TGIF!

This week wasn't too tough, but I found myself just feeling sooo couped up inside. I just couldn't wait to get off work. After I finished that presentation, I really felt like getting some fresh air, not the kind of "fresh air" in the bar. So I decided to so something I have never done in Switzerland (actually I don't really find myself doing it in the states, but I was driving a Honda).

I went driving around like a redneck, just for the sake of driving. And no, I didn't have a 6 pack next to me. And no, I did obay the speed limit (loosely).

Man how cool was that! Went over to Lutry, got on the highway and just let it rip. I was going 130 well before I was out of steam in 4th. It just feels soooo good. I love that car!

Now off to dinner for some tapas!

We went hiking

and winded up...
a big black cow chased us around..... because she didn't like me singing the pink panther theme.

We started filming this because she wanted a picture with the sweet looking cows. You can tell how much she loves cows - like best buddies.


Before the chase.



Of course, the cameraman had to ditch filming because of the chase.

Then after...


Then she commented on what happened.


Then we re-enacted what happened.

(we will try to subtitle this in english later)

upgrading to snow leopard

the directory service is still burning up a lot of CPU for no good reason.

The upgrade killed my openldap install so I had to install from scratch.

This meant compiling the berkely BD. LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS are absolutely crucial to doing this on OSX. Google provided good help there.

Orchestrator is still loading up with JVM 1.6 instead of 1.5.0 even with the hack. Don't know what is going on there.

i love TV, I love the bar

been a tough few days.
After VMworld, I had to unwind n0 matter how tired I am. So I ended up at the irish bar next to the hotel.
Beer, wings.... boy, i didn't realize how much i miss it.
then back to the hotel. TV!!!!!!!
Swiss TV SUCKS dead goats!
American cable rocks......... Ｉmiss it.

eeepc update ui

first time I am running it. it just crashed on me. I think the updates are still running since the ps outputs suggest it's still alive.

There is no way my wife would know that if she is the one running the update.......

Also noticed that asus disabled the update button on firefox and only allows you (in the UI) to install newer versions of firefox through their update server. The problem is that they are WAY behind..... (FF still on 3.0.4 when it should be 3.0.13 or 3.5.2)

1st thoughts on the eeepc 1000

not sure if the hype of ssd is paying off. Maybe it's the processor and memory spec that is slowing the down.
The thing shipped with Xandros linux by default. Not bad, kinda cute. The keyboard is a bit clunky, and feels cheap, but I suppose what is what you would expect from asus.

Why do the xandros UI folks choose to model their UI after Windows? There are plenty of good examples out there. Ever heard of OS X?

Getting to a command prompt was a bit painful. ctrl+alt+t... wa then sudo konsole. I suppose it's the KDE console. Then there is no easy way to get it added to the desktop where all the apps are.

One more thing. The reason I hate touch pads...... you hit them by accident all the time. That is why I preferred the nipple on the thinkpads.

jetlegged but I need to get some sleep now......

(went to a decent japanese joint last night....... i guess i look the part. they say "hi" a lot:)

wise words.......

Nature commits no errors; right and wrong are human categories.

-PARDOT KYNES, Arrakis Lectures

Quote of the day

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'
- Sam Levenson

vision for a company

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_ozzie?currentPage=all

intriguing read. It makes me wonder, in VMware, we do have someone doing this kinda stuff, right? We need a vision, a concrete one.

Another thought. Is MS just a good place to foster good managers? Thus far, I have really like Maritz's stuff, he too comes from MS. Cerrtainly Ray Ozzie doens't come from MS, but he works there now.

The interesting thing to watch might be will MS be as good as today when the Maritz and Ray Ozzie generation of managers retire?

better get back to forming a more concrete strategy for the product I manage............

jump starting the freakin' car

hats off to German sports car maker.........................

You have made jumping a car soooo freaking complicated, and the relevant portion in the manual so disjointed.  Un-Deutsch und unglaublich.

 

We accidentaly left the GPS plugged in. You would think the car would shutdown the aux power when its not running.  Anyway, we were left with a great car that won't start.

We were able to borrow a jumpstart kit from a mechanic but were unable to start the car.  Since it's a mid-engine car, I figured I can't reach the battery leads and the instruction in the manual was what I needed to do to jump start the car.  Remove the fuse box cover, pull out the leads that had the plus sign on it, hook up the red end of the jumper cable to it, then the black end to the car body.  Woowoo, I got lights in the car.

But the car won't start.

We returned the jumpstart thingy, thinking that it just didn't have enough juice for our car.  The mechanic looked baffled.  We borrowed some jumper cables and waited for a friend to get off work.

Did the same routine, and of course, it didn't work either.  Now I am reading the damn manual again, and sure enough, at the bottom of the page in fine print, it said something like: "this won't start your car.  You can now open the front cover of the car (where the motor of a front engine car would be).  It doesn't tell you which page you should read now.  Flipping through the 300 page manual, I found that 10 pages later, you find a picture of a battery and jumper cables hooked up to it.  It doesn't tell you where the damn thing is, it just shows you that you can hook up jumper cables to it.  Damn it!  Well, I guess 2+2 equals 4 and I started searching for something that resembles what the picture had shown.   

After pull out every conceivable cover, faceplate under the hood, I found the battery!  Hooked the jumper cables to the battery and eureka!  

Doing all this while I am sick with a fever really didn't help.............................

Happy Thanksgiving

As expected, we will not be celebrating Thanks Giving with a Turkey this year. Instead, we are heading out to Barcelona for the long weekend.
Pretty tired now from working the whole day. Had lunch with Manu. For those from the Ecole, he moved out to Chicago 1.5 years ago.

Suddenly, I am thinking of a friend from the east coast. I hope you are having Thanksgiving with your mom and things are getting better. I know how it feels. These feelings tend to sting a little during the holidays.

St. Laurent

Today, we enjoyed a bottle of St. Laurent from Austria: Hoepler - Erwein 2005

It's a bit light compared to the Malbec, tempranillo, Chianti, or french wines we normally like, but has yet enough flavor, and is slightly sweet to match with the mild venison Entrecote we had.

I think it's a wonderful match, but also offers such an Austrian flavor that makes me think there is probably enough emotional factor in it for YiChun and me - she lived in Vienna for so long and I when I was so young.

what a week

Lufthansa pushed the flight back yet again...... I am sitting in Munich after a long haul flight from SFO.

looks like some changes are coming down the pipe. Hopefully the situation will improve at work. It will be a hard couple of months, but hopefully all for the better. It's amazing how one person's actions could impact so many people's lives.

Much learning on the job and life. Makes things interesting, doesn't it?

are we becoming dumber?

The Perils of Public Chic. - an op ed from WSJ provided plenty of food for thought for Mark and me.

This reminds me. The American people deserve more credit than I give them. I didn't think America was ready for a black president. I can't believe I would say this, Bush actually accelerate the giant leap forward by screwing stuff up so badly.

Like the Chinese proverb: Mr. Tsai's loss of a great horse is not an indication of loss of fortune.

The 80/20 rule in marriage

From the movie: "Why did I get married?"

In most cases in marriage, you are only going to get 80% of what you need. So here comes this woman offering the 20%, because you ain't gettin' it, you think you are getting 80%. Only when you go with her, and you end up with 20.

back in America

For two weeks of meetings and VMworld.

Oh do I miss it.

Was watching the show Rachael Ray has. Never seen it before since it came on after I moved to Switzerland. (Looks like her voice is more horse, she put on some weight, and she just looks plain tired. Slow down, girl!)

Jerry Springfield was on that day. On the question of what kind of food they provide in the backroom for guests, Springfield said:
"We have ...... and mesh potatoes because most of our guests don't have teeth."

So very cute :)

Russia has invaded Georgia!

My dear Americans, For those of us living abroad, sometimes these kind of posts just don't help persuading how great America is, no matter how hard we try to convince people near us.

before naming your child

ah, one of the often talked about topic. You want our child to have a special name and yet not be ridiculed. With so many bad examples, one should just google a name before you name your child. I had a friend in college of Greek descend, his name was Clito. It's ok, just a Greek name, but did you ever think that you are giving birth to your son in an English speaking part of the world and chances are he is going to have a pretty rough time in school?

Stumbling upon Lev Tylor's divorce news and that she has a child. She named her son Milo?

YiChun said maybe we should consider calling our child Caotina Yiu.

when voters lie

Excellent article on wall street journal on political surveys and voters:

what would you do?

Friends came to visit from Ireland this weekend. Younger of the two sons was a student of YiChun's. The older son is autistic. It's really touching to see how much effort both parents put into raising the son. Not only are the parents, the younger son also takes responsibility in watching over his older brother at times.

Last night, I asked myself what I would do if I had a child like that. I admire what the parents have done. I ask myself if I have the same level of dedication, and I am not at all sure. How could you ever be sure at your child's birth, besides the ten fingers and ten toes, that everything is "normal"? It must have been a gut wrenching thing to find out that your child is different.

Which leads to another question. Some of us strive to be different. "Think different" - Apple's commercials always say. But when it come to physical and mental characteristics, we all wish to be "normal"? Why the disparity?

There are just so many unknowns in life. I guess we all expect the unexpected.