9 to 5

Just as I was getting ready to leave work today, a friend knocked on the door. The conversation went something like this:

friend: i come to say good bye.

me: what? you are leaving? where?

friend: <some other place>

friend: you didn’t know? the news has been around for about a week.

me: what? why?

friend: <pause>

me: you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.

friend: live issues.

friend: it’s going to be an easy job.

friend: 9 to 5.

friend: i want to spend more time with my family.

me: i see.

I know he’s not struggling in term of performance. In fact he’s been busy on a high profile project. I guess he just got tired of it so he fired the company and left. Good for him .

It actually hit close to home on me as well. Is this what I really want to do? What do I get from this? Certainly not a lot of money. I bet he didn’t take to much of a pay cut if not actually a raise. Hell the benefit may even be much better. Satisfaction? Contention?

ps. Just because we were talking for a little while, I got a couple of instant messages on my terminal. Holy swinging chandelier trap, Batman! (Or as Admiral Ackbar said more succinctly, “It’s a trap!”) I should have left earlier. Instead, I needed to spend extra half hour to fire off few replies. Why do some people like to forward questions at the end of Friday like they’re trying to shed off problems? Hey, that thing did not have anything to do with me and you knew it or should have known it.

flavor of the week: Grass

I like Jelly Belly jelly beans and one of my favorite flavors is Grass. Grass is (or used to be) part of the Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s beans collection. Yes, they really have the icky flavors like in the books. While I think I’m pretty adventurous in my taste, I didn’t try all of them. I tried Vomit, Dirt, Soap and Grass and they all tasted like they are labeled (yes, Vomit really tastes like vomit). Obviously I’m not too keen on trying Booger, Earwax, Rotten Egg and the rest.

Grass does taste like grass. But not in a bad way. It’s semi sweet and once chewed it has the slight flavor of grass in the morning. The type of grass in your front yard, not the other grass although that certainly could be interesting. I wonder if some drunken chemists actually tried to capture that grass flavor in a jelly bean candy.

If you are a fan of Harry Potter (which I am not) you should try some of the flavors to really experience what some of them taste in the books. However, I don’t think even a warlock would actually enjoy some of the flavors. I keep myself to Grass and other Jelly Belly regular flavors.

Police Concert, Oakland 06/13/07

Intro

I wanted to start writing about more than complaints from my mundane life. I went to The Police concert a few weeks ago and always wanted to write about it. Too bad I haven’t got the chance until now. Anyway, this is not a review of the concert although I may have some comments on concert itself.

The Police announced the reunion tour at the Grammy’s after breaking up for more than twenty years. Looks like everyone is trying cashing in on the 80’s remake/reissue. The tour is sponsored by Best Buy and Best Buy’s rewards members got first dibs at the tickets a day earlier that fans club members. Btw, the fans club charged a whopping $100 for membership. Fortunately, a friend of mine was a Best Buy’s Rewards member and I was able to get a pair of tickets. In retrospect, I could’ve resold those tickets for good profit.

On concert night

We were almost late because we spent more than an hour in traffic trying the get away from the venue. Parking was full and traffic jammed from hundreds of cars trying to find parking elsewhere and other cars pulling in not knowing the parking was full with a dozens of trucks and eighteen-wheelers thrown in for good measure. This was a complex that hosted many concerts and NBA, NFL and MLB games through out the year for so many years. You would’ve thought they could’ve arranged things a little better. Maybe putting electronic signs on both highway directions indicating traffic and parking status on the stadium would help. To be fair to them, I’m sure they tried and maybe it’s just impossible to make it better. Maybe bureaucracy held them up. Maybe I’m jusy a little whiny bug.

Just as we stepped inside the stadium looking for our field seatings, The Police appeared on stage and kicked off with Message in the Bottle. When we got to our seats, a guy looked at us and promptly pulled the arm of his lady friend and jumped over the new row of seatings. When I looked at our seat numbers, there were actually 4 empty seats. Two were ours and the other two empty. So were the couple before seat squatters? Maybe they saw a few good and empty seats and occupied them hoping the real holders couldn’t attend or were they the owners of the other two seats and decided to leave just as we got there for unknown reasons. What a mistery.

The concert itself, while not great, was good. The main point was that The Police is playing together after twenty-some years and everyone should just be happy about that. I have to say that most if not all were quite content with that. They performed all of their hits although they rearranged most if not all of them. I appreciated the effort although the result had a few misses. The stretch of De Do Do Do De Da Da Da, Invisible Sun and Walking in the Footsteps was too drawn out for me. The high point was Wrapped Around Your Finger where Steward Copeland played back and forth on the drum sets and on some chimes instruments that to me looked to be hanging metallic barnacles. I was waiting for King of Pain and it finally came on the first encore. First? yes, there were two encores. I wonder when are concerts going to bore surprise us with even more encores.

Aftertaste

So the concert was ok. Was is worth the troubles and ticket price? Yes. The concert itself is good enough to worth the ticket price. It was not great in terms of performance. The date was one of the earlier on the tour so the was a few but noticeable rusts. Sting sang a little like the solo Sting and he didn’t hit the octaves like he did twenty plus years ago. The drum, base and guitar ventured out of sync a couple of times. However, for fans of The Police music the concert delivered big time. They answered prayers of their fans who had been wishing that this would happen. This is obviously apparent from the fact that their concerts were (are, as some dates are being added) sold out within hours worldwide. They also make it relatively affordable especially in contrast to news of Genesis concert costing $225 for the cheapest tickets.

So to in closing: Would I pay the same amount of money again to see them the second time around? No. Did I regret not selling my tickets for big profit? No.

SFO (3G + bluetooth tethering)

I’m currently waiting to board my flight. I was trying to find free wi-fi service but my search turned out nothing. Hmm.. 3G coverage looks good, how can I connect my laptop to my phone and use it as a modem.The blackjack can act as a USB modem. As (bad) luck would have it, I forgot to bring my phone proprietary usb cable. So bluetooth is the only way.

I can connect ActiveSync but it only allows sharing the laptops connection, not the other way around. There is a way to connect from the PC to a bluetooth device as a Personal Area Network. However, my phone rejected this connection although it identified itseld as a PAN device. Fortunately, googling on my phone revealed the how-to. It turns out that buried in the /Windows folder of my phone, there is a small app called internetsharing. I have to use this app to connect my phone as a PAN device then connect again from my PC. That’s not bad. it’s actually very simple. Speed is good for browsing and email.

Why isn’t this small program on the Blackjack’s application menu?

customer service call

I made a call to a certain company’s customer service number to downgrade my sunscription service. I was put through a series of automated options that ended with “press 1 if you want to upgrade. press 2 if you want to downgrade”. I was mildly impressed. I thought that this is probably the most intuitive customer service call system I’ve experienced.

After pressing ‘2′ and a brief pause, I was connected to a csr. So far so good. Then…

csr: Hi.. how may I help you?

me: Hi, I want to downgrade my service

csr: sure, let me forward you to that department. Please hold.

me: !!!??!?

What? What was the point of having very specific automated options if in the end a living, breathing csr still needs to forward my call to the relevant department?

I have to mention that the human operators were nice and my request was completed swiftly once I get to the correct department although I was on hold for several minutes. However, mark me perplexed at the dubious automated system.

alone

Tonight, A and the kids will be flying out of the country. It’s only for two weeks and then I’m going to join them. I will be home alone for the first time in years.

Somehow, I feel strange and I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow. I can’t sleep last night just thinking about it. Not that I think I will miss them too terribly (I will miss them but it’s only for two weeks and I can reach them almost anytime in the meantime). It just feels bland. I think the trip back from the airport will be a particularly peculiar one.

edit: I should try to find a Wii this weekend

3G in Napa…

but not in Palo Alto?

Pix

Looks like my postings worth less without pictures. I should work on embedding some pictures for some of my posts as soon as I just get off my lazy butt and start (which is may not be soon).

Motorola KRZR

My dad has always been a fan of Motorola flip phones since the MicroTAC 8700 to the current mass favorite RAZR. While I like some Motorola phones especially their sturdy older models, I’m not too impressed with their newer lines and I don’t really like flip mechanism anymore. I guess cell phone preferences are a matter of personal taste.

Anyway, his RAZR is really in a terrible shape. It was wet with sea water once (a long story) and the metallic keypad had developed some rust (!?!). Most Java apps wouldn’t run correctly either (including the ones supplied on the phones). I think it has something to do with it having a really old firmware. He has had the phone since early after it was released and I think the firmware is just old and buggy. He just never played with the Java apps there to confirm that it never was working correctly since he bought it.

So with the KRZR being the new Motorola flip model, I set out to find one for him. The KRZR is not yet released by the GSM operators in the US so I looked at eBay and asian cell phone stores for unlocked European/Asian version. A post on Craigslist tipped me that Motorola itself had an online store selling their unlocked phones and they were having a discount during the holiday. So bought it from Motorola direct with official 1 year warranty (my credit card added 1 extra year to that) for less than I would’ve paid for without warranty from eBay or the stores and my dad got an early christmas present.

There is nothing special about the phone itself (at least to me). Basically it is like a RAZR. Btw, if RAZR is to be a short for ‘razor‘, what is KRZR short for? I couldn’t find any suitable word except for ‘crazier‘. Anyway, it’s like a RAZR but skinnier and a litle longer and a little thicker. The back side is coated with rubberized layer while the front side is in glossy lacquered finish. I think it looks better than the RAZR but the glossy finish will attract fingerprints and sticking dust like crazy especially in the humid SE Asia where it will be used.

Feature wise, I think it was decent for a Motorola phone. It has a 4-band GSM radio with EDGE. Call quality is good and inline with other decent newer GSM phones. Same with battery life. User interface is not as good as Nokia phones or even Sony Ericsson phones but this one is also kinda personal. My dad having owned only Motorola cell phones likes the UI just fine. Camera is 2MP (unlike the CDMA version which is 1.3MP) and in my opinion surprisingly decent. Maybe not as good as the best ones I’ve seen and I haven’t seen too many but definitely decent and serviceable as a phone camera. I’ve used only HTC and Samsung phone cameras which are terrible so I might be very impressionable. Btw, if the phone is in camera mode when it’s flipped closed, the camera is still on and the display move to the secondary LCD so the camera lens and the LCD is facing the same way. I didn’t know that flip phones with secondary LCD do that. Good for taking a picture of your own face instead of looking at the reflective metal thingy on other phones.

Supposedly it’s also a decent music phone. It supports A2DP bluetooth profile although I couldn’t make it work with my cheapo Logitech stereo bluetooth headphones. The built-in speaker is loud and clear. It also takes a microSD card for storage expansion. I bought a Corsair 2GB card for my dad and it seems to work fine with the phone. The current software does not allow MP3s from the microSD card to be used as ringtone. Only MP3s from phone memory can. This is not very convenient althogh I read a firmware upgrade changed that.

Now the phone has a mini-USB as its only port. So it’s used for charging, synching with a PC and yes, for a headphone plug as well for wired headphones. Not very convenient especially when I can’t make it work with my bluetooth headphones. Regular bluetooth headsets for handsfree talking does work fine however.

So overall it’s a good phone. For the price, it’s not the phone that I’d get for myself. But as a comparison, between the RAZR 2 years ago when first introduced and this phone now, I think the KRZR is still a better phone. Imho, the RAZR then was an average phone in a very fashionable shell (for that time) while the KRZR now is an good above average phone in a slightly less fasionable shell for the present. That should make Motorola fans like my dad happy.

disclaimer: I am not a phone/tech reviewer and this is not a review. I have not used many cell phones and I am not qualified to make an objective review/comparison.

A Watch

My watch is broken. My wife accidently dropped it on the floor and looks like it knocked many things loose in it. It wasn’t a great watch in the first place. It was an inexpensive Skagen quartz watch. I bought it because I needed a watch and I liked the way it looked at that time.

Anyway, it seems like I need a new watch. Or rather, I want a new watch. I am not a watch connoisseur and I am not too familiar with the different qualities and movements of today’s watches. I have two that I am considering right now. One is a Seiko 5 Military Automatic watch. Another is a Japan Seiko Perpetual Calendar quartz.

The first one has a Seiko in-house automatic movement (made in Singapore or in rare cases, Japan) and day-date function. It a decent basic movement that cannot be hand-wound. The watch has some water (100 feet which I was told is about the same pressure as water coming out of a shower) and shock resistant. I think it can be acquired for less than $100 from Asia or eBay.

The second obviously has a quartz movement. It does have day-date perpetual calendar that does not need to be reset until 2100. The particular model I want is made in japan and has the simple classic stainless steel casing popularized by the Rolex Oyster (but not originated by Rolex, I think). Unfortunately this watch is impossible to find in the US and still hard to get from Asia (online or in-store). And if available, it probably will cost $300-$400 new. Kinda steep for a simple stainless steel quartz watch.

Right now i’m leaning towards the first one. However, I’m going to wait for a while before I actually make a purchase.