Plea to Silicon Valley and Tech World -- Think SMALL!

Do you remember the days when you thought who needs 1 GB of space? That seemed way too much space. Except now that everything is faster, all the software is taking up more space. I have a plea to the tech world -- could you PLEASE make programs smaller?? It's ridiculous that I'm getting messages to delete programs because 130 GB of space is not big enough. If we are getting so great at conserving energy, I say please conserve bandwidth/hard drive space/memory. , I'm tired of looking for ways to delete programs, files, defragment, etc. to make room for bigger and bigger files. (Incidentally, Microsoft and Adobe are the worst offenders, at least in my laptop space).

And if we are moving into "cloud" computing (e.g. zoho.com) to make room in local space, I have another plea to make. People don't necessarily want their files stored in 3rd party servers -- please have an option for people to use softwares in the "cloud" but keep files in their own computers. No offense, but I have no faith that any other company or person will be vigilant about keeping my tax files, social security number, and any other documents with sensitive information completely safe. At least if the files are sitting in my laptop, I have only myself to blame (maybe).

The chance of anyone remotely connected to making any of this happen reading this blog post is probably small to nil. But I feel much better having vented out into the cyberspace the frustration of upgrading hard drive or laptop to make way for bigger programs.

Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park

So I took a short break and went to Palm Springs with my sister. Actually, it was to cash in on my one free night stay at a hotel (which I won on some random raffle) and free dinner to go with it. Because we don't really play golf, we decided to go check out the Joshua Tree National Park. I was surprised at how big the park was -- 2 hours to drive straight across from North to South! And I was also pleasantly surprised at how majestic desert vegetation can be. Here are some pictures.

Forest of Joshua Trees. I had seen random Joshua Trees by the freeway but they looked quite beautiful in a field full of them.


A close up of one against rock formations.


Although it was very windy, Joshua Trees did not sway with the wind. The bark of a Joshua Tree was rather interesting.

A different angle of Joshua Trees.

Cactus flower!


This is from the highest point at the park. What you see there, it's San Andreas fault line! Pretty interesting to see one of the biggest earthquake fault line in California.


Self explanatory.

Me in the middle of Cholla Cactus Garden.


Cholla Cactus Garden, in all its glory.


Another angle of cacti... bottom up!

Flower of cholla cactus.

Cholla cactus against the sun.
Other wild flowers with cholla cactus.

Not sure what this is called but looked quite dramatic.