Driving Back To LA

It wasn't fun leaving Vegas, especially when you had a blast the previous night.

Before we hit I-15S, we decided to visit Oom Cun Sien in Henderson since we haven't visited him for a while. I believe it was 2 years for my dad and 3 years for me, I remembered: the last time we stayed over, my dad woke me up to let me know that a tsunami hit Aceh. Also, Ida needed to tap the internet for 1 hour to finalize her report.

We arrived in LA a little late and we feasted at President Thai.

President Thai

498 S Rosemead Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91107
Tel: (626) 578-9814

http://www.president-thai.com

This is one of the Thai restaurant that I like since the servings are not too sour or too hot, maybe the food is closer to the Teo Chew style with Thai background.

What good here? I think everything is excellent. The recommendation page is a good start.

Fun In Las Vegas

Let's leave it at that ...

Driving to Las Vegas

Vegas, here we come!

The traffic was reasonable and it wasn't crowded at all.

Timberland at Primm is closing the door and they are throwing everything away. Looking at the inventory, I gather that they will close the door pretty soon.

Warner To Sell DRM-less Music Via Amazon

From nyt: Warner lets Amazon sell their music without DRM

Checked: Rock Lobster (B-52) is now available.

Dealing With USCIS

There is no better way of spending your vacation by queuing up the USCIS line 6:15 in the morning. It was cold and windy, luckily I was wrapped up like Michelin man, waiting in line, alone, until hell broke lose at 6:30. Out of no where, 20 people showed up and queued up behind me. Amazing.

The guards were late, I wasn't let in until 7 o'clock sharp, although I should be let in at 6:45, extra 15 min in the cold. Also I was totally irked by the jackass, who checked my bag, thought I might do the federal government harm if I waltzed in with my Pentax. WTH? I can understand no knife policy, but no camera? What about embedded camera on a phone? Should I go in without cell phone? Jackass private security had no answer. But, in order for me to get in, I had to walk back to the parking lot to drop the camera in my car. Extra 15 min well spent. I waltzed into Room 1001 with the 7:15 people. Ridiculous.

It is great that the USCIS InfoPass system works for people who has an appointment at 7 or 7:15 since I walked out at 8 sharp. I will not recommend using the system to acquire appointment at 10 o'clock since you might end up meeting the officer around 12 (lunch time).

On the way home I heard, from KPCC (NPR), that someone whacked Bhutto.

Also, dad bought eee PC, the 4GB with web cam version, and prayed that it arrives before he departs for Jakarta.

Dinner at Din Tai Fung.

Post Christmas Craziness

I tried the clothes that Ida bought me for Christmas presents, most them were off-sized, thanks to the made up standard of the clothing industries. No surprises here, time to exchange the gifts.

Roads were clogged, malls were filled to the brim.

Pasadena was alright, it wasn't too crowded. But purchasing clothes was painful experience: lots of the desired size was taken, and previous coupons didn't work anymore. But nothing, could be compared to crawling for 20 min along Baldwin Ave in the afternoon and two and half hours of sneaker shopping.

Christmas

Christmas has arrived and we celebrated it at Simi Valley, this time I didn't bring anything to the table since I was preoccupied the day before.

Smells Like Teenage Spirits

Ida is here in the south land

... and we went to watch Jay Chou's world tour concert.

Lights Out

Something bad happened last night, the lights were out around 6PM and it wasn't restored until the following morning around 7/8 AM.

Most of the blocks had their light restored around 8PM but not ours.

We had to resort to the ancient activities when the light are out: swapping ghost stories and playing with the settings of my digital camera, well the later is not that ancient.

Pre-Christmas Days

Useless should be labeled to these days before Christmas. Nothing but making sure that I could leave the office till the closing of the year.

Ida will fly down for Jay Chou concert so the trip to SJ is canceled. I guess I have the time to sort the junk that I brought back from Jacksonville.

Lights are out tonight, so we are in the book store reading the past, present and future.

1929 America Before The Crash - Sloat
Secrets of The Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country - Greider
Economics Making Sense of The Modern Economy - 2nd ed - Cox
Guide to Economic Indicators: Making Sense of Economics - 6th ed - The Economist

Linux Server In A Stick

Ingredient:

1. 2GB bulk USB stick from Micro Center - 15.00
2. Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Live CD (from ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso)

Follow the instruction at pendrivelinux.com.

Let the hacking commence ...

Perl 5.10 And Parrot 0.5.1 Are Released

According to Perl Buzz: Perl 5.10 is released to the wild. It's a nice Christmas present and it coincides with the 20th anniversary of Perl.

People from ActiveState did a great job by releasing the Win32 binary early.

Oh well, time to test the new binary and the modules.

Fixed Phone Pie Is Shrinking In US Too

Follow up on the previous posting that touts cell phone only adoptions in EU households, /. posts an article from itfacts.biz, in which scraped an article from Bureau of Labor Statistics titled: Spending on Cell Phone Services Rapidly Approaching That of Residential Phone Services.

Whew! Talking about going through 2 brokers to get the info.

Anyway, the conclusion:

1. Spending on cell phone service grows, while lower on fixed phone, the trend has been steady since 2001.
2. Spending on cell phone service is predicted to exceed fixed phone this 2007.

Monkeys Count Too

From NPR: Researchers (Cantlon and Brannon) at Duke University conducted tests to gage the accuracy of arithmetics between 2 female rhesus monkeys (Boxer & Feinstein) and a group Duke undergrads.

This is one the findings:

And they [Boxer and Feinstein] were right about 75 percent of the time.

But this is the key difference between the species:

"When you take away language from a human during a math task like this," Cantlon said, "they end up looking just like a monkey.

Scary... the monkeys would be getting at least a B, and some poor humans (most likely from LAUSD) get F.

Links:
Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students
Paper @ Duke: How Much Does Number Matter to a Monkey (Macaca mulatta)?

The Conscience of a Liberal

Bought "The Conscience of a Liberal" by Krugman @ Borders, apparently I couldn't resist the temptation of 40% off (with Border Rewards). Before I bought the book, I searched for the audio book version since I am going to be sitting in traffic a lot, but I couldn't find one, nor the audio book version of Freakonomics.

Also visiting dr Irawan to catch up with news.

Google v Microsoft

Responding to this article: Slowly Transitioning to Online Software, I believe Google needs to beef it's Google Gear in order for the customers to be able to take their document off-line.

I couldn't foresee people will go wireless and update documents using their tiny screens in droves.

But, consider this scenario: working on a compact notebook using wireless connection. Is it going to mainstream? Judging from the current wireless market (which is very anti-customer), e.g.: Verizon Wireless redefined the common English word of unlimited to limited, and highly priced product, we are not going to be there in 2-3 years.

Rearranging Junks

After resting whole yesterday, I have the energy to clean up the garage.

Nothing to brag about yet.

Retreat

Spend the night at Simi Valley again. I don't want to do it, but I need to transport my clothing back to Arcadia.

Hooman @ GG

Hooman swang by to meet In yung and I @ GG. In yung also brought a friend along, forgot his name.

Holly ...

From Marginal Revolution

Toxoplasma gondii is a favorite parasite of evolutionary biologists because it has an incredible property. The parasite lives in the guts of cats where it sheds eggs in cat feces that are often eaten by rats. Now how to get back from the rat to the cat? Amazingly, Toxoplasma gondii infects the brains of rats making them change their behavior in a subtle way that increases the genetic fitness of the parasite. Toxoplasma makes the infected rats less scared of cats and so more likely to be eaten!

Goat Hill Tavern

1830 Newport Blvd
Costa Mesa, CA, 92627
Tel: (949) 548-8428

It is called tavern but it is really a beer joint, well known for the weird selection of beers, e.g:

1. Turbo Dog from New Orleans, LA
2. Murphy's
3. ... [will update as I remember/revisit the place]
   

Swing Back

Last Friday, while stuck at ONT, I managed to create an HTML report that ties WR execution result with the application log. The report is pretty rudimentary but the script was optimized to prevent parsing old results and unnecessary loops.

I spent all hours these Monday and Tuesday, adding features to debug the fail/error execution. Finally it is decided that I need to:

1. Add screen capture prior to clicking search button, since the date objects were not filled in.
2. Stabilize the picklist object when select action is performed: add wait between data entry and tab keystroke.
   

I am going to stop eDoc SS combination search and switch back to module creation since I have been neglecting that project too long.

Back To SoCal

IMGP0940
Originally uploaded by plwizard

I insisted to arrive early at the Mineta Airport since I was bringing back a bottle of wine. Well, I miscalculated the eagerness of people wanting to travel in the morning, apparently it was not crowded until I boarded the plane at 7:30 AM.

Next time, I'll arrive at the airport around 7 when flying out at 7:45.

The flight was good and short, and it was pretty warm inside ONT. Therefore, I was surprised when I walked out and I found the nice, cold and crispy Southern California weather.

It was a clear day, notice: the picture of snow capped Mt Baldy through I-10, usually one would notice a layer of smog.

Halu Ramen

375 South Saratoga Ave.
San Jose, CA 95129
Tel: (408) 246-3933

http://www.ramenhalu.com/

I love this place, simple menu, simple food.

No Country For Old Men

Didn't do much today, Ida and I had a late breakfast and we went to watch No Country For Old Men.

[write more]

I missed a lot of good lines, especially the last Tommy Lee Jones' monologue.

And then ate some ramen at Halu.

We finished the day by watching Gosford Park at home. Saw Kelly Macdonald again.

Wooden Charcoal Barbecue House

4611 Geary Blvd. (Between 10th and 11th)
San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: (415) 751-6336

I love it for the wooden charcoal, no matter what Hank Hill preaches about propane, the meat will not taste the same.

Hiking Again

Went hiking with Ida and the usual suspects again at Windy Hill.

The trail is located on open terrain with little coverings so the view could be easily enjoyed. I dropped in exhaustion twice since we were climbing steadily with little leveling.

Links:
Windy Hill trail map (pdf file)
The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District

Gochi Japanese Fusion Tapas

19980 Homestead Rd
Cupertino, CA
Tel: (408) 725-0542

http://www.gochifusiontapas.com/

Modern izakaya plates and a bit overpriced.

Delayed Flight

First, instead of departing at 17:25, it rescheduled to fly at 17:55, and then disinformation reigned as the time of departure was pushed several time to 18:40.

The actual departure was: 19:10.

It is pretty painful to track the historical data of Southwest 187's since FAA website doesn't provide historical data, but I managed to get the data using FlightAware.com.

Apparently the plane is late due to cascading effect. In the beginning, it was already late by 24 min, and it added another 30 min delay from Kansas City to Las Vegas, and another 20 between Las Vegas to Ontario. By the time I arrived in SJC, I have already late by 80 min (from the rescheduled late arrival).

Total wasted time: 80+30 = 110 min. Instead of arriving in SJC around 18:20, I had to wait at ONT. It is alright if I consider the price of ticket (75USD), I will have to fork more if I am to drive.

Bad Friday

Too many bad events happen today:

1. The NGS V1 deployment validation test blew up on pre-production last night, it was the same problem again. Apparently, the dot net executable that selects default printer will freeze the application if several of them (several VMs on a host) are executed at the same time. Fixed the problem: add wait time between launching WR script and sort the order of execution machines.
   
2. eDoc Importer execution blew up too. Apparently, the old client problem weren't fixed, I manage to fix the old client installation, and re-clone the client. Also, let Ed know that each origination execution is not supported anymore.
   

And I have to fly out this afternoon.

Venus T4U

Bought the case from Micro Center today.

Combination Search Project In Full Swing

eDoc SS combination search, writing Perl script to verify each scenario that's being executed with the WR execution and server log:

• Write script to parse WR execution log.
  
• Ponder: should I use sets to correlate search scenario (search criteria set) with sets of search criteria logged? Nah ... to much work. Index the search criteria using hash and compare it against the log.
  
• Write script to get log files from archives, will not get the downloaded files again.
• Write script to parse the log files for search criteria, index them and archive/delete the log files.
• Write parsing routine to extract data from search scenario files, make sure the corresponding WR script is executed successfully and it exists in the search criteria index.

Admin

• Dropping files off to online storage (originally 1.8GB left).
  

PerlIO-GZip Is Broken

Found a problem with PerlIO-GZip module (v0.17) with ActiveState Perl 5.8.4 + Win2K, apparent it doesn't gunzip a compressed file properly. At first, I suspected a bad gzip file. But the files, extracted using Winzip and GNUWin32 gunzip, are good, so I believe this is a problem with the module.

I will investigate a little more and send the artifacts once I am done with the eDoc scripts.

Currently I extract the files using GNUWin32 gunzip utility and pass the content to STDOUT for parsing.

gunzip.exe -c CompressedFile.gz

Benjies Restaurant-Delicatessen & Bakery

1828 N Tustin Ave
Santa Ana, CA 92705
Tel: (714) 541-6230

Ambiance: It is an old style sandwich shop, so old: the seniors feel like home there.
Food: Pastrami, corned beef, swiss reuben with Russian sauce for 11 clams. Yeah, it is expensive.

Dan Is Gone for Training These Two Days

Dashboard-NGS EOP

• Analyze load tests conducted by Doug based on the size of order information.

eDoc SS combination search

1. Fixed the certificate issue, the productivity of script execution jumps and more logs are being produced. Apparently WR browser event handling is not reliable for v9.2.
   
2. Verification of search result is broken due to new grid object.
3. Remove WR 8.2 and replace it with WR 9.2 on my desktop. I need to upgrade WR since I need to fix the search result verification.
   
4. Fix the verification of searches, and deploy to execution machines.
5. Writing Perl script to verify each scenario that's being executed with the WR execution and server log.
   

Admin

• While swapping hard drive for Dan's broken machine, I found that we are running out of good machines. All better Dell machines are not working, busted motherboards.

GPS

Looks like there is a no good automotive and hiking GPS unit out there. Reading the forums, it appears that Garmin 60CSx is solid unit, and I like it since it has these features (sorted based on importance):

1. High sensitive GPS receiver + SiRF III chipset.
2. Custom POIs (ability to add additional points of interest).
3. 10,000 point automatic track log; 20 saved tracks (500 points each).
4. Garmin said this unit supports 2GB micro SD but someone (Amazon) has upgraded to 4GB.
5. Up to 20 operating hours using 2xAA batteries.
6. Trip computer.
7. Water resistant to IEC 60529 IPX7 standards (can be submerged in one meter of water for 30 minutes).
8. Barometric read and digital compass.

But it has it's drawbacks (all of them are very important):

1. Need to buy separate maps, Garmin MapSource City Navigator for automotive and Topo for hiking purposes.
   
2. No turn-by-turn voice directions, only beeping.
3. Route recalculating issues for automotive purposes.

Looks like I have to get Nuvi x50, I am driving the freeways, more than hiking the trails.

Gender In/Equality

From The Economist:

Nopa

560 Divisadero @ Hayes
San Francisco, CA 94117
Tel: (415) 864-8643
http://www.nopasf.com/

I kept forgetting my due to blog this joint, never mind that I have visited it twice.
Bar: Extremely packed.
Long table: good for socializing.
Brew: Extra large Lagunitas IPA
Appetizer: Strange but tasty freedom fries.
Main: Pork chop

Nailed the Stupid Cat