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2005-07-28

 

Balls with a Stick

There was another intern events yesterday, this time seeing a Mariner's (baseball) game.

Of course, I didn't go.

I still can't understand why would anyone interested in any game about hitting balls with sticks. Baseball, softball, cricket, and the worst, golf. Playing amature games or watching friends playing might be okay, but any professional game is just lame.

2005-07-27

 

Mac Mini, Episode II

I was reconsidering my plan of buying a Mac Mini, since Apple's announcement of switching to Intel CPU. After all, binary compatibility could be a mess, particular with my plan for a long term switch to Macs. The cost of upgrading from the pathetic default setting of Mac Mini would also be something.

But just when I was about to decide to delay the plan, Apple announced the new Mac Mini. With the added memory (256MB is seriously a joke) and wireless/Bluetooth now a standard for the $599 model, it is suddenly usable coming directly out of the box.

Now all I have to do is just to wait until Amazon has sold out its discounted, remaining inventory and replace them with the new revisions, before the end of my internship. Then when I arrive my Houston home after the long drive, a shiny Mac Mini will be waiting for me...

2005-07-26

 

The Cat in the Flat, Episode II

Why would someone search for "The Cat in the Flat"?

Why the heck would my page get the first place?

2005-07-20

 

Another Restaurant Review

Since I publish this piece on Yao's Restaurant, people constantly come to my blog by searching in Yahoo (which, BTW, seems to produce more and better detailed results than Google nowadays, as Google seems to be not indexing all pages now, but that's another story). As an experiment, I'm writing a review on another restaurant to see if it also draws visitors.

If I want to pick one restaurant in Seattle to talk about, probably it has to be Purple Dot Cafe, a Hong Kong-style cafe. They have dishes that are very close to those in Hong Kong, like my favorite Cafe de Coral. My favorite is their dinner set "Ying Yang Eel Over Rice," with roasted eel over "white sauce rice" (cream sauce with pork strips and onion) and "red sauce rice" (tomato sauce with various seafood). With today's soup and an orange juice for less than $12, you feel like you had 3 dinners. However, the quality of the dishes varies a lot, so you may have to go multiple times to try out their better dishes.

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2005-07-17

 

Laptops should be Milktea-proof

I'm so scared, after someone suggested the possibility of me getting fired due to what I put here, I'll now put some non-secret stuff about my work instead.

We're given those shiny Dell Latitude D610 laptops at work (just for using Outlook), in parallel to the Linux boxes for actual work. A few days back when I was enjoying milk tea at work, a generous man like me did what is natural – I shared with my laptop. Long story short, the "Y" key stopped functioning (or to be exact, kept pressing itself).

To cover my own ass (I know, sentences like this only get my blog to a higher search engine position for some keywords), I decided to fix it myself. Been there, done that, as I have replaced the keyboard for my own laptop.

Yet this time, it is a bit different. It turned out, D610 is too new. I just can't find any old part for it in eBay.

Desperate time, desperate measure. I took off the keyboard, popped off the "Y" key, cleaned a bit, and you know what, it works again! It's a bit loose, but as long as it works, I don't care.

Morale of the story? Laptops should be made milktea-proof, otherwise it would affect the productivity of your employees...

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2005-07-15

 

The Fear of All Sums

I know, I said I'm not going to talk anything further. But it is my life, and I have nothing else exciting going on...

So I guess the most interesting thing of my job is what a PhD candidate like me would be doing in Amazon, maybe except as a cheap programmer. Here's a hint: I spend some of my working time reading papers that are as old as me (other than coding them and writing this blog)... I work a lot on adding numbers, and then spend even more time staring at them, not knowing what they mean...

But there are other interesting things to learn in the weekly "tech talks", like how IMDB works (I guess a lot of people don't realize that this is from Amazon), how Amazon bid for ads in search engines, etc. Of course, there are some bad talks, too. Like the last one on customer service, it was a horrible waste of an hour: that guy just showed how customer service works and the shiny GUI to facilitate their work...

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2005-07-09

 

I'm Bored...

Proof? I've updated RSRemover to version 0.1.

2005-07-06

 

When You're in Seattle

What to get to eat? Texas barbeque! Try Longhorn Barbecue Outpost!

Where to go for a long weekend? Vancouver? Dead wrong! It has to be San Antonio, Texas! I spent the July 4 break on the Alamo, La Villita, Natural Bridge Caverns, River Walk, SeaWorld San Antonio...

2005-07-01

 

Hot French Chicks, I'm Coming!

After all these years, Scrivener has finally been accepted, by Middleware 2005, for conference publication. I'll probably go to France to give the talk. The other submission I had was rejected. The conference acceptance ratio is 1/6. So... does it imply that my submission is 3 times better than the average? :P

 

New Place to Live

So I finally found a new place to live, just in time for the July 4 firework in Seattle. It was pretty difficult to find a place, since landlords usually prefer tenants going for longer terms and give them priorities to decide. Anyway, I am now paying only around half of the previous rent, and in additional to a bedroom, I also get a large sitting room with comfy chairs. Also direct bus route to work. Wireless network that just works. And the sweet thing is, I can now pocket the remaining of my housing allowance!

I don't know how much longer I could have tolerated my old place. One of the many rules that I can't take is "no cell phone in the kitchen." No one told me ahead so I found it out the hard way. What I can't understand is, while people talk loudly in the kitchen (I know because my room is very close to the kitchen and got disturbed all the time), I was told not to use the phone when I just wanted to refill a glass of water in the middle of a phone conversation in my room. Laundry is worse: the machines eat 10 quarters and then refuse to work. They do provide coffee, but it is SBC. No, not this one, nor this one, but something Slightly Better than Crap...

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