Just another Saab Lover

TEST BLOG POST FROM ONENOTE

2010-02-10T10:54:00.001-08:00

OneNote is pretty impressive…

My take on Thai people's Blackberry craze

2009-07-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

People here (in the US) uses crackberry just for corporate emails. Probably I miss something but I don't understand the craze of Thai people using it (great celeb marketing case study, probably?) I think iPhone's user interface, variety of applications and web browsing capability is FAR superior to BB's (BB Pearl's browser is even more terrible than Windows Mobile's). It lacks of QWERTY keyboard but well... do people use it that much to chat and send personal emails?

Anyway, I haven't played with any Blackberry since a little bit after Pearl so probably I can't say much. Choose the one you like best. I personally saved myself from two generations of iPhone and bought 3GS on the 2nd day it launched. Now I can't live without it. :)

Update: Web browser on the Curve is much better than the Pearl. But still the screen is still small, needs the ball for navigation. Although it's compatible with Flash, iPhone browser is still much much more usable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LJMLKou_9c

Top 10 Sad Songs

2008-07-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

Someone once called me a robot since I never understood how people can cry for sad song or sad movies. But what I experienced some time before made me realize why there are as many (or maybe more) sad songs as other kinds of songs.

I got this idea from High Fidelity, the movie I just watched and really like. Here are my top 10 sad songs of all time...

10. รักที่เพิ่งผ่านพ้นไป - Groove Rider
This song just hit right to the spot. Same place, same atmosphere, same music, same type of drink don't matter... without the same person.

9. โลกที่ไม่มีฉัน - Portrait
Everyone has one's own world. You can share the world with someone else. But when the world is getting spoiled, maybe it's time for the other person will just have to bite bullet and walk away.

8. เปลี่ยนไปทุกอย่าง - Friday
I was embarrassed at a concert by this song once. Having someone can gradually change your life. Losing someone can also be life-changing, but in a quicker and much more painful way.

7. ความเจ็บปวด - Palmy
Someone who's gotta go must go. When there's nothing you can do, it's better to accept the pain and learn to live with the change. Time will heal, you will be stronger and the world will be beautiful... eventually.

6. เจ็บจนวันนี้ - Bodyslam
I heard from somewhere that, to get over someone, it will take half the duration of your relationship. It's not really the case. No one can tell how long the pain is going to last. They key is definitely to let go. The longer you try to hold, the longer it will take and the worse it's going to hurt.

5. ยื้อ - Pause / Flure
It's just the worst position where anyone can be.

4. รักเก่าๆ - Soul after Six
Things are way too complicated especially in the subject of love. Most of the time when you have to make any decision, just follow your heart and leave the other out of your decision. Yes, it's cruel but at least it's better, for both, in the long run.

3. เกี่ยวกับเรา - Fin / Morning Surfer
Relationship is always about two people. If it's not working, it's still about two people even though there's someone else involved. Maybe because it's not the best match. Maybe because it's just bad-timing. Just end it where it started... at least friendship can still remain.

A lot of people asked me why I wasn't angry of what happened. I think if I have to be angry, it would have to be at myself. Maybe I was too careless, maybe I was a jerk, maybe, like Juno said, we just didn't try hard enough.

2. ปิดประตู - Boy Traibumirat (via Friday)
When you hit the bottom in your emotion, it's not at all a bad thing to close the door and just cry your friggin' heart out. You don't need any pretty reason. You can say you're just sad.

Someone needs to keep lyrics sheet and pen away from this guy. His sad songs can definitely kill. It's the second song from Friday that made it to this list. Major portion of the credit should just go to Boy Traibumirat. Other hard-hitting songs are ส่งแค่นี้, and recently-released ผูกพัน (special thanks to someone who tearfully introduced this song to me).

1. ช่วงที่ดีที่สุด - Boyd/Pod
Love is easy during the happy times. But when things get rough, it's hard but memorable at the same time. These difficult times show how much two people love each other. It's just a great feeling when you look back at them to see how you could get through it. After things ended, the past memories can come and haunt you once in a while. Good memories can hurt. Bad memories can hurt even more. But it's definitely worthwhile that, once in your life, you have lived through these "best moments".

I shouldn't have believed Boyd Kosiyapong when he said in the interview that he couldn't write any sad songs since he doesn't want it to make himself sad. I trusted him by playing his new album at the most fragile moment, hoping it's going to cheer me up. The little holding hand, the movie tickets, the messages exchanged across the world, cost-sensitive student trips, crying on the phone... all these flashbacked.

--- Sad songs are not bad if you know how to use it properly. They remind you that you still have heart. They give the meaning to some unknown pain. They can even help you move on during the most difficult time of your life.

Big Loss in Geek World

2008-03-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

Today, Arthur C. Clarke, one of the world's most renowned sci-fi novel writers passed away at the age of 90. His imagination actually inspires a lot of great technology invention. For example, people recognized him to be the inventor of satellite.

RIP sir. Hal is crying for you.

Track Changes feature in MS Word is great, but...

2008-01-02T10:41:00.001-08:00

You have to be really really careful ;)

Well... I don't think anyone would email a love letter as an attachment. However, this can be a lesson learned for something most critical such as sales pursuit or executive engagement letter. It may be annoying but you can turn on the warning to confirm if your file has comments or tracked changes before saving and emailing it.

สวัสดีปีใหม่ 2551 - Happy New Year 2008!

2007-12-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

Our beloved king of Thailand made this new year's card so I would like to share it with all of you. Have a prosperous, joyful and excessively fun new year!

MS Exchange Mail on iPhone - the workaround that works

2007-12-28T14:54:00.001-08:00

I heard a lot of raves about how iPhone doesn't support corporate emails running on Microsoft Exchange. The main problems here is that Microsoft doesn't open an API to their ActiveSync and Exchange Server (Why would they? Microsoft Windows Mobile is actually big in the corporate email user market). By default, you have a few options down here.

Use iPhone's Exchange mail protocol (however some mentions it works with only some companies)
Set the rule to forward or divert mail from Exchange account to other IMAP or POP3 account (A lot of companies, including mine, that are cautious about corporate security and confidentiality disable this rule, even if it's client-based. Also, addresses in To: and Cc: fields may get lost with these rules.)
Access the email through OWA, Outlook Web Access (It's difficult enough to use OWA on Internet Explorer of Windows Mobile devices. I can't imaging using it on iPhone's Safari).

Another workaround you may want to try is having an always-on Windows box that locally copies all the incoming mails to another iPhone-compatible mail account. Here are the benefits:

The rule is totally client-based and designed for copying mails from one folder to another. Thus, your company is not likely to block it.
All the mails will live inside iPhone's proprietary, user-friendly Mail application.
All the addresses on To: and Cc: lists are preserved so you can reply to all without re-populating the addresses from phonebook.

Here are what you need:

A cheap Windows box that you can always leave it on at home, with Microsoft Office and Outlook installed and set up to your corporate account
An alternative email account, preferably IMAP since it gives better integration to iPhone Mail than POP3. Gmail is one of the better options here.

Here are the quick steps that you can fine tune in Outlook rules. Note that I've tried this on Outlook 2003--will give you an update once I've got Office 2007 machine next month.
1. Set up an IMAP account inside Microsoft Outlook client in the same domain as the Exchange corporate account.
2. Add a rule in Outlook client by starting with a blank rule.
3. Set the rule to Check messages when they arrive

4. Filter some emails to be moved as desired (don't tick any box if you want the rule applied to all incoming mesages)

5. Select Move a copy to the specified folder. Then, click the link specified in the text area at the bottom. Choose the folder that belongs to your IMAP account.

6. Set up your iPhone Mail application to retrieve emails from this IMAP account. Use your corporate email address as the From: address on iPhone Mail app.

With this, all incoming emails to your Exchange account will be moved to IMAP account that will appear on the iPhone. You can receive and reply the Exchange emails on iPhone now.

Some caveats of this workaround include the need of leaving the machine on (if your dog hits the power switch when you're not home, your forwarding system is gone) and the Sent items have to be maintained on two accounts (although you may have some creative rule to move the messages on Sent items of IMAP account back to Exchange account).

I don't use iPhone myself but have tried the moving to my Gmail account; it works beautifully. Just give it a try and let me know :)

Key to the Next-Gen Kindle

2007-12-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

I wrote a while ago about Amazon Kindle and its technology. Although the current e-ink technology is very energy-efficient, visible in bright sunlight, and sufficient for black & white materials, it still lacks the huge ability to display colors. I found this potential next step that can fulfill the need through MIT Technology Review magazine.

E Ink--the company that invented the current e-ink technology used in Amazon's Kindle and Sony Reader--is working on the next generation of e-paper. The firm claims that it can now "add red, green, and blue filters to the capsules, producing a prototype color display". It also claims that the prototype screen can refresh at the rate of 30 frames per second.

Amazon.com is one of my favorite companies. I can't wait to own a gadget that is big enough to read on (not readable on cellphone) and is small and fast enough to take out to read at breakfast or an airport gate (not laptop, of course). With monthly and paid contents from Amazon (hope the pricing model will change by then), it's excited to think that I can read Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, MIT Tech Review, blogs, and books on the device, in colors.

... And I'm not even talking about Harry Potter-like moving images, and possibly video, that it can show. Imagine how cool that's going to be?

This Summer's Going to be ... Dark

2007-12-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

The Dark Knight, second part of the 'new era' of Batman will be out summer 2008. Same crew mostly: Christian Bale as Batman, Gary Oldman as the cop, Michael Caine as Alfred. The director is Christopher Nolan of Batman Begins, The Prestige and Memento (woohoo!).

You can watch the 2-minute trailer and download HD clip here.

Dude... Where is my country?

2007-12-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

After over four years of highly corrupted government which still shows damage to the economy and one coup that dilute the value of our democracy, now he's back.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119837519117247325.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

It's extremely sad to see the wasted two-year attempt of trying to improve political situation in Thailand. I still think that having a business Prime Ministers is good for the country since they can get things done faster and more effectively. However, ethic, honesty and love to the country are still the top qualities that any politicians must have.

The biggest problem in Thai political system is that there are several parties that try to just maximize their own benefits...

Q: Why do Thai politicians cross the road?
A: Because the other side gives them better position to be in the government and better chance for spots in a minister

One of few things that the ousted PM Thaksin said and I agree is:

There is no true friend or permanent enemy in Thai politics.

Only god knows what's going to happen next. I don't think there's anything we can do except to hope that the system is going to sort itself out. Another coup would do more damage than help to the country.

Give us back our country. There has to be the point that enough is enough.

Most Lovable Song on 107.7 The End Now

2007-12-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

Great guitar, nice lyrics, cool vocal. The screaming part is breathtaking and not overdone.

Dilbert's Ashok died!

2007-12-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Dang.... this can't be real. I really like the his personality. Hope he's going to be cloned back in the next few days.

Dang you the PHB!

Kindle - Good Idea, Bad Implementation

2007-11-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

Amazon just introduced a device that lets you read electronic books, blogs, magazines, and newspaper in paper-like manner. Although it's a visionary idea, people says it's doomed to fail because:
1) The device is expensive. $400, without touchscreen, or backlight.
2) The users will have to pay for blog access. The books, newspapers, and blogs can be downloaded over-the-air via cellphone network without any monthly charge. However, only a limited number of blogs is available and the monthly fee to access blog, though minimal, is not zero.
3) Funky Keyboard and colorless screen. Imaging reading Stephen Colbert's I'm America without color. Also, the keyboard makes the screen unnecessarily smaller and ugly.

Here's how I think it should work:
1) The device should be much much cheaper, say $100 to create externalities. Amazon is going to harness the profits from the magazine/newspaper subscription and high-margin electronic books anyway (currently charged at reasonable $10).
2) It should come with color touchscreen and without a keyboard.
3) Flat-fee monthly subscription can be charged minimally to cover cell network costs incurring to Amazon. With this, it should allow free access to any blog.

This is going to be like other e-book readers that came out and flopped. They can come up with future slicker device but that's not going to take off until they're reducing the price and willing to take some loss on device cost. $10 is the price point that people are happy to pay.

Don't be afraid of pirated ebook distributed on BitTorrent or something. Think about how Apple is making tons of money out of their DRM iTunes songs...

They Kill Again...

2007-11-18T17:30:00.000-08:00

The Killers's new album, Sawdust, is finally released. I'm trying the new Amazon mp3 service that lets you legally download non-DRM mp3 songs and listen them on all your computers and devices regardless of their platform and number of times. The price of whole album is considerably cheaper (~20%) than on iTunes.

Click picture below to go straight to amazon mp3 page...

Best of Both Worlds - My Mac Experience

2007-11-16T16:07:00.000-08:00

From my step-by-step Twitter update, you guys must already know that I just got an entry-level macbook yesterday. Here's my experience after roughly 24 hours of having it.

Speed and user experience are unbelievable - It takes about a minute to boot up from total shut down, hard drive is almost silent, and it never requires the Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill the applications that hog CPU/RAM usage.
Out-of-the-box applications are amazing - Apple Mail is even superior to Thunderbird. iTunes works flawlessly and real fast compared to the Windows version. Firefox (well... not really out-of-the-box but I think it deserves to be listed) has almost identical UI and shortcuts as the Windows version, but renders the page much prettier (esp. images) and faster. Spotlight is just blasting fast!
Windows is fully supported - Parallels Desktop makes it happen that they deserve every single award they received. My company's Outlook runs beautifully on the virtual machine, and speed is incredible. With Office and Trillian installed, I can now do most of my work at home on this Mac.

The only little things are the screen, which is a little too small to do some document work, and Firefox, which seems to act a little slow when Parallels is on. Hmm... I guess it's already time to go Pro.

Red Sauce Pasta is Totally Obsolete

2007-11-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

I tried a couple of light tomato pasta and really liked it. Then, I realized it's incredibly easy to make, esp. considering removing the need for horrible canned tomato sauce and making everything from fresh materials. Found the recipe here.

1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 tsp. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. basil
1/4 cup red wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions:
Saute onion and garlic in large skillet coated with non-stick vegaetable spray. Add remaining ingredients, and simmer 15-20 minutes. Serve over hot pasta.
Dressing has 2.2 g fat per serving.

I did everything pretty much the same except I used olive oil, didn't have cooking wine, didn't add sugar, added two shrimps in there (which are amazing), used dry chopped basil instead of fresh, and didn't freshly grind pepper in there (my pepper grinder was left at friend's place during the crazy drinking night -- now I'm crippled!).

Overall meal quality- fantastic. So glad it turned out so well so we don't have rely on canned red sauce anymore. The linguine was at its perfect al dante (add bunch of salt, wait till water boils before throwing the pasta in, keep the water boiling for exact nine minutes). Too bad I don't have any freshly ground pepper and fresh basil leaves. Also, we didn't have any chilled Italian Peroni beer so I had to go with Stella (Belgian) which is equally good but hey.. it makes it not fully italian. Garlic bread is not homemade (the secret is ครก) but it's not a biggie.

P.S. Biggest improvement of Windows Mobile 6 is the ability to upload the photos right into Windows Live Spaces. I had to beam one picture at a time with WM5 which was unbelievably tedious!

Greatest Hacker of All Time (also iPod Invention) Revealed

2007-11-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

xkcd rocks again! Never knew the writer is big fan of Chinese fighting saga...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

See the third part for the inspiration to Steve Jobs that really created iPod. I'm sure even the Fake Steve Jobs doesn't even know about this. (BTW, I just got his book yesterday. It IS high-larious)

Performance Review

2007-11-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

As my mid-year review is approaching, I just found this blog post of my friend. She's working for the geeks' most sought-after company with the name started with G.

I'm very happy with it. It proves that non-sense girl can be successful at work. It proves that you don't have to bullshit to be successful. It also proves that stealing bottle water from microkitchen everynight doesn't effect my performance.

I'm fairly happy with my career right now. But I can't say that I'm not jealous with her feeling above.

It's on Its Way...

2007-11-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

Life's too short to be frustrated by something you work, play, and live on... everyday.

Ordered it through MacMall.com. Will update with the overall shopping experience from this machine :) To make sure that those of you who'd like to buy it on Amazon don't pick the older releases, I've linked the latest update of the 2.0GHz model ($1,099) to the image above.

Other models are: 2.2G White ($1,299) | 2.2G Black ($1,499)

Tech Icons You May Be Looking for...

2007-11-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

There's a guy who's kind enough to create these fabulous icons and publish them without copyright... Visit UserInterfaceIcons.com

Found it via Twitter of Dave Winer.

Go Tartan!

2007-11-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

Finally we took the first place from DAPRA Challenge back from Stanford who admittedly performed better last year. Anyway, the VW Touareg is much cooler than the Tahoe, but what can I say, GM is a huge funder for researches at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

So, next time you're in Pittsburgh, esp. on Forbes Ave, be careful of a GM vehicle with a bunch of gadgetry stuff on top. It may be unmanned.

Seattle's Best Thai Food - Krua Thai Kitchen

2007-11-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Krua Thai Kitchen

2515 NE 55th St
Seattle, WA 98105

(206) 985-4398

www.kruaseattle.com

My girlfriend and I love good authentic thai food. We've been looking hard to find anything that's close to the restaurants we usually visited back in thailand. We know a lot of thai friends some of whom serve in thai restaurants. All of them say this place is a real thing so we gave it a try.

This place is definitely our favorite Thai restaurant in Pacific Northwest. We fell in love with Krua Thai since the first time we tried it. Fish sour broth (thick orange curry with water crest omelette and shrimps) really hook us and is the dish we must order every time. For the menu... Hmm... Where should I start? It's too hard to describe all the dishes we like in detailed like my normal food review on my treo keyboard during the flight. But i'd say there's no dish we tried that's disappointing. Beside that orange curry, the top ones are clay pot prawn, pork skewer, and trout salad. I guarantee with my thai tongue that all these are authentic. Quality of their raw materials including seafood, vegetables, and duck is also second to none.

They have about seven to ten tables inside and about three tables of outdoor seatings so the back lot can accommodate everyone's parking. We've been there on random nights in the week including saturday and have never experienced any wait for the table. Two waiters are staffed at all time but they also handle to-go orders which can peak some nights so the service may be a little slow. After all, they're all efficient, attentive, polite (and sometimes hot :P).

Full marks for food, service, price, and parking. Oh... Did I tell you that the place and food are incredibly clean for the price range? I would cut half the star for not selling any alcohol but it's a no biggie.

We eat at this place so often that you are likely to run into us when you're there. If you see a geek with a treo and orange curry on the table, don't forget to say hi.

Best Beer Buy at Costco

2007-11-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

I tried this Peroni the first time at Little Italy in Boston with a client who was raised in Italian family. Along my post on Italian wine, I think it's a good idea to blog this Italian beer as well. It tastes like Kloster (the beer popular in Thailand before Heineken came in and convert beer drinker including my dad to be its fan) so it reminded me of a lot of early beer drinking experience.

I found Peroni 24-bottle box at about a dollar per bottle and was so glad that Costco doesn't carry just domestic trashy Bud-Miller-Coors trio. It's quite easy to drink and not bitter but not tasteless like other light beer (good for girls and guys). The price is comparable to Heineken and Corona so I would recommend it if you want to stock some beer for future parties or dinners. It will make your party memorable because everyone has Heineken and Corona in their fridge.

Italian Wine of the Year - Straccali Chianti

2007-11-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

I've never been into Italian wine. Most of the time, we had Chianti at Italian restaurants since they always carry it as house wine. My experience with Chianti hasn't been good - the ones I tried had very high acidity and tannin esp. the horrible one Buca di Beppo carries (probably I should stop eating there).

I found this Straccali at the grocery next to my place. It's in the "clearance tray" with $6 price tag for 1.5L bottle. Can't remember the year but I think it's 2003. No expectation for quality at all - just buy and bring it to large party, I thought.

We had a house-warming party last night an a friend's place. There were me and my friend who were not against red wine so I was a little reluctant to open it in case it was lemon. Man... it turned out to be an amazing wine even when you don't consider the price - medium-body, great taste, and super drinkable. Between two of us, we finished 2/3 of the bottle even before the appetizer was ready - it was duck foie gras brought directly from Paris. I absolutely enjoyed it since alcohol has turned off my sense of liver stinky smell.

Someone also brought 1.5L Yellow Tail Shiraz and we opened it. A few other people helped us on that bottle but I could tell that the toilet bowl at that place was quite purple last night ;)

BlogRush Update: Steve Jobs-Style Introduction

2007-10-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Just got this email from BlogRush...

Boom! Phase 2 Is Now Active (And New Video)
BlogRush to me
10:02 pm (1 hour ago)

The massive BlogRush "Phase 2" is now active!

New Dashboard, new reports, new widget sizes, and a lot more!

Please start by watching this VIDEO that will explain how to use it all:
http://www.blogrush.com/vphase2

* It's very important that you watch the video FIRST
or you will miss out on some of the new additions.

After you watch the video login to your account at
http://www.blogrush.com

AND...

We're not done yet!

Lots of additional improvements and features in the works!

We're working very hard to help drive even more traffic
to your blog.

Stay Tuned.

Best Regards,

John Reese
Founder of BlogRush

The subject line is funny. It makes me think he tries to copy Steve Jobs at Apple Keynotes.

I really want to check it out BUT it looks like they screwed up my password during the migration -_- Just asked for the new password and hope it's going to work tomorrow.

In terms of stats, still two visits were driven in from BlogRush widget. Still keep monitoring.

Romantic Side of xkcd...

2007-10-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

Click the image above to see the full-sized.

Album I'm Waiting for...

2007-10-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Killers is coming out with their new album, Sawdust. Click the image below to pre-order from iTunes and listen to the first single. Hmm... these guys are pretty active -- releasing three albums in three years with some singles.

BlogRush Update: I'm Qualified

2007-10-23T00:24:00.000-07:00

Only a day after I blogged about BlogRush's quality audit process, I've got the email below from the founder.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
-------------------------------------------------------------

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

-------------------------------------------------------------
10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
-------------------------------------------------------------

We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've
removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our
new Quality Guidelines.

I've always placed the widget four pages (for 1024*768 resolution) down on the right pane. Well... sorry to say this but I wouldn't consider it a good page location (at least I wouldn't put AdSense there).

But after all, keep up guys. You're at a very important moment of your idea... whether it will take off or will flop.

BlogRush Update: A Month Later

2007-10-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

After I started placing BlogRush widget on my blog and wrote one update, here's the update at one-month mark:

BlogRush member's Dashboard and Report are not up yet; the temporary Dashboard shows that my "Traffic Last 7 days" is 36. Below is the preview that the founder promised to the community. Looks pretty neat.

Google Analytics reported that I've got two single visits from BlogRush widget, with the average page view per visit of... one.
The founder sent a short email (thank god...) to every member and link it back to his blog post. Here's a quote (with the part that I think important bolden):

We are adding Widget Performance Monitoring to our network. If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK.

We are working on something that might give members with poor widget performance a “warning” to let them know they are in danger of being removed from the network; which will give them a chance to give the widget better placement on their blog so they can, hopefully, rectify the situation and remain a member of the network.

We are not going to require our members to place the widget at the very top of their blogs or put it in any specific location. However, it’s common sense that if someone places the widget where normal visitors aren’t going to see it much, that they will achieve poor widget performance — and will most likely be removed from the network.

DO YOU HAVE THE WIDGET PLACED REALLY LOW ON YOUR BLOG?

If so, you need to move it higher on your blog to give it better placement.

Don’t want to do that? THEN PLEASE REMOVE IT COMPLETELY.

As I said, BlogRush was designed as a FAIR system. There’s a reason it was created as a COOPERATIVE network. It’s so its members can work together to generate more targeted readers for their blogs.

But this system doesn’t work if all members aren’t contributing at least somewhat equally. Why should any member give the widget high placement if other members are not going to? And yet those other members stand to receive the SAME REWARDS? It’s just not fair and, therefore, we have no choice but to make this change.

So any member that’s only willing to put the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog isn’t a member we want in our network — and our network will deliver more traffic, per member, without them.

This is the part I don't get. We have to give their widget good placement enough, otherwise, we'll be removed from their network? Here are my takes on this:

BlogRush is not yet a mature service. Its success relies heavily on involvement of the community, i.e. bloggers. Thus, the "stick" approach - forcing the bloggers to give up the valuable page space (potentially for ads) to the service that hasn't been proven to boost traffic - is not going to work.
The criteria for fairness and equality doesn't make sense. I haven't gone through the whole logic for giving members the credits yet but I feel from his message that earned credits are primarily constituted of the number of times that the widget is loaded, and not much on the times that the widget is really viewed or clicked. As you figure, the weight on views and clicks should be much higher.
Lastly, I don't agree that the higher the widget is located, the better performance it's going to give. Back to the second point, BlogRush should change their logic to give more credits when blogger's widgets are watched or clicked.

Like I said, I'm a big supporter for innovative internet marketing ideas but BlogRush doesn't go the right direction. The blogger should have freedom to choose where in the screen they want to place the widget and accept the consequence of higher or less traffic. Threatening to cut off membership is, frankly, quite dangerous for BlogRush at the moment.

Say that again? Dumbledore is Gay???

2007-10-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

JK Rowling revealed in her interview at Carnegie Hall that, while she was writing her HP Saga, she always imagined in the back of her mind that, Dumbledore is actually... Gay.

Found it through Digg and Leaky Cauldron so this shocking news must be legit.

The Office - Screen Saver

2007-10-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

I never ever got this show but wow... this is hilarious. Not sure how long YouTube is going to keep it though but just in case you're lucky.

Myers-Briggs - The Fortune Teller

2007-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been to or read fortune teller who just describe how you're like to make you ooh and ahh of how accurate it is? I just experience it myself. I took the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) a while ago with this the result below:

However, I just found out what it means to be an ISTJ - Introvert, Sensing, Thinker, Judging. Holy cow... it's like the writer has worked with me for years...

Serious and quiet, interested in security and peaceful living. Extremely thorough, responsible, and dependable. Well-developed powers of concentration. Usually interested in supporting and promoting traditions and establishments. Well-organized and hard working, they work steadily towards identified goals. They can usually accomplish any task once they have set their mind to it.

The text is excerpted from PersonalityPage. You can take the test of 60 questions and see the results there.

Something you can't stand, but can't live without...

2007-10-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

... the Palm Treo 750

Turbulance

2007-10-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Love this ad. It really explains all how my Saab 9-5 handles on the freeway.

xkcd rocks...

2007-10-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Oh man... I took me twice to get this.

I would be really surprised if they don't have any constraint on the Students table. But well... that's probably the first time they got this after all these years.

If you like it, here's their site and RSS feed.

This is the First Time that Dilbert is Way Wrong

2007-10-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

By wrong, I meant that the Dilbert part never happens. :P

Just kidding...

Danang Krungthep - pork leg, anyone?

2007-10-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

DaNang KrungThep Restaurant
905 San Pablo Avenue
(between Buchanan St & Solano Ave)
Albany, CA 94706
(510) 524-6837

I'm on the run again - now to Richmond, CA, a little town just a bit north from glamorous Bay Area (sayonara Kansas City, I won't miss you!). Great food, lots of night lives, tons of Thai friends.

Seems to me things are not that simple in consulting. For the first two weeks of the project, I have been carpooling with my manager to the client site at 7.15, attending back-to-back meetings till 7 in the evening, feed myself with crappy cold food at the hotel room, and work a few more hours before spending valuable time on recharging sleep. The cycle has been like this three to four days a week.

I rang a good Thai friend who went to Stanford for two full years, asking what she recommended around the area close to my hotel. The first and only thing she could think of is this place - Danang Krungthep. With all the steam I accumulated during the work hours, I know it's the time to give myself good Thai food and a bottle of Singha. DaNang is the forth largest city in Vietnam while KrungThep is the Thai name for Bangkok. So, we expected the balanced mix between Thai and Vietnamese menu from this place. (be careful of another place called Thep or KrungThep down the same street - it's not the same restaurant)

I was impressed with Danang Krungthep. The place, though not highly decorated, is spacious, clean, and well ventilated. At the time we arrived (7-ish Tuesday night), the place was less than half full. Parking is just in the convenient back lot. We were seated right away. The menu is huge. And, most importantly, they had the unlimited supply of Singha... Ahhh....

We spent about ten full minutes to go through the hundred-page menu. I decided without thinking to go with the pork leg (it's chinese/thai stew style with pickled cabbage). Seriously, most Thai restaurant just stick with perfecting their spices for stirred fry and sauces, and don't bother to buy the whole pig legs and make this rare dish from scratch. It comes with appropriate amount of skin. The meat is tender. Pickled cabbage is mellow. The dish and Singha just go really well together. We also had fried spring roll as appetizer. You know how good Vietnamese spring rolls are so it's not a disappointment either.

Full five stars for great food, parking without hassle, good service, willingness to go above-and-beyond on food, and supply of Singha.

I guess I have 412 more items to try at this place.

Chocovic Guaranda

2007-10-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

I just blogged a couple of days ago about the the amazing dark chocolate I found at Trader Joe's. As promised, I gave the sister bar with cocoa from Ecuador "Guaranda"a try. Although it's more fruity, mellow, and easy to enjoy, I like the strong cocoa flavor of the Ocumare better. Give both a try and let me know how you like them.

Demotivational Posters

2007-10-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Since the motivational posters are grossly overpriced (it could range from 9 to 20 bucks depending on how good wordings are), here's the site that let you create your own demotivating posters on your own. The selected ones are posted here.

Suicideville, WA

2007-10-06T18:19:00.001-07:00

As my girlfriend is gone on a business trip for two full weeks, this is how my weekend alone at home looks like.

This is how the next weekend and the week after is going to look like...

Dark Bar of the Month - Chocovic Ocumare

2007-10-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

I incidentally found this bar when I was doing my Monday project night drill, picking up water at Trader Joe's in Emeryville. There are several selections of dark chocolate at the register but the one with the tag "Unique Origin - Ocumare" offers specific sources of cocoa. Interesting idea, I think, so I gave it a try on the one from Venezuela.

My girlfriend and I agreed that it's the best dark chocolate we can find so far. Strong but not too bitter. Not at all any sour smell like what Lindt and Hershey's always screw their dark with. Absolutely right level of chewiness and sweetness. And it's just $1.99 per standard-sized bar. Great deal...

After a little more research, I found that the brand is Chocovic from Spain (so amazing that they don't really put their brands on the label; want the product to sell itself? Weird marketing tactic for chocolate bar). The one I tried was the Ocumare with the cocoa from Venezuela. Will try the one from Ecuador this Monday and will let you know.

Big thanks Trader Joe's for this dark sweet find.

If you don't have any Trader Joe's around your area, you can get it from Amazon below:

BlogRush Update: How to Write a Good Email

2007-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote about the weblog headline exchange service called BlogRush about two weeks ago. Although their widgets on the lower right pane consistently stream links to contents similar to those in my blog, they have hard time keeping their member's dashboard up. Currently, what they can provide is how many visits (and the primitive blogrush credits) my blog got so far, and how many referral traffics my blog received and created which equal to... ahem... 0 from the start till now. Google Analytics hasn't identified any traffic generated from BlogRush yet.

Their report feature hasn't been up yet so I don't know what it does. Oh... one thing I found interesting is that I received an email, all in plain text, from the founder. I've copied it below. I'm a big supporter of innovative internet marketing concept so I'm not going to criticize their service which is still strictly beta right now. But man... you really need to find a better way to write your email.

Even though I never consider myself a good writer, my first and foremost recommendation would be keep it short. Then, I know it's hard to call something out sometimes when you are writing plain-text email, DON'T OVERUSE CAPITALS. Also the mix of *asterisk bold* and capitals keeps stopping me when I was trying to finish the mail.

TO: All BlogRush Members
FROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

ARE YOU READY? Because *everything* is about to change. Forget
everything else up until now...

PREPARE FOR *BIG* CHANGES! (TWO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE.)

BlogRush CAN'T EXIST if we're not sending you a lot of ongoing,
targeted traffic. We fully recognize this and that's why this is our
ONLY FOCUS.

The BlogRush team has been hard at work making major improvements for
you and we won't rest until BlogRush is running 100% smoothly and
sending you tons of targeted traffic! This is OUR MISSION. Please
know that our entire team is working around-the-clock to make
improvements and fix any problems AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

(We sincerely appreciate your patience.)

We've encountered some problems since our historic launch just over a
week ago, and we fully recognize that we've made some real 'goofs'
with the system for our Public Beta release...

For example, our data center provider (one of the largest in the
world) had a short, temporary outage (they had to replace a network
switch) two days after our launch. We had no control over this
outage but want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE to those that saw this message
on their blogs (where the widget should have been):

"We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site
will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes."

We were completely *EMBARRASSED* when we realized this happened.
That simple message was part of our application code and was meant to
appear only on *OUR* WEB SITE PAGES if we ever experienced an
outage. This was accidentally 'marked' to be a global error message
for ANY outage -- including if our widget ever had a problem
loading. This was a major GOOF and we're willing to admit it. Our
code was planned so that in the case of a problem with our widget,
NOTHING WOULD LOAD in its place. So a visitor to your blog doesn't
see an error or anything wrong should the widget ever have any
technical issues.

This was quickly corrected and is now working properly. Should the
widget ever have any problem loading in the future, your blog will be
served a transparent space (which will show whatever background your
blog design has) and
your blog readers won't really notice anything.

Again, our sincere apologies for our major goof. It was quite
embarrassing.

NOW ONTO SOME SERIOUS ISSUES...

We also realize that we completely underestimated the number of
unethical people that would sign up and proceed to CHEAT and try to
'game' the BlogRush system. These cheaters ruined the click-rates of
many of our members (and burned through a lot of their credits using
automated 'exploit' methods) and hurt BlogRush's ability to send
maximum traffic to our honest members' blogs.

BUT ALL OF THAT IS ABOUT TO BE ERASED... LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

In the next several days to come, we're going to be rolling out MAJOR
changes to BlogRush. BIG changes. And these changes (again) have
just ONE primary purpose -- to drive more ongoing, targeted traffic
to your blog.

We've listened to your valued feedback and constructive criticism and
we have been working in TURBO MODE to make the changes you want ASAP...

----- HERE'S WHAT'S COMING IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS -----

100% MANUAL BLOG REVIEW.

Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that
registers to participate in the BlogRush Network.

We'll be applying some quality guidelines and criteria to our
decision-making process. (We'll be publishing these guidelines very
soon.) If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY
WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join -- i.e.
they won't be able to serve our widget, refer other users, or have
their blog posts distributed across our network. They will have no
access to any BlogRush services.

Our members, like YOU, made it LOUD AND CLEAR to us... BlogRush needs
to only have members that have quality blog content -- not blogs
filled primarily with ads and other spammy looking JUNK.

The only accurate way we're going to keep these junk blogs out of our
network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND. And we're willing to
do it to protect the integrity of our network. I don't care what it
costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any
blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM
from here on out.

* We realize that several non-English language blogs blatantly
ignored our "ENGLISH BLOGS ONLY" warning on our Registration page.
Rest assured, though, they'll all be PURGED from the network when we
do our QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT over the next several days (you'll read
about it in a moment).

As I've said several times before, BlogRush isn't some passing "fad"
or short-term service. We're dedicated to building an incredibly
valuable resources for bloggers FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

We'll also be doing a QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT of all of our existing
member blogs. We'll be reviewing every single blog that's currently
in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process
becomes active.) And we'll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our
network that don't meet our quality guidelines and criteria.

As you can probably tell by now, we're not messing around. We have
put a lot of hard work into the development of this service and we
will continue to bust our butts to make it one of the best Internet
services in the world. COUNT ON IT.

We're also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND
WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our
network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER.

We'll be dedicating an entire department to stay on top of any
abusive behavior in our network. We believe that our new measures
are going to instantly eliminate most, if not all, of our system
abuse. It's going to take us a few more days to roll-out all of
these measures (and to complete our entire QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT) but
rest assured, BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.

And a quick word to any 'cheats' that might be reading this
letter... it's very possible that you may come up with something
extremely creative that temporarily gets by us, but you should know
something... IT'S NOT GOING TO BE WORTH YOUR TIME. And I'm not just
talking about the tiny amount of traffic that you'll receive before
we shut you off.

You see, we have other plans in the works...

If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or
form, we will not hesitate to come after you. Our company is well
funded and has plenty of resources. And we WILL use them to punish
you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process). Oh,
you think you can just hide behind some anonymous proxy IPs? Sorry,
it's not that easy. ANY reason you'd have to try and cheat the
BlogRush network for traffic and any attempt you make to monetize
that traffic will lead directly to your front door -- whether it's
AdSense, any affiliate program in the world, any online pharmacy,
porn site, casino... ANYTHING. We will follow the trail and it WILL
eventually lead to you.

Our hard-working company provides the income for MANY families. As
the CEO of our company, I take this very seriously. I HAVE TO.
People that attempt to abuse or cheat BlogRush are affecting the
livelihood of all my employees and their families. And I will do
everything in my power to protect them -- it's MY DUTY.

So for all you cheaters that joined BlogRush and had your fun trying
to siphon off some traffic, hopefully it was fun. And I'll go ahead
and make this statement right now... IF you were one of the people
that has been cheating our network I'm going to give you ONE
opportunity... quit now and we'll pretend it never happened. I
think that's more than fair.

BUT... if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL
eventually discover what you're doing, where you're trying to send
traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT. Sorry, but WE
HAVE NO CHOICE NOW.

* If you're one of our valued, HONEST users, I'm very sorry you even
have to read stuff like that. I know it's a waste of your time.
Unfortunately, there are unethical people in this world that attempt
to abuse and take advantage of others.

MOVING ON...

---- ALSO COMING SOON! ----

**** A LOT MORE CATEGORIES! ****

You asked for it, and you're getting it!

We're going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to
increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your
blog -- this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all
members.

* Stay tuned over the next several days for more news about the
addition of new categories.

AND...

**** IMPROVED REPORTING! ****

The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users
right now. This is the reason that users show discrepancies when
looking at Google Analytics data (or other stats packages). We're
currently sending more traffic to our users than we're reporting in
the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits
everyday. We'll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all
the numbers will be accurate.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we'll be
giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the
most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You'll get a ton
more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need
it. It's only FAIR!

* Also we apologize to anyone that has seen a "negative" credit
balance for their account. This is a minor bug that we're taking
care of. It doesn't mean anything and you can just ignore it for
now. We apologize for any confusion.

**** IMPROVED NETWORK DISTRIBUTION ****

A few of our users have noticed that they're building up credits
faster than the system is using them. This will eventually balance
itself out as the network continues to "adjust" to the growth levels
and traffic patterns of each category -- because our network provides
syndication distribution based on daily average "cycles" and then
adjusts moving into the future; so it's able to accurately predict
how fast to use a certain user's credits, etc. -- as compared to just
using them all "as fast as possible."

---- AND HERE ARE *TWO* BRAND-NEW ADDITIONS THAT JUST WENT LIVE!!!! ----

**** BLOGRUSH "FLAVORS" ARE NOW ACTIVE!

You can go login to your account, click the "Settings" tab and then
select "Flavors."

You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have
to only use our original "black" widget design that many users
thought was ugly! (Hey, just don't let our lead designer hear
that... he thought his black design was "really cool.")

Now you can select a color that more closely matches the look of your
blog. Our users have been asking for this since we launched our
Public Beta, and we've taken action to offer these new options.

* We have future plans for further widget customization but we're
working on one "stage" of improvement at a time! Please bare with
us. We're fully aware of the request for a more narrow widget as our
current one doesn't fit on some blogs. We're trying to produce a
solution and should have some news soon.

HERE'S THE BEST PART...

You don't have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to
that "Flavors" section for your account, select the flavor you want,
then hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button. That's it! Reload your blog in
another browser window and take a look.

And if you want to see what a different flavor might look like, just
pick another one, hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button and reload your
blog. PRESTO! :-)

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST...

***** BLOG POST CONTROLS *****

Under the "Settings" tab you'll also find a new option called, "My
Post Control." Here's what this awesome new feature does...

You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts...

For example, you can add a keyword or phrase and create a new post
filter. If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that
filter active -- and you can add/delete them at anytime) that
contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that
post...

WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won't use any of
your syndication credits!

All bloggers post "off-topic" stuff from time to time, or short posts
that don't have a ton of great content. Well, now you can easily
keep any of those types of posts from using your valuable syndication
credits and from being shown across the network!

This is GREAT for you because now you can control exactly which posts
of yours will be syndicated. This can help you maximize your CLICK-
RATES and, ultimately, the traffic you receive from the BlogRush
network. AND it can help retain NEW READERS for your blog (your
ultimate goal that can grow your blog's traffic on a day-to-day basis.)

Here's Why...

By selecting which posts get syndicated (by simply adding filters
right BEFORE you publish a post on your blog that you don't want to
be used; or having setup one well in advance) you can make sure that
you're only syndicating your BEST POSTS. The ones with top-quality
content. Your posts that a new visitor to your blog will enjoy and
be much more likely to make a "YES!" decision to become a regular
reader for you!

AND OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING...

This is only the very beginning for BlogRush. We have so much great
stuff in store for you! As I said at the beginning of this
letter... we will continue to work VERY HARD to make improvements
and add-ons with ONE PRIMARY FOCUS...

To drive more ongoing targeted traffic to your blog.

I want to personally THANK YOU on behalf of our entire company for
your interest in BlogRush. We've received a lot of criticism from
many bloggers on the Internet, and we'll be the first to admit we're
not perfect and a lot of it was WELL-DESERVED.

But please know, we're busy working around the clock FOR YOU. You
have our word on it.

Now go login to your account and try out some of the new "Flavors"
for your blog! And also start setting up some Post Control Filters
so you can start maximizing your content syndication.

I'll be in touch when I have more "news" to share. Thanks for
reading this long letter. I had a lot to tell you about. :-)

Best Regards,

John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

Windows Development Uncovered

2007-10-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton on David Letterman Show

2007-10-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

OMG... He tore her apart, rip, laugh at her, and tore her apart again, and again.

While I'm not a big fan of her, I feel bad for her that she was laughed at by Letterman and talked to like a three-year-old. It was a good move to try to stop it but the better thing would be not going to this kind of show at all. Don't know what she was thinking...

MIT Pranks

2007-09-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

Apart from academic quality, MIT is definitely the best school if you want to build your career in pranking. They already have a group called MIT Hack that will do fine job training you by involving you in prankster extra curriculum. This year, they have made Halo the sacred, historic, and world-renown statue of John Harvard.

Before:

After:

My favorite is this one -- they've moved a small-sized fire truck up to the Great Dome. Pretty darn cool...

Send your children here. You won't be disappointed.

Steve Jobs Hates People Like Me

2007-09-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

Uncle Stevie's got an angry rant today about the job McKinsey did over there. Although I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, terribly sorry, Steve. I picked this career track before I even know your secret diary exists.

And yes, my firm's end-user platforms are completely Microsoft now. We run Windows XP on ugly ThinkPads, all firm-approved mobile devices are required to run Windows Mobile, we don't know what we do today nor can send message without Outlook and Exchange, we don't call each other anymore but chat through Live Communicator. There are more but I think you get the idea... People just keep complaining about work/life balance in this industry. I guess you can turn things around by moving things to Apple. Free MacBook Pro, iPhone, and free iPod Classic will surely save a lot of our sanity and blood pressure level. And we will be the coolest kids on the plane!

I heard that there may be needs for our help at Apple. I would be more careful before coming in if you have this attitude then. I probably need to paint my ThinkPad silver, put on the Apple white sticker that you give us with an iPod, run WindowsBlinds with Mac OS skin, and shut up when we get BSOD. Peace out. Namaste.

BlogRush - Hoax or Real?

2007-09-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Just found this article about the new blog headline exchange service dubbed BlogRush via BlogNone site. Basically, a blogger has to register their blog and RSS feed with BlogRush, place the BlogRush widget, and then BlogRush service will automatically find the similar contents to your blog and place them in the widget. Your postings will also be placed in others' blogs in return.

The article argue that this BlogRush doesn't do any good except trying to boost their site popularity. I feel it's no harm trying it so I just placed it there. I've also got Google Analytics enabled in this blog -- will report back how much more traffic it improved.

Another Corporate Example from Dilbert

2007-09-23T13:38:00.001-07:00

I'm sure you have or will have experienced this in a project at some point.

Deloitte Films Available to Public

2007-09-21T22:19:00.001-07:00

Following my prior blog post about Deloitte Film Festival, now all the movies are posted on YouTube here... and here are the top three:

Winner: Food for Thoughts

Second: The Green Dot

Third: WTBCTB (man... this is actually my favorite)

Enjoy!

Thai Tom - Greasy Hole in the Wall

2007-09-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Thai Tom
4543 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98127 (206) 548-9548

My girlfriend and I are in the quest of finding an authentic Thai restaurant from where we can order something simple like basil pork with fried egg or cashew chicken like what we could from the small restaurants around the school we went to in bangkok. A friend recommended me a place around UW and, based on reviews on Yelp, I thought it must have been Thai Tom. Com'mon, it's got 4.5 starts on Yelp. Over 100 people can't be wrong. The place is small (1st criteria), looks dirty (2nd criteria), close to college (3rd criteria), and cheap (all four criteria are met!)

We arrived at the peak time at 7 something during school year. Hungry UW students were queuing up for take-out and the place to sit. We spent about 20 minutes waiting. Not that bad, I think. The waiters there were highly efficient though so it wasn't that bad.

After we were seated, I could sense the college late diner. Everything there was greasy. Nope, I'm talking just about food. The tables, floor (kitchen and dining area), and the wall are greasy. Fine, we thought. We're used to this type of place back home. Oh... Gotta mention about the music. They were playing the songs you would find in a nice night club and the old Thai rock/alternative songs we liked during our teenage years. Very cool...

The menu is made of carved piece of wood which is pretty cool. We saw only some dishes which are not Thai. I wanted to eat Tom Yum but they ran out of it so we ordered Tom Kha instead. My girlfriend and I ordered Spicy Noodle and Cashew Chicken.

When the food arrives, we couldn't believe the size of it. Huge, compared to what we have to pay. However, we were absolutely disappointed. Listen folks, no matter what anyone says, this place is NOT authentic. The Tom Kha (Coconut Soup) misses several kinds of spices and herbs while the spicy noodle was almost inedible and (and I believe Pad Thai and Pad See-you also) came with rice. Being overly sweet, unnecessarily greasy, and housed in hole in the wall doesn't mean it has to be authentic.

Bottom Line:
The food deserves just one star but I gave another for the music and services. If you want a real, nice, reasonable, authentic Thai food, go to "Krua" Thai Kitchen (55th St & 25th Ave) But if you want the Thai version of General Tso kitchen, be my guest.

iPhone Hack is a Breach of National Security

2007-09-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

I know you want to do it 'cause it makes more sense to hack it than to switch the provider or give up your contract. But don't do it folks... They've warned you and they're going to come after you.

Inspiring...

2007-09-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

I just found this story about Randy Pausch, a CMU CS professor who got an incurable pancreatic cancer. Doctor said he's got only months to live, and yesterday he delivered the farewell lecture at McConomy auditorium. As a CMU alum, Impressive, I thought, but didn't care to find the video or anything.

Then, I found that the article's got over 3,000 diggs so I gave it a try and found his talk on YouTube. I initially intended to watch only one clip, but found myself couldn't stop watching ten high-quality clips that someone is kind enough to post. Although his talk was really humorous, I couldn't help crying. You can start with the intro part at the Post-Gazette video site here and continue the first part on YouTube below. Skip to part 6 if you just want to know what you can learn from his amazing life.

I kept telling people that the only disease that really scares me is cancer because the common ones that kill you like heart disease, diabetes, or strokes can be controlled if you take good care of yourself. Now, I realize that, instead of trying to avoid cancer, it's more important to avoid wasting your healthy time on nothing and losing opportunities doing good to the world and people we love.

Next, it's not wrong to have fun. All the Thai people are raised and taught in the way that we have to follow the rule and give elders respect. The classes we took are usually boring as the teachers tried to maintain their respectfulness. Instead, we should make the classes fun and students will gain trust in classes and pay attention. This is actually what my fiancee tries to tell me all the time, and my favorite professor did an amazing job teaching me.

Lastly, the best way to die is to see people crying for you, and you smile back to them and say "it's okay, everything's going to be all right". And when people just keep thanking you for what you've done and what you've left them. Of course not, I'm not talking about money here.

I hope his case can be similar to Steve Jobs's case. If so, hundreds and hundreds of people will be so lucky that their dreams can be fulfilled by this great man in the future. Professor Pausch, please don't give up. You told us not to.

Animal Rights Activist Features Naked Alicia Silverstone

2007-09-19T17:51:00.001-07:00

The group called PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is about to launch a campaign using one of the cutest blond girls of the '90, Alicia Silverstone. But I'm so fastinated the message they're sending out: Treat animals right by not eating them??? The induction I have here is: you'll become hot if you become vegetarian; you can treat animals right by not eating them = you're hot when you treat animals well.

Good choice on the model though - she regained her hotness by becoming vegetarian after became so chubby in the late '90s. Hmm... but why naked?

Another reason I want to blog this is that I found this video has been tagged for YouTube age verification which is blocked by my firm's network (oops...). PETA plans to broadcast in Houston and then national TV the video that YouTube requires age verification? Hmm... Looks like something is not right here:

a) YouTube users flag the videos as Adult contents too easily.
b) Since the Internet has a more sensitive mechanism for adult content detection, so to people that says the Internet is so unsafe for kids, please shut up. Even the contents broadcasts on daytime TV requires age verification on the internet.
c) Kid protection systems on both TVs and PCs never work whatsoever.
d) Watching woman half-naked and her half butt is fine for kids.

Anyway, I don't have any take on this except that it's glad to see her hot again. She's a beautiful girl. It was sad to see her letting herself that chubby several years ago.

On the last note, this matter concerns hot girl, nudity, and sex marketing. I bet Fake Steve Jobs is going to comment on this like he did here soon.

State of Independence

2007-09-18T17:39:00.001-07:00

Saab History asked the reader to vote on their favorite Saab slogan. Vote your fav and see the results there. I like the State of Independence one. We're not driving a wholesale car yet it's not crappy made like most American and some European brands. I also like Gill Sans font. Became my favorite after my favorite professor, Michael D. Smith, used it in his decks and Saab has announced it as their official font.

Blog Anatomy

2007-09-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've switched to BlogSpot for quite a while but just realized its features and potential recently. 10 points to Google to make BlogSpot/Blogger so easy to post, integrated with other Google services, and very Web2.0 friendly. Here are some cool stuff I'd like to feature here.

Slick UI, nice fonts, cool theme - just came out of the box from BlogSpot site.
World-class search engine - All a posting is searchable right after they it's published enabled by Google.com-class search engine.
Ads are there, but surely not intrusive - Unlike Xanga that shows big ugly ads at the top of any free blog, ads on BlogSpot is customizable. So, I put small ones at the right pane and some at the bottom. When you click, the cut would go to the writer instead of Xanga.
HTML-enabled comment box - You can include some simple formatting HTML tag in the comments. Also, when you post comment, you can choose to automatically leave your Google ID on there, override the credential by adding your name and web address, or post the comment as anonymous. It's really easy so keep on 'menting, folks!
Integration with Google - Under "What I'm Reading..." section, I added Google Reader widget to share interesting postings from the RSS feeds I checked out several times a day. More widgets are on the way. Will keep you updated.
Tags - I've tagged all the postings I wrote in there. See on the right pane under "My Tags" section. You can click "cars" to select only postings about cars I had in there, for instance.
All active social-networking buttons - On the right pane, you'll see a bunch of buttons of the social networking sites I'm currently involved in. If you're part of any of those and want me to join your network, just click it.
Amazon item preview and add-to-cart - For a lot of item pictures in the site, you can go ahead and hover your mouse over. The preview, star ratings, and current price from Amazon will appear right away. You can just click the Cart button to add the item into your Amazon cart. I'll get a cut out of the sales you give Amazon too. Feel free to let me know if you want me to split that somehow :P

Tawon Thai

2007-09-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

Tawon Thai
3410 Fremont Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103 (206) 633-4545

I visited this place because of my mom -- she knows the owner of this place and he treated us a big meal the first time we were there. No offense to my american friends here, initially I thought this place is so americanized. Pad Thai and Tom Yum soup are too sweet for native Thai tongue of mine.

Then, I went back with my girlfriend several times when we're around the area. We discovered several dishes that make Tawon Thai the real best Thai food in the area -- and I'm not saying that because I know people there. They're really good. The best dishes we always go back to eat (sorted by order of likeness) are:

H1. Kow Soi (Curry Noodles) $8.50
Better than a lot of places even in Thailand. Spiciness and Taste of the curry noodles are just right. Salty, sweet, spicy enough to make it absolutely yummy but not overdone. Pickled cabbage and fish sauce they put in there are so high quality that you can feel it. Don't forget to ask for chilli paste to go with it.

44. Neau Yang E-San $9.95
Best thai-style grilled beef I've ever had. Sauce (jaew) is amazing. They use New York steak beef grilled it to well done (don't complain folks, that's what Thai people do for grilled beef dish) but it's not at all chewy. Highly recommended for beef lover.

H4. Gai Manow (Chicken lime) $9.95
Most people screw up this nice dish but this place doesn't. They grill the chicken instead of deep fry it so it has nice grill aroma. The sauce is made of real lime juice and low on mayo so you can have great smell of lime in there. Other places put almost pure mayo on the chicken with some fresh lemon slices with seeds and peels left on them. Ew.

A.4 Crispy Soft Tofu $6.25
The name is a little confusing itself. They use soft egg tofu and fry it to perfection. I'm sure it's not an easy dish to make since tofu can get mishaped very easily when you put it into the boiling oil. They made it so nice-not soaked with oil. I really like the flavor but my gf doesn't eat tofu so it can't make top of the list here.

The owner shipped most of the decoration, except the dining sets, from Thailand. The ceiling is really high that you'll feel it so spacious. You'll have a glimpse of the kitchen but the ventilation is great making it not stuffy. When the owner is there, he really enjoys talking to the customers over there if you want him to (I saw him sitting down with a lot of diners over there just to chat). Although they don't have full-serviced bar, they have several selection of wine, beer on tab (including Fat Tire Draught), and of course, Singha! The owner can give you bar experience if you go there alone :)

Bottom line:
4 stars out of 5.
It lost 1 star because parking is a little hard to find and the famous Thai dishes are quite americanized. However, the ambiance is nice and staff are really helpful and friendly. It's a great place for meeting with friends, dining with kids, having work lunch, and dating.

Car Safety Ratings

2007-09-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

This Insurance Institute for Highway Safety site is pretty cool. Just select make and model of the car you own or plan to buy on the right pane. See sample for our Saab 9-5 over here. Too bad our model is 2000/01 so it just got average rating.

Deloitte Film Festival

2007-09-17T11:22:00.001-07:00

My firm had an initiative a few months ago to get employees submit short films about work and life at Deloitte. I think it's a great idea for people to relax from project work by doing firm activities, expand their network, and show their creativity.

3rd Place - WTBCTB (Rap MV by the interns. Dude... I think the lyrics are even better than SNL's Narnia thingy)

2nd Place - The Green Dot (super hero action-packed short film)

Winner - Food for Thoughts (you know how much consultant people love food!)

Not sure if the links work with external network. Leave the comment if they don't then.

Update: Apologies folks. My ex-colleague just let me know that the links don't work if you don't have deloitte account. Ironically, he just left Deloitte last Friday. For those of you who's interested in viewing these great films, just visit our Jobs site and send me the job posts with your resume. I can refer you through our internal referral system. The access to the site will be available for you within your first week with the firm.

Update 2: The films have been made available on YouTube. See more details here.

JoT on Steve's Apology

2007-09-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is not the apology for iPhone users so I'm good here :)

Expectant New Baby

2007-09-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

As mentioned earlier, I've been working on finding the replacement for my Krups XP4000 espresso machine. After going through research from different sites including CoffeeGeek.com, I found this Gaggia Carezza standing out. 21 and 85 reviewed this products on CoffeeGeek and Amazon respectively and the average rating is roughly 8 out of 10, not bad for an espresso machine in $200 range.

Darnit Palm. What Happened to You?

2007-09-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

You used to be my favorite gadget maker before iPod came to existence.
You made sleek, slim, and nice handheld PDA which I loved so much and used over the course of two years.
You were always there for Mac users when they want a PDA that doesn't crap out on the Mac.
Your Palm OS was probably the best PDA operating system even now compared to that run on the iPhone.
Your Treo has been a close competitor of Blackberry even though you don't have backend solution like them.
You made my current mobile device, although I hate Windows OS to the bone and it's kinda thick, I still like look and feel of your hardware, compared to those thick and old HTC models.

Now...

You announced the partnership with Microsoft to have Windows Mobile, which your OS is far more superior, on your devices.
You came up with "stuck-in-the-middle"-sized mobile concept Foleo, and then killed it even before it was born.
Your PDA-only devices have features that are far more superior the iPod Touch for a long time but they no longer sell.
Lastly, You came up with Palm 500v, which run Windows Mobile and does not have touchscreen. This is just your own version of Motorola Q which looks like an ugly T-mobile Dash. Only reasons people bought the Treo over Windows Mobile devices or Blackberries are your OS and the touchscreen.

Frankly, what are you thinking?

Saab Transformers

2007-09-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

I've seen this commercial for ages, long before the Transformers hype, but totally forgot about it. Although GM is a big sponsor of Transformers the movie, they didn't really feature Saab in there. Saab 9-7x sucks but the ads looks really cool though.

No More Price Cut Analysis - Steve Jobs Got Pissed

2007-09-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

All right folks. This is why I said my earlier blog post was the "last words". But you people didn't believe me, just kept going on about it. Now, he's pissed. Enough now guys; if you continue, he'll be screaming and won't cut any price again. We won't have any material to write next time.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Enough with the iPhone analysis stories already

Gift Idea

2007-09-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Since you are the reader with good taste, I would like to present you some gift idea for upcoming special occasions.

First, for gentlemen who are into watches, I recommend the luxury octagon 18K Audemars Piguet with brown genuine crocodile leather strap. This timepiece is equipped with Tourbillon to ensure accuracy.

Buy now from Amazon by clicking the image below and you will receive 29% discount equaling $48,000, which is enough for you to purchase another Chardonnay Pearl Lexus GS350 All Wheel Drive with Bird's-Eye Maple Accent Trim to match the watch.

Second, another watch for Him. Featuring perpetual calendar, sub-dials for day, month, year, and moonphase, this timepiece has power reserve of forty-four hours. Click link below for extensive reviews from sixteen distinguish individuals who own and are impressed with it.

Lastly, if you feel uncertain of crazy trafficker around you on freeway, I recommend JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. This would do the charm. Click the image below to see comments from one hundred and sixty customers. Order now folks, only two are left in stock at the time this post is written.

Like other Amazon product links you'll find more in this blog, once you buy anything through the clicks, I'll receive a cut of commission from the Associate program. And if you get anything in this post, I'll be your best friend, promise.

Last Words on iPhone Price Cut

2007-09-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

What's going on here?
Like mentioned in the prior blog post, Apple slashed $200 or 30% the retail price of their overly hyped iPhone, two months after they introduced the phone at $599. To make the early buyers feel better, Apple offers a $100 store credit to all the buyers.

The early adopters must have been hurt here then?
Oh yea... Angry rants popped up all over the country right after Steve Jobs announced this in an Apple's event last week.

What's behind this?
No one can give the definite answers on this except Steve himself or the Apple PR who have been tight-lipped. Expectedly, they're not going to say anything. Some of the hypotheses are:
1) Apple wants to boost the Christmas sales.
2) Similar to 1), they want to wow investors with Q3 and Q4 numbers, which they will.
3) They are doing price discrimination by time, letting people who are willing to pay premium buy the phones first, then broader mass which intends to pay cheaper prices will jump in after the price cut.
4) They want to release the inventory, preparing for the next revisions with 3G and other updates.

Do you think they made any mistakes from the beginning?
From economic perspective, there's nothing wrong with this logic. Early adopters naturally have suffer from the high early acquisition costs. Everyone who bought the iPhone knows about it and accepted it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have paid $600, which is three times higher than other average smartphones in the market.

$100 seems to be quite cheap for a compensation for a loyalty fan. If you're Apple, would you do anything differently?
No... I'm sure most people who own the iPhone love the devices. They're happy with it for the past couple of months, and can be a little angry to themselves for paying more than they should have. Offering money back for this reason is very unusual in this industry. Offering Steve Jobs' apology in the last paragraph of their open letter is even more unusual.

Some people are talking about Apple's fanboys. If I'm Apple, I wouldn't even worry about them. Apple has done this to the fans so many times with the iPods, laptops, and the desktops. Apple has done an incredible job in fading out and in their products. The distributors can senses a slight demand shortage, and before they realize, boom... new products are on the shelves. The fans are so used to buying Apple's gear, and then seeing the new devices in the same line at cheaper prices released a week later.

More importantly, their stock has already rebounded. People will forget about this price cut and the stock is going to make all time high again after the next earning report.

What do you think will happen to the iPhone?
The price has reduced to the point that mass is willing to pay so it's going to flow out of stores like water this holiday season. Price will not drop lower than this. For the longer term, Apple will make faster, thinner, prettier iPhone with larger storage and more features and gradually launch it at the similar price even with the carrier's partnership.

So AT&T is and will be pretty happy, huh?
Not exactly. Although they have switched, upgraded, and broken cellphone contracts of a million wireless users, they haven't really enjoyed the benefits and cross-sales of iPhone services. For example, Apple offers a tool to make ringtones from iTunes purchased songs. Or the access to iTunes music store through Starbucks' T-Mobile Wi-Fi network. AT&T will sign up at least a couple of million more users over the next two contracted years. However, I don't see this partnership lasting very long - Apple is so dominant in the relationship which can upset AT&T, Sprint has advanced AT&T in terms of technology (WiMax iPhone, anyone?), etc. After two years are over, Apple will see who can allow them to make most money. If no player stands out, they're going to unlock the iPhone.

As a consumer, what would you do?
Well... Quite hard to say. First thing is that, don't buy Apple's devices because they're cool. Apple's products are better than gorgeous most of the time. But think of it more on the features. Don't buy an iPod if you love staying home and spend five minutes driving to work every day. Then, if you think you really need a device, buy it early. I bought my 30 GB video iPod from the first month. Now it's not even outdated and I feel it worths my money. Finally, having a price protection credit card especially for buy stuff from Apple is not a bad idea.

M-velope Video - Final Cut

2007-09-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

Remembered the clever marketing campaign that Google asked Gmail uses to submit the video of them passing the M-velope?

See below for all the featured videos that people at Google has edit into a single.

Once again, Google rocks. Not that they just asked their customers to create a video that is, in my opinion, good and fun to watch enough as a TV commercial for free, they have with a nominal efforts identified the Gmail die-hard fans around the world. These people can potentially in the future spread out the words about new marketing campaign or product features to their network, helping to boost feature adoption. Lastly, they promoted the submissions of homemade, creative, copyright-free, video, in YouTube. Of course you know, YouTube is also owned by Google and dies to build strong community that regularly posts fun videos.

10 points to Gmail marketing team, or probably it's an engineer who has this great idea and makes this happen during his/her 20-percent time.

Real Saab Lover's Blog

2007-09-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Technorati. I found one blog owned by a real Saab enthusiast who lives in New England. His blog, nicely named Saab History, displays a bunch of what's going on in Saab community around the world esp. the ones around New England. Too bad I've moved away across the country from Boston. But I own the Saab anyway, and I would never buy a car in Boston. Train frequency and coverage, cost of ownership, and Zipcar availability just make it irrational to own one over there.

Freakovideomics

2007-09-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

During the part of our house-buying, I was reminded about buyer and listing agent's incentives mentioned in one of my favorite books of all time--Freakonomics.

Then, I wondered how the author, Steven D. Levitt, looks like. I thought he shared a lot of qualities, e.g. getting Ph.D. and being successful at young age, interested in economics, with my favorite professor. So I looked him up on YouTube and found his video below. I'm sure you'll find it hilarious. And this is just a very tiny sample of his book. If you like it, I guarantee you're going to love the book too.

JoT Cracked the Price Drop Reason

2007-09-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs on iPhone Price Cut

2007-09-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

See his comments yourself...

His message to iPhone initial adopter
Expressing his thought
... and someone that saw right through him

For the time being, AAPL price has not recovered, still in ~135 range compared to $145 before yesterday and after iPhone was announced.

The New iPods vs the New iPhone Price

2007-09-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

vs

results in...

Early Adopter's Pain (กรรมของพวกขี้เห่อ)

2007-09-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

As you know, Apple launched their revolutionary music/internet devices, phones two months and seven days ago and sold them at ridiculous prices of $499 for 4 GB and $599 for 8 GB models, with two-year-locked $60-100 monthly subscription. Today, they've discontinued the 4 GB model and dropped the price of 8 GB version to $399. Too bad for the early adopters of Apple products. Luckily, they didn't release the hardware-modified version that allows the devices to run on the faster 3G network--the feature that Apple knows wholeheartedly that the phone lacks.

I admitted I really wanted the phone since it came out but, luckily, the firm pays for my Treo and the monthly fees for life. Although it's a crappy phone, nothing beats free stuff.

Talking just about an iPhone, I would wait until it gets to second or third hardware revision. At least it should have 3G capability and at least 16 GB of memory (the also-launched-today iPod Touch has 16 GB, same price, and is a hair thinner). Also, I would wait till it has connectivity to Exchange Mail server or I changed my job to the smart company that uses IMAP mail. :)

Me - Simsonized...

2007-08-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Very cool... Try it yourself.

My Favorite Running Route

2007-08-27T14:49:00.001-07:00

Google Rocks again... Now Google Maps allows users to embed their custom maps to the website...

See the map of my favorite running route in Boston below... Only one of a few things I miss in Boston. (Oh wow... I didn't realize that My Maps feature was also improved. You can add really refine the corner points of your route to be really detailed. Now my running route in the world is really accurate.)

View Larger Map

It is not a bug...

2007-08-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

it is a ...

Global Warming

2007-08-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

OMG... Can you in Bangkok just walk outside A/C room without getting sweat? Absolutely not!

..and I'm not talking about the horrible traffic, motorcycle all over the place, taxis stopping randomly next to a junction, bus dropping passengers in the middle of the road.

But it's still home after all. Thailand, I love you... and thanks for having BTS, MTA, and taxis for us. They surely save Thai people a lot of sanity.

At the end of the day, shopping here is not really that heavenly. Clothes are most of the time above my price range anywhere at the Trio (the Paragon, Central World, and the Emporium). Anyway, I still have Jatujak waiting for me this weekend. Prepared to spend a bit over there.

I'm not that fascinated the pirated stuff like in the prior visits. Maybe I'm too old for this kind of stuff (and probably because Avis has been giving me free iTunes downloads). I didn't spend much on CDs like last time either (after I realized that the sales at DJ Siam are full of sh** most of the time). Just bought only the ones I really knew and shut my ears off when they boasted about no-name people that they produced themselves.

Lastly, food here never disappoints me. ก๋วยเตี๋ยวปลาป้าหนึง (pattaya 038 428 908), รุ่งเรืองก๋วยเตี๋ยวหมู (อีกชื่อคือ เฮียฮ่อ, สุขุมวิท 26 0-2258-6746), Bei Otto (best pork knuckle and german sausages in my opinion), เลือดหมูคุณศรี are amazing.

Will update the full list after I get back then.

Gadgets I Currently Want

2007-08-13T01:51:00.000-07:00

1) After my beloved Krups XP4000 manual espresso machine prematurely died, I was looking for a new machine that is capable of grinding and effectively frothing milk. This Delonghi's Super-automatic ESAM3300 really stands out. It's equipped with removable boiler, nice grinder, milk frother (although not automatic), decalcifing indicator, and programmable brewer. The price is a little steep-$800 shipped excluding tax. Better be prepared to pitch it to K. Kratai to split the cost (hey... I'm home just only 3 mornings a week!)

2) Have I told you that my new cellphone- Palm treo 750 is a piece of crap? Yes, it still is. (Although Palm has designed the phone itself pretty nicely, I can still go on and on how bad Windows Mobile 5, combined with stupid GoodLink, is but... maybe later). Apart from horrible battery life, the alarm feature sucks! Don't people at Redmond know that there's a feature called "Snooze" in most modern alarm clock at the moment. And, how about that stupid little beep that can't even wake up a cat?! Anyway, I've been fastinated with the "Smart Alarm Clock"-- the alarm clock that studies your sleeping pattern throughout the night, and wake you up when you're during the light sleep cycle within the preset period. As the technology is still at the bottom of the S-curve, the prices are still high. I found one (capable of waking two people up individually) from aXbo at about 200 Euros (yikes... it's just an alarm clock!) and one from US Sleeptracker at about $150. The idea and products are quite neat but I'd probably wait till the price goes down to "normal" level.

I found her life with two carry ons

2007-08-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

I once blogged about last year's American Airlines Road Warrior winner. I finally found her blog! Just a reminder, she's working at the same company that I'm sacrificing my life to, referred in her blog as ABC Consulting. Her blog is 100% hilariously written--she called Mother Nature bitch when her flight to Wimbledon was half-day delayed. I started to be a fan of her blog when she described our professional travelers' lives in seven days of the week. Highly recommended for someone who wants to know more about lives at ABC Consulting or consultants in general.

Great job Jammahs. You have become by favorite blogger now!

Dictionary 2.0

2007-08-07T16:51:00.001-07:00

I thought I invented the word "comfortability" and awkwardly used it during a team meeting at Sprint. It turns out that someone has defined it. That led me to the user-contributed dictionary called Urban Dictionary. I learned new interesting words from there like preppies and aberzombies.

Pretty cool...

Bill Gates on the Daily Show

2007-01-31T20:51:00.000-08:00

Along with the Vista flow, Sir Bill Gates of Microsoft was invited into the Daily Show to promote the latest OS...

Here's the clip:
, which is a little surprising that he intended to leave so soon. I thought he was on rush catching the flight to London (consultant's thought, my friend)

Then, the mystery was resolved:

Steven Colbert on Cingular Rename

2007-01-26T17:10:00.000-08:00

Dude... he's really a geek... Remember last time when he urged people to change Wikipedia entry of African elephants and asked viewers to vote his name for a new bridge in Holland or something?

My Life with Two Carry-ons

2007-01-26T16:55:00.000-08:00

One of a consultant in my firm just won American Airlines's Road Warrior award. She received 1 million American Airlines miles and 1 million hotel points (sounds like a lot... but she's already got 500,000 miles with AA. I don't think it makes a difference unless you're on vacation for a couple of months, or you can convert them to Virgin miles and make a trip to space!) Her blog is right here... I found her blog hilarious as I have been on the road for almost two months now and we're using the same traveling policy.

The good thing about traveling for work is that it allows me to fly back to Seattle instead of Boston every weekend. Only last weekend that snow hits Denver and made me missed my connection (bad choice of project location, Pisit) so I had to fly red-eye from Seattle to O' Hare, then catch the first flight to the client site in Kansas City. Even worse, I sat next to a baby who was uncontrollably screaming the whole flight. Not very pleasant night.

Hope it's getting smoother over the next three months when the snow is going away... Please... Can't do this every week.

Microsoft Certified Windows Fan (MCWF)

2007-01-24T05:24:00.000-08:00

Amazon has Vista Ultimate Edition Upgrade DVD. Limited to 20,000 copies, all of them are signed by Bill Gates himself...

Don't wait, MS fans. It's your chance to show your love and loyalty.

Personal note here: How long does it take you to put on 20,000 signatures? Does it worth Bill Gates time at the end?

50 Most Stupid Things Bush Has Ever Said

2007-01-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

http://brianschwartz.name/?itemid=140

Well.. Jon Stewart has brought something on his show. This is just only some of them.

Car Ad Fights

2007-01-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

One thing I really like about US is that they're so open about ad fights. Unlike Dtac and AIS case Thai people experienced a couple of years ago, advertisers here are not really afraid of attacking competitors with funny (and sometime hurting) ads campaign. See what happened with innocent-looking jag when faced with fierce 5-series eyes:

Not enough? See Multiple-party war here. I found it incredibly funny and am glad that my colleague's dad who just got a Bentley really like it.

The Brand-new Lexus Self-Parking Demo

2006-12-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

As always, the early adopters always suffer the pain of new technologies such as this one.

Bottled Music

2006-12-03T17:28:00.000-08:00

Someone said you can use your foot to blow the whistle by stepping on yellow line at a BTS platform.

Obviously, you can play a song with just a pair of rollerblades and a bunch of bottles!

Speeder's Nightmare

2006-11-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

German police department just hired Brabus to build a speeding chaser which should be able to catch any speeder pretty easily. Isn't this awesome (and it looks cool too!)

Evil Customer

2006-11-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

Ha... Hope I don't have to face this kind of customers at any point my career.

The Best of Jon Stewart

2006-11-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

His show has been on the top three on my list and only one of the two talk shows I watch (the other is its brother show: The Colbert Report). He's undoubtedly my favorite show host. Big thanks to Youtube that allows me to share these great episodes with you guys.

My recent favorite: Bush's vs Kerry's jokes...

Donald Rumsfeld was caught lie by an ex-CIA guy. Thanks for the service sir... See you, not so soon.

His take on Ted Stevens's definition of the internet.

A huge bunch of Pres Bush's great clips is coming. That's one of the reason why I don't give any hoot that I don't have the rights to vote in this country! Looks like someone doesn't know what his job is :P

His infamous "open mic" oops:

What's he talking about again? Maybe I'm too foolish:

Hmm... Politicians are pretty similar around the world. The most famous is not the exception.

The President on geico commercial.

... and the best of all, he kicked CNN guys' asses on their own show called Crossfire which was later taken out of the schedule because of this.

This is his response on his show Monday after:

Enjoy,
Jon Stewart's fan

Dilbert

2006-11-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

How many times do I have to tell you that Dilbert is the best Organization Management handbook (with specialization in Software Engineering context). What's more to ask?

Some of you might have heard that Scott Adams, its main creator, suffered with a never-before curable disease making him unable to form conversations. However, he tried curing himself and made the impossible possible. His inspiring blog is here.

ซูฮกครับ...

Tech Antique at Siam Cement

2006-11-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

My friend is working for a child company of SCG. He discovered this during the โละของเก่า activity. Too bad we don't have any kind of museum to keep all these "valuable" stuff.

Thai Sloanie Blog

2006-11-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the blog of Thai people at MIT's Sloan School of Management; the folks I have been hanging out with when I'm still stuck at local projects here in Boston. Thanks for your friendship and your calls when you plan to do anything fun.

It's most likely that I will be in Boston a lot less than before. Will keep you guys posted where I will be. You guys can always swing by... you know... free house/hotel/rental car :)

SLR Movie

2006-10-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

Very amazing...

Speed Reading Techniques

2006-08-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

Found a great post about how to speed up your reading. Most of the tips are pretty helpful. Hope I can get back to the reading goals (1 book per month) I set before soon (I'm well far behind though)

Net Speed Test

2006-08-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

I found this cool network speed test tool, SpeedTest.net, from Digg again. Not only it allows you to try downloading and uploading files from multiple locations, the UI also looks really cool.

South Park & RIAA

2006-07-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

Wow... this might have made me stop downloading free music online ever again ;)

Who Needs TV

2006-07-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty strict with myself not having TV since I got here two years ago. This is because whenever I'm near TV, I just browse through and watch worthless programs or the movies I've ever seen (both are full of commercials, of course) which are really wasting a lot of my time.

Fortunately, Web 2.0 enables the socially posted video clips from the shows people think are good. I've been following Jon Stewart's Daily Show on the web. If you sort the postings by Date Added, likely you'll get good part of the show last night. Just 10 minutes a day and I can follow the show I want to see without having to be strict with its schedule. The best thing is that it's free!

A side note here: I've been wanting to follow the good current news. Web 2.0 allows that again. Digg has the feature to sort most popular user-posted stories within the day, week, month, and so on. If thousands of people think they're good, they must be at least okay and worth reading, right?

"I'm a PC" guy on Net Neutrality

2006-07-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart rocks again. John Hodgman was the guest of the show last night talking about Net Neutrality. He also pointed out how our honorable Sen. Ted Stevens got it wrong. Well... he must know it pretty well for sure. He connects to it everyday.

Another Stupid Moment from Pooyai

2006-07-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

I blogged a short while ago about Senator Ted Stevens showing his understanding on internet during his talk to support Net Nutrality regulation. Yesterday, President Bush forgot to turn off his microphone and accidentally spit out some not so nice words in the middle of G8 meeting.

Thai politicians are not so bad after all...