Just to record my travel in 2007 so far. Maybe I can generate a visual map in the end of the year...

 

01/01/2007 TPE -> SEA

01/03/2007 SEA -> SJC

01/05/2007 SJC -> SEA

01/07/2007 SEA -> DFW

01/09/2007 DFW -> SEA

01/10/2007 SEA -> SJC

01/12/2007 SJC -> SEA

01/21/2007 SEA -> LAX

01/25/2007 LAX -> SEA

01/30/2007 SEA -> SJC

-- 10 days in January; 14 days at home

02/01/2007 SJC -> SEA

02/02/2007 SEA <-> SNA

02/05/2007 SEA -> SJC

02/16/2007 SJC -> SEA

02/20/2007 SEA -> SJC

-- 5 days in February; 5 days at home 

03/02/2007 SJC -> SEA

03/05/2007 SEA -> SJC

03/09/2007 SJC -> SEA

03/14/2007 SEA <-> SJC

03/24/2007 SEA -> TPE

-- 5 days in March; 16 days at home

04/01/2007 TPE -> SEA

04/09/2007 SEA -> SMF (Sacramento)

04/13/2007 SMF -> SEA

04/16/2007 SEA -> PDX

04/20/2007 PDX -> SEA

04/23/2007 Seattle -> Salem (Driving)

04/27/2007 Salem -> Portland (Driving)

04/28/2007 Portland -> Seattle (Driving)

-- 8 days in April; 13 days at home

05/06/2007 SEA -> ICN -> PEK

05/12/2007 PEK -> HKG -> TPE

05/20/2007 TPE -> SEA

-- 3 days in May; 16 days at home

06/03/2007 SEA -> LAX

06/08/2007 LAX -> SEA

--

07/08/2007 SEA -> SNA

07/12/2007 SNA -> SEA

07/27/2007 SEA -> LAS 

--

08/05/2007 LAS -> SEA

08/20/2007 SEA -> SFO

08/24/2007 SFO -> SEA

--

09/10/2007 SEA -> SLC

09/11/2007 SLC -> SEA

09/30/2007 SEA -> SFO

--

10/02/2007 SFO -> SEA

10/08/2007 SEA -> ORD

10/11/2007 ORD -> SEA

--

11/07/2007 SEA -> LAS

11/08/2007 LAS -> SEA

11/12/2007 SEA -> LAS

11/15/2007 LAS -> SEA

11/22/2007 SEA -> NRT

11/29/2007 NRT -> TPE

--

12/02/2007 TPE -> SEA

12/08/2007 SEA -> LAS

12/11/2007 LAS -> SEA

--

 

Summary 173 days on the road, 48% travel rate, roughly 14.4 days on the road per month

 

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

 

July 1st is my first time to outdoor rock climbing. The weather was great and people went climb together had hangover so my skill seemed to be relatively good under that circumstances.  The place we went was at exit 38 of I-90, which is a famous place for rock climbing and other outdoor activities (like hiking). There is even a book about rock climbing at this place! And it's in 2nd edition now (MJ has the latest edition with him, and everyone who walked by stopped to look at the book! ).

 

I topped two routes rated about 5.6 and 5.7. They were both taller than the routes in the gym, one is about 30 ft and another one is 50 ft (all estimation by hangover people). And I did need to get used to the height in the first place, then is to find the route in order to get to your destination. I bought a helmet a day before, but didn't use it. Luckily I only got some bruises on my knees. :) We stayed there from 10:30 till about 2pm then went back to have a BBQ. It's a long day, but a good experience. Should try to go out some more in the future.

 

The funniest thing for the day was actually that J, who had his hangover so bad that he didn't climb, found a Motorola cell phone battery in the hill near where we climb. Then later on A joined the 'search' and actually recovered the phone, it's a Morotola ROKR! And the phone still works (except the SIM card is not registered anymore). MJ got to use a 'new' phone, I helped him to transfer all his contacts to his SIM card and he just needs to get a new back for the cellphone and a charger. As the old saying goes, "You never know what you will find!"  

create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks.

 

After 3 hours delay from RDU (due to the thunderstorm), short flight turned into a long wait. I finally got into the city around 11:30pm. The front desk recognized me easily and called "Mr. Chen", he even asked about my last stay at W New York (actually it's W Union Square with the Underbar ). Check in was easy, the lobby was small, so I would expect a small room as this is New York City.

 

However, a 451 sqft room did surprise me and the name is a good match: "WHAT A ROOM"! The room has spacious living space for a king-sized bed, a lazy susan and a big desk. A HD TV with DVD/VCR player could make you want to extend your stay. View of the Rock Feller Center from the window and from the WETBAR. Unfortunately, only 12 hours from my check-in to check-out and out of that 12 hours, I spent 3.5 hours in the WETBAR. But, if you want to spend $300 a night for a hotel room in New York (I used my SPG points for free-stay), I would definitely recommend W New York -- The Tuscany. Minimum Gold level membership with SPG is highly recommended for free upgrade and late check-out.

 

After spending two nights partying, two brunches with friends, one dinner and one open-house afternoon, I finished my short weekend stay at New York City and finally went home. Next time, I think I want to try the St. Regis.

I just couldn't help complaining about this ridiculous situation. Partially it is my fault that I didn't read through the spec of the laptop before I recommended my friend to buy it. But I still think this is a stupid design and the vendors are really stupid on this...

 

So my friend was looking for a new laptop. And I recommended ASUS W5F, because I have a W5A and I liked it a lot. What I didn't notice was that there is no more PCMCIA slot on ASUS laptops, and they began to use this new standard called "Express Card". Unfortunately my friend has a 3G PCMCIA card OEM'd by OPTION, and there is no 3G card in "Express Card" format now. The only way out is to buy a USB Adapter for PCMCIA like this. And the U132 is right now priced at USD $192, one store is on back order and the other one has the schedule for shipping.

 

For USD $192, I can buy another 3G card......

 

I think this is a very stupid design decision and cause inconvenience to the consumers. The vendors did not have a plan for consumers to upgrade their card. They won't know it until they buy it. And ASUS resellers in Taiwan have NO solutions on this either. I personally think this is a stupid move and totally not considerate of how the customers would feel. Stupid vendors and their stupid designs. They should simply put a sign up saying "I want your money, just give them to me"... Wouldn't that be easier and more closer to the truth anyway?

 

So... I use Google reader as my RSS reader. Ya, the AJAX application would still take a lot of your memory if you leave it there for a while, but it's still more convenient then having an offline RSS reader. Anyway, Google reader can share the starred items (things I find interesting) using link or javascript. Unfortunately MSN Space does not allow javascript (to prevent CSS of course! :), so only links are possible:

 

If you use Google Reader, click here; If you have your own RSS reader of choice, click here. I do prefer to share news on a subscription basis.  Enjoy!

So... I was in Dallas last weekend. Had to go somewhere, right? :) I went to the "Sixth Floor Museum" located in the West-End region of Dallas downtown. The museum was actually quite cool, and of course the reason to call it "Sixth Floor Museum" was because Lee Harvey Oswald fired his shots from the sixth floor of the building. The museum was cool because it presented many aspects of this assasination and its position in the history. In the mean time, the museum was open to possibility of conspiracy theories and was not trying to convince you that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only killer!!! :) Therefore, even though I went to the "Conspiracy Theory Museum" which is the alternate "Sixth Floor Museum", I was not really impressed and did not pay my $9 to enter. You can see most of the photos I took in the photo album.

 

I won't bother to try to cover the whole JFK thing and all conspiracy theories behind this. I guess even people can prove there were 3 shots and more than one shooter, but no one can ever prove who's behind this and the motivation. Even the JFK movie could only provide one perspective. I guess things like this was just hard. So let politics be politics and tourism be tourism. :)

 

 

So... Isareal-based company, Checkpoint, offered to buy Sourcefire, the company that brought Snort to commercial appliance. But then the deal was being investigated and now Checkpoint is dropping the ball because of too much trouble. :) The concern was that because many departments in the U.S. government are using Snort so such a purchase would worry people that trojan, backdoors or other malware could be implemented once the ownership of Sourcefire shifted to Isarel.

 

By the same logic, we can expect this deal (Alcatel to takeover Lucent) to fail too. :) Although Lenovo already finished the acqusition of IBM laptop, not that no one uses IBM laptop in U.S. government... :)

 

Using the same logic to apply to other places, every country, X, should not use a product developed by country Y, where Y != X, if the product would be used in government departments of country X.

 

So how could this world be flat? And there will never ever be a trustable software, hardware or product and any activity trying to certify a product for security would eventually fail anyway.

As previous entry, this is the countries I've been to (at least stayed over one hour or longer! :))

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands