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2007-09-30

 

Major Stock Sold

Finally sold my other stock and major investment that I mentioned in the earlier post. EMC is actually becoming more of a direct competitor to my company, since our acquisition of Veritas to extend to storage and their acquisition of RSA to extend to security. I knew their stock was going up since the announcement of IPO of 10% of VMware, an obvious financial means to push up the stock price by exploiting the sudden public attention to virtual machine technology.

Result? It went up from $13.79 when I bought 6 months ago to $20.70 when I sold last week, a 50% profit. However, it triggers a new problem. Now that the interest rates are declining, and I don't have time to research on my next investment, where should I put my money?

2007-09-27

 

Berkeley DB vs SQLite

Ok, this is my attempt to make this blog a little bit more "educational."

In my latest project, like most projects, I need a library to quickly store large amount of data and perform some basic queries on the data. Since I want to implement the prototype quickly and make it easy to send the prototype to other people, I decided against using any "real" database. I see two options: Berkeley DB or SQLite. Since SQLite is like new and cool and allows me to dust my SQL, I decided to use it.

Obviously, the rest of this entry is about why it was a stupid choice.

I need the library to map some ID number and hash values in both direction. Doing it fast in SQL engines requires the use of indices on both fields. In SQLite, the only supported index is BTree, which means that it would needlessly sort the millions of hash values...

A quick reimplementation in Berkeley DB with hash based indexing reduced the running time from 10 hours into 3.

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2007-09-25

 

Bureaucracy

I never quite understood this word, other than as something opposite to efficiency, until recently. How do a research person define his "business goals"? How about self-evaluation based on alignment of personal performance with vision and value? It is not to the extent of the Colored Giant but at least they rightfully decided that I don't fit in and I agreed.

But things could get worse. Like unwillingly taking precious vacations so that someone other than me can save cost by shutting down sites during holiday seasons...

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2007-09-23

 

It Rained! Twice!

Oh mine, I was almost completely forgotten this weather condition type. It's been forever since the last time it rained. When I was in Houston, I hated raining very much (except for the hottest days in summer... which means half of the year...). But I didn't mind a bit raining here, not only because it is so rare, but also it cleans up the dirty streets a bit here.

What's amazing, though, is that the small rainfall already caused many traffic accidents and trapping cars in muds. Hard to imagine if we had one of those Houston rainfall here.

2007-09-19

 

California Metric

Despite its heavy taxes, California is a crowded state. For example, you can't find a house that looks nice within 10 miles from where I live that is selling for less than $1million.

To deal with that living condition, our mattress sizes are different. Say for King size, we have California King instead.

But make no mistake about cars. We have plenty of trucks, SUVs, and Hummers. That's why a compact car here means... an SUV!


Of course, I wouldn't mind so much if I was not late for work today and had to park right next to it.

2007-09-15

 

Loving Virgin

As a founding member of eleVAte, the frequent flyer program of the new Virgin America airline, of course I should try their flights. And I just did. They really changed the game of flying.

There are a few things that are different in their flights:
When they have Internet access (coming soon), they will just conquer the world...

What can I say! I love Virgin. And that includes the airline... Too bad they only fly to a very limited number of cities right now.

P.S. There's nothing special about becoming a founding member of eleVAte. You simply need to register by the end of this year.

2007-09-13

 

Profitting From Sickness?

I just went to see a doctor today (that has more to do with the lack of updates than "Must... Stop... Update..."). The visit was covered by my insurance, so I needed not to pay. But I got two prescriptions, and using a coupon from Ralphs, I got back a $30 gift card, while paying only $10 for the pills thanks to my insurance. Had I separate the two prescriptions and also used the CVS coupon to get back another $25 gift card, I would have profited $45 from my sickness... Is this still considered as some kind of deals?

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2007-09-04

 

Must... Stop... Update

Haven't updated for a few days. My right hand has not been feeling well lately. I just bought a new mouse... I hope it is not RSI. I am supposed to have learned from the best, since my former boss started the Typing Injury FAQ. Anyway, I need to use computer less now, so don't expect too many updates.

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