This was back in 2001. Since then, the free e-mail service was discontinued. For years, my Messenger account was associated with a non-working e-mail address. People would try to send me e-mail via my Messenger account and I would never get it. Actually, it’s kind of silly for them to try to send me e-mail that way, everyone knows what my preferred e-mail address is.

Anyways, if you want to change the e-mail address that is associated with your Messenger account, follow these steps:

1. Don’t bother using the Windows Live Messenger application. Just to be safe, sign out of Messenger while you do this.
2. Point your browser towards http://accounts.live.com.
3. In the Windows ID field, enter in the e-mail address associated with your Messenger account, the password is your Messenger password
4. Once logged in, you should see all sorts of interesting stats about your account
5. Click “change” next to the Windows Live ID field
6. Follow the instructions presented on-screen

You can choose to change the e-mail address to any address you want. It will take at least an hour, if not more, for the change over to occur. Your Messenger contacts will most likely need to sign out and sign back in to see the modified account.

And that’s how babies are made.

Here are a list of random things going through my head right now:

• I’m thirsty and this water is delicious
• Walking up the stairs to my apartment on the 28th floor is good exercise but I can sure feel the burn in my legs
• There is too much road paving going on in my community, every street is down to one lane
• I haven’t been home enough to be able to eat all the food in my fridge and now I gotta throw some stuff out
• I can’t figure out how to change my e-mail address associated with my Windows Live Messenger account
• I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow

Thanks for playing along!

I enjoy a good Internet meme just like people did in the 1930s. One of my favourites is “High Expectations Asian Father“. The meme is a play on the stereotypical Asian parent and their attitudes towards their children regarding grades, food, finances, and many other topics. The meme is way more hilarious if you’re a child of Asian parents who immigrated to another country to start a new life (which I am). Nonetheless, even if you’re not Asian, I hope you find a few of them amusing.

Wow, I’m really writing a lot of these “Did You Know?” posts lately.

Did you know that when I was a kid, my dentist briefly discussed with my parents about getting braces for my front teeth? When I was younger, my two front teeth grew in large and in charge. They didn’t stick out too much but it was still noticeable. They were my adult teeth and unfortunately, I still had child-sized facial features. These massive choppers were hard to miss compared to the rest of my teeth that hadn’t been replaced yet. Combine that with my smaller head (yeah hard to believe my head was once smaller) and you had a freaky combo. It looked like I was ready to gnaw on a redwood tree and take it down in minutes.

In the end, it was decided I would not get braces, for several reasons. First, my parents were of modest means. They could have afforded it but it wouldn’t have been easy on the budget. Second, my two front teeth didn’t stick out that badly, it just looked kinda bad. Third, I personally didn’t want to endure all that metal in my mouth with the headgear and crap.

It turned out to be a good decision to forgo the braces. The rest of my teeth and head caught up to my two front teeth. It’s not perfectly aligned but once my other teeth came in and my head grew to a ridiculously large size, everything looked a lot better.

While construction continues on a large retail complex at the base of my apartment, tenants are just filling up the last spots in a revamped commercial area less than a block from where I live. The latest two tenants are Subway and Starbucks. I visited the Subway on Saturday. It one of the nicer Subway outlets I’ve seen. It’s got real tables and chairs as opposed to the booths you see in some of the older locations. Some tables had black leather armchairs which is something I had not seen before in a Subway.

Previously, the closest Starbucks to me was about a seven to ten minute walk from my apartment. I can now see this new Starbucks from my apartment balcony. There’s always slightly more fanfare when a Starbucks opens up compared to other food outlets. It’s as if it signals to the world that that particular area was deemed good enough to support expensive coffee-based drinks. I also fully expect Starbucks to open up a location within the retail complex below me when it is completed in the spring.

Now if only I could get a combo Taco Bell / KFC close by…

I was going to write about how interesting it is when coworkers discover my blog but that post will have to wait for another day.

I just finished showering when I happened to look out from my balcony and saw at least three police cars with lights on about two blocks away from my apartment. The police cars were stopped and they had pulled over a white SUV. I quickly grabbed my binoculars and looked on intently. I realized that I had missed the beginning of the action as all the doors of the SUV were already wide open and they were several police officers gathered behind their vehicles with their guns drawn.

I could hear a woman’s voice faintly yelling out instructions to whoever was still in the white SUV. After a few tense moments, a teenage male in a t-shirt stepped out of the SUV with hands raised. They made him walk back towards the police cars. Once he reached the officers, I couldn’t tell what they were doing to him, as it was dark. Then brought another dude out of the SUV. Once this guy got close to the officers, they made the dude get on his hands and knees and crawl the rest of the towards them. Awesome! 🙂

It was then I noticed there were two K-9 units on scene. At least I think I saw two dogs. One dog was released by his or her handler and it jumped into the SUV through one of the back doors. It didn’t spend a lot of time in there before jumping back out and running back to its handler.

Now during all of this, I had noticed one person that stood out in this whole situation. There was this woman with what looked to be blond hair, a light coloured hoodie of sorts, and dark capri pants who seemed to be quite close to the action. In fact, she was standing pretty close to the uniformed officers. She seemed like a civilian to me, so I thought maybe the cops were using her to identify the people in the SUV. I didn’t realize until the dog came back out of the SUV that this woman was actually holding a weapon and was a police officer as well. With the dog giving the SUV a once-over, mystery officer and some other uniformed police cautiously approached the SUV with weapons still drawn. They cleared the SUV and everyone seemed much more relaxed after that.

It’s been fifteen minutes since that happened and most of the police have gone. The SUV is still there but I bet it’s gonna get towed away pretty soon.

If you’re interested, read about the time I got pulled over by the cops when I was in grad school.

Welcome to another edition of “Did You Know?”!!!

Did you know that only female members of mosquito species seek out a blood meal? Did you also know that mosquitoes can feed on nectar and other sugars? It’s true!

Female mosquitoes usually require a blood meal to procure the necessary proteins and iron to develop their eggs. So if you’ve ever been bitten by a mosquito, that mosquito was female and is going to lay her eggs very soon.

I’m feeling terrible tonight. I think I may be getting sick. I’m gonna go lie down.

Today I got mistaken for a junior engineer again. This has happened several times since I had to take EA’s handout of a job back in May. Being in the Sports label has shown me how they do things is so very different than we did things in the Games label. In the Sports label, if you’re doing front end work, everyone thinks either you suck or you’re junior (and don’t know much else).

Just because I’m working on the front end of a game doesn’t make me a complete nOOb. I know no game play engineer in his/her right mind would ever choose to work in front end after having four years of game play experience but I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Of course almost all the engineers on my new team don’t know this.

I need a drink.

As a testament as to how exciting my Sunday was, I spent most of the day looking up old Saturday Night Live skits online. If you’ve never seen the Harry Potter skit with Lindsay Lohan as Hermoine, give it a look. I’ve also watched Will Ferrell as Neil Diamond about a billion times but it never gets old. I’ve linked to this particular skit before but I think it’s as entertaining today as it was when it first came out. Killing a drifter to get an erection, now who would have thought of that in the first place?

This led me to IGN’s list of their 25 funniest Will Ferrell characters. I don’t disagree with any of their choices but I personally would not have put Ron Burgundy in the number one slot. Sure, it’s a great character but I’m not sure if it’s better than say his George W. Bush.