Official Reserves

From The Economist:

China is by some distance the world's largest holder of foreign-exchange 
reserves. Its currency hoard passed the $1.5 trillion mark at the end 
of last year, little more than a year after it reached $1 trillion.

US Unemployment Rate Jumped To 5%

Whoa! According to The Economist:

The unemployment rate in America jumped from 4.7% to 5% in December.

American employers, excluding farms, added just 18,000 workers to their payrolls in December, the smallest increase since August 2003. Government hiring more than accounted for the rise: private-sector payrolls fell by 13,000.

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.

Gender In/Equality

From The Economist:

Black Friday

Nothing much for me, bought a belt buckle since the old one was ripped apart.

Hunting for Nokia 810 at big box stores by South Coast Plaza to no avail.
Thinking about getting MacBook but it doesn't sync with Nokia 6233 or Blackberry 7520.
Participate in Engadget Black Friday Fest and get nothing.

Bummer. Better have better plan and less expectation next year.

On the other hand, Ida was having too much fun ...

Thanks Giving Party at Simi Valley

We were celebrating Thanksgiving in Simi Valley.

Menu:
Turkey set for 6-8.
Costume made sponge cakes.
Hess Cabernet Sauvignon Select 2003.
I brought beef (couple of rib eyes and NY strips) and grilled them at Stanley's.

It was a lot of fun.

China's Missile Range

Very interesting graph from The Economist: China's missile range. It was presented in several The Economist articles, one of which: The long march to be a superpower.

Halloween @ Work

Gerardo and Ronda
Originally uploaded by plwizard

New Cube in Santa Ana (2)

The first agenda of the day: complete the LR scripts for eDoc, and they were completed before EOD. The highlight of the day: Craig called requesting assistance with LR scripts on Dashboard project. It is going to be interesting...

On the right, the cube after it was cleaned up.

Flood in New Orleans

Holly Molly!! We dodged this.

From IHT: Heavy rains hit New Orleans, flood areas just recently coming back from Katrina damage.

New Orleans

• Use cab from airport, stay in the touristy area, the other side of the city is very artsy.

• Don't take flat tire insurance from your car rental if you are not planning to visit the other side of the city, I didn't scour the entire city but most of it seemed debris free. The city/touristy side is definitely free of debris.

• Careful when you drive, avoid wet spot since it could be a deep hole that could break your car axle, beware, since there are lots of them in the city.

• If you want to drive, GPS device is a must:
• Not all street signs, at the other side of the city, are restored after being blown away by Katrina.
• The streets near freeway are spaghetti like.
  

• Never come to this city in October. It rains every 5 minutes!

• French Quarter is asleep during the day.

• The hyped Pascal's Manale is alright, if you could afford yourself being a tourist nowadays, you could have the experience in your city.

• Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world.

• Any Hurricane is better than Hand Grenade.

• "Big Al" Carson is alright.

• Go straight for Bourbon St in French Quarter @ night in October.

• NOLA takes reservation for the next 6 months.
  

New Cube in Santa Ana and File Server Going Kaputz

This is the condition of the cube in Santa Ana when I walked in Monday morning. Yes, it is open and spartan, but I got a window seat.

The boxes hold the computers from Jacksonville. I will post the cleaned-up version later.

Also the highlight of today: file server in Santa Ana blew up. A new instance of the machine was brought up quickly so the work could proceed by swapping the data drive to another machine.

I suspected that the machine might have faulty drive (well, it has failed once and it was a Dell desktop after all) and hopefully I fixed the whole machine by swapping the old drive with one from a cannibalized machine. The machine was swapped and joined to the corporate domain at the end of day.

After the mess died down, the workspace had the next attention.

Transportation

Back to the land of traffic congestion last Friday night, and I need a new transportation. Enter: Toyota Highlander 2008.

I am officially an active participant to the global warming, driving mid-size SUV 80 miles daily.

Last Day in Jacksonville

It was smooth sailing on Tuesday: the junk was laid out, squeezed into the Relocube, excess garbage was picked up, and in the afternoon Craig showed up to pick up the grill, along with Wayne picking up the keys and the ABF Transportation person taking the Relocube away, all at the same time. :D

Wednesday, the last day in Jacksonville, we left at 11:30AM, flying to New Orleans, LA.

My Junks in 6 x 7 x 8

Hellish Monday

Everything went well on Saturday since nothing much is being done, just boxing up my stuff and papers.

Joe swang by on Sunday and helped me squeezed the sofa into the Relocube. After that, everything went crazy. I packed a third of my stuff that night, not much since I was tired from moving the couch and mattresses.

Monday was hell, although it started well, I ran errands: buying cleaning stuff and ratchets to tie down the stuff, keeping them from falling on us when we open it in Pacoima, CA. Took Michael to have lunch with people from downtown, Ray and Jen from SCM also showed up. Went home packed some more, I thought that I still have tons of space, not knowing that I was dead wrong. Later that afternoon I asked Michael for help with storing the vehicle for time being. #*?!@. After renting the car, we went to have diner, I was packing again until 3:30AM in the next day.

Last Working Day in Jacksonville

Good bye cube, smell you later.

YAPC::NA::2007 - Houston

Back to YAPC again after 2004 at Buffalo.

Bunch of pictures are loaded to flickr.com