Obsession with twngan

So my first day in Amazon. It turned out, I'm going to work in Union Station, right next to the Chinatown. An Asian grocery is literally right on the other side of the street, and there are a lot of Chinese/Japanese restaurants around. Even though I take buses to work, everything becomes so convenience now. I even had Hong Kong-style wonton noodle for lunch!

Another interesting thing is that they tend to name their systems after places along the Amazon River. Well, anything further is confidential, so I'm not going to say any more, except that what I'll work on could easily save Amazon millions of dollars...

Labels: work

This was the most exciting day, merely because I kept thinking Seattle is finally within reach. But just as an old Chinese saying, "bad thing comes with good thing." I realized that I have left my power adapter in the hotel in Portland. Yet also as another old Chinese saying, "good thing comes with bad thing," the hotel found it and agreed to mail it to me at my expense.

So finally I'm there. What can I say about Seattle? Lots of rain, hills, buses, police cars, Starbucks, other coffee houses, Japanese restaurants, gay people, ...

After the bad experience in the middle of Nevada, the Microsoft route became too scary. Instead, a longer route going through Sacramento was used so that all the way is on Interstate highways, as recommended by AAA.

The price? California, of course. Other than the higher gas price (although wasn't much higher than that in Nevada), it was the rude Californians. Passing with the narrowest possible space, tailgating crazily if you happen to slow them down for a few seconds, etc, no wonder you'll need something like this.

BTW, a city named Eugene was on the way... Does it have anything to do with this guy? Maybe as much as Tsuen Wan to me?

The route for this day first passes through some native American territory. Other than the souvenirs they sell, one thing I noticed is that they make pretty good milkshake... Try them if you have the chance to drive through the desert in Nevada.

Speaking of desert, it was also the most dangerous part of the trip. A large part of the "state highway" there has only one lane each way. There are, as usual, some slow trucks around. The only way to pass them is to go to the opposite lane and accelerate. All this has to be done in a short time, because there can be vehicles coming from the opposite direction at a relative speed of 160+mph... Certainly that wasn't a lovely experience.

But that is still not the worst part of the day. The stupidest and potentially the deadliest mistake of the trip was to follow the route suggested by Microsoft Streets & Trips (which they would send you a copy if you are going to work for them). In the desert, it suggested us to go from a state highway to a local road (Gabbs Pole Line Rd) and then a state road...

What's wrong with that? First, there's no sign on the road, so you can never be sure whether you're on the right road (!). Then, the road hits an open ranch area, where there are cattle and buffalos on the road (!!). But the best has yet to come: After 10 miles or so, there's a sign saying "No pavement ahead." (!!!) What? It isn't even a paved road? Only sand? Of course, it ended up in the middle of nowhere (picture taken when there was still "pavement")...
Two hours wasted on trying that route and coming back to reroute using state highways... Of course, I can't blame anyone. After all these years, I should have learned better than to rely on M$ for crucial things...

Labels: road trip

The second day was the longest day, not only in terms of mileage, but also because of the hilly, narrow, 5mph roads around the Hoover Dam in Nevada. Anyway, the fun of the day was neither the road condition nor whatever happened (and stayed) in Vegas, but the followings...

While driving in Arizona, there was this truck with a picture of a guy at the back, pointing his index finger upward. He was really annoying, given that as the driver behind him one has to stare at him. Luckily, the truck (as usually) was slow and could be passed easily. What's more interesting was after Kingman when it was close to Nevada, it was completely dark already. The smart thing to do, given the unfamiliarity of the area, was to follow another car. A pickup truck was used for that purpose. But wait a second... What was that grayish cloud-like thing on the pickup truck? That looked like... Casper! God knows why, maybe he wants to have some fun in Vegas too. But right before entering Nevada, Casper (and the truck) was stopped in a checkpoint by some cops (Why do they have checkpoints anyway? Do people smuggle stuff from Arizona into Nevada!?). Not sure what happened to Casper since then...

I haven't updated this blog for a while, mostly because of my road trip to Seattle. Now that I'm there, it's time to put down a couple of things happened on the way, while I'm waiting for FreePastry to compile on my prehistoric laptop...

So this day is the start of the road trip, going through Dallas, Wichita Falls, and Amarillo. The greatest surprise of the day was traffic – not in downtown Dallas, as one would expect – but on the way from Dallas to Denton. The speed is more like 10mph instead of... hm... let's say fast elsewhere. The rest of the route is mostly interstate, so nothing much interesting happened. On the night, we stayed in the Pow Wow Inn, which turned out to be nothing better than a motel. The attendant said it used to be a popular place, but is becoming less an interesting place since the fading out of "The Mother Road" Historic Route 66.

Labels: road trip

M$ is not releasing Longhorn until much later (can't remember when; it keeps changing anyway). What can we do? Well, if you're in Texas, one way is to go to see a real one. Bayou Wildlife Park in Alvin, TX (30 mins from Houston) is one of the options.

While I'm still looking for a place to stay in Seattle for my summer internship (yeah, I know, only 2 more weeks), I finally found out the best place to look for. No, not simply craigslist, but HousingMap, a site that combines craigslist results with Google map that show you exactly where the places are. Alone the same line, there's this site that combines Google map with traffic information. Both are soooo convenience...

There has always been a stripe cat wandering around the apartment I live in. The old lady next door, who already has a black cat, always feeds the stripe cat with good cat food cans. Out of courtesy, one as simple-minded and naive like me would think.

It is not until recently, after the stripe cat has given birth to three kitties, that I have uncovered her little plot.

Out of the three kitties, while one is striped, the other two are black. Right, the old lady's black cat is not "fixed," and now has three children.

Now the "wild" cat is staying. There's no better place than here with steady food supply and proximity to the kitties' dad. The stripe cat raises its children on my way to the laundry room. It always gets mad when I walk around. And you don't want to mess with a cat that thinks it is protecting its children from strangers.

It is difficult to arrange an "unfortunate accident" on the cat; it has attracted so much attention from the tenants, that simply meowing in the public area would make at least two nosy neighbors to open their doors to check out what's going on.

Somehow I find this a bit annoying.

for my boss, Associate Professor Dan Wallach. Got tenure and a baby girl Nina Leanne (a cute name, BTW) in two days. Can't say it's the best timing for me though, given that I don't have any little favor, like signing my doctoral dissertation, to ask for.

I've talked about the online edition of Appledaily, a popular newspaper in Hong Kong, is free for people in Hong Kong only (albeit this can be easily defeated by going through an open proxy in Hong Kong). And now there's this Google Web Accelerator released (as beta, as always). Privacy issues set aside, looks like they're smart enough to download the content from a local machine. You can simply use it to defeat any location check. Maybe it's about time to call an end on this stupid idea of charging for content based on geographical location in this digitized world?

Last night was the final game 7 between Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks. To show my support to Houston, I drove to Dallas and back yesterday, a nearly 10-hour drive. Yet the result? No mood to discuss here.