Daily // June 2007

June 30, 2007

Another week, another weekend. It's been two weeks into my internship and it certainly passed quickly. As for today, well I wasn't as productive as I thought I'd be.. But it's forgivable since I'm not like this everyday. Sometimes you gotta let yourself relax, you know?

Tmr I'm heading to Kings Dominion, an amusement park in Richmond, Virginia (about two hrs from where I am). Who am I going there with? One of my colleagues and his two sons (11 and 9 year olds). It should be fun. Meanwhile I should rest early tonight since we'll be leaving very early..

June 29, 2007

Happy Birthday Kevin.

Sadly, history repeated itself today when Martina lost in the 3rd round. But let's fast forward the bad news..

While I'm not quite trapped in the iphone vortex, I'd still love go to the store and try one in person. But, from a realistic point of view, it's crazy to pay so much for a phone. It's also amazing that so many people put 'getting an iphone' as their top priority. I wonder how it'll be viewed when we look back on this launch day 20 years from now..

June 28, 2007

It's getting quite hot and humid around Germantown and Rockville. On usual sunny days the temperature would get above 30C. But the difference between here and Florida is that temperature here drops at night (to low 20s).

I'm starting to get use to my lifestyle here. And that is working from monday to friday, recharging on weekends, and so on and so forth. This is both good and bad: in a way I'm becoming more and more independent, but I'm also fastforwarding my life to an adult one and missing out on one of the few summer holidays I have left.

A happy 19th birthday to Kevin since it's already 29th in HK, and it's good to hear that you did well in AL.

June 27, 2007
Wimbledon: Martina finds her stride

Phew. I relaxed after Martina clinched her victory at the fifth matchpoint during her match against Japan's Aiko Nakamura. You just never know what would happen until the very end.. But the score today seemed much 'healthier': 6-1, 6-2. Certainly, the match was tougher than the score suggests, but Martina definitely played better than she did on Monday. How did I know? Well, I followed the stats along the way.. There's also a convenient site that streams ESPN if you'd like to catch some tennis in the morning (or at night for HK readers).

One more thing... From Derek: Apple users, try pressing ctrl + alt + command(apple) + 8. Cool, ya?

June 26, 2007

Good day? Good day. Today is a very hot day. I didn't have much work in my queue, but I didn't get to eat out for lunch, which is usually my heavy meal of the day. But at night I decided to try Carrabba's, an Italian restaurant next to the bus stop. Perhaps influenced by watching Bambino, I ordered a linguine pescatore. It was quite good.

Seeing yourself in a 4-yr-old-picture brings back many memories.. And I don't think I grew much (physically) after that time..

June 25, 2007
Wimbledon: Hingis shakes off rust on day 1

As I was changing server configurations this morning, I had a Live Scores window open to see how Martina Hingis was playing, and not surprisingly, it didn't look good. How come? Well, she's been sidelined with injury for the past few months, missing all of the Wimbledon warmup events. Today, she was hanging on with one finger as she saved two match points against a British wildcard. Martina overcame and won 6-7, 7-5, 6-0. Kudos, kudos..

Meanwhile, she will have a day of rest before appearing again on wednesday. Here's Wimbledon's site. Oh, btw, next time you get on a mac, or if you are using a mac now, try hold shift when you launch Dashboard or reveal desktop; you may be surprised..

June 24, 2007

I really enjoy my Sundays. Having a regular work schedule makes you enjoy the free days you have, which is kind of like what you'd feel during school. So today, after waking up, I walked to Panera Bread for a light brunch. What did I have? Asian seasame chicken salad + strawberry smoothie. You should all try it sometime, this combination is quite good.

Another great thing I get to do on sundays is to watch a new episode of 放羊的星星. Sadly there are only 4 more episodes left.. I don't want it to end..

Back to another week of work. Good luck to me, and to you as well.

June 23, 2007

Does my site look lifeless? I really don't want it to sink into oblivion you know.. I'll try my best to keep it interesting.

So, today, I metro'ed to DC. Having got the $6.50 day pass, I traversed excessively between many stations just to make sure I didn't waste the ticket. I first got off at Farragut North, where I looked for Mont Blanc (and found it closed). Then I walked almost 10 blocks along Connecticut Avenue, and decided to eat lunch after buying a few books. So my next stop was Gallery Place/Chinatown, and after much spotting, I walked into 台山餐廳 to fill my stomach.

After lunch I traveled between Union Station (where I stayed to read for 30 minutes), Metro Station and Dupoint Circle. Around 5 I left for Shady Grove and went home for dinner. I enjoy my weekends.

P.S. You can see the metro map to get a better idea of where I went today.

June 21, 2007

I finally got my macbook back. Well, it turns out that my entire front bezel is replaced, including the camera, which costs $210 + $100 labor fee. That's quite a hefty amount; but fortunately I'm still under warranty.

Good nite for now.

June 20, 2007

I got a call from Apple saying that my macbook is ready to be picked up. But then it was a bit late (around 6pm) so I'll likely visit them after work tmr. We'll see.

June 19, 2007

Ah.. I'm so tired from work each day. And hungry too.. I need to get some snacks tmr.

June 17, 2007

Well, I woke up 9:30ish today, had some cereal for breakfast, then just didn't know what to do for the day. I knew I need to read the networking guides, but then besides that, I had nothing in mind. I felt very empty - it is as if I'm only here because of my internship. When my job hours or days are over, I don't know what to throw my energy into. Can I really bear this kind of goal-less, mundane life for another 10 weeks?

Anyway.. I did finish the most important areas of the readings. Now it's time to rest and prepare for another week of work.

June 16, 2007

When I arrived at Apple store this morning around 10:30, I was shocked by the amount of people inside. Other stores were just opening up and I thought I'd be one of a few early birds, but no. Did they fix my camera? No; not yet. However a Genius in the store confirmed that it's a hardware failure after booting off a clean OS. They said it'll take 4-5 days to get it repaired, which is quite disappointing, since traveling to this particular mall took me an hour by bus. But what could I do? Scream and demand an exchange for a new Macbook Pro? Maybe if there were less people in the store...

Right now I'm using my laptop from work. I'll need to finish up some readings tmr. Bye for now.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I went to watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer after work yesterday. It was quite good I thought. Maybe some of the jokes felt a bit forced but the reviews are really being too hard on this sequel.

June 15, 2007

My second day of work was good. I finished more orientation material, and in the afternoon I started some readings on networking. What will I be doing? Loadbalancing on servers. Maybe I'll explain more of that in the future...

I'm going to head to Apple store in Montgomery Mall tmr. Let's see if my isight can be fixed.

June 14, 2007

My cell phone's alarm woke me up at 7, then after snoozing it for 10 minutes, I got up and quickly dressed up. I left the apartment around 7:40, caughted the first bus (#100) from Germantown to Shady Grove. There was quite a bit of traffic, so the ride took 15 mintues longer than usual. I then caught the second bus (#63) successfully and arrived at the office before 9.

Orientation took place, and after some paper work, I was introduced to my team, which consists of my manager, my mentor and...me. Ya, our team only consists of three people. One good news is that my expected work hours will be from 10 to 4, which is quite nice.

More work tmr. What should I do on my first weekend here?

June 13, 2007

I arrived in one piece. But it was not without delays. Firstly, due to lightning, the entire crew in Reagan Airport stop working for an hour. That hour was exactly when my plane landed.. So all the passengers on board sat on the plane and stared at the gate in front of us in vail. I suspect that during this time the workers are sipping coffee in some lounge..

Then, I had to handle the DC's metro system. It was extremely convenient, surprisingly. The airport's station was right on the yellow line, and I transited to the red line towards Shady Grove via Chinatown station. It took about 35 minutes for $3.90, which is not bad, right?

My internship in Thomson Financial starts tmr. Let's see how I plough through my first day of work. Good nite.

June 12, 2007

Packing now. I'll be flying into DCA (in DC) around noon tmr. How do I feel? Nervous and anxious. I promise to update when I get there. See you!

June 11, 2007
Inquisitor

I remember very well how I reviewed WWDC 06 last year. I was using a Vaio back then. Who would have thought that a year later, as I review WWDC 07, I'd be using a mac? Anyway, I'm overall impressed by Leopard's features. The new desktop looks nice (with the exception of the rather ugly menu bar), the unified color theme looks good (a bit dark maybe), time machine seems promising, spaces is a good addition, ichat will be fun to use etc etc.

Today I also found a very useful plugin for safari. It allows you to preview search results as you type in the search box, similar to what Spotlight does locally. Read more about Inquisitor here.

Btw, I received something I really love today. What is it? I'm afraid I can't tell you.. As to why I'm reading the iSight discussion forum, well..my iSight keeps giving me the "green screen of death". So..

June 9, 2007

In a few days I'll be back in Maryland. I wonder what'll be in stall for me. But right now I need to decide what to bring with me, because I can't bring a lot..

June 8, 2007

So, I went out to see Ocean's Thirteen today. It is the first time I watched a movie in the cinema alone.. How was the movie? I thought it was superb. The cinematography was great, the plot was engaging, and the acting was good. Overall I'm impressed and this third sequel is much better than Ocean's Twelve. You should really go see it.

June 7, 2007

Try search "how to make spaghetti" in google and restrict the results to traditional chinese.. Guess what's the first site that pops up? That's right..my site. Apparently a few taiwanese wanted to learn how to cook spaghetti and arrived at my site. I suppose it's because of my entries about spaghetti in May.

Life is extremely monotonous sometimes.

June 6, 2007

Do you know that Apple is switching Mac OS's default file system to ZFS? Apparently, it stands for "zettabyte file system", where zettabyte denotes one million terabytes and represents an entire file system's maximum size. This feature is certainly an invaluable one to users like me, but there are other intriguing features. Here's one that makes Time Machine feasible:

June 5, 2007

I'll keep this short since I need to wake up in a few hours.. So, without further ado, good night.

June 4, 2007

Hello. How are you? I realized I haven't directly spoke to my readers for 4 days.. Oh well.. For you mac readers (using Safari or Firefox), you may notice that the black info bar is finally correctly aligned. Before yesterday, it was dangling mid-air on top of the feature pix. This is great news, ya?

What should I do in this last free week before my internship starts?

June 1, 2007

忘了，忘不了。