Be All You Can Be

I have finally started my search for a new job. One headhunter contact already told me that he rarely got positions for LAN Account Admins, so there is little hope with him. Another hunter I got in touch through my sister V is not in the I.T. field, but she had graciously put me in touch with three others in the area. Hope something will come to fruition.

I signed up with NYCJobZone.com through a banner ad on NY1.com. I'm not ready to leave New York City, much as I hate its crowded streets I might as well limit my scope to the city. Strangely, the first email notice I got from NYCJobZone.com is all about... the U.S. Army! The first position was titled musician, the second was Security Position, third was Officer, and the last was... SOLDIER! Perhaps because I mentioned network security in my resume, NYCJobZone got it mixed up with physical security. I don't think the Army wants someone in their late 30s standing guard of an ammo dump or other sensitive locations. I'm in no shape for boot camp or to become a killing machine. Oh well, let me just, uh, soldier on with my job search...

Big Big World

America the Green

Just in time for Earth Day, I recently subscribed to America the Green (ATG) podcast, with Carolyn Parrs, Irv Weinberg, and John Biethan. I figured I can't claim to be environmentally concerned without being regularly informed myself. The mainstream media can only cover so much environmental issues. I need to know more about the green issues and podcasts, for me, is the best way to go.

The first podcast of ATG I happened to listen, Saying I Do To A Green Wedding, was interesting but doesn't apply to me. It was educational and interesting nevertheless, with topics about farm raised seafood, conflict-free diamonds, biodiesel transportation, etc. Yet the second podcast that I came across, Rethinking Recycling with Justin Stockdale, was where I learned something both disheartening and fascinating. Mr. Stockdale told the listeners that landfills are made to ensure their contents don't decompose. The trash in the landfill is kept dry so that they don't decompose much. No decomposition means no liquid coming out of the trash, no chance of leakage into the landfill's surrounding. Likewise, less smell comes out of the landfills as a result of no decomposition. Supposedly, there was a case of a newspaper found in a landfill that's still readable. So much for bio-degradable diapers, too. If those Pampers end up in a landfill, the sh!t won't go anywhere!

Ubuntu and BitTorrent

As a Mac user, I see no reason to mess with Linux other than to see what's all the fuss there is. I am not interested in hosting my own web server or mail server, so Linux server is out of the question. Linux on the desktop still has years to catch up with Mac OS X's beautiful GUI, supposedly, so there's no attraction there either. However, with all the Intel-based computers I rescued off the street, some with hard drive, memory, CD-RW drives, etc. intact, I'm tempted to turn one of them into a Linux desktop. With broadband access, I can just download some distro as an ISO image file, burn the file to a CD, then stick it into the host PC, and, oh, some hours later I'll have a Linux desktop. Of course I haven't gotten around to doing all that because while the whole process can be put into one sentence, actually doing it takes much more time. Or, as mentioned in Every OS Sucks, a comedy song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, even though the fun is in the technical details, I have a girlfriend and things to do, or to be exact in my case, I have a family and things to do.

From what little I heard, Ubuntu seems to be the easiest-to-use Linux distro out there. Just boot it up and it'll automatically detect everything for you. I've thought of giving Ubuntu a shot and the recent roll-out of a new Ubuntu, nicknamed Feisty Fawn, seemed to be just the ticket. Alas, demand for Feisty was high and all the mirror sites were overwhelmed. However, I was able to download a torrent file and got the new distro via the BitTorrent client Azureus. Recall that the last time I checked out BitTorrent technology, I concluded that there was nothing to it other than for pirating movies. Well, here's a perfectly legit use of BitTorrent. After getting my own copy of Ubuntu Desktop for i386, I became another distribution channel of what I just downloaded, or in torrent lingo, I help seed the resource. Well, it seemed easy to become a seeder, but it took much mucking around to really become a useful seeder. Supposedly my NAT (network address translation) was not setup correctly such that people couldn't get to what I offer. I had to read the Azureus FAQ over and over, trying to fully understand a whole slew of seemingly foreign terms like seed, peer, leech, snub, tracker, etc. In the end, it was a matter of configuring my DSL router to allow incoming traffic to a port Azureus expects to make data available to. I have been doing my part in making the data available to the public since three days ago. I plan to maybe keep up the service for about a month. I'm not too keen on keeping my computer up too long as it wastes electricity that way. The file itself is about 600 MB but according to Azureus I've uploaded more than 5 GB of data. Now, only if I have the time to actually make use of the file...

Watch The Two Closing Doors

Down With Smoking

One aspect of my recent trip to China that was negative, beside the initial monotony, was second-hand smoke. I've been living in health-conscious New York City for so long that it is a given that eating out automatically means it should be a smoke-free experience. Not so in China, or any other places that still think it's perfectly fine to light up anywhere smokers feel like. I think Asians such as Chinese and Vietnamese simply love smoking. Maybe it's only because I know more Asians than people of other races, but most Asian men I know are smokers, especially outside of the U.S. It didn't help at all that our host, Uncle P, was a heavy smoker. I cannot recall if he smoked much back in 1994, perhaps because it was a shorter stay and we didn't have dinner with many people. He sure did during my second visit. He lit up before the meal, during the meal, after the meal, in the bus, off the bus, around children or with no children around, so on and so on. He may be excused because he lives in China, where such behavior is perfectly acceptable, sad but true. What was extra disappointing was that in our big group was an uncle on my wife's side. He lives in NYC all these times and must know the rule. Whether he followed them in NYC or not I didn't know, but he sure enjoyed his smoke very much during this visit, lighting them up almost everywhere. Whatever restraint he might have regarding smoking while in NYC simply went out the window. Of course 9 out of 10 men who went to the various dinners that I attended were smokers, but again, they were Chinese in China, where smoking is still allowed in public places. Nothing ruins a good meal like a whiff of second-smoke in the face. I tried my best to avoid the smoke but I am sure my lung blackened much during the visit. About the only place that prohibited smoking was McDonald's. I'd rather die from heart disease or whatever Mickey D's food bring, at least it's my choice, whereas with second-hand smoke it's someone else's bad decision and rude behavior that do the harm.

Luckily, Hong Kong's new smoking ban just took effect Jan 1st of this year, so my HK visit was extra pleasant. When the smokers in the group had to fill their needs, they had to step outside just like back in NYC.

Recycling in China

Every now and then, the news would have a story about some environmental problem in China as the country catches up to Western standard. The Yellow River is overused for some industry, sand storm blasting Beijing because of destruction of trees, you name it. So it was comforting during my recent visit to see most of the public trash receptacles having separate containers for recyclables and non-recyclables, such as shown in this photo, taken at the San Ya Nan Shan Cultural Tourism Zone in San Ya, Hai Nan Island. In some other places, I spotted plastic containers set aside just for the purpose of collecting used batteries. Of course, it's one thing for the government to make available the recycle bins and it's something else for the average person to be aware of them. Even in my office in the U.S. of A., the recycle bins often have non-recyclables in them.

Just as some U.S. states have bottle-recycling laws, whereby empty soda cans and bottles are worth a nickel or more each, in China, there's a market for plastic, glass, and paper. Bottles for drinking water had some value, as I saw old ladies here and there collecting them. In Tai Cheng, I noticed many people wandering on bicycles, with a wagon behind them, picking up recyclable items. They usually have a glass bottle mounted on the bike's handle bars, on which they would tap periodically to draw attention to themselves. Perhaps they pay a small price for the materials, or got them for free, what I know for sure is that their wagons usually had things in them.

Well, Well, Well

The Rough Ride Home

The long oblication finally came to an end this morning. Technically, it happened yesterday, as it is now 11:15 a.m. on Monday, 16 April 2007. Thanks to the time difference, we "gained" twelve hours by the time we landed - it was already 2 a.m. 4/16 in Hong Kong but we set our clock back to 2 p.m. 4/15. Some kind of Time Travel, eh?

It was a rough ride at times. Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, when the plane was shaking from collision with jet streams, I was thinking that I wouldn't make it home to post another blog entry. Or be in the office the next day to whip up some more KiX scripts. By the time we reach JFK, the weather was bad and the plane had to circle the airport a few times before actually landing. Sounds of people throwing up could be heard here and there in the cabin. I normally have no problems with motion sickness, but during the wait to land I was starting to develop a headache. Perhaps the sum of the rough landing, the run in the rain to get the car, and jet lag was too much for me. I had a nasty headache but it went away after a few hours of sleep, sans dinner.

Still, it's good to be home.

What's New in Hong Kong

At the hotel I stay at, Harbourview Horizon, the club house is open until only 9 p.m. I got back at 8:30 and quickly whisked away the kids to the club house for them to enjoy a few precious minutes in the playground. These same kids were complaining about sore feet from walking all day, but now had the energy to slide, run, and crawl. Kids!

I didn't expect Hong Kong to change much since my visit in 1994. After all, how much more advanced can it be? Well, it can and it is.

I already mentioned about the subway's glass partition, but another obvious change is the use of RFID tickets. Back in 1994, entering or leaving the train platform requires feeding the ticket to the turnstile. For us tourists who buy single-trip tickets, this still holds true, but for the locals the Octopus card is the way to go. Without even taking the Octopus card out of their wallet/purse, most people simply put it atop the card reader and off they go. It is similar to the system in use in some office buildings. How I wish the NYC subway would evolve to the next level and use the same method. It is very frustrating to slide the dang MetroCard too fast or too slow.

Victoria Peak is probably to Hong Kong as the Statue of Liberty is to NYC - you have to go there when you are in HK. For me, another reason was for my Son to enjoy yet another train ride. He loves train very much. I remember the Peak that I visited in 1994 only had a few telescopes to look around. There was a path to walk about, perhaps lined with local artists hawking their wares. The Peak that I visited yesterday was a multi-story mall. There was a post office, a video game parlor, Madame Tussaude Wax Museum, souvenir shops, fast food restaurants, etc. Sadly, another change is the higher level of pollution noticeable from the Peak. I don't know if I have any 1994 photos taken from the Peak, but supposedly if I do, I would be able to see the difference. All the building tops are now covered in smog. One entrepreneur on the Peak viewing platform claimed that he can "clean up" the smog in the photo. I suppose he would take pictures of the tourist and then digitally add them to a clean HK skyline.

During my 1994 visit, I stayed briefly at the apartment of my future wife's Uncle on her mother side. Near the apartment was the "new" Dragon Center mall. What made the indoor mall special was that it had a working rollercoaster. Supposedly, for safety reason, the coaster is no longer used, but the tracks are still there. I tried to photograph the tracks but for whatever reason a security guard didn't let me. I don't see why. Even with 911 and threats of attacks to the NYC subway, no law has yet been passed to ban photographing in the NYC subway. Maybe the guard just liked to pick on us tourists. Other new additions to Dragon Center are the ice skating rink and arcade zone.

Hong Kong Subway

I've just had my full day in Hong Kong. As someone who loves mass transit, I was amazed anew by the Hong Kong subway. They now have added glass screens to separate the people waiting on platforms. Only when trains arrive in the station do the doors on the glass screens open up to admit and discharge passengers. Amazing! No need to worry about someone having seizure or some drunks falling onto the track.

Hello From Hong Hom

On Thursday, in the afternoon, we took a train from Guang Zhou to Kowloon, Hong Kong. The trip completed the transportation modes we used on this vacation - airplane from JFK to HK International on Lantau Island, bus from Hong Kong to Guang Zhou, short boat ride during a theme park visit in Hainan, and now train. We even had a cable car, like a ski lift, when we visited Monkey Island, prior to checking into the Waika Hotel. The last night we were in Taishan, my Son and a cousin also got a moped ride around rural China, thanks to Uncle P.

It feels almost like home while in Hong Kong, just that people drive on the "wrong" side of the road. We arrived in Tsim Sha Tsui, a tourist area, at night and neon signs were everywhere. The sky two floors up in almost all directions were just neon signs of stores trying to grab our attention. We decided to eat Vietnamese but it took a few queries with the local to find one. Even then, the small store had to have an employee walk us two blocks to the bigger store to accommodate our group of twelve.

BTW, the China Firewall isn't in use in Hong Kong. I can finally write new entries and see them exactly as how the world sees them.

Vacation Day From The Vacation

Yesterday, some time during the long wait for the pantyhose shopping spree to end, I decided that I would regain from the herd some control of my day. I decided that I won't be leaving the hotel the next day, i.e. Wedn. April 11. The Wife and her family etc can go anywhere they want, I just won't be a part of the herd, at least for the day. The Wife reassured me that they would visit some local tourist spot and there won't be a shopping event, but I stood my ground. I feel guilty about not being with my Son but there were many adults in the group, someone better be a responsible adult and not just go ga-ga at the sight of a SALE sign or be in deep conversation about the good old days and pay no attention to the kids.

I started the day with dim sum with the Wife's old classmates. Well, it was really she and her chums eating and talking at one table while Son and I ate at another table in the same room. I can take that. It's something to do for the Wife, not for some distant relative's fifth cousin. After the Wife left the hotel with the Son, I took a nap, watched TV, read a sci-fi paperback, and listened to a This Week In Tech podcast on my iPod, with a nap or two here and there. Then I had lunch in the Western restaurant in the hotel lobby - porkchop and Coke. Originally, I wanted seafood pizza, but just because it was on the menu didn't mean the chef on hand could make it. After lunch, I plunked down another 15 yuan, or about $2, for another hour of Internet time.

So much with complaining. I did enjoy a few moments here and there. Borrowing a page from my sister's blog, below is a list of differences I noticed between this China visit and that from my first visit back in 1994. It may not be 1994, it may be 1993, but for argument's sake, I'll assume it was 1994.

• Water. Back in 1994, at the home of Uncle P, where I stayed at, water had to be obtained from a hand pump. That was better than going to the public well, but still it was an inconvenience. On this trip, I learned that indoor plumbing has arrived to this part of rural China, even though the pipes are outside the walls, not inside them. Only in newer buildings would one find indoor plumbing with the pipes out of sight. In older houses, it would be too much troubles to knock down the walls to hide the pipes, would it not?
• Paved Roads. One night during my 1994 visit, Uncle P and I had to ferry the Wife's maternal grandma home on bicycles. There were some large pieces of kitchen equipments, maybe a wok or a rice pot, and they were tied to the bicycle I rode on. Uncle P took care of carrying grandma on his bike. The distance wasn't that great, but the trip was difficult because the road consisted of dirt and rocks, with puddles here and there. It was nighttime and we had perhaps only a flashlight, the moon, and the stars. Our two bikes were the only traffic on the road. More than 10 years later, the road is now paved and lit. Traffic consists of many trucks, mopeds, and even some cars.
• Telephone. I recall that prior to the visit, while in Hong Kong I had to go the post office to send a telegram to Uncle P. Then after we arrived, I had to walk the narrow path across some rice paddie to the village post office to send a letter to the U.S. I don't remember if the USPS had started using self-adhesive stamps back in 1994, but at the time in the village the village post office had a jar of rice glue on the front counter for attaching the stamp to the letters. Nowadays, many families in the village have telephone and many people walk around with mobile phone, some even with those Borg-like Bluetooth headsets. I noticed that many houses' outside walls have phone numbers scribbled by hand. Uncle P's daughter said the writings are advertisements for some services.
• Internet Access. Back in 1994, even NYC didn't have wide adoption of broadband Internet access and the village probably had zilch. Now the Net is reachable via DSL, which is understandable since DSL works over phone lines. I don't know about the big cities, but I can see that cable TV is not yet available in the village. The phone had become a necessity so DSL adoption is natural, but watching movies and TV shows on cable TV is still a luxury. I borrowed Uncle P's PC one day and access was so-so. At the Waika Hotel in northern Hainan Island, my Son tried to play some game on PBSKids.org and it took forever to load. In general, anything half the world away took time to load. Not surprisingly, I haven't seen a single Mac computer. It's so much easier to cobble together a motherboard and some adapter cards to make a PeeCee running on Windoze. BTW, at 15 yuans/hour, my Internet time at this hotel, the Sunrise Hot Spring in Taishan, is the cheapest I found on this trip. At Waika it was 20 yuan/half-hour and at Holiday Inn Resort in Sanyan (south Hainan) it was 30 yuan/half-hour.

My one-hour computer time is almost up. I do have photos further supporting some of my findings listed above, but even though I have the necessary hardware to transfer the photos to this computer, I don't want to risk messing up the PC. It's a Windoze PeeCee after all, who knows what kinds of problem I may introduce into it by just connecting it to a digital camera. Speaking of PC problems, a few days after I first used Uncle P's PC, his daughter had to rebuild the machine from scratch because it crashed. Piece of Crap.

Taishan, Second Stay

I am on my second stay in Taishan, or some rural area of it to be exact. I had the false hope that on the first stay I did my part in visiting the in-laws' relatives, neighbors, and friends, but no... Today we visited a friend of my father-in-law, but the worst part came when the women in the group descended upon some store that sells pantyhose and bras at very good price. I don't know how much money they saved, but I was bored to tears after the many hours waiting for them to finish their shopping. Marriage, schmarriage, what a compromise...

China Trip

I finally found a few quiet moments to compose a second blog entry while on vacation. I see that there is one comment to the first entry, but viewing it is equivalent to previewing the blog, which is filtered out by the China Firewall. I'll just have to wait until I am outside the Firewall, or back in the U.S. of A. On second thought, I am able to see the comment as an email message in my Gmail inbox.

This trip so far is mostly an oblication, just a word I made up - a combination of obligation and vacation. The trip started out in the inlaw's home village and everything was for meeting all those relatives on the wife's side. No fun there, although I probably have some new faces for the extended family tree I maintain. Also, there's plenty of materials for future blog entries. In no particular orders, I can see future entries on the following topics:

• bullshit, the real type that comes out of the bull, not those found in politics or some corporate offices
• indoor plumbing with exposed pipes
• squat toilets
• Internet access
• rural landscape
• community life
• Hainan tourism
• homesickness

Testing The China Firewall

Can a blog entry be made on qaptainqwerty.blogspot.com while being inside China? The good news is Yes, but the bad news is that the finished entry, or probably the whole domain of blogspot.com, cannot be viewed.

Off To Vacation

I'm all packed and ready to go on my vacation. Out is the DVD player and the two discs - there is just no room for the player. Well, the kids just have to be creative and find other things to do. That video iPod sure looks attractive now...

I'm tempted to try to access Gmail via a mobile phone. Perhaps if that SIM card switcheroo works out on my device, I'll try it, if it doesn't cost so much. I've thought of giving moblog (mobile blogging) a try, but I haven't made a penny with AdSense so I don't see the point of spending extra money on maintaining this blog. Perhaps I'll update the blog via the computer at the home of the wife's relative. I even bring along the transfer cable for the digital camera, but don't count on it - it's Windoze after all, chances are I'll have to do twenty things to the PeeCee before it can recognize my camera and bring the photos in. I'm sure there are Internet cafes along the trip. It's a matter of finding the time to sit down for a few quiet minutes to compose my thought. There is a disadvantage in traveling in a big room, especially when it's your in-laws and they all think alike, which somehow makes all your decisions invalid...

Qaptain Qwerty out...

Fun Pack

I'm mostly packed for my trip. Actually, that should be "my wife already packed all the essential stuff, like clothes, hygiene items, and medicines." The things that I like to pack are what I call fun stuff. Things to keep the kids, perhaps myself, entertained during all the dead time, e.g. in flight, waiting at the mall for the women to go shopping, etc.

Cathay Pacific has personal TV in every seat, so that will help provide plenty of in-flight entertainment. Originally, I was going to buy an airline adapter to power my portable DVD player, but now that won't be necessary, I hope. Other things that I definitely will bring are:

• crayons
• markers for use on paper
  
• dry erase boards and markers
• paper for drawing
• iPod with Y-splitter and two sets of earphones
• novel - I swiped a thick novel off my colleague's personal sci-fi library in the office. I should send him a note...
• Flushed Away and Happy Feet DVDs, mostly to be used during some down time in China or HK. I keep the receipt in my wallet in case Chinese authorities suspect the discs are illegal copies...

Other things to bring:

• adapter to use China wall electrical sockets
• extension cable to convert one outlet to three - wonder if the voltage difference will matter...
  
• charger for iPod
• charge for cell phone - supposedly my cell phone won't work in China and at some steep roaming price in HK, but I heard that I can buy a SIM card in HK and swap mine out to make local calls. Interesting concept.
• dental floss
• extra AAA batteries for my ancient Handspring PDA
• digital camera with extra battery and memory card
• Besta Chinese electronic dictionary - hey, it might be useful in reading street signs somewhere in China or HK.

I'm sure there are other things I want to bring, but I am sure I'll think of them just as I head out the door...

China Vacation

In a few days, I'll be going on vacation with the in-laws to their home village, then to Hainan Islands and Hong Kong. Ho hum. Been there, done that. Granted it was more than ten years ago that I last visited China and Hong Kong, but I don't expect much difference. Originally, I was hoping I would go to Shanghai but in the end it turned out we won't have enough time. Hopefully, the trip will be an eye-opener for my son. It'll be his first trip to a non-Western world.

In my mind, China is still that Evil Empire communist country where the government crushes its citizens. Where corruption and bribery are standard fare. Where intellectual properties don't mean anything. Where ripoff and poor imitation of great designs are made. I guess despite what my late father's attempt in ingraining in our mind all the great things about being Chinese, I've spent too many years growing up in the U.S. to have any positive feelings toward China the country.

I don't look forward to the long flight half-way around the world, the constant bargaining charade to go through whenever we have to buy things on our own. To be fair, bargaining was required in most non-mall stores in Cancun, Mexico, too. Oh, well, I'll do it for the Kid.

World66.com

create your own visited country map

I like to use Blogger's Next Blog button to randomly visit other blogs. They have done a good job of cleansing blogosphere of splogs (fake blogs that are really spams web sites). One blog I happened upon showed a map of the world with the countries the blog writer had visited. The service came from World66.com, linked in the title of this blog. Just check the boxes corresponding to the countries you have visited and generate the map with the click of a button. There are also sections just for European countries, U.S. States, and Canadian provinces.

Not much of a world traveler, I visited only 12 countries or a meager 5% of the world. I did not counting Belgium and Japan, since I was in those two countries only for connecting flights. I was born in Vietnam so there's no surprise there. I left Vietnam for the open sea and spent a few months in refugee camp in Indonesia. It was no Club Med, but still it was an extensive stay. Then I was in Singapore for a few weeks to catch a flight to the U.S. of A. Some years later I visited Canada, China, and Hong Kong, on different occasions. Fast forward a few years, and I happened to work for a travel company as its sole techie person. I got to travel with the president of the company to London, England for a meeting, after which, on my own time, I took the train through the Chunnel to Paris, France. On another trip, we went to Milan, Italy and Frankfurt, Germany. A few months after that, another business-related trip followed but this time I got stuck in the underbelly of Chennai, India, aka Madras. I was supposed to check up on the progress, or the lack thereof, of some software house that was developing for said travel company. My world travel pretty much ended with honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico. Sure I went back to Canada, but as the saying goes, been there done that.

Dodge That Anvil!

For the past few nights, I've been busy writing for About This Particular Mac (ATPM) a review of the game Dodge That Anvil! (DTA!) from Rabidlab. As the name aptly describes, the goal of the game is to avoid being hit by anvils falling from the sky, while pulling carrots and such out of the ground. Well, it's just a computer game, something to while away the time.

I used to think it would be nice to work as a game tester. Supposedly Nintendo has employees whose sole responsibility is to test out the new games made for the consoles or handheld devices. How cool a job is that? Get paid to play. After finishing the review of DTA! I don't think it is that cool anymore. When there's a condition to doing what you think is enjoyable, it's not fun any more. I suppose those Nintendo testers at some point would rather be pushing paper or finding values with VLookup() in Excel. Too much play can make Jack a dull boy, too. While I like DTA! a lot for being relatively easy to play, at times I HAD to play it just to gather enough info about it for the review. Unlike traditional magazine, online mag like ATPM doesn't have the constrain of space. As long as the review doesn't turn into an encyclopedia entry, one can write as much as applicable. I started testing the game using the Toon challenge level, in which one cannot die, just to advance as fast as possible through the various levels the game offer. But then I HAD to try out the other challenge levels to see the differences. Also, even though I already had the full version of the game, I HAD to install a demo on a different computer to learn about the demo's limitation. When one HAS to do things, the end result ceases to be enjoyable. While I strongly believe in the great work ATPM does and really want to help further its goal of disseminating Mac info to the world, I didn't have as much fun playing DTA! as I thought I would.

Now that the review is done with, I'll allow a few weeks of zero DTA! then go back to it. I'll play the Toon level again and this time will go all the way to the final level.

Crosswords

Out of nowhere, I recently resumed my interest in doing crossword puzzles. When riding the subway, normally I have a paperback or my iPod with me, but one time last week I didn't have either. Maybe I had the iPod but its battery was depleted. It's one of the minor annoyance with the iPod. I would walk out the door and the battery meter would indicate the device had 75% power, but by the time I reached the train platform, a mere few minutes later, there would be nothing left. I think I have the 10-GB iPod for at least three years already. I suppose electronic devices are not supposed to be used this long.

I happened to have a copy of Metro New York, one of the free daily newspapers, with me at the time. I've been reading Metro almost everyday but never once bothered to try the crosswords. Perhaps there was an easy clue or two so I was able to populate some section of the puzzle. The more I read into it, the more I was able to solve the puzzle. Soon enough, I was going old piles of newspaper pulling the crossword pages. I will stick to the general theme in the newspaper instead of those specific to the magazines. For example, I used to do TV Guide puzzles and ended up only learning about TV stars or shows with short names. My goal with the crosswords is to learn real, useful English words.

Compared to Scrabbles, playing the crosswords is much better in terms of learning or using words. The shortest crosswords word must be at least three letters long, so I don't have to deal with those obscure two-letter Scrabbles craps. I discovered that I know a lot more words compared to back in high school days, which is, oh, only about twenty years ago. I still cannot solve entire puzzles - there are always some authors or celebrities who I don't know about. Sure, I know the Cambodian politician Pol Pot, but that's only because Cambodia is a neighbor country of Vietnam, so I only happen to know a little bit about it.

For those people that I don't know about, I plan to look them up on the web some day. I haven't resorted at all to Google and its ilk in this newly-re-discovered enthusiasm. Back in the old days, when I do the crossword puzzles, I would have stacks of books nearby. Almanacs were useful for looking up people's names or geographic info. Dictionaries are a must. Some words are so obscure only certain big fat dictionaries would have them. Barlett's Book of Quotations or some dictionary of American slang and idioms sometimes help. In extreme cases, I even made trips to the public library to look things up. Aaaah, such were the days before personal computer and the advent of the Internet.

Flash Flopped


// This script takes the user to Scene 2 when goScene_btn
// is released.
goScene_btn.onRelease = function() {
gotoAndStop("Scene 2", 1);
};

Good grief! All I wanted was to make a button for use on the web, that when clicked on does something, like revealing a picture behind it. But in Macromedia Flash it's not as simple as I think it should. The above "code" is needed just to go to Scene 2 of some movie clip. I sure had the wrong idea about Flash.

A long time ago, when there was a computer called the Commodore Amiga, bundled with the computer was an authoring program called AmigaVision. One could write multimedia applications with AmigaVision all from by dragging icons into places and setting up their various parameters. For example, you can have a movie clip loaded, then a music file played, then some text shown on the screen, and so on. AmigaVision was probably inspired by HyperCard, the grandfather of authoring software, from Apple Computer. Unfortunately, I never actually used AmigaVision, even though I had it with my Amiga 3000 computer. I just never had the need to use it.

I had the wrong idea that Flash would be something similar to HyperCard or AmigaVision. Just drag and drop icons representing the various actions then adjust the icons to perform the work. I have no problem with learning programming languages. However, I do plenty of that at work already, when I get home I just want to have some fun. The Flash language, I think it's called ActionScript, seems to be object-oriented, that is, everything is an object with properties and actions associated to them. The lousy goScene button above has an event called onRelease associated to it, relating to the event that button is released. The trouble with this is that you need to know the exact thing to type, or know what to look for. Integrated development environment like Visual Studio help by predicting or listing the various options available as you type the codes. But again, when I'm home I just want to do something on the creative side, not learning a new programming language and the various details needed. And definitely not while the trial expires every day...

I may download another Flash demo, this time for use with my Windows XP PC, but perhaps I'll fare better if I read more about Flash first. I'm sure there are some good Flash books at the public library.

Winter Fun

Every time it snows heavily, adults would groan about having to shovel the sidewalk and dig out the cars, but to the kids it's fun time! It snowed good last night and while there wasn't enough to make a snowman, I gathered enough snow to cover the backyard steps and turned it into a slide. Last time it snowed heavily, J enjoyed sliding on the saucer sled in the backyard ice "pond". My backyard is tiny and the horizontal skid was just a few feet in distance, but it was still very enjoyable to J. This time the slide provides enough momentum for a fun downhill ride of a few more feet. I made sure there was a small path on the side for J to go up. Then I instructed him to either crawl into the saucer sled or sit back into it, never stand on it. One of the few things I learned out of engineering school is that safety is a very important factor in many things. A few friends of J in the neighborhood joined the fun and cheered each other on as they took turn going down the ice ramp. I was about six feet from the foot of the ramp to deflect the sled to the side lest it collides with the shack. A good time was had by all!

Irish Heart

My mother is very good with making food. She occasionally would tell the story about her not knowing how to cook until after she got married and went to live my father's family.

She has a knack for learning about food making easily. If she sees something she likes, she would ask about it. Even if the person only shares the recipe in some vague terms, she still can come up with the product. Sometimes she would improvise and substitutes materials to come out with something better. I have never cooked in my life, unless your count cooking rice, so I cannot describe how she does her things. All I can say is I'm lucky to have her around to make all the delicious food. Even when she experiments with something new and the result isn't quite what it's supposed to be, I still wolf them down.

She saw some contest sponsored by Nestle that only requires the use of their condensed milk, supposedly from their subsidiary Carnation. Mother made the heart-shaped pudding above as one of the many items she will send pictures in.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

NYC Auxiliary Police

I don't recall ever mentioning news articles in my blog, but a recent event changes my style. All over the news this morning was the killing of two NYPD Auxiliary Police Officers in Greenwich Village. Some guy, supposedly angry over a friend's job termination at a restaurant, visited the restaurant and killed the bartender. When he was followed by the two auxiliary policeman, he turned around and killed them too.

I recall one time in high school, perhaps in the junior or senior year, I took Criminal Laws and the class had a visit from the local auxiliary police force. At that presentation, I learned that the auxiliary police are just unarmed volunteers. They even have to pay for their own uniforms. They may be trained in basic self-defense but mostly serve as eyes and ears for the regular force. The theory is that having a police presence, even unarmed, can deter crimes. They get to drive police cruisers and I don't know what else they get out of it, but they can certainly get killed in the line of duty, just like what happened yesterday. I love doing volunteer work, but I must say the auxiliary police must be volunteering in the extreme.

R.I.P., NYC Auxiliary Police Officers Eugene Marshalik and Nicholas Todd Pekearo.

Whose Line

I've been enjoying a few good laughs from watching on DVD the first season of the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? The show is basically improvised comedy. The host Drew Carey, with the help of the live audience, would throw at the four comedians situations for them to act out. The star comedians are Wayne Brady (the black singer), Colin Mochrie (the bald Canadian), Ryan Stiles (The Tall Guy from the Drew Carey Show), and a guest comedian. The situations can be as commonplace as a house party or a dating contest, but most of the time they are exotic/uncommon ones like an encounter between Dracula and his slayer or a love triangle. The situations are usually twisted by requiring the comedians be restrained in some way, like not able to move on their own but instead moved by volunteers from the audience, or acted out in some styles of songs, etc. Further complicating matters, the comedians are usually assigned some strange characters, on the spot, and they must rely on their knowledge and quick wit to come up with something funny. My favorite routine is the Hoedown, in which Drew Carey and three of the comedians make up a ditty to describe some topics. In these days of instant web search via Google and such, sometimes it's hard to tell the smart person from someone who just happened to know how to look things up quickly. With improvisations, you just have to know your stuff to carry out the tasks. I truly admire these resourceful comedians.

MADAM I'M ADAM

Reading about Steve Wozniak ("Woz") and the computer revolution he helped fuel, I couldn't help wishing I was more involved with the revolution. It's just wishful thinking. It was the early 1980s and I was just a high school lad. I have overcome the language barrier a few years earlier and was comfortable with the English language by then. The revolution was already under way and the computers of the time include the TRS-80 and the Commodore-128. Thanks to my high school buddies M and R, I was enrolled in some computer summer program at Jamaica High School. I learned BASIC on, I believe, the C-128, in glorious colors. Something that I learned back then is useful until this day - string manipulation. Strings in computer programs mean text, as opposed to numbers. One of the exercises that we did involved determining if a string is a palindrome. A palindrome is a phrase that is spelled the same backward and forward, disregarding space and punctuation marks such as comma and apostrophe. Take MADAM I'M ADAM, supposedly something the First Man, Adam, said to the First Woman, Eve, when they, well, first met. Not counting the apostrophe, it's M-A-D-A-M-I-M-A-D-A-M backward and forward. To determine if the phrase is a palindrome, we would have to spell the word backward, picking up one letter at a time from the end. I believe we had to use the MID function to pick up the letters. The syntax for MID is MID({text to extract out of}, {beginning position}, {number of characters to grab}.) For example, MID("Hello", 2, 1) equals to the letter e. A FOR..NEXT loop, with negative step, was needed to walk along the length of the phrase. For other exercises, we learned about the LEFT, RIGHT, LEN, and ASC functions, etc. Really simple stuff but applicable in many situations.

Forward to the year 2007, I have uses for these simple functions in my scripts to retrieve info from Netware eDirectory. Using NDAP programming, I was able to determine the full path of a given username. For example, user John Smith, SmithJ, is an accountant in the New York office, so his fully-qualified name is .SmithJ.Accountant.NYC.USA. Having the full path allows me to add the user to groups via scripts. The only problem is that the path returned via NDAP is the reverse, like NDS:\\Tree\USA\NYC\Accountant\SmithJ. To convert the result to the dot-limited format I had break down path to its components, where each component is separated by slash. Then I pieced the components back together, only I had to start with the last original piece and end with the first original piece. VBScript and NDAP are all modern technologies, but they share the common string functions, such as MID and LEFT, that I learned back in the 80's.

One fun side-effect I had with learning computer in those days was the game Artillery. It was a simple game of two players taking turns shooting projectiles at the other party. Players would enter a number to represent the strength of the projectile and another number for the angle of attack. Now on my PowerBook G4, I have the game Pocket Tank, a descendant of Artillery. Pocket Tank has nice graphic, sound effects, music, options of wind direction and terrains, but the basic idea of adjusting power and angle is still there.

How about a few more palindromes to close off this blog entry?

ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA
(Supposedly something Napoleon said before he was exiled to Elba Island.)

A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA!
(How the Panama Canal came into being?)

SEX AT NOON TAXES
(A special kind of taxes for certain activity at 12p.m.)


As you may suspect, palindromes are mostly very contrived, something made up and its existence justified afterward, not something that would occur naturally.

iWoz

I recently finished reading iWoz, the Steve Wozniak auto-biography. In case you don't know, Steve Wozniak is the other "Steve" of the two "Steves" who founded Apple Computer. Nowadays, Steve Jobs has almost all of the limelight with all the cool products to come out of Apple, so Steve Wozniak, or simply Woz, may not be a familiar name to some.

Being a Mac fan, I should have read all those books about Apple and the Mac, but somehow I never got around to it. From other non-book sources, I had a general idea of the founding of Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs' house. That the two Steves built a device to fool the phone companies to make free long distance phone calls. Plus that the Macintosh was an idea borrowed from Xerox's PARC lab. Reading the book filled in much of the gap in my Apple history.

The way Woz put it, all the computer design from the early days of Apple Computer was his. He was quite an engineer, someone who not only design things but made them himself. He actually designed a Breakout-type game all with hardware. Bill Gates' BASIC hasn't been around at the time so there was no way to write programs via software. Woz likes to mention every now and then what binary is and how important it is to computers, but I think it's just a waste of time, even for a techie like me. The two Steves are four years apart, such that when Woz was already done with college and designing the first personal computer, Jobs was a mere lad in high school. Woz did give credits to Jobs for being a smooth talker over the phone and succeeded at getting free computer chips from some salesman. He also mentioned that Jobs was good at building computers, but still it was Woz who revolutionized personal computing by introducing the first modern personal computer - a CPU, a keyboard, and a screen.

Someone once showed me some picture of a computer, the CPU being a wooden case. I thought it was just a joke, but in reality that was how the first Apple computer was. The upstart computer was literally working out a garage or a living room, so there was no manufacturing facility to mass produce plastic cases for the new device. Instead, Woz and company just went to some hardware store, bought a bunch of wooden sheets, saw them to size and somehow cobble them together. What a humble beginning!

One piece of misinformation I had about Apple related to VisiCalc, the spreadsheet program. I knew that VisiCalc was the first of its kind and helped sell many computers, but I mistakenly associated VisiCalc to the IBM PC. According to iWoz, it was on the Apple computer that VisiCalc took off.

Steve Jobs is a great businessman but I have no trust in businessmen. Those kinds of people are prone to exaggerate just to sell their products, or provide misleading info, or simply withhold info if such action is beneficial to them. Not surprisingly, in the early days when the two Steves collaborated, Jobs cheated Woz out of a few thousand dollars on a project. Jobs claimed that they were paid by Atari $800 so each of them got $400. Woz later learned that the total was actually a few thousand dollars. Woz valiantly dismissed Jobs' action as youthfulness' foolishness, he simply wrote, "We were just kids."

It must be great to be friends with Woz. When Apple Computer made it big time with the initial public offering (IPO), many Apple employees became millionaires. Woz ensured the wealth was shared by giving away his own shares or selling them cheap before the IPO. The way Woz spent money sometimes sounded crazy. He threw away $12 million of his own money, twice, to produce some concerts, but he said he didn't mind and that the important thing was that he had fun. Sheesh, he would give me just $1 million and I can have some fun with it, too.

Strangely, there was no mention of the Segway, that gyroscope-based electric scooter that was the talk of the town not too long ago. Maybe Woz only liked to talk about his own invention, not something that he helped finance. In the end, he wrote at length about a universal remote control that he invented, but compared to the Apple computer, the story about remote was very boring.

theartofquitting

Totally by coincidence, shortly after my Art of Extortion cartoon appeared in ATPM, I was contacted by a Rene from the theartofquitting.com project. He expressed interest in my Quitters Are Not Losers cartoon, which he saw on Flickr . The project tries to get people to quit smoking and makes an art out of it, by showing pictures about, well, people quitting smoking, or the dangers of smoking, or messages about quitting smoking, you get the idea. It sounds like a worthy cause. In my immediate family, fortunately nobody smokes, even my brother-in-law quitted after many years of smoking, but I still know others who smoke. Check it out quick, as Rene has new art submissions every day, so my cartoon drops lower and lower on the main page.

The Art of Extortion

As I was preparing the letters A through H for the blog entry about Art Text, an idea hit me. It was almost like those old-days kidnapper's note! Supposedly to conceal their handwriting, kidnappers of bygone days would clip letters from newspapers and magazines to spell out their ransom message. They would then wrap the note around a brick, drive by the kidnapped person's family, and toss the package through the window.

The cartoon marked my debut with ATPM.com as a contributor. Previously, I was only a proofreader, a good one at that, I might add. The March 2007 issue of ATPM.com has both the Art Text review and the cartoon. I asked for the cartoon and review to be separated by a few articles, so that the reader wouldn't be instantly make the connection between the two. However, it didn't work out that way and the cartoon appears right in front of the review. Hopefully, the combo is still a treat for the ATPM readers. The title of this blog entry is a link to issue 13.03 of ATPM.com.

In the office, I'm probably the most technical person in the department. I have a knack for learning technical matters quickly. Well, everybody probably claims that when they go to job interviews. I suppose only my colleagues can second my claim. One down side with knowing more than others is that when you yourself have questions, the likelihood of someone else having the answer is not that great. At home, I use the Mac most of the time and usually can solve my own technical issues, not that there's much to solve. Getting involved with ATPM is a great way to learn more about the Mac. As I ran Art Text through the torture tests to find its weak spots or just to break it, then proofread the entire beta version of the e-zine, I learned a few things about the Mac that I didn't know. For instance, when programs copy info the clipboard, they can provide multiple versions of the info. In the case of pictures, the different versions can translate to different formats, e.g. JPEG, PDF, or TIFF. Art Text only used PDF and subsequently what it puts into the clipboard wasn't available to other programs that don't paste from PDF. I also learned that because of the different magazine formats ATPM issues, e.g. PDF vs. web, different publishing processes were involved. Errors or typos can be found in one format but not in the other, just because the tools used in one process may be smarter in the other. The staff members of ATPM include Mac programmers and professional graphic designers. I am sure there's much to learn from them as I continue getting involved with ATPM.

Get Firefox

Are you using Firefox for your web surfing? Firefox is the up-and-coming web browser, perhaps someday replacing the monopolistic Microsoft Internet Explorer. There are many things to like about Firefox, other than that it's not from Microsoft. For me especially the list of Firefox features includes search suggestion, RSS, and cool plugins/extensions such as VideoDownloader.

Nowadays most web browsers have a built-in search field where you can enter what you want to find and press Enter. No more going to Google first. With Firefox 2.0, as soon as you type a few letters into the search field, Firefox lists some suggestions, and usually its first suggestion matches what I want. Amazing! It probably has something to do with how popular the search term is, but still interesting.

RSS is the ability to subscribe to a web site. You end up having a button, sort of like a Favorite or Bookmark, but when clicked on reveals a list of recent entries to the web site. I subscribe to my sister's blog and now finding out if she updated her site is just a click away.

I installed VideoDownloader extension some time ago but never had any use for it. I probably read in some list of 10 Firefox Extensions You Must Have. VideoDownloader makes it easy to save a copy of a video seen on the web, which these days are mostly in Flash format, thanks to YouTube. A friend told me that he liked some old cartoon show on YouTube and would like to have a copy of it on his hard drive but didn't know how to do it. I visited the cartoon clip, clicked on the button that VideoDownloader added to the Firefox window, and clicked on the Get Video button. One more click to confirm that download and off it went. Some time later, I had the entire 50+ MB of the video on my hard drive. Maybe there is something else out there for MS IE 7 to do what VideoDownloader does, but I sure like the way it's implemented in Firefox.

I've joined the marketing group for Firefox , SpreadFirefox.com . I added a Get Firefox button to the sidebar of this blog. If you decide to go with Firefox, use the button to download and I'll get some points with SpreadFirefox. Hopefully enough points will be accumulated to convert into prizes, whatever they are. Happy Firefox Web Surfing!

Knock Knock

My son J recently became interested in telling knock-knock jokes. He might have been exposed to this joke genre from one of those tiny joke books that sometimes come with some kids' meal - I think Wendy's had them for a week a long time ago. What's interesting is J get s the concept of the joke, even if he probably doesn't know what a punch line is. He knows that you always start by saying "Knock knock" then the other party would say "Who's there?" He would next say a word to which the other person repeats the word, attaches "who" to it, and inflect the tone to make a question. J would then throw out the punch line. For example:

J: Knock knock
Other Kid: Who's there?
J: Anita
OK: Anita who?
J: Anita go to the bathroom bad, hurry up and open the door.

Most of J's cousins, a year or more older than him, don't grasp the concept and would make up nonsensical punch lines, much to J's frustration.

I try to help J along with his new-founded interest. I'm much of a punster myself so I am very happy to see J being interested in the English language from this fun-filled angle. Sometimes I have to teach J new phrases so he can better appreciate the pun. Below is just a short table I compiled for J.

Knocker	Sounds Like	Four Eggsample
Anita	I need to	Anita/I need to go to the bathroom...
Boo (Who?)	Boohoo	Boo Who?/Boohoo, stop crying!
Doris	Door is	Doris/Door is locked...
Dozen	Doesn't	Dozen/Doesn't anyone want to...?
Jose	Oh Say	Jose/Oh Say Can You See?
Orange	Aren't	Orange/Aren't you supposed to...?
Owen	Open	Owen/Open the door!
Police	Please	Police/Please do this or that...
Radio	Ready	Radio/Ready or not, here I come!
Sharon	Sharing	Sharon/Sharing is caring.

As a bonus, check out an old cartoon from way back in the year 2004. I had much help from my colleagues. Canoe/Can you and Venice/Where is are not hard to figure out, but 'SHowie and So How We is a rather contrived pair, but we all had fun putting the 'toon together.

SANE Saves The Day

One disadvantage in my computing life, up to now, has been having to resort, for scanning purpose, to Mac OS 9.22, the Classic operating system as compared to the modern Mac OS X (pronounced "ten", not X as in Malcolm X). I have an old USB flatbed scanner, a Umax Astra 1220U, something that I picked up at some show at the Javits Convention Center for $40. It is bulky but still works so, much as I drool over the slim design of some new scanner, I have no excuse to get a new one. That's one problem with trying to be environmental, not to discard perfectly usable devices just to get new ones. I still use a 10-GB iPod (no color, no photo, no video, just sounds) and a Handspring Deluxe PDA (8 MB of RAM, again no color) only because they still work. Unfortunately, OS X has no software driver for the Astra 1200U scanner. Each time I need to scan something in I would have to go into Classic mode and launch Photoshop 6. It's quite a step backward to have to use the OS 9 user interface, but it had to do. Luckily, I was able to download the OS 9 driver from Umax's web site. I have to give them credits for that, as nowadays many web sites want a little something in exchange for even something as simple as drivers. So, as long as I can tolerate OS 9, I can continue making use of my flatbed scanner.

One time I even ventured to check into VueScan software. It's a comprehensive list of drivers for many old scanners and other input devices, including even SCSI scanners! Alas, the list isn't comprehensive enough to include my Astra 1220U, only 1220S. It might work or it might not, at $40 for VueScan, I didn't feel like gambling.

One day I happened to notice that GraphicConverter's Acquire menu option has something about Twain Open Source. GraphicConverter is the granddaddy of image conversion program for the Mac and has since branched out to do other things, such as scanning and basic-to-intermedia image processing. Twain has something to do with scanning, that's all I know. Open Source is the whole movement of free software for the taking, even with source code included should you fancy making the program better. So it sounded like GraphicConverter can scan in using free software driver. A quick search in Google and I arrived at the Mattias Ellert site, http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/ . SANE stands for Scanner Access Now Easy and is some kind of open source format for making computers see scanners. I quickly downloaded the TWAIN-SANE Interface package but... the disk image wouldn't mount. I downloaded again and yet the disk image still wouldn't mount. No disk image mounted = no installer to run from. Just by luck, I decided to upgrade StuffIt Expander to the latest version, 11. That did it! One rule of thumb with dealing with computers - always make sure you have the latest upgrade for your software. Remember when I couldn't get the WiFi card in my old iMac to work? Since my iMac was right next to the DSL router, I figured there was no need to ever worry about the WiFi software. I disabled checking for updates of WiFi-related software. Then when I gave the iMac to my niece and she needed to use her uncle's wireless access, I got her a WiFi card and try to make it work in my house first. With the outdated software, nothing worked, but a post on a MacAddict forum and I was reminded to make sure all the software is up-to-date. Sure enough, once patched with the latest software update, the iMac was surfing the web wirelessly.

With StuffIt Expander 11 installed, the last hurdle was to make sure all the necessary software packages were downloaded and installed. One annoying thing with open source software is the developers like to make available all the various options. For me, I just want to download one file and run with it, but in this case it was necessary to have three different packages installed. First and foremost, I had to install from the SANE Backends package. Next was the SANE Preference Panes, which is only required if you want to tweak your scanning settings via a graphical user interface. Yup, should you want to you can drop into a Terminal box and do all the tweaking from the command line. I use DOS a lot in the office and like to type my commands, sometimes, but at home I don't want to mess around with Unix commands. Lastly, I had to install the TWAIN-SANE Interface package and everything finally worked. GraphicConverter was able to detect the Astra 1220U right away as soon as I told it to use Twain open source. Now the only times I need Classic is for my son to play some of the older I Spy games...

Mask-Changing

I first heard of the Chinese art of mask changing from the movie King of Masks. It seems impossible how anyone can remove a mask that fast. Recently I went to a Chinese New Year performance hosted at the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library. One of the performer, a Mr. Wang something, was a mask changer. It was amazing! He may have black strings hidden on his cape's shoulder, but whatever the trick, it was great to witness. Enjoy!

Art Text

I've been busy with writing a software review for ATPM.org, the online magazine mostly devoted to the Macintosh personal computer. The software is called Art Text. Think of it as somewhat of a Photoshop for text. You can do many things to plain-looking text to spice them up. In the accompanying image, I used Art Text to adjust various parameters of text objects. Each letter is a different picture exported from Art Text. A through D are actually pretty plain, only the typeface and shading were changed. A's shading is green glass, C is metallic, D is orange plastic, and I can't remember what B's material is. For E, I employed the Stroke effect to give the letter an outline. G reverts back to simple shading, but it's such a good one - it's called Egg. Sure looks egg-like, no? With F, I used a yellow gradient and since flower starts with F, I threw in a daisy field in the background. Lastly, for H as in HOT, I used a fire texture. It helps that the font I used for H, papyrus, is somewhat squiggly, like the tongue of a flame.

I've proofread many articles for ATPM and for my first review, I consulted their guidelines. I worried too much about adhering to the guideline, such as what info to include in the review heading and how to rate the software, and as a result had quite a stumbling block to get up and running. I think I finally got something going now, but just to get started was painful. Sometimes it's just easier to jump in and fix things up later.

Remembering Dad 2007

Six years ago today, my Dad passed away, after about two years of fighting liver cancer. The cancer started out in the colon, but by the time he had surgery to remove the affected tissues, the cancer already spread to his liver. Dad obligingly went to all the chemotherapy sessions. He cooperated at all the various medical exams he had to go through. Mom kept recalling the time when Dad went for some scan whereby he had to drink lots of some medicine fluid provided by the hospital. The drink came with choices of artificial flavors such as banana, strawberry, mango, etc. Of course, they all tasted equally horrible. Dad didn't complain at all and quietly drank it all down. He said that the doctors were trying to help him so he should be a good patient. On the other hand, in the same waiting room, there was an old Korean man accompanied by his son. The old man was making a big fuss of it and kept shouting and yelling at his son. None of us know the Korean language, but Mom could tell from the loudness and gestures that the old man blamed his son for his troubles. Not my Dad. He didn't want to be a burden to his children and just kept at taking the pills, exams, etc. just so he would hopefully get better.

The one thing that I remember about Dad's passing was how quiet and empty the hospice room was. At the time he had been in the hospice for maybe a week already. The end was near, there was nothing more the doctors and nurses could have done other than dulling the pain through injections and such. The family took turn being with him and Mom was with him all the time. But it was getting late so I drove my sister V back to her apartment. As I was heading toward the Grand Army Plaza traffic circle, my cell phone rang. It was Mom and she said simply that "He was gone." We all knew it was just a matter of time, but when the moment come, it was hard to acknowledge it. I calmly made a few right turns and headed away from the traffic circle to return to the hospice. Dad was still there, in the same position he had been for the past few days, as he was under the influence of all the painkillers and was not awake. But the oxygen machine had been turned off and other than Mom's quiet sob, the room was totally quiet. It was the oxygen machine that was making all the hissing noises, but its service was no longer required. Sitting down in some armchair, my tears just flowed freely. "Che^'t la` he^'t", the Vietnamese phrase meaning "Death is the end of it all", but I just couldn't hold the tears back.

One consolation for Dad was my son. It was unfortunate that he couldn't live long enough to walk J to school, to see him become so articulate, still he had about six months of time with his grandson. He was there in the hospital on the same day J came into this world, and Dad was present at the banquet to celebrate J's first month of life. In the photo above, we celebrated the three generations that we briefly had. Dad had a beautiful head of hair but lost it all due to the chemotherapy treatment. I remember shortly after he became bald, I got a bald haircut, too, to show my support for him. I don't think my parents got it, even after I told them so.

Hasta La Vista, Baby!

From the Non-Existent News Department: "In a scene too similar to that of the PS3 release, long lines went around the block outside the local Best Buy stores - these people really wanted to be among the first to buy Windows Vista! Once the stores opened, copies of Vista went flying off the shelf and fights soon erupted in a few places..."; "On YouTube, the video clip titled 'See Me Smash My Vista' had a million hits five minutes after it was posted..."; "In China, the file-sharing network Mien-Fei had to be taken down after downloaders eager to get their free copy of a hacked version of Vista overwhelmed the site..."

Yeah, right.

Just the exact opposite happened. Only a few diehard Windoze geeks wasted their time at the midnight release of Windows Vista. The photo accompanying the Yahoo!News article about the release amused me - it showed a Chinese lion dance on stage at some release party. Vista was so bad that even if Microsoft purposely leaked out an unprotected copy of it for the Chinese pirates to pass around, it wouldn't go anywhere.

In other Windows-related news, my work laptop has decided to take a break from working. It would not completely load the desktop. The system tray only had the one VNC Server icon and the time of day - good to know it still cared enough to give me the time of day. Some icons on the desktop wouldn't show and one had a generic icon, meaning it for some reason couldn't find its source file. The Start button wouldn't respond so initially I would keep powering it off, in short, rudely killing it off. Upon booting up, it again went into the same cycle and got stuck with a non-responsive and incomplete desktop again. Somehow I thought of issuing Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Security window and chose Shutdown from there. Only then would the computer properly load the desktop. Sheesh, any average computer user would know that's another way to shut down a computer, right?

In the Direction of NWDir

At work, I frequently need to find out whether Netware accounts exist for a given list of employees. The task can be accomplished with Bindview but I don't like that route for many reasons. Bindview's interface is very clunky and unintuitive. The export routines are still in the stone age of computing and can only save files in DOS' 8.3 format, i.e. eight characters for the name and a 3-character extension, such as RBusr107.csv (Retail Bank users for January 2007, in a comma-separated value text file.) What's more, with Bindview I need to login with a username and password, and because I don't use it often enough, I usually have trouble remembering it. The company doesn't have enough licenses to cover all the users in the Netware Directory Service, so to get a list of everyone in the tree means running multiple reports, on the different regions, and combine them afterward. I never figured out how to use Bindview's filter function to limit the resulting report to show just the users I am interested in. Lastly, it is a waste of time to have to make a list of everyone in the network and then go through that to find the ones I am interested in. The perfect approach would be some kind of codes that take from me a list and search just for them.

With ActiveDirectory or NT, I have found the necessary codes to look up the network accounts. GetObject(), whether bound to NT or LDAP provider, provides what I need. With Netware, there are very few code examples out there to learn from. I know it can be done because someone in the London office wrote a program, Novell Utilities, to add users to groups, all from just the username. I asked for the code of Novell Utilities, but the original programmer had moved on to some other position within the firm and his replacement could only send me the codes without any help. He sent me some VB project file that even after I gave myself VB6 I still couldn't read it. The replacement guy was so busy with whatever he had to do, I couldn't expect any help from him. Or at least that's what he said. So I forged on on my own, relying only on the search power of Google to find some code examples on NDS programming. Novell provides some reference materials, but without formal basic training and examples, they were totally useless. It didn't help that the company blocked access to Usenet groups. Usenet groups are the digital equivalent of public bulletin boards where people can post and read notices. There are all kinds of topics in Usenet and while many are technical-based, there are also many about dating, hobbies, politics, etc. topics that are best not be made readily available to the office workers to keep them unproductive.

I wrongly assumed that since Novell eDirectory is some kind of LDAP, I would find what I need by searching for Netware and LDAP, even GetObject and NDS. Finally, it dawned on me that since Novell Utilities requires some .ocx and .dll files to be registered, I should try to search for anything related to the names of the support files, namely NWDir. But it was only at home, on the Mac, that I managed to find references to NWDir in some Usenet messages. One big challenge with NDS is that to reference a user I would need to know the full path to where in the network the user is. For example, just SmithJ isn't enough, I have to specify John Smith's account as SmithJ.Accounting.NYC.Amer.Hercules, to properly identify the SmithJ account in the Accounting department of the New York office of the Hercules tree. With NWDir properly used, I can get the fullname from just the username and from then get all kinds of info about the user. I've cobbled together some codes and so far have not succeeded but I'll keep trying because I know NWDir is the right direction to take.

iPod Fast Forward

Some time ago, I started to appreciate podcasts but also lamented the iPod's apparent lack of a way to fast forward or rewind, so to speak. While anything is played, podcast or music, it seemed the scroll wheel is used only for adjusting the volume. Or so I thought. One day, by pure luck, I accidentally pressed the center button, i.e. the hub of the scroll wheel. Instead of the volume indicator, which "fills up" from the left as the volume is louder, I saw a little diamond symbol riding a white horizontal bar. Rotate the scroll wheel and the diamond moves left or right accordingly, taking me to different positions within the podcast. So that's how you would fast forward and rewind an audio digital piece on the iPod! I am pretty sure the technique is mentioned somewhere in the iPod user's manual, if there is such a thing, but it's a lot more interesting to learn it by chance, especially when the need is at hand.

SafariPlus

I use Firefox all the time and I am very happy that Firefox coupled with the Flashblock plug-in has improved my online experience tremendously. However, Safari is still the default web browser on all new Macs sold. As a public service for the Mac community, I searched for a plug-in for Safari that would suppress loading of Flash animations. There were some shareware plug-ins out there, but I found a great freebie that does the job just fine, and another that isn't so great.

If you use Safari and are tired of those annoying Flash animation, I recommend that you get SafariPlus. Installation is a somewhat simple matter of (1) creating a folder called InputManagers inside your Library folder - if you don't already have an InputManagers folder, that is; (2) moved the SafariPlus folder, in its entirety, into the InputManagers folder. That is it. Not as simple as how Firefox handles plug-ins, but not too bad either. Start Safari and now you have the extra menu item called SafariPlus under your Safari menu. SafariPlus started out as a cookie manager but I won't get into that. Select the new SafariPlus item and go straight to the animation page. I strongly recommend selecting Never, meaning don't allow Flash anims to be loaded at all. Instead of the ads, now you will have just a placeholder, like that in the screenshot. If you really want to see the ad, just click on it. Or Ctrl click it and choose Rewind or Play.

The other Flash plug-in for Safari that I came across works but getting it to work is just too much... work. You would have to create a filter, supposedly for the various web sites you come across. I started doing so but after the fifth one or so I concluded that's just too much work. I think I managed to achieve a quick result by making a filter called *.swf*, which means any web links that contains .swf, the default extension of Flash file, would not be loaded. The star or asterisk ( * ) in computer lingo means one or more characters. So, http://www.blah.com/cool-stuff.swf , or http://www.bleah.com/yada.swf ?=sksksk,foo=kwkwke, etc. would all be prevented to have the Flash file loaded. It seems to be a good solution, but I think the average user shouldn't be expected to know that much.

So, plug that SafariPlus into your Library/InputManagers folder and your Safari experience will be much more enjoyable. The plug-in is freeware but the author John Chang noted that should you enjoy it, give something back, whether by doing some volunteer work, give away an app you wrote, or give him some amount of money, so take your pick of the way you want to give back.

Harry Potter Completed

Last week I finished reading all the Harry Potter books in print and started anew with the movies. Though the movies are pretty good versions of the books, certain parts of the book had to be left out of the movie, maybe because of insufficient time. For instance, in the movie version of Sorcerer's Stone, nothing was mentioned about the bad feelings Snape had for James Potter, Harry's father. Then in the second movie, when Harry traveled by Floo Powder for the first time, he didn't have to hide from Lucius Malfoy when Malfoy entered the seedy shop that Harry had accidentally traveled into, all because he said diagonally instead of Diagon Alley.

With episodes about teenagers discovering the opposite sex, the book series definitely caters to the young readers. What I couldn't help noticing is the parallel between Adolf Hitler and the main villain Lord Voldemort. Voldemort's agenda is to clean the wizard world of all those who are not pure blood, derisively known as Mudblood. Interestingly, Voldemort himself isn't that pure, as only his mother was a witch, whereas his father was just a Muggle, or a non-magic person. Just like Hitler with his short statute and non-blond hair. Had I not know the author to be an English person, I would think she was referring the early United States of America, where people of all races were given equal chance of succeeding in life, well, theoretically anyway. Of course, nowadays, it would be political incorrect to put down any minority groups, so it sure cannot hurt to praise the melting pot every now and then.

America Through The Outsiders' Eyes

While we were in Viet Nam, what little exposure we had about the U.S.A. was mostly through U.S. TV shows like Mission:Impossible, Ironside, Wild Wild West, Star Trek, etc. We knew that the Wild West was conquered while Star Trek only showed the future of a conquered universe. It was shows like Mission:Impossible that gave us a view of real life in America, well, real to the Vietnamese anyway, even if it was a bit skewed. We thought that everyone in America walk around the house in dress shoes. That all Americans were large in size. Imagine our surprise when we first met Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, or other Americans who were not gigantic. Perhaps if we were dropped somewhere in the mid-west our misinformation would be confirmed, but not in the melting pot of New York. We arrived on a cold January night, with snow on the ground from an earlier snowfall, so the situation further supported our wrong view that in America it's always cold. In South Viet Nam, the weather is always warm, albeit wet during certain months, so it seemed perfectly logical that in America, cold winter should be all year round.

The accompanied photo is from one of the early snowfalls we experienced. We were living in Elmhurst, Queens at the moment, which was our second home after the apartment in the Bronx. I know it's not the first snowfall because I remember clearly taking the umbrella to the #4 subway station to meet my mother during one heavy snowfall in the Bronx. Coming from a warm region like South Viet Nam, where there has never been snow, the early snowfalls were very interesting to us. I have other photos showing my teen self making snowballs. Nowadays, I still enjoy playing in the snow, with my son, but sometimes I cannot help groan about shoveling the sidewalk.

There He Is! Revised

I double-checked with my older brother T some of the memories I have about our first subway trip with the IRC social worker, as detailed in the previous blog entry. I sure had a couple of items wrong. I don't know how my brother does it, but he remember lots of things, usually things that I forget.

I was sure that the IRC social worker was a Caucasian man, but T said it's a Cambodian man. Also, it was me who shouted "There he is!", not my sister O. Lastly, T confirmed my suspicion that all of us had to duck under the turnstile bar to get into the subway station. We didn't know any better then, but now looking back we all agree he probably pocketed the three tokens that were meant for us. Recall that he did deposit one token, which I out of curiosity wasted by cranking the turnstile bar. Shame on you, Mr. IRC Social Worker!

America - The Early Days

Ah, the early days of a new life. Unfortunately, I don't have much of them remembered. Sure wish I wrote them down sooner. Therefore, without further ado...

The Subway or Ổng Kìa!

A social worker took me and my three siblings from the office of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to some place. Maybe we were going home after spending a morning at IRC filling out paperwork to get our green card, who knows. I think the social worker was a white male person, somewhat tall for our standard at the time. Our English was bad so we didn't fully understand him. At one point, maybe after stepping out of the elevator in the lobby, some of us thought we saw the social worker heading one direction, while others among us thought we saw he going elsewhere. We were probably among a sea of men in business suits and it wouldn't be hard to follow the wrong person. I think it was my eldest sister who shouted in Vietnamese, "Ổng kìa!", meaning "There he is!" Maybe it was the fear at the moment of being lost in a new city, this incident remains in my head until this day. Another memorable incident during this trip with the social worker happened at the subway turnstile. It was the first time we traveled by subway. As the four of us huddled together waiting for the social worker to led us in, he deposited a token and may have told my eldest sister to walk through. Probably out of curiosity, I spun the bar on the turnstile - and wasted the token. I cannot remember how the social worker reacted to my stupid action, but I know we all crawled under the bar to get past the turnstile.

Arms Folded and Head Bowed

Shortly after settling down in the Bronx, near the T intersection of Devoe Terrance and Webb Avenue, my sister V and I started attending JHS 143 John Peter Tetard School. Naturally, I was placed in an ESL class, although some in the class spoke decent English. I vaguely remember the teacher being a Ms. Young. Among the students, there were a couple of Korean girls, some Haitian girls, maybe some other Vietnamese or Chinese kids. During my early days at JHS 143, the school sent a Chinese chap to be my translator, but a few months later I learned of his Chinese accent and didn't need his assistance anymore.

In Vietnam, teachers are held in high respect, perhaps on the same level with doctors. In the classroom, when we answer the teacher's question, we are supposed to stand up, arms folded and head bowed, to show respect. I did the same when I first answered some question from a teacher at JHS 143 and gave the class a big laugh. To all those kids growing up in America, without the benefit of knowing Asian culture's high reverence for the teaching professional, it was probably a funny sight to behold. I don't recall of doing that again, ever.

Coming To America

Today marks the 27th anniversary of my arrival in the U.S. I was in my early teen and accompanying me were my parents, my eldest sister O, my second older sister V, and my older brother T. We were fresh off the boat, figuratively speaking, or as it's said in Vietnamese, "chân ướt chân ráo", meaning one foot (chân) is still wet (ướt) while the other is dry (ráo).

We arrived at JFK International at night, via Singapore. It was a cold night, much like today. We came in clothes made for the warm weather of Southeast Asia. Our sponsor was Uncle P, a cousin of my mother, on her father's side. I think he brought us some winter jackets. We stayed at his home that night and for the next few days. The trip from the airport to his home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, could not been very long, but somehow it made me feel nauseous. Unlike my eldest sister, I don't get motion sickness easily, whether it was an airplane ride or a bus ride from the city to the countryside, but the short trip in Uncle P's car got me.

The first few days of a new life should have been memorable, but after 27 years I don't have it all remembered. I know I enjoyed Uncle P's bathtub very much, after the months of living in the refugee camps in Indonesia. I played with my cousin E's toy boat in the tub for what had to be a long time, because eventually Auntie had to knock on the door to make sure I was OK.

One day while staying with Uncle P he drove me to a nearby school. I took English classes for a year before we left Vietnam but bookish learning and actually using/hearing English were two totally different things. I spent a day at the school and had no idea what happened. Perhaps Uncle P thought my family was going to stay with him for a few months. In reality, after about one week, the agency that provided the social service for us, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), found us an apartment in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. The area is now somewhat of a Little Saigon, but back then we were only one of the few Vietnamese families in the area. Most people were nice to us.

My mother may have a better collection of photos from those early days in America, but I only have this one photo. It was taken inside the late department store Alexander's, at the northwest corner of Fordham Road and Grand Concourse. Other than that piece of info, I cannot recall what was the special occasion.

Twenty-seven years. In the movie, many years can flash by in a second, or as sometimes said in Vietnamese plays, "mười lăm năm trôi qua", meaning "fifteen years floated by". In real life, sometimes upon looking back, the many years do seem to pass by very quickly. In those 27 years, some of us went on to secure higher education, obtained professional jobs, traveled all over the world, moved to different U.S. cities, and achieved the American Dream of home and car ownership. Well, one of us got into the I.T. field and now feels his job threatened with low-cost labor from India, but that's life.

Happy Anniversary to my family!