Wedding pics

These are the most hi quality ones since Love who is a professional took them.........

Check back often. I am sure there are more to come.

Sia

why does everyone keeps asking.....

"Are you nervous?"

No, I am not really. I think I was tense a couple days ago because of work. I am cool about Friday though. Everything is pretty much done except the party favors that were supposed to have arrived from Germany today. But that's ok. YiChun are now picking out music for the party. Gettin' married is actually kinda fun. :)

gettin married

ah, the Swiss government just informed us two days ago that we have to get married on May 30th. So we are having the civil ceremony, and a dinner party for the friends nearby.

A little surprised? So are we.

Check out the web page.

Urgh.... OS X 10.5.2 & Juniper SSL VPN

IT had some issues with the SSL gateway. I think they must have upgraded to solve the problem. As a result, when I connected up this morning, it forced me to install a new client and that is where all the problems started. First the software wouldn't install. Then throwing the Network Connect software away didn't help. When I did finally get it to install, I got stuck where it was executing the installation script.

I tried everything on this post and some of the stuff was helpful. This is what worked for me.
Delete the Network Connect app.
Do the links suggested by the last poster.

$ cd /usr/lib
$ sudo cp libcrypto.0.9.dylib libcrypto.0.9.dylib.ppc
$ sudo cp libssl.0.9.dylib libssl.0.9.dylib.ppc
$ sudo ln -sf libcrypto.0.9.7.dylib libcrypto.0.9.dylib
$ sudo ln -sf libssl.0.9.7.dylib libssl.0.9.dylib

Then delete the files:

$ cd /Library/Frameworks
$ sudo rm -R net.juniper.*
$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/juniper

Then do what sudogeek said here:
The installation for Juniper's Network Connect differs on different OS X versions. I have successfully installed and used Network Connect 5.5 on Mac O X 10.3.x, 10.4.x, and 10.5.1.

Mac OS X 10.3.x, <10.4.9:>

Mac OS X >10.4.10, 10.5.x: This alternative method works for all Mac OS X versions but seems to be necessary only for the newer ones. You need to log in to your Mac as an administrative user and open the NetInfo Manager (10.3.x or 10.4.x) or "Directory Utility" (10.5) application in "Utilities." Under "Edit" click on "Enable root user." Then go the "System Preferences" and change the login options to Name and Password. Log out then log in as root. Now use Safari to open the web site which loads the VPN client. Click Start for Network Connect and the software will be downloaded and installed. Now, log out of the root account, go back to your regular administrative user account and log in. Again open the "NetInfo Manager" or "Directory Utility" application and under disable root user. Then go the "System Preferences" and change the login options to whatever you want.

Don't replace this bit with the sudo safari stuff from your regular user. It should work in theory, but when I tried it, safari still asked me to provide the password.

Even though I am a UNIX guy and don't believe in reboots, I did a reboot just to make sure the links and all the changes I made are in correctly.

When the box came back up, I logged in as root, the installation went fine. Although I tried logging into the SSLVPN, it failed. I logged out and logged back in as the regular user, and was able to get into the SSLVPN without issues. Weird.

Good luck.

HP Laserjet 4 m plus on OS X

what a pain....... If you don't know how it works.

It wasn't available in the drop down for OS X. The new OS X 10.5 drivers from HP doesn't have it either.

On windows, duplex works, and everything is cool.

The printer kept printing everything twice and ignore all duplex setting when printing from the Mac. So here is what it all came down to. To get the Laserjet4m plus working, you have to use the generic postscript driver, and go into the postscript setting on the printer to turn duplex on. In addition, set copies to 1. My printer came in German, so it's "Examplare". That kept throwing me off because I thought the drivers were not working. Urgh......

On March 5th, 1979..............

I turned 4. Our family spent a year in Vienna with an Austrian family.
Today, I went to visit that family. They were kind enough to dig up some pictures of me. I must admit that I really don't remember that much of that year - I was only 4.
I will let the pictures speak for themselves, and you be the judge whether I was a cute kid or not.

St. Moritz

Highly recommended! Go in off season, stay in one of the villages 5km away from it and you too can experience what Prince Charles does every winter. I experienced one of the nicest surroundings in Switzerland. The lakes, the mountains were simply mesmerizing. It was truly incredible.

They have maps you can take for free at the tourist information right in the villages. For hiking, they will also provide you with a list of all the trails available in the area, and how long it takes to hike them. I would recommend a trail map, simply because it provides some comfort in knowing where the heck you are going and better detail than what the tourist maps would.

state side for a few days

Went back to the states for three days. It was an interesting experience. I was able to test my idea of moving back to the states. There are certainly plus and minuses. The up side is certainly obvious - I speak the language, know how things work, have friends that make up a fantastic social network, the job opportunities available, the convenience, the amount of entertainment available, the restaurants, and it is the place I want to settle down in the long run. Best of them all is the powerful capitalist machine - the shopping, the amount of merchandise available, choices. Consumer is KING! (Those of you who know me are probably shocked to hear me say that, but wait until you move to Europe)

There are some obvious downsides too: with the commercialism, things are more about money than anything else, there are people everywhere, no easy access to nature or places where you can take a nice long walk. (I noticed that the three days I was there, I walked less than I would in one day in Switzerland)

It certainly put things in perspectives for me.

do you call?

so, here is the situation.
I traveled across the pond to the west coast for an interview. The time on land between flights was three days. I met up with two friends for dinner the first two days. The girl friend of a good buddy lives in that town; she is also a classmate from last year. Even though I might not have the best relationship with her, do I call and maybe hang out the last night there? Or, do I go to an alum event, and make some contacts? Or, after a full day of interviews, sit and relax?

What's your take?

Nice, Cannes, Eze, and Monaco

Eze, the destination YiChun had talked about for the last six months finally made our travel itinerary. The first trip YiChun and I took after her move here was to the French Riviera (as if the Swiss Riviera wasn't good enough).

We stayed in this little hotel at the center of Nice, in the Messena street. It was well located. The seafood in Nice was pretty good. Although I do have to say they definitely charge a fair tourist premium. But hey, what are you going to do, it's the french!

The beaches in Nice and Cannes were really not that impressive. The Nice beach is stone, and while the Cannes beach is a bit nicer and sandy, both of them cater to tourists en mass. Not my thing. The back streets of Nice are quit quaint and filled with little shops and restaurants that are worth an afternoon's exploration.

Eze was WAY cool. It's this little village built on a cliff in the 15th century. The town was full of little alleys and had a spectacular view of the bay. I have to admit that I was not expecting anything that nice and unique. I was really surprised. If you ever make it out to Nice, and have little time, make Eze your destination. The bus from Nice drops you off right in the center of town. Take a walk up to the town, and be sure to make a stop for a drink at Le Château de la Chèvre.

Monaco is cool for its romantic image, F1, the casino, and of course, the playground of the rich and famous. It's an interesting place to visit.

Macintel part 2

just a couple more things.

1. My clock was running a lot faster than my wrist watch. Weird, I thought. System Profiler reported that the processor speed was at 1.4GHz while it's a 1.86GHz Core2 Duo E6300. So I thought my bios setting was wrong. Sure. But fixing that didn't do the trick either. I know that I applied the jAs 10.4.9 and have the 8.9.1 kernel so I shouldn't have the issues with the older 8.8.1 kernel as described here under Time is wrong. But I tried the fsb=266 trick, and everything worked! Now I wonder if the same thing was causing Skype to have funky audio and drop calls. Huh.

MacIntel

Ah, the beauty of OS Y on two heads without having to pay over $2k for just the system.

Last year, I put OS Y on my Thinkpad. But it never ran quite smoothly because of the lack of SSE 3 support.

Having a MacBook Pro really helped in convincing me of the switch. Long ago, I made a commitment that if a UNIX variant ever had a nice GUI, I would switch. While I am fairly UNIX savvy, it's just a little painful to run as your main box and without the mainstream apps.

This year, I put a new PC together. Up until now, my main desktop was a P3 with rambus ram. I was pretty careful in picking the hardware, especially the video card. I choose the ATI 1900GT. Figuring that Apple supported the 1900XT officially, and it shouldn't be a problem. Well, WRONG!

So here is my documentation on how to put Aqua on. It doesn't take that long, about 8 hours of work. I got everything I wanted to work: dual head, full QT and IC support so VLC plays DVDs and OpenGL stuff works as well.

Couple of things to remember.
1. You might want to get a second drive that you can experiment with. Just in case you blow stuff away by accident. Didn't happen to me, but if your end product is a fully working system (I fully intent on replacing Windows), why not put it on a separate drive?

2. This worked for my system and I have little clue if it would work on anything else.
Core2 Duo
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 motherboard
Marvell Yukon ethernet
AC97 Azalia
ATI 1900GT 256MB from Sapphire

What you will need:
10.4.8 jAs distro
10.4.9 Jas update
AzaliaAudio.pkg.zip
Natit_edited.kext.zip

Installation Steps
1. Install the OS from DVD without selecting the ATI fixes. If you pick the ATI fixes, you will get a blck screen after reboot. A post from jAs suggested that the fix might be incompatible with the video card. You should get 1024x768 after you have gone thru all the installation steps here.
2. Next take care of the network card and audio. Follow this step-by-step guide. (I printed out the directions ahead of time.) I followed steps 9 thru 17. Skipping Step 13.
3. Use this approach. Since it's not as easy to read, understand and has a mistake, I modified it a bit. Here is what I used.
-Get natit_edited
-You will need to copy your Device and manufacture id of ur card (About this mac -> More info -> Graphics / Displays). Mine was 0x724B1002 where 0x denotes it's a hex value and 724B is the device id and 1002 is the manufacture id.
-Open natit.kext and edit plist file, find your model, and change the device id with the correct one.
-Copy natit.kext to /System/Library/Extensions
- Edit Info.plist in /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000.kext/Contents.
- find IOPCIMatch
- add 0x724b1002 in the string section. (this is where I got tripped up. The original guide fouled up here)

-Go into the terminal, browse to /System/Library/Extensions and type:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
sudo chown -R root:wheel Natit.kext
sudo chmod -R 0755 /System/Library/Extensions
diskutil repairPermissions /

-Reboot and enjoy!

istanbul

Was at Istanbul two weekends ago. I was really surprised at how modern Istanbul was. It was clean, orderly, and best of all, the people were friendly! Very few people hassled us, and even fewer people tried to cheat (of course, you have cabbies who would take money from you whenever possible).

My friend said: "well, there is no sense of adventure here at all."

Pretty cool place to go visit though. You can definitely see how history marked Constantinople as the place where Christianity met Islam. Some pretty cool sites though. I have never been inside of a mosque before. When I went to Saudi Arabia, I wasn't allowed in since I am not a Muslim. There are some pretty grand stuff over there. Best of all, you could go it. I do enjoy how liberal Islam is there.

That brings up another topic. Neither my friend nor I could figure out what the rule is on the female dress code is among Islamic women. Of course, there were the few classic all-black dresses. However, most Muslim women there dressed somewhere between colored skirts covered by a khaki trench coat and fashionable jeans with nice blouse and matching shoes (plus headscarf, of course). You might think it's not big deal to wear something that covers your entire body and then wrapping yourself in a tight trench coast. Just keep in mind that it was 38 degrees (around 110 in fehrenheit)!

Anyhow, it was a nice weekend and I have the pictures to prove it!

some reflection on El Chemista

Reading El Chemista. The section after the boy meets the al chemist in the desert and was given a speech on life.

I agree, and wish that things in my life would also work out to be the same. Things and people help you get to where you are supposed to go. Any maybe everything that happens is a part of a larger plan to get me to where I am supposedly going. But I wonder how the boy started, and if he was simply told what his destiny is versus figuring it out himself. Yes, there was a dream and that it was the gypsy and the king who told him where to go and what to do. But what did he want? It just seems like he was also making up his mind as he went. Is that how it’s supposed to be? Are we supposed to have a bigger goal and understanding where we are going then go toward it, and make smaller decision to get us there everyday? Or, do we just make it up as we go?

Certainly, reminders are needed every so often once you figure out where you want to go, but I think figuring out where you want to go is more important, and certainly challenging.

I still haven’t figured out what my goal is.

been a while, life hasn't been great

but you still have to find time to have a little fun.

Freak!

Started taking french lessons this week. The lady is very nice and she seems to be very good at what she does.

To supplement my french lessons, I decided to listen to those french lesson tapes when I walk to and from work. To get the most out of the tape, you should always try to "repeat after me." So there I was, walking with ear buds, mumbling to myself. I started to notice strange stares: what the hell is that freak doing, talking to himself, walking?

strategy time

Got a board meeting to prepare for. I need to come up with a strategy, a staffing plan, and a budget. :) I guess this is the kinda stuff b school is supposed to prepare you for, and all MBA students hope to do when they graduate. Yet, I just feel nervous. I know, I have done this many times in school, but yet, I still find myself flipping through the ICP ("International Consulting Project" for those of you who are not familiar with IMD speak) manual trying to find a strategy "cookbook".

Nah, it's not a cookbook, only if it were that easy. The ICP manual does show you the steps to follow though. Cool. I also need to dig up Boschek's notes on industry analysis to make sure I am doing stuff right.

Huh, I guess B school does teach you something. I just wish I have all this stuff in my head so I don't have to keep referring to my notes. Guess I just wasn't built that way, but I know Maria is (good reason to why she is a Bainny).

Anyway, enough bullshit, I better starting digging through Bolschek's notes.

deal time

I have something GOOD to announce!

Cidway just signed a signature deal with the largest bank in a country straddling Europe and Asia. Even though it's just a pilot, when a bank has millions of Internet banking users does a pilot, they do it for x00,000 customers! (Sorry, I can't really tell you what "x" is)

Not only that, we beat out the European market leader! It's pretty exciting!

I hope this is only the beginning of many more deals to come. Stay tuned!

long distance

It's hard. My last relationship endured through two years of long distance. The current one has pretty much been long distance from the get go. We are really happy together, but the distance requires a different kind of romance, and a different kind of passion. Lots of Skype (although I didn't feel it as much last year since I had less say over my schedule, and at least 50 others also kept their relationship going that way), lots of emails. Personally, it's just that much harder to conjure up the kind of passion when someone is right next to you.

Sigh..........

wow, she can write

Banjot, a friend of mine married a writer. I had never read her stuff until recently, and wow, she can write. Meeta was recently published. Here is Banjot's entry about it on his blog.