Friday, April 14, 2006

ESWN black out

got this error when going to ESWN ...

Error

Sorry, you have reached either a non-existent site or the site has been suspended (or deactivated) due to Disk Space and/or Bandwidth Violation / Exceeded.

Site Owner: Please refer to this help page for information.

Did somebody forget to pay the bill?

Webby Awards

People love lists. So we have the Webby Awards here. Here is the current nominations. My blog is not on the list, so I must be doing something right, no I mean they must be doing something right.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Pokemon Theme Song Music Video

Nytimes Commute Digest

Save yourself, yes, people need to save more for their retirement, that is if they can retire, and save, at all. Social security is heading to bankrupcy or something in 2007 or 2042, so folks you are on your own. If you don't have anything to save now, at least quit drinking $3 fancy coffee every day. I don't have additional cash inflows other than my day job, so I don't do Starbucks. I can't explain to my kids like Daddy can't afford your college education because I drink $3 a cup coffee every day.

Older people blog too and they may be the better bloggers. Older bloggers tend to avoid cyber cutesy words. I think that's a good thing, got to remember that. When you are older or plain old, cutesy words just don't sound right.

Angelina Jolie is saving poor Asian kids one at a time. Soon to be 18 illegal Chinese alien, Young Zheng would soon get his green card from Home Land Security, thanks to Angelina Jolie who urged John Sullivan III — a partner at Fulbright & Jaworski to work on his case pro bono. Angelina Jolie might be much hated and made fun of, but I think she does some real good work, I mean not her movies, though.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Breaking...and not so breaking news

Transit Worker Union leader Roger Toussaint was sentenced to a 10-day jail term for inciting a 3-day illegal strike that left New Yorkers in the cold in last December. Roger Green, a democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn who sided with the union said the jail term gives Roger Toussaint "rock-star" status. I say WTF? He can't compare Toussaint to Martin Luther King Jr.

Jacques Chirac rolled back the CPE labor law. Unpopular economic reform is not going to work with the French. Don't worry about the French, as long as the gullible Asians are still lining up to buy Louis Vuitton and Chanel, they will do just fine.

Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron CEO, proclaimed he was "abolutely innocent." Let's see if the jury buy that.

While the Jewish folks celebrate Passover and the Christians celebrate Easter, I being a "gentile" just celebrate the arrival of Spring. I got to celebrate something. I refuse to be left out without celebrating anything.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

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Harry running
It's like he's running away from the branches' shadows. Daytime nightmarish run, with a touch of playfulness. He's after all smiling.

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Jin Lu


Queens Botanical Garden

Queens Botanical Garden

April 9th, 2006

Shot by a Canonite I found in the park. Shot in JPEG Large, should have done it in NEF. Fill flash. I really have no problem with Canon folks, Canon really comes across having cleaner pictures. People who have extra cash, please send me a Canon 5D with pro lenses or the Canon 1dsMkII with pro lenses.
Queens Botanical Garden

Saturday, April 08, 2006

"The wealthier you get, the smaller your balls become"

"Working class people play basketball, middle-income people play baseball and wealthy people play golf," Democrat Congressman Mark Udall was quoted saying that on The Economist.
That explains a lot of things.

Friday, April 07, 2006

A sharp knife

A good knife is a very good investment in the kitchen, it probably lasts more than you want it to last.
Any chefs would tell you a good knife is a safe knife because it simply doesn't slip that easy when you cut. No surprise here.
What does Jacques Pepin say about sharp knife? A sharp knife gives you a clean cut, it heals faster. I am floored.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Day After Tomorrow

They are probably filming the Day After Tomorrow 2 in Manhattan right now. Or wait, it's really snowing in April.... Posted by Picasa

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Apple takes matter in its own hand

I was reading David Pogue's piece on FrankenMac on my way to work. You know that's how I do my reading these days, on my commute to work, standing. Then I found out from a colleague of mine that Apple is actually releasing its own piece of software today to allow dual boot into Windows XP.
It's inevitable.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Hong Kong Streetstyle featured on Style.com

Style.com has a piece on streetstyle in Hong Kong.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery to think one can be happy without money
-- Albert Camus

Materialism is more fun when one has money.

Spring Break

New York Times has an article about Spring Break and anorexic. Thanks to spring break, now anorexia is a competitive sport, let's see who gets thinner the fastest.

There is also an aricle on the Magazine about the greatest man-band from Australia, The Wiggles. I like them too. When Alex was a pre-schooler, he really liked them and did go to Madison Square Garden to see their life performance. The oldest guy there is Jeff and he's 52. I actually find them pretty cool. Their songs, some of them, I can sing. I believe they wear Blundstones too.

Friday, March 31, 2006

Day Off

I am taking a day off to celebrate the nice weather.
I went to IHOP (International House of Pancake) with Alex and Harry. Plenty of sunshine and the temperature is just right for a day off.
Recent developments:
I haven't taken any new pictures recently and nobody really misses them, myself included.
I am reading some Ruby on Rails stuff, just another outlet to waste time on. I can't stop thinking of like Kate Moss blowing off rails everytime I read Ruby on Rails, is Ruby a person's name, who's just like Kate, like to be on rails...I think the name no doubt will attract some crack heads for this programming language. Ruby was invented by Matsumoto from the Land of the Rising Sun. My knowledge of RoR is limited to Hello World!, just like any other languages I know.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

No Blog Entry

Well, because my life is just as boring as yours and my total lack of imagination doesn't help either, does it?
Weather:
Weather is nice, it gets warmer and warmer and the day is longer and longer, you know longer is better - just can't help myself.
Over the past weekend, I did some minimal spring cleaning. Kind of cleaned up the patches of green we have on the sidewalk. Basically, it's a cigarette butts recepticle. I cleaned them up but I don't think the cigarette butts free status will last long.
Activities:
Alex and Harry are learning to swim. Alex passed the first level. He still can't swim without the floaty or bubble. We did some ice skating as well in Iceland on Long Island. Look like we won't be going skiing anytime soon, maybe until the next winter.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Afternoon Report

Microsoft announces Vista will be delayed in the retail market to early next year. Corporate users can have it sometime in November. Yeah, let the corporate slaves in cubicle farms test it out first before rolling it out to the serious home users.
Earlier, Sony also announced PS3 won't ship until November.
For people who dig fancy UI, you don't have to wait for Vista, Mac OS X is available, now.

Paris is burning, again. This time is about entitlement, it's all about entitlement. The new law is supposed* to increase youth employment but at the same time allows employer to fire, without cause, any new hires who are 25 or younger, within the first 2 years of employment. I like to work in such an environment, like you can't be fired. And you are entitled to this and that. I never work under any contract and I think many people don't. Here is like "employment at will." One can simply walk away from work, or get fired on the spot. Of course, if you are not happy being fired, you can sue your employer. But that's another story. In essence, nobody owes any 1 month notice kind of crap to his employer. There is no contract, and hence no contract to dispute, isn't it neat? Picture credited to Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images, linked from the New York Times. (*note "supposed" is believe it or not, a freaking BIG word, like I am suposed to punch out at 5PM every day, but then I am a corporate slave, I never leave on time ....)

Monday, March 20, 2006

Kissena Park

Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou visits New York City. The World Journal reports that he was going to visit Kissena Park today, though I could not find any picture to verify that one way or the other.

Friday, March 17, 2006

St. Patrick's Day

The city gets greener and you feel obligated to get drunk. And yes, men on skirt, or kilt. The Knicks, losers by default, even won a game against the Detroit Pistons, in their horrendous St. Patrick's green uniform. Jamal Crawford was the player of the game. Go losers, go Knicks.

Afternoon

FCC is postponing the mandatory adoption of terrestrial digital broadcast till February 17, 2009.

I suspect more actors and actresses will go under the knife once HDTV is in full bloom. Even Howard Stern went through one lately.

The older or old anchors are retiring as they don't look too good in HD. Network is replacing older guys with younger anchors for their morning and evening news. It's all HD's fault. That's just kidding. Getting old is OKAY, but not getting fat and ugly, that's different.

As more HDTV, or more flat panels are selling in the market, the risk of falling heavy TV sets killing kids should go down as well. Flat panel HDTV, it's all because of the kids.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Morning

Salon.com has an exclusive on the prison abuse scandal. Pictures too grahic to be linked here. I thought it's big news but I don't see any print media coverage, namely the New York Times. I first learnt about this exclusive from ESWN last night.

George Clooney doesn't know how to blog, and that's OKAY. So the blog appears in Huffington's Post is not his. Big misunderstanding or misleading. The link to the original Clooney's blog is gone.

Bill Gates is not happy with a $100 portable notebook jointly developed by MIT and Google. Obviously he is more happy with his ultra-mobile PC which retails for $599 to $999. I think I will be happy with any computer notebook that has somewhere close to a 12" screen, broadband connection, some USB port. I am not terribley about touch screen keyboard, I like real keyboard input. I write terribly longhand.

Microsoft took out pages of New York Times to advertise their people-ready software. For a minute, I thought it's a print ad from PeopleSoft. No, it's from Microsoft. I read that MS is planning to spend $500 million on this people-ready campaign.

I think the FCC just pushed back the ATSC schedule to 2009. Mike Wallace, Dan Rather could have stayed a little longer.

Barber Shop in Chinatown

 Nowadays I loathe to have my haircut, that's why I seldom have mine cut, maybe once or twice a year. I went back to Chinatown. I could ...