schav

Badly Designed: ESPN Score Center App

2011-12-05T23:21:00.001-05:00

I've decided to blog more regularly about everyday apps or things that I've noticed have frustratingly bad or poor design. Partially inspired by the folks that send in examples of good design to Don Norman, after reading DOET, I've been a bit more critical of things that just plain piss me off while using them. Recently, I was really really annoyed at a horribly designed Alpine Stereo in my leased Purple (yes, Purple) 2008 Scion xB. But I was always pissed at it while I was driving, so by the time I had returned to a computer, my anger had passed (pissed-ness had passed!). Anyways, I figure there is plenty of fodder for me to blog about in this arena.

So, today's post brings me to ESPN's Score Center App on Android.

Annoying! It's Dec 5th already but Nov 24 is still ALL UP IN MAH FACE!

Poorly designed aspect #1: The League views or "sections" always displays the last fully updated set of scores at the top of the page, before displaying the latest set of scores. For some sports, this might make sense when you're in between daily games. Say, it is Monday morning and I load up the MLB section. It theoretically will show yesterday's scores up at top first. Below those, it will show scores for today. If it's Monday morning, I load it up, I see Sunday's scores. Great.

But fast forward, to say, Monday evening, and I load up the MLB section, I have to scroll all the way down past yesterday's scores to see the score of the on-going Yankee game.

A more maddening example is the NFL section. On a Sunday afternoon in Week 13, I open the app and try to view the scores of the games going on. 95% of the time (even though I've realized my mistake before), I get confused as I open it up and instantly see scores of games THAT ENDED A WEEK AGO. My eyes do a spastic brain fart thingy, then I remember that I need to scroll all the way down to the bottom, just to see the score of the game going on now. Even though it clearly says the date and Week 12, most people don't look at those carefully. Nor do many people know which week of the NFL they are currently in. As of this post on Dec 5th evening, the scores from November 24th are still showing up at top! Come on, guys! Get your ish together!

Poorly designed aspect #2: The little dropdowns to access more of a League (NFL scores, news and standings) don't do anything and are hard to click on. They are so tiny, my fat finger always misses and ends up tapping a game score below it. Then, if you are able to expand it, you see a horizontal tab menu. It isn't much bigger than what was there before. Kinda useless to hide, hard to expand, and it requires me to do an additional tap just to get to something that could have easily already been displayed. Useless.

Poorly designed aspect #3: Sometime you double tap. Sometimes you don't. This seems to have been fixed or I was temporarily insane. Good job, Bristol.

Google Voice Uses Your T-Mobile Minutes. Whoa, what?

2011-08-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

Google Voice is awesome. It's a great way to unify your various phone numbers into a single number, with powerful features, such as speech-to-text transcription of voicemails, call forwarding, screening, free text messaging, etc etc.

I haven't yet made the leap to replacing my existing number. I mainly use the voicemail feature, which lets you replace your crappy, antiquated mobile service voicemail (in my case, T-Mobile, with painfully tedious voice menu interfaces, like "Press 4 to replay this message" ) with an auto-transcribing voice-to-text email service. Basically, when you don't pick up your phone, Google Voice overrides your T-mobile voicemail, playing your greeting, recording the message, transcribing it and alerting you via email and text. This is a lot more convenient (like visual voicemail on iPhone) and it's free.

However, I recently happened to go over my monthly calling minutes and went through my usage history to find a whole ton of 1 minutes calls to Athen, NY (518-xxx-xxxx) every day or so. What the hell? After some more digging, I found that this was a Google Voice number. Apparently, for the voicemail service to work, Google sets up a conditional call forwarding number on T-Mobile. On T-Mobile at least, these type of calls use up your allocated minutes. Doh. Wish someone had warned me about that.

Lesson learned: Sometimes it's better to not send everyone straight to voicemail. :/

Is Your Yelp data showing up in your Facebook?

2011-07-28T16:08:00.000-04:00

So confused.

I'm an avid user of Yelp (look me up and my sick, redonkulous haiku Yelp reviews here), as well as Foursquare (I'm actually still in a dilemma whereby I am unsure where I should primarily be checking in locations with. But that's a post for another day). I NEVER use Facebook Places, as I don't see any point in telling my FB friends that I've eaten dumplings for a dollar for lunch. Again. For the 3rd consecutive day. While wearing a wifebeater. Some things gotta stay on the DL son! But lately, for the past several months, I've noticed this little module appearing on the right hand side of my Facebook page. It looks like this:

Facebook has been tailing you in that dark grey '76 Ford Galaxie all this time.

Under a module titled "Favorite Places", it's listed out a few places that I've been too that I don't ever remember Liking on Facebook...ever. I've never checked into them using Facebook Places. I'm 89.23% positive that I've never shared these listings on Yelp on my Facebook feed.

I'm positive this is linked to Yelp data, because when you click on the place name, it takes you to its Yelp listing.

Digging further, I found this data rather limited: it only lists 4 venues as my Favorite Places. That means I can't be one of those crazy incensed users that accuses Facebook of monitoring and stealing my data and tracking my whereabouts. Conspiracy theories be damned!

My only current guess is that I must've clicked that custom green Like button on Yelp that used to be displayed in the listing details. Looking at Yelp now, that button seems to have disappeared. It used to look like this (actually I think I think it morphed its appearance quite a bit):

Yeah, I want to Rate it, Review it, Like it, Edit it and see who else liked it because I have all the time in da world.

Anyways, does anyone else see this Favorite Places stuff showing up in their Facebook? If so, can you tell where it came from?

Don't Cross the (Google+) Streams!

2011-07-07T09:31:00.000-04:00

So I've been using Google+ for a week now and I have some thoughts on it. Since you're here reading this, I will just list them out:

Following doesn't make sense - The Add to Circles mechanism is really slick. Getting to drag your friends into actual circles is addictive. I like how they've already separated out the main key groupings for most people:

Friends
Family
Acquaintances
Following

However, the Following circle is kind of confusing. I know they're trying to incorporate the Twitter model, but it doesn't seem to fit when presented next to the other groupings. Out of your Gmail contacts (which I'm assuming is where they are importing all these people from), very few of them are people you'd naturally think of as people you'd "follow". Your Gmail contacts are either your friends, acquaintances or strangers; people you follow (at least the way we've been taught so far on the Internetz) are most likely either celebs or public figures. Maybe, after they get a few notable users, Google could show/suggest some public profiles of these users here: "Follow Bill Clinton, Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey." Or maybe I'm totally wrong and Following is for that girl that you're obsessed with that you emailed once but now won't accept your Facebook friend request.

[heavy panting]...I added you to my Circle.

They were smart in limiting invites - I'm sure 60% of it actually is what Vic Gundotra says is due to "insane demand". I'd bet the other 40% of it is trying to fan that fire to CREATE that insane demand. Exclusivity, as we've seen so many times with new Web sites, creates demand. I don't know how many people have asked me for an invite the minute I mentioned it on Facebook. The problem was, I couldn't figure it out. There's this whole weird thing going on right now where Google Plus still sends out invites yet doesn't actually let users accept them.
People are ready for a Facebook alternative - A year ago, I wouldn't have agreed, but I think by now, people have seen enough of Facebook (Facebook.com, on their mobiles, in the movies, on TV, on other sites with Facebook Connect) and they're getting a bit tired of it. That and everyone's social graph on Facebook is no longer a close-knit group of friends. Your grandma is on Facebook. Your Uncle Bob is too. Oh, and John from Accounting keeps sending you friend requests. And your Insurance Company wants you to Like their page. Facebook privacy settings are still WAY too confusing (ask any of your friends if they understand it) and people have just pretty much accepted that this is just how it is. Either you limit your friends network on Facebook or you just don't use Facebook anymore. And surprisingly, I'm hearing that latter sentiment more and more from people I know that are under 30. "Facebook has too much of my shit" is the phrase I commonly hear. "Half of these friends are not even my real friends" and "It's full of Ads and scams" is another. Not sure if this is related at all to their recent slow in growth as well.

Funny thing is, these are the same people requesting me for a Google+ invite. Not sure yet if they'll like it any better after the initial novelty wears off. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out over the next few months.

Insert rat joke here:

2011-04-19T01:34:00.001-04:00

Insert rat joke here:, a photo by schav on Flickr.

I forgot about my Flickr account for awhile (that's a blog post for another time). I used to share my mobile photos all the time circa 2006ish. Not sure if it was because I lived in New York City and had plenty of fun things to shoot or just the novelty of it. I have a much nicer Android G2 phone, awesome camera now, unlimited high speed data plans, yet all I take are pics of my son (which are awesome still). Is it because I'm in LA?

Anyways, this is one of my favorite pics I caught with my Treo phone back in 2007. It was of the West Village Taco Bell that got shut down for rat infestation.

Via Flickr:
from the West Village Taco Bell joint recently shut down due to the Secret of Nimh

Google Hotpot...Is So Damn Confusing

2011-03-07T01:03:00.000-05:00

"Google, what the hell are you doing?"

I just signed up for Google Hotpot recently and after a few minutes, gave myself a face palm. That is when you do this:

Open left hand up, palm facing up
Move hand up to the face, making slapping sound as your face hits er....palm.
Add optional head shake or sigh

Okay, I get what Google is trying to do with Hotpot. Google is tired of Yelp getting all the local search/recommendations love, even though Maps is the #1 online map application on the Web, and probably mobile (iOS and Android pretty much come with it). Being the Supreme Master of all search things, Google can't just let Yelp kick its ass in local recommendations, especially after Yelp rebuffed their $500 million ~~bribe~~ offer a year or so ago. So Hotpot is a way to give Places/Maps less of a regurgitated/search summary feel, and to start driving original reviews and ratings.

Hotpot starts off well. It has a cool little Hot-or-not rating (almost game-like) interface to be able to quickly start rating things, and getting recommendations. Slick, but not really that original. This is pretty much common in a lot of recommendation-type sites now (see Netflix, GetGlue)...

Anyways, after that, it goes downhill pretty quickly. You rate things, but then you don't really know what's next. After clicking here and there, you realize, oh, the recommendations are shown in the same view as the items you rate. Okayyy...There really aren't any other screens in the app. You just rate things to your heart's desire.

Then, a notice tells you that you recommendations will appear in Google Places. What? I thought I was using Hotpot! What is Google Places?! Then you click on one of the items you've rated, say, "Ray's Pizza". It brings up the detail page, with all the deets like store hours, address, phone etc. But then you realize the Google Hotpot logo has been replaced with Google Maps and the URL has changed to maps.google.com. Where the hell am I?

You then think, okay, maybe this'll be simpler and easier to understand on mobile. You grab your Android Phone and head to the marketplace and find 0 results when you search for "Hotpot". Ummmkayyy......You head to the Hotpot FAQ and they say that your recommendations will show up in the mobile Places app. Huh? I already have that on my phone. I don't see no stinkin recommendations!

At this point I gave up. Can't do it. Too much work. I already have the Yelp app. Methinks Google needs to seriously consider scrapping some of its disparate "function" type services, like, Latitude, Buzz, Friend Connect, Places, (any more?) which only serve to confuse the average consumer and tie it in under a singly branded service. These services are obviously useful, (some are) interesting and serve Google in various strategic markets, but I'd think that they only reach half their potential when they're so just thrown out there with little thought on packaging to the end consumer. Average Joe Consumer (or my wife, but she'd kill me if she saw that I compared her to Average Joe) can't be bothered with figuring all this out. I know I can't.

But then again, maybe Google is already planning to do all that with Google Me.

What Four Skills Have You Learned?

2010-10-05T16:11:00.001-04:00

Enovate, which covers media, social and online trends of youth in China, recently blogged about the TEDx event in Shanghai. While the coverage was interesting, part of the post mentioned the overall theme of this year's event, which was "10,000 Hours":

The idea came from Gladswell’s “outlier,” which claimed that those 10,000 hours is roughly what one needs to develop a skill. So right before the event started, my friend Patrick did a little calculation on his phone – by age 28, you would have roughly 24×10,000 hours in your life, which means you should have mastered 24 skills. I disagreed and said, you would need to spend a lot of those times sleeping, eating and growing up. So we revised and said, ok, maybe 4 skills is more reasonable for a 28-year-old. So now, think for a minute, what are the 4 skills that you have developed?

I've haven't read "Outliers" by Gladwell (only Blink and Tipping Point) but I've read that this was a theme he keeps on pushing throughout the book: that 10,000 hours is what it takes to become a master. If the above guess-timations are correct, even 4 masterful skills learned by the time you're 30 seems quite a lot. I can't even think of two things that I'm skilled at. And what does "skilled" really mean? That you make a profession out of it? That people pay to watch you perform it?

What are the TWO things that you're masterful at?

Sometimes Design and UI Mean Jack Sh*t

2010-09-14T19:11:00.001-04:00

I use Gmail a lot.

I love Gmail. I use Google Apps Mail for ibeatyou. I use the mobile version on my crappy Windows Mobile phone, and even find that bloated Java version incredibly useful. I've used the crappy mobile HTML version too on a 2.5G connection.

But, even though Priority Inbox has been out for what, almost 3-4 weeks now...I haven't even clicked on the link once. (They have a special red link reserved for new features in the top right menu) Nor have I felt the need to read about it. Because everytime I've been looking at my inbox, I'm overwhelmed with all my mail (I get about 300+ emails a day after filtering out most of the automated crap) that I don't look anywhere else, nor do I feel I have the energy to setup something new that will take up even more of my time.

But it finally took reading Fred Wilson's post on Priority Inbox to convince me enough to check it out tonight (I still don't feel I have the time to check it out during work hours today!).

Why am I writing this? Because I found it interesting and some evidence that sometimes, no matter how slick, clean and UX-friendly an interface is designed to call out something (e.g., a new feature, a product announcement, etc), a user just won't click it or pay attention to it. But that user may hear a recommendation from so-and-so, and boom, they'll go out of their way (e.g., startup computer, launch browser, log into Gmail, find that link) just to click that link. The power of peer recommendation.

REAL "Ugly" Web Sites That Do Just Fine

2010-09-07T00:16:00.000-04:00

MySpace's monstrosity of ugliness

There was a recent post on the KISSMetrics blog about 4 Ugly Sites That Make Millions. The post (at least the way I read it) seemed to imply that sometimes people don't care about the design and UI of a website; that, as long as it's functional and fills a real need, then the people will come (and stay), even if the site is butt.

I generally agree with the author of the post, but it seems to downplay the fact that these designs were pretty standard-looking and not extraordinarily ugly when compared to their peers when they first launched:

Ebay's cluster F of rainbow coloring, modules and links? Pretty standard back in 1995 and through 2000.

Craigslist? It wasn't really ugly, just spartan. And that was pretty typical back in the late 90's as well.

Secondly, the 3rd example website the author used was Google. Come on, now. How many people really considered the Google search page ugly when it came out? People welcomed the simplicity; I've never heard one person call it ugly. Plain, maybe...but not ugly.

Basically, I felt this post was pretty weak in its supporting evidence, even though I agreed with the general point. Ebay, Craigslist and Google were poor examples. In the end, only Plentyoffish made sense as an example.

So that got me thinking, what are some REAL website examples that at launch, were already considered relatively ugly and piss-poor in design that ended up doing well? Say, a site that launched within the past 5 years?

The only thing I can think that comes close is MySpace. But that was more due to its users' personalization features. I honestly can't think of any recent examples. I even Googled around and found this HackerNews discussion on the same topic and no one there could think of anything either.

Anyone know of any good examples of butt-ugly sites that launched within the past 5 years and did well?

New Google Calendar Favicon and browser tabbing?

2010-08-23T17:07:00.000-04:00

Anyone else get messed up by the new Google Calendar Favicon (the icon that shows up in your browser tab)? I do most of my work within the browser and being able to recognize which tab belongs to what website is key.

The new icon screwed my up this morning so far. Everytime I want to find my Google Calendar (apps edition) tab, it takes like 30 seconds to scan all of them, until I remember that this new icon IS Google Calendar.

It just goes to show you how visually oriented we are on the Web. I need to find my Web app tab now and I need to find it in 10 seconds by visual cues. Any thing that changes throws me for a loop.

My first foray into using browser tabs was back in 2003 (I was all about "Open in New Window" before that fateful day). My friend (thanks Matt!) showed me how to use a keyboard combo of CTRL-T (open new tab) and TAB (cycle cursor into Google search input field) to speed up my Googling. Boy, was it awesome.

Since then, I regularly keep my browser open with 5-15 tabs open at once. Around that time, Gmail launched, and keeping your browser tab open to keep an eye on your auto-updating inbox was a new thing. Since then, more and more web-based services have launched and it's become pretty standardized to keep a tab open for your Web app of choice as it autoupdates through the day. My tabs are usually:

Gmail inbox
Gmail apps mail inbox
Google calendar
Facebook
ibeatyou (it's replaced my Meebo as it has a Meebo IM bar integrated)
Reader
Munin
Google Analytics (I like to check throughout the day)
Various miscellaneous work wikis/

How many tabs do you keep open in your browser? What do you usually keep 'em open for?

Facebook will NOT kill Foursquare

2010-08-19T17:32:00.000-04:00

This article at PC World agrees with Alex Wilhelm that Facebook Places will "crush" Foursquare now that it's out. I don't feel the same way. I feel that Foursquare crowd is different from the Facebook segment. Obviously, they intersect, but the Foursquare crowd (at least from what I can tell) is intent on grabbing badges, becoming mayor, etc. They're hooked on the game. They're engaged in building their virtual "rep" and love to namedrop places they've been to.

Facebook Places seems to be a more general approach to let your general friends know where you're at or where you've been. I don't forsee the current form of Facebook Places trying to incentivize users in game-like behavior to drive activity. Facebook is a utility and Places will make it more useful for you and me to connect when we're near each other geographically. But I think Foursquare will still have its place. Whether by themselves or under Yahoo or Google's wing.

However, from a business-side, I can see companies and brands trying to leverage Places and tying that in with their brick-and-mortar businesses and their Facebook pages. They just want to be where the people are already. I'm sure Facebook Places will be integrated with the Facebook API to start leveraging developer efforts to build location-aware mobile Facebook apps. So in that way, yes, Facebook changes the game significantly. But Foursquare is small and nimble (and smart) enough to adjust their game plan accordingly.

Startup Life When You Have a Family

2010-08-15T13:03:00.001-04:00

After having our newborn son this past fall, things changed a ton. Not just in regular life, but also in my life at work. Actually, before my son was born, my WORK, unfortunately, was most of my life for the past couple years. I hate to admit it, but there were definitely a lot of times when I was with my family that my mind wasn't 100% there, whether I was lying in bed, at the shopping mall, at the dinner table...My head was filled with thoughts about improving the product, upcoming deadlines, and emails that I should be sending.

After 11 months of being a first-time dad, I think I've just started to figure out how to better balance things, between the personal and work stuff. There have been quite a few great posts out there talking about this topic. Brazen Careerist's Penelope Trunk put up an insightful post last year. I remember Steve Case (AOL) wrote up an interesting article on this as well, detailing his insights from his early days of starting up AOL while starting up his family (Sorry, can't seem to find this one anymore).

I figured I'll share the things I've learned too. If it can help one person, then it's worth it:

Cut out the BS

Bobby Kim of the Hundreds once said this to me when I asked him for advice on being an entrepreneur and a father. While this sounds like total common sense on the surface, it's a lot harder than it looks. Regardless of what environment you work at, there are going to be a whole slew of minor issues, situations and general BS that you just don't have time to deal with. You've got to learn to delegate better, know how to just say no, and when to extricate yourself from an event, meeting or whiteboard session that's devolved into a waste of time.

Designate work time vs family time

You've got to be able to just set aside time for your work vs time with your loved ones. Anyone who works from home knows this. It becomes even more important when you have kids and the time with them is so precious. Set aside work time at home to be a time in the morning before the kid wakes up and after they go to bed. Trying to mix it in here and there is just unproductive and makes everyone unhappy and annoyed. Having a designated time at night to work on things makes it easier also when you have to leave the office for home at "normal" hours. You don't struggle with trying to stay later to finish something as you'll have time at night. Of course, this also means that you don't get much sleeping-in time; however, this was pretty much a given when you signed up for this startup thing.

Give more, get more

Let's face it. It's tougher being a mom than a dad. So know that when you're around at home, helping out (doing the dishes, giving the kid a bath, vacuuming the place) all help you earn credits. These credits are redeemable for times when you need to stay late, attend that conference, or work on the weekend. Usually these credits are good for at least 3 months. Be forewarned that sometimes these credits may inexplicably disappear if you screw up.

These are 3 pieces of advice I can think of now. If I can think of anymore, I'll post them in the future. Also, I'm sure being a mom and in a startup is THRICE as hard.

What's Your Product Development Process aka How Do You Get Stuff Done?

2010-08-08T21:10:00.001-04:00

At an early stage startup (or at almost any stage tech company), one of the things that your team usually has very little of is time. Time to get your product out into the market. Time to fully test and flesh out your product concept before releasing. Time to churn out page after page of design documentation. Because if you don't get your shit released, someone else is gonna do it before you. Or that "big opportunity" is gonna disappear. Or you run out of money.

Hence the rise in popularity of the various flavors of product development, like Stage-gate, and the flexible process. These then are combined with software development processes of Rapid Application Development: Agile, Scrum, Extreme Programming (I just hear those EXTREEEEME dudes in Harold and Kumar whenever I hear about XP).

IBM, Google, IDEO and the like have publicized their methodologies of developing products. There has been all sorts of research and whitepapers detailing best practices to seed innovation and setup specific implementations and roles (e.g., Scrums have a "master", XP pairs people together, stage-gate has, uh..."stages") as more companies have embraced and accepted the reality that they need to get their work done faster and need to bubble up innovation. There are bountiful sources of information and guides on how to implement these methodologies, easily accessible via a simple search on Google, not to mention countless books on Amazon.

Yet I find that most startups don't practice XP, Scrum or JAD formally. And from a product development perspective, there is just the process of:

What do we build?
Ok, let's build it and release it.
Shit, it broke!
Ok, let's fix it. Btw, let's squeeze this in too.

Rarely are the majority of the people at startups from a Microsoft or some large tech company where they've gotten plenty of practice implementing structured rapid development (or maybe it's because I've never worked at a startup in the Valley?) And increasingly, startups are just kids fresh outta school, maybe still in school. There is rarely room for a product manager-type.

How come? Because it's more perceived training and time vested into learning some other "process" that is taking time away from getting your product (or some iteration) out the door. Unless you have a CTO or tech lead with formal training and the patience to guide the whole team in a new process (and a patient CEO who's just itching for stuff to get developed), usually it's just a bunch of dudes scrambling.

Instead I find that people usually have some sort of hybrid, combo "process" that's evolved organically. I guess most people just figure it out, bringing together the best elements that work for their team. And they seem to usually mirror, or at least, take some key parts of these formalized practices. At ibeatyou, after we moved out of the House of IBY into a formal office (that's a whole other story), we evolved into a general product and software process of:

Weekly meetings of product team on high level product priorities
Daily quick huddles for tech team in the morning (well, morning for startups is sometimes almost noon)
Weekly planned releases/iterations/bug fixes
Monthly "sprints" of major features
Requirements for minor features are bullet-ed out high-level in "tickets"; major features are whiteboarded out, maybe Wiki-ed out if needed
Some individual functional and integration testing done in development and staging server
Monthly brainstorms for new product ideas

Now of course, we didn't follow this structure to a T. There were plenty of times when it was just almost complete chaos. But when things were semi-normal, we pretty much stuck to this way of doing things?

How are things done at your tech company? How do you generate new product ideas, and how do they get prioritized, built and released?

Does anyone still use Blogger anymore?

2010-08-02T03:39:00.003-04:00

After going on a blog reading-binge tonight via Google Reader, I am inspired to start blogging again...something which I haven't done really since 2007-ish. Too many reasons to list why I've been slacking, but some big ones include:
* moved to China (blocked there; you can't imagine all the proxy and workaround stuff I had to do just to VIEW my blog)
* started up a company and moved to LA (I had no energy most of the time to do anything outside of work)
* the rise of Twitter and 140 character microblogging
* the rise of Facebook (status updates galore)
* oh yeah, the birth of my son!

Before I start again, I want to make sure I'm doing it at the write (rimshot!) place. I mean, I know, it really doesn't matter: a blog is a blog is a blog. But it's also not a shiny, hot new Tumblr. Nor is it all plugin-able like a Wordpress. Also, it looks exactly the same as it did 3 years ago (which maybe, is a good thing?)! Finally, the few subscribers I had on this blog a few years ago have all probably moved onto something better and cooler (my mom, included!), so I don't want to write for nobody!

But, I've finally realized that, regardless, I need to write. I was never much of a writer, but I think I need some sort of outlet for my thoughts and writing; stuff that is too long and irrelevant for my Twitter followers...Stuff that doesn't make sense in Facebook...just stuff that's in my head or bits of knowledge or riffraff that I've picked up along the way.

Also, during this blog-reading binge, I've realized (or re-realized) how powerful blogging or just writing on the Web is. I've learned so much and have gotten so much from information people have shared on their blogs. Stuff that they write for public consumption that they weren't paid for. Cuz they just wanted to. If I can write about or share something that helps just one person, or sparks a single idea or response from some reader out there, then it's been worth it. If it causes a chuckle or two, even better.

So here goes!

2009-09-29T01:16:00.001-04:00

Do you know the Internets? quiz - Take more fun quizzes at ibeatyou

Windows Mobile 5 + Google Sync + Mac OSX = 24 hours of frustation

2009-08-16T01:32:00.008-04:00

It's been a busy past year or so and I just haven't had the time to blog (nor the energy). I guess, since then, Twitter has blown up and Tweeting has become the easy way to (micro)-blog. Who wants to write a witty whole paragraph when you can just tweet how about your lunch? Or just a simple status on Facebook that's instantly read by all your friends, instead of a carefully crafted rant on a blog that only attracts spam comments about Acai Diet Tea?

Anyways, I'll give it a go...if just to do some writing outside of the context of work emails and FB activity comments.

So let's get dorky again...

I recently spent a frustatingly annoying weekend trying to synchronize Contacts and Calendar events on my Windows Mobile 5 T-Mobile Dash with my OSX 10.4.x. In short, it didn't fully work, but it was good enough. I wanted to blog about some key things for those who attempt this in the future so they don't have to go with the crap I did:

* Try to start with a clean slate: If you already have contacts info on your phone that you want to wipe out (since you have it saved elsewhere), you can use SK-Tools to clear it out or follow the recommended freeware mentioned in this post. It's best to start with a clean state. I didn't want to hard reset my phone given that I'd have to reinstall all this other T-Mobile crap (I have an unlocked phone).

* Use as much native stuff as possible: Let the standard transports do the work. Don't bother with buggy freeware or open source sync stuff. Go with ActiveSync on WM5. Google Sync can take care of most of the rest. If you can get it syncing on the Mac, just use Address Book and Calendar. Why bother installing other crap?

* Don't bother with desktop sync: I was aiming to sync Dash <-> Google <-> Mac while trying to use as much native and/or popular software as possible. If you don't have OSX 10.5 or greater, your only chance for Calendar syncing is Sunbird which is iCal compatible. I gave up on that, as that would've taken more time and hassle. Also, Google Calendar and Google Contacts are fast and convenient enough these days where you really don't need desktop PIM anymore. If I don't have Internet, at least it's available on my phone. Why complicate it more? I'm down with that.

* Cleanup your Google Contacts list first: Google tries to make it easy for you in Gmail by adding almost everyone you've ever written an email to in Gmail to your Contacts List. When you Google Sync to your WM5 phone, it tries to sync ALL 15 thousand of them! Not good. You need to do a few things for this to work right:
1) Delete all the contacts you don't give a crap about
2) Create a group for your contacts that you don't want on your phone. Move all those contacts there. Google will ONLY sync contacts on the default My Contacts list.
3) Clean up duplicates. ActiveSync doesn't tell you much when it fails. Dupe contacts is the #1 cause of failed ActiveSyncs.

That's all I can think of now. My neighbors are watching some movie outside in the pool area and it's friggin loud. I hate them.

Year One on ibeatyou!

2009-05-28T14:27:00.001-04:00

Year One: Amazing "Year One" Invention - Find competitions at ibeatyou

Year One: Old School Buddy Picture - Find competitions at ibeatyou

Lessons learned from Video Games.

2009-03-12T21:14:00.002-04:00

A few gems from our users:

What I learned from video games - Find competitions at ibeatyou

do you know your heroes? i do!

2008-11-09T04:25:00.001-05:00

anti-china media bias

2008-08-16T14:10:00.003-04:00

I'd have to say I agree 100%...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-karabell/jumping-off-the-anti-chin_b_117309.html

Nash and Baron, hanging in santa monica

2008-07-30T05:09:00.004-04:00

Best Movie Trailer Spoof - Find competitions at ibeatyou

finally.

2008-03-24T04:29:00.006-04:00

so, i need to apologize for not blogging inawhile.

things been very hectic.

anyways, the crew here made a video to help promote the opening up of our site.

enjoy.

hey

2008-03-21T23:06:00.002-04:00

sup guys.

Getting old

2008-01-15T20:49:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been feeling a bit older. a few signs:

- seeing more hairs fall into the sink. urgh. i know my hairline is receding but this is not cool. especially when it costs me more money to unclog the damn sink when it's full of hairs that should be on my head.

- when watching old 70's or 80's movies or listening to older music, i get all nostalgic. while this is true for a lot of people, it seems to be extra symptomatic for me these days, even for movies i hadn't even watched when i was young! i got all nostalgic the other day when a local Shanghai station was showing La Boum, an old teen French 80's movie, and dubbed in Chinese, that I had never seen until now. Somehow the few party (la boum) dance scenes took me back to some old memories...wtf is wrong with me? (On a side note, this is Sophie Marceau's first movie, kinda weird seeing her so young)

- finding myself saying this music sucks or that song sucks. yeah, there is hella bad music out there, but i find myself saying it way too much these days.

- i made an iTunes playlist called "Nostalgia". loser.

- i find myself saying "wow, he's looking old these days..." or "dang, she better Botox that prune face of hers!" whenever i see older celebrities showing their age. the scarier thing is that these are things i can't help but focus on these days...when you're under 29 (that's the cutoff point i think), you don't notice these things. but now...a droopy chin here. more bags under the eyes there. the fattening of the face (for guys). more angular and prominent cheekbones (for women). i feel like that's all i notice when i watch a movie. again, WTF is wrong with me? why can't I watch The Georgia Rules in peace?!

Geek stuff: China Mobile Settings and Mr. Stupid Designer Guy

2008-01-04T19:10:00.001-05:00

Because it was a bitch to setup and I know other people may have the same situation, I will post my settings for my China Mobile phone for GPRS. China Mobile (the largest operator here, and I guess, in the world) doesn't provide too much support in English. For setting up your non-China Mobile phone with GPRS internet access, it's may be even harder for some expats, as you're dealing with unclear instructions, Chinese, and different phone maker settings/menus. I had to deal with crappy Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) on a HTC/Dopod.

First of all, I just wanted to say: buying a mobile phone here is damn expensive, when compared to prices in the U.S. Of course, in the U.S., there are a lot of subsidized phones with plan contracts, so you end up with heavy discounts. Here, most people pay as you go. Anyways, I researched a ton and ended up with an HTC T-Mobile Dash S620 (Dopod C720W). The Chinese Dopod version is the same except it comes with a Chinese ROM and Wifi is crippled (deal breaker). I ended up getting the T-Mobile Dash on a trip to the U.S., where I eBayed it (another story, but don't ever buy something on eBay with money orders).

Anyways, if you Google it, you can find quite a few posts on China Mobile GPRS settings, but 90% of them are wrong, crap or outdated. I had to dig deep into Chinese BBS postings, translate them, and piece together bits and pieces from different posts, and (the hardest part) try to understand what the HELL the Windows Mobile Usability designer was thinking when they designed the Internet setup menus in WM5. To this day, it still almost has no rhyme or reason and I can't understand WHAT THE F* logic these menus are supposed to follow. What ordinary person would know how to piece together "GRPS proxies", "Connect to Work" (why would you want to do that?) and port numbers, etc on their phone settings?!

MR. STUPID DESIGNER GUY. You suck.

Anyways, for future posterity (though I'm sure these will change with newer phones and China Mobile updates) here they are:

1) Go to Settings->Connections->GRPS and use right soft key Menu to Add a new entry

2) Select "Connects to Work". Name your access point anything, like "cmnet". Skip the rest and select left soft key Done.

3) Go to Settings->Connections->Proxy and use right soft key Menu to add a new entry

4) Select "Connects from Work" and "Connects to the Internet". Set Proxy to: 10.0.0.172:9201 (This is also where WM5 wouldn't even let me easily enter in a "." into the number only field. STUPID DESIGNER GUY AGAIN!)

Note: these Proxy address will probably change in a year, but should be okay for awhile. Also, this is valid for Shanghai. Not sure if different elsewhere in China.

5) Select "Type: HTTP" then press left soft key "Done".

6) In your mobile IE, go to Options->Connections and uncheck Automatically detect Settings.

7)
a) If you want to connect to Web with your WiFi connection, choose "Select Network: The Internet" and press Done.

b) If you want to connect to Web with your GPRS connection, choose "Select Network: Work" and press Done.

8) You should be good to go.

9) Go to mobile Google and search for "Stupid Designer Guy"'s address so you can personally give him a face punch.

2008

2008-01-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

happy new year.

for 2008, i've resolved to blog more. so here goes...

2007 was an eventful year for me:
* quit my job
* moved to Shanghai
* started up an internet company with some friends

some sadder things happened too. lost a grandparent. moved away from friends and family.

in 2008, i resolve to:
* improve my mandarin
* make shit happen with my company
* visit 4 places in Asia (2 in China, 2 outside)
* dedicate more time for creative stuff (Garageband is calling me!)
* keep in touch better with friends and family

Colonel Yong He and the Hall of Low Self-Esteem

2007-10-02T20:16:00.001-04:00

during the past few visits to Shanghai, J and I have been occasionally goin to this local chain called Yong He Da Wang (永和大王) for breakfast. it has a lot of good, cheap basic taiwanese/shanghainese food (small wonton soup, fried dough sticks wrapped with egg, soybean drink, spicy beef noodle soup). nothing awesome, but decent and semi-clean; you know what you're getting, as it's a chain. it is probably from Taiwan as Yong He is an area in Taipei known for its soybean milk. they also faced a lawsuit from KFC a few years ago for TOTALLY copying KFC's Colonel Sanders for their logo. they just took Colonel Sanders' pic and applied the Mongoloid Effect Filter that comes standard with Photoshop on that bad boy. Colonel Yong He is nowhere to be seen these days though.

anyways, being a fast-food chain, Yong He is a good example of how unsystematic (at least from my McDonalds'-trained eyes) their food serving system is, typical of most Chinese-fast-food-chains (KFC, McDonald's, Burger King operate the same as they do in the U.S.). you attempt to line up in front of the single register, as you stave off old ladies and other evil line-cutters (see my previous post on Boxing Out). if you are lucky enough to finally get to the register and order your food, you get a receipt. you then walk over to the dining area, hope to find an open table or seat, then hope that a server happens to walk by (just because they visually see you wave at them, doesn't mean they'll come over). you hand them your ticket and hopefully, they'll bring you back your order, in one, two or maybe 3 separate trips.

the problem is that there's no order. you they just have a bunch of receipts, they don't care who ordered first and barely remember where this order goes. so often, people get orders swapped, other people eat your stuff first...it's just stressful.

for the servers, it's even worse. they probably don't get paid too well, and they just face a ton of verbal abuse all day long. usually, they are migrant workers from outside Shanghai, women, both young and old. the Yong He we go to has a long hall-shaped dining area. as the server walks down the "hall", they are bombarded on all sides with verbal volleys spewed forth in vitriolic personal attacks, like:

where the hell is my food?

, or

i ordered before them, why did they get their order first?!

, or

are you an idiot, where's my soybean milk?!

, or

you are useless, you good-for-nothing?! you suck and this place sucks! where's my food?! i hate you!

it's a non-stop barrage of people throwing order recipts at the servers, accusing the servers of being slow, of messing up orders, of filling orders of people who came after them...all in all, it can't be good for the servers' self-esteem. AND there's no tipping in china. even though this wouldn't be the tipping kind-of-place anyways, it just shows you how food servers/waiters have it real good in the U.S.

if you haven't realized, we Chinese are a very courteous people, yet when it comes to customer service, we don't hold back on making it known how we feel. the customer is ALWAYS right here.

thoughts

2007-09-27T11:13:00.000-04:00

i was thinking the other day...

there really isn't any black or dark humor in chinese culture. i mean, there are definitely parodies and other sorts of way to poke fun at things, but for some reason, i can't see an Ali G, or The Office doing well here or having chinese-versions of those shows. things have to be really obvious or slapstick to get a laugh. there's no tongue-in-cheek dry humor, at least from what i see usually.

maybe i am judging mainly from the mainstream media and entertainment that's everywhere. i'm sure there is other stuff going on...in performance spaces, plays, clubs, concerts...but everywhere i turn on the tv here, it's contests of people trying to get famous, people sobbing on 124-episode tv melodrama series, or other stuff. there are some interesting documentaries here tho'.

i think some of this might also be because my mandarin isn't that great. so when it comes to more sophisticated dialogue, word play, double entendres... maybe i'm just missing the whole boat on a lot of it.

but when i think about it now, i guess most mainstream pop culture and media/entertainment is about mass appeal...and all this stuff is pretty much what you see on the boob tube in the U.S.

so maybe it's really just the brits with the dry wit.

robot farmer

2007-09-18T06:35:00.000-04:00

though i don't live near Beijing, if i go out there, i'd visit this guy:

boxing out the line predators

2007-09-05T13:23:00.000-04:00

much has been made of China's effort to "rid" itself of "unwanted" social behaviors before the 2008 Olympics.

it is a pretty big job. u have over 1 billion people in this country. not all of them are in the cities where tourists will undoubtedly flood, but still, that is a lot of people to re-educate on: spitting, nose-picking, foot picking, hacking, littering, jaywalking, etc...

granted, most of the folks seen doing these things are usually people from poorer or more rural areas, working in the city. so i think it really a matter of education, or rather,

i don't give a flying F, because i need to just survive and feed my family.

this i understand. i don't think it'll be that easy to correct. social norms really need to take awhile before they cause someone to think twice about a once-normal behavior. and not to scare anyone from coming to china, you rarely see these behaviors in most parts of town.

however, one thing i really really hope they can improve upon is the chinese tendency to disregard anything to do with lines. china's always been so damn crowded. so many people, bikes, cars, everything. so really, people are used to being jostled, slammed, crushed, pushed, pulled, around all the time. when they see a line, it's like an open invitation with a huge sign that says, "CUT ME. I'M NOT WAITING IN LINE FOR ANY REASON. I ACTUALLY WANT TO STAND IN THIS POINTLESS LINE LONGER."

this seems to happen less frequently with younger people (whom I assume have become very westernized, waiting in line at the KFCs or just from their absorption of western culture in general). with older people (er, anyone over 40), particularly women, and also old grannies, they are relentless, preying upon orderly line after line, never stopping, always on the lookout for fresh line-kill.

next in line to buy your subway card? BOOM. not anymore! Grandma Wong is buying one now!

waiting to buy tickets for this show? POOF! time to wait 10 minutes more!

oh cool, finally a taxi available? let's just open this door and step righ-KAPOW!. Random Lady just flew into the back seat from the other side of the cab! (this has actually happened several times to us before; the one time it happened to our friend, she literally dragged her out of it!)

i have to say that this actually was common in Chinatown, so i had a little preparation for it. i think it actually did help, because lately, i've been using my basketball box-out technique (think Tim Duncan) to decent success.

we went to a noodle shop the other day. a local place. kinda divey. but supposedly really good. and the owners just cook; they don't give a damn about who arrives first and who orders first. people basically stand at the tables while're you're eating and strategically position themselves so that as soon as the diner slurps their last noodle, they can personally lock down that seat. it doesn't matter what order you got there. what matters is whoever boxes out the best. i pulled out my modified box technique (more Yao Ming this time), slightly bending the knees, with arms astray to the side, hips spread and outward, for maximum blockage around my target, tensed and ready to spring into action while simultaneously blocking 3 pushing grannies from getting my table as the diners finished up.

those noodles tasted extra tasty!

nerdy mobile topic

2007-08-22T02:09:00.000-04:00

i am a long-time Palm fan and user, but moving to Shanghai has forced me to get a new PDA/smartphone and I haven't yet decided.

this article from engadget really hits the mark about what a shame the Palm story has been in the PDA market. i want to love 'em like i used to, but there's not much to love these days.

eating skillz aka Shrimp Hand

2007-08-21T13:06:00.000-04:00

today my topic is eating skillz. i don't have any. and i don't mean skillz like Kobayashi or Crazy Legs Conti (from East Village!). what i mean is chinese-seafood-eating skills.

in the u.s., seafood is usually all nice and pretty. you get a bib. the lobster is cracked open for you. the crab is sometimes cracked open for you. you get a crab shell...er, cracker(?) and a cute little fork to get the meat out. the shrimp is peeled and the head is removed already. this fish is deboned. this is in contrast to chinese seafood, regardless of what style cooking it is. the universal chinese seafood eating method is straightforward and totally opposite: you get one tool, and it's your chopsticks. otherwise, it's all hands and mouth. maybe a toothpick once in awhile.

even though i grew up in a chinese household, my seafood eating habits were more u.s.-style. even though i had had different types of chinese seafood (q'ing giant shrimp on the beach in Taiwan sprinkled with MSG, eating gooey oyster egg omelettes at the night market, picking sea snails out, with a toothpick, from their shells), i was still always pretty used to using chopsticks or knife and fork to get at my seafood.

after i met my wife's family and became more immersed in Shanghai-style seafood, i realized i was inadequately prepared for seafood eating Chinese-style. even more so after i moved to shanghai a few weeks ago. people here are pros and don't even need a Wet One, as their hands stay dry and clean. For them, it's easy:
- sucking sea snails out of their shells while holding them delicately yet firmly with chopsticks only

- deboning a fried fish with tongue-action only and spitting out the bone, so it looks like those cartoon fish bones Heathcliff ate

- taking a whole steamed shrimp in your mouth and somehow, using only your left incisor and right top molar, decapitating it, sucking its head juice soup out (it tastes better than it sounds), deskinning it in a peeling fashion, picking off the legs, then spitting out only the skin and tail into your plate.

- also, doing the above but with crawfish

i've had some practice the past few years, but i have to use one of my hands almost everytime. my pimp hand always ends up my shrimp hand.

j's friend took us today to a great seafood restaurant today (i have no idea where they took me, except that it was far away in YangPu). far as hell and a dump. but really fresh seafood. and again, i was making my hand all juicy and smelly, with shell bits all over my mouth, while across from me was this cute little girl, mowing down all the food: shrimps, crawfish, wierd lobster thingies, hai gua zi (海瓜子), fish, i dunno.

i watched while she ate, hoping to learn a few tips. unfortunately, everything was in her mouth, so the secret techniques continue to elude me. i did learn however when i ate that sea slug thingy, that i was supposed to spit out that black nasty part. oh, yeah, like i can tell the difference between the black nasty inedible part and the slimy, black edible part of the slug. :)

wow. die hard 4. wow.

2007-08-17T06:27:00.001-04:00

i just watched a chinese bootleg of die hard 4 (aka Live Free or Die Hard). wow. that was bad. and it wasn't because the dvd was a turkish bootleg that occassionally was interspersed with soundtrack problems where english jumped to turkish and then back again. it was just...bad!

i won't bother with a review of the film. there are enough of those on imdb. surprisingly, it's IMDB rating is 7. 7!!!!! People, what is wrong with you!!! i think the main thing that spurred me on to write a post about it was about how bad it was. i mean, i was not expecting an Oscar tour-de-force performance. it was just so friggin ridiculous and unbelievable. not that jumping off a 80 story building and hanging onto a firehose to simulataneously take out a helicopter while shooting Huey Lewis in the forehead is realistic, but at least, Maclean was just rescuing some hostages. this time, in DH4, he is rescuing the COUNTRY. he might as well as have been balancing the federal budget.

anyways, what i will do is list everything i learned in DH4. I learned in DH4, that:
- sneaking into a nerdy hacker's dingy apartment to attach C4 to his ubuntu boxes and then hiring really muscular henchmen to hide out in a van outside his suburban home in a van to upload a virus to their computers when they are on-line and waiting for them to press the delete button to activate detonation of the C4 explosives is obviously easier than just sending the muscular henchmen in to just kill the kid.

- the better hacker you are the faster you type and the more 3d screens pop up while you're typing

- good hackers still look at the keyboard while typing

- some evil hackers are so good that they can remote control anyone's webcam to film anything

- any good hacker can redirect "all the natural gas in the area" to any location they want and cause the gas to ignite, to boot

- an explosion of "all the natural gas in the area" somehow cannot kill Bruce Willis

- when you are a hot evil kungfu hacker chick, your computing skills consist mainly of verbal confirmations of what's already showing on the screen, like:

Virus upload complete.

, or

Process initiated.

, or

Activating sensors.

, or even,

There's something wrong.

- a Palm Pilot (a really old dinky one) can help unlock the most secure data centers in the world

- all data centers with really important data have a freezer room, where you can do gymnastics on the bars and poles to fight people with

okay, that's enough.

bball in shanghai

2007-08-08T22:55:00.000-04:00

some interesting things i noticed over the past week, relating to bball.

the nba is huge here. i guess i kinda knew that already (i think only soccer, er, football is more popular), but you really see it around you in a very noticeable way.

walking by some sneaker shops, i saw a lot of promos for Shaq's Chinese shoe. it has a tv spot and a lot of signs all over the place, but i think the kids prefer the young stars, like King James, Kobe (I guess he's not THAT young anymore), etc...

a friend invited me to play hoops with him at a middle school playground. it was full of kids hooping it up, like any other playground in the U.S. (well, if we were in Chinatown). i'd say 50% of them had some sort of NBA-related merchandise on them, whether it was simply a t-shirt with a logo, a CWebb jersey. most of them have the baggy shorts things going on. i'm sure none of them were wearing this stuff 4 years ago. just amazing how David Stern has really infiltrated this market.

not only were the kids wearing the clothes, they were trying to play the nba game. i saw one kid with baggy shorts, headband, AI jersey, trying to do no look passes, behind-the-back dribbles, fake jukes, etc. he had skills. the kid i guarded was looking me straight in the eye, as he tried to dazzle me with his ball handling and juking. luckily, as an old man, i can play the mental game a little better, so i just bumped him around and roughed him up. that threw him off a bit. we did lose the game however. i would like to attribute that to the wind or something, but i was just plain wheezing like an asthmatic out there. i am so out of shape.

even though Yao is popular, i don't think the people here really dig merchandise with his name on it. i believe kobe, mcgrady and AI are more popular. maybe they all relate to the shooting guard/forward than a center more. i did see a bunch of kids reading their worn copy of SLAM! magazine. maybe they are more fascinated with black people than the everyday variety chinese. who knows?

plum blossom explodes the bonef

2007-08-05T05:37:00.000-04:00

on friday we met up with some friends of a friend in new york. he took us to a japanese place (yakitori-type) that was all you can eat and drink for 148 yuan. that's less than 20 bucks!! (two thumbs up!) afterwards, we hit the opening of some chocolate place here (eh...) and then some crazy expat hangout bar called Zapata's (not really our scene, not that i really know what our "scene" is...). we did get to meet a lot of interesting people however.

the people here have been really nice. friends of friends in the states have been very welcoming and very cool, showing us around and inviting us to everything. even random service people and taxi drivers haven't been too rude. not sure what the reason exactly is (govt regulation?) but for instance, when j and i took a cab that hit some construction on a main road, the guy stopped the meter after we took a detour. we weren't even halfway to our destination yet, but the guy insisted, since he had to take a different route. weird.

saturday, we met up with my dad's sister (gu gu) and her husband (gu fu). they took us to a delicious cantonese dim sum place for brunch. we ended the day at some chain that specializes in congee (also where i saw the description of some dish that is also the title of this post).

it seems lots of folks that i meet here in SH, relatives or friends, are all from elsewhere. there is a lot going on in this city and you can really see it and feel it...lots of change, lots of people coming in trying to do something big. just like new york, it is a city of opportunity. The Plum Blossom Explodes the Bonef!!!

battle roy-meow

2007-08-01T23:11:00.000-04:00

while not everyone approves of Michael Vick's activities, everyone loves a good catfight.

here is a vid of my cat (play) fighting my sister's cat:

who do you think won?

surfing...i took thee for granted

2007-08-01T05:54:00.001-04:00

a lot of sites, that aren't even political, that i used to go to, i can no longer visit here from Shanghai.

flickr- they block pics
dynalias- a work site i use uses one of those dynamic dns services. that is impossible to reach as it's totally blocked. highly inconvenient.
blogger itself- i can't read anything under the blogspot domain

luckily, i am a nerd and figured ways around it. firefox has a lot of plugins that make it easy to get these sites viewable.

i probably shouldn't talk about this anymore if i don't want to go the way of the former China FDA head...

shanghai summer

2007-07-30T02:48:00.000-04:00

so it is really hot here in shanghai. like crazy 95+ degrees plus humidity. and i thought taiwan in August was bad.

we are settling in our apartment. it's in the middle of an old Shanghai alley south of Huaihai Lu, a large promenade-type type of road. the subletter (sublessee?) made it really nice inside. so we get the a combo of "pottery barn"-type interior decoration (she did a great job with it) plus all the typical, local "amenities", like hanging my undies out on the balcony (it is a nice view! the balcony, not the undies).

i would put a nice picture here, but it's really annoying how flickr is now blocked in China. maybe i'll put a video up next time.

random things we've done here so far:

- got a celly cell (everything's Pay As You Go/Prepaid here)
- drank many 7ups (they taste awesome when it's hot. or it must be some special local formula. or fake)
- drank many beers (those huge 40's you get with dinner are like 30 cents/bottle)
- ate lots of food at all the traditional places
- used Skype a lot
- got a haircut at a famous barber shop near Nanjing Lu (J used to go there as a kid; she didn't want me to get a funky Jay Chou haircut)

one thing we haven't done yet is check out any more modern/nouveau-type eats. i figure that will come come soon. there's only so much cao cai (stir-fried dishes)/buns/noodles one can take.

actually i take that back. i could eat that stuff forever.

touched down

2007-07-27T01:11:00.000-04:00

arrived in shanghai last night.

24 hour flight and we are okay with jetlag today.

lots of pics to be posted shortly. the apt we got is really cool, in the French Concession area.

hot and humid as hell today, posting this at a Coffee Bean cafe in some mall.

clean teeth

2007-07-12T10:58:00.001-04:00

your teeth never really feel clean until you get a soniccare toothbrush. those are amazing. really.

exhausted

2007-07-05T01:16:00.000-04:00

i'm tired.

we've been packing to get ready for the move the past few days.

our (*&((*@#$@ coop board has YET to approve of our still-prospective tenant.

our flight is scheduled in a few days.

our cat is all stressed out living with my parents and not eating.

my plantar fascitis seems to have been exacberated by me wearing my "mandals" the past few days.

my in-laws PCs are all messed up after we left michigan. i had set up some sweet hi-tech setup for their living room: flat screen 19" widescreen monitor hooked to a clean XP box with Skype calling and IP video via PPStream. The living room of the future. all was well until we drove past the stateline between Pennsylvania and NJ (and 500 miles away from them)...antivirus things, quarantines, zone alarm prompts, chinese characters rendering as boxes in really important looking dialog prompts they can't read. stoopid 'puters. the other computer has some virus that only has like 3 matches on Google (it's really new).

going to bed.

so...

2007-07-01T16:00:00.000-04:00

...so, we are finally going to make the move to Shanghai, China.

What lies in store for us? we dunno.

Currently in Michigan seeing J's parents and running some errands.

Also got to try out the iPhone at the Ann Arbor ATT/Cingular store. I really don't care much for the latest gadgets (my friends can attest to my old-school, paint-scraped Sanyo picture phone), but holy wow...the iPhone is going to be HUUGE. Double "U" HUUGE.

yes, it's cute

2007-05-18T16:36:00.000-04:00

this guy has hilarious cat pictures. i mean, who DOESN'T like kittens?! even Darth Vader had a thing for kittens.

wtf?!

2007-05-07T00:19:00.000-04:00

and i thought this was just a Wu-Tang song (and an old 70's kung fu movie):

official chess boxing organization

it's about time

2007-05-04T15:56:00.001-04:00

They finally upgraded Citysearch.com to a post-1999 interface.

I really REALLY hated that Neighborhood/dropdown combobox thing they forced on us. Let's see how this one works out.

brookyn gangs

2007-04-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

i stopped by a bbq this past weekend in brooklyn and encountered members of a rapidly growing gang.

gang members tend to be white, balding, in their late 20's or early to mid 30's. typically wearing skinny jeans and a rockband or gas station t-shirt (sometimes with a s, they travel in packs of 3 or 4. sometimes they will travel with a baby stroller and a young emo-wife. they often sport facial hair and wear black-rimmed glasses. game players will recognize the hero of Half Life2 as a member of this gang. beware, they are armed with iPod Nanos and Nintendo DS's.

running into ppl

2007-04-25T00:10:00.000-04:00

i guess it makes sense, with NYC being such an epicenter of everything, but lately i've been seeing or bumping into a lot of random people throughout the city...

- i saw an old co-worker sitting near me on the subway.

- i saw an old high-school classmate (wow, he looked old) on the street in soho

- i saw my co-worker at a cafe near where i liv e

- i bumped into my college dorm hallway mate at a restaurant. he was from MI so that was totally unexpected.

all this makes me wonder...

...will Jobs really get away from all this scot-free?!

ADD Enablers 2.0

2007-04-13T15:24:00.001-04:00

There are just so many things out there on the Web that just really make it all too easy for many of us to waste time or make it difficult to concentrate on any task. Obviously, personality and your ability to focus are prime factors, but I think that just the sheer volume of information/data that is inundating us these days (and the ease to access it all) make it even more difficult. Some causes of my Web/Digital ADD:

- Web-radio- playing your fave songs, which only cause you to Google the currently playing band's...
- MySpace page, so you can find out more than you ever wanted to know about a band. Of course, you'll then want to watch this band in action and so you hop on over to...
- YouTube, where the "Related videos" only drive you to start viewing random videos of sleeping kitties. Your cute kitty interest piqued, you hop over to...
- Kittenwar, where you just can't stop rating those damn cute cats! Now that you got your rating thing going on, you decide to start rating more movies you've seen on...
- Netflix. I think I've rated 400+ movies now. AJAX star rating thingies are addictive. But what did other people think about that "House of Wax" (starring Paris!) remake that your wife conned you into renting last night? You go over to...
- IMDB. Ah, one of the original Web 1.0 site with Web 2.0-type features (user-generated content, ratings). Cool data on who directed what. Yes, the chats on the discussion board are quite engaging and stimulating (e.g., "THIS MOVIE SuCkS!!!! LOTR and MATRIX, best EvER !!"), so you quickly run away to see the trailer of the director's upcoming work at...
- Apple Trailers- Transformers and TMNT look sweet. Hey what's that blinking in my other...
- Firefox tabs? I don't know how I was able to have 60 Web pages open at once before Firefox tabbing. Anyways, the thing that was blinking in my other tab was a notice from...
- Gmail. Gmail autoloads the page in an Ajaxian way and so I will always have instant email access. When I want to just chat directly with someone, I end up switching to my tab dedicated for...
- Meebo. IM in a Web page. Genius. Of course now, I really can't avoid incoming IM messages while I'm surfing. But at least, my PC CPU can be spared a few cycles from rendering all those Yahoo! IM avatars in everyone's windows. Speaking of Yahoo, how's my fantasy baseball team doing? I need to check the live scores on...
- Stattracker. Live scoring for your made-up team compiling made-up stats in real-time. Very addictive.

Whew, I broke myself out of that endless loop. Time to get back to work.

Thrillist : Spotlight Live

2007-04-12T16:56:00.001-04:00

Oh boy... Talk about humiliation on a whole-new (and expensive!) level. I'd take punk rock karaoke over this anytime.

ESPN fantasy players receive jolt of reality A major glitch in the sports giant's online baseball contest statistics service causes early-season n

2007-04-12T09:51:00.000-04:00

EWhy I stopped playing ESPN fantasy sports a few years ago. The people I know there told me it's a huge mess (in general). They are more about Web design, Flash, etc. rather than scaleable systems and architecture. Pretty embarassing...meanwhile, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports rules.

The crying game: Misery clubs come to the UK | the Daily Mail

2007-04-10T16:04:00.000-04:00

These people need to get their heads straight. I could cry in my beer at home if i wanted to. for free.

Bees are sweet

2007-04-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

Recent National Geographic shows have gotten me pumped about bees and hornets.

Here's an amazing clip of 30 japanese giant hornets taking out 30,000 bees in 30 hours.
Pwnage!

opened the ipod...

2007-04-02T11:29:00.000-04:00

and followed something similar(

Diary of a Mac Geek: Servicing Your 4th Gen iPod) to get it to work. although i did leave a few marks on the damn shiny chrome. damnnit. at least there wasn't any soldering involved (crazy PS1 mod stories from way back when).

anyways, according to the Web, opening and reconnecting some loose cables seems to resolve like 80% of those supposed damaged hard drive issues on iPods. mine seems to be working pretty well now (crossing fingers).

damn apple for almost making me buy another $400 shiny thing.

Cheap Haircuts on New York Citysearch

2007-03-29T17:31:00.000-04:00

Cheap Haircuts on New York Citysearch

ah, my favorite haircut place. i like Richy the best, but I always have to point to that Tom Cruise (a la War of the Worlds) picture to get a decent haircut. how embarrassing.

Strange Shanghai...

2007-01-29T14:24:00.001-05:00

One guy's interesting view of the boom in China now, esp. in Shanghai...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10421131

the greatest.

2007-01-18T17:01:00.000-05:00

web. page. ever.

things that are fun...

2007-01-11T16:42:00.001-05:00

Fun Thing That I Never Get Tired Of #4123:

Regular Expressions!

i guess i don't need to ...

2007-01-05T16:11:00.000-05:00

...move to SF. I've always wanted to move to Sunny California- "California here we come... Right back where we..."-erm, sorry, I guess I shouldn't sing that since that show got cancelled this week.

Anyways, it's going to be 70 degrees tomorrow. SEVENTY! What's the point of going to Cali when I can get SF weather right here in New York AND better food AND better public transportation?

but it's 10 blocks away...

2006-12-07T09:51:00.000-05:00

Blockbuster is attempting to capture some Netflix customers with this latest promo. Bring in a Netflix tearaway label and you get a free rental.

Um, the problem I see here is the fact that Blockbuster is about 7 blocks away from me. Also, I have to push open two doors to actually GET INSIDE. WTF are they expecting me to do next for a rental. Climb Everest?!

Yao-hate

2006-11-22T10:42:00.000-05:00

Two good articles on the hatin' on Yao right now who is dropping 26 and 10 nightly.

Houston Chronicle article.

The Time is Yao.

This finally is the Year of the Yao (sorry, that was a stupid name for a fascinating movie). Yao's gotta start smacking the shit out of his haters.

test

2006-11-21T10:56:00.001-05:00

of supposedly "cool, mashable" technology.

wake me up before you go-go

2006-11-15T11:53:00.001-05:00

i make very convincing arguments when i am lying horizontally, in bed.

i've been trying to get up at 6:30 in the morning every weekday to get out of bed and work out before heading to the office.

i used to be really good at this stuff, when i was in my young 20's. it was so easy to motivate myself with the mantra from Body For Life:

"Get up, lazy ass! Body for LIFE! You only have one body in this life time, your ONLY body! Do it! Treat it right! BODY FOR LIFE!"

And within 3 seconds, I'd be able to leap out of bed and head to the gym

These days, it's more like:

"Body for life...come on....Sighh...get up....you only have one body....zz....body....for....sleeep........"

And then I reset my alarm and go back to sleep.

bitch slapping the ipod

2006-11-05T20:21:00.001-05:00

my 4G ipod has been faithfully running smoothly for about 2 years now. winamp, ml_ipod plugins, no issues.

but for the past week it's been dead. just clicking and whirring repeatedly, showing me the "sad ipod" icon.

good thing there's the web. apparently, many people have reported fixing this issue by dropping the ipod on the ground. it probably jars the loopy hard drive back into place. now that doesn't sound like the best reason, but i decided to punch my ipod a few times, giving it a big slap on the back and dropping it a few times on my desk, about 5 inches above it.

whaddya know, it worked!

we'll see how long before it acts up again. doesn't seem like an actual fix...

2 steps forward, 3 steps back...to a pimped TV

2006-10-27T14:49:00.001-04:00

i've been pretty busy on a variety of fronts, but i decided i need some side projects to keep my geeky self busy. so i've decided that i want to implement a DVR, like MythTV. Didn't want to buy one (that'd be too easy). MythTV i heard has lots of headaches. So I found XBox Media Center (XBMC). How cool would it be to:
- watch all my ripped DVDs stored in a digital library
- listen to any of my MP3's stored on my PC
- check weather
- see a slideshow of my pics
- watch Tivo'ed/PVR'ed shows streamed off of my PC
- playing 80's arcade games like Centipede and Defender

all from the living room. on my xbox.

it'd have to be living room-compliant (not too ugly, tho' the TV rack is already IKEA-ugly) and quiet. also, most importantly, it'd have to be wife-usable. so basically, XBMC it was. MythTV would result in a loud, whirring, ugly tower in the living room.

so it sounded cool and all but i realy wasn't sure how to get started. i've had a bit more spare time at work lately, so after surfing a billion sites, i decided to go with a low-risk, low-budget approach.

Step 1) Get USB flash card for softmodding. Done- already have one. this shit is easy.
Step 2) Get WiFi adapter for Xbox so it's on the network. Done- Found a Linksys for 25 bucks; took awhile though, as the postman lost it for a few days and i had to go through some anguish at the post office, but it's all good now.
Step 3) Get USB to XBox adapter. Done- Got it on the Web for 3 bucks. wow, this is a cinch.
Step 4) Get Splinter Cell game disc. Done- Already have it.
Step 5) Download softmodding software. Done- Easy.
Step 6) Format USB card to FATX format. Uh oh. Why is my screen blinking repeatedly.

Looking on the Web, it looks like my Kingston USB stick isn't compatible with the Xbox. Damnnit. Back to Step 1 and increasing my budget.

Notable Cheap Eat

2006-10-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

(image from Gothamist)

I've been kinda in a rut lately with discovering new Cheap Eats around our neighborhood. Some of of it has to do with where we moved to. Grand Street has a few things, but you really have to leave the area to get some more variety.

So I was highly enthused and thrilled when J and I stopped by Pio Mayo in the West Village. Highly recommended. I had the pork Torta...crisp lettuce, just the right amount of shredded pork, not too dry and a good amount of avocado. Yums. J had two tacos. I'd go back to this taqueria many more times. ***1/2, $.

do you want that Second Life

2006-10-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

The Second Life game has been getting crazy coverage recently...here's yet another one.

I spent 30 minutes with my friend racking our brains on things that exist in the real world that we could introduce to Second Life and make 5 billion dollars off of. The brainstorming session wasn't too spectacular:

"Um, like, do they have cell phones?"

"Nah, but they don't need cell phones. They can just IM."

"True."

"How about pets?"

"Wow, that's a good idea! Yeah, pets like ...um, uh...roosters, yeah! And then we have cockfights. Cockfight Island, baby!"

"Um...yeah, okay."

i'm so pretty

2006-10-17T13:26:00.000-04:00

i love this commercial.

cherry 2000

2006-09-22T14:25:00.000-04:00

some dudes have developed artifical life-like skin to be put on robots and other non-human things.

the last part talks about obvious medical uses, such as "remote-teleoperated breast exam robots". HUH?!?!

yeah. it's cherry 2000-time.

can anybody tell me...

2006-09-20T11:02:00.001-04:00

what the hell is the difference between:

- Studio 60

and

- 30 Rock ?!?!?

They're both about SNL-type shows. They're both on NBC. They both are in heavy rotation in ads. I don't get it. Maybe because i was asia for 2 weeks (so long!) that i lost my american sense of things.

Best things of 2006 in New York City

2006-08-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

Thing #51232:

Those Chase ATMs inside Duane Reade. Previously, one budget conscious drinker would have to stumble from a bar, across two intersections, around some bums, past 3 bridge and tunnel partypeople, 14 nyu freshmen, 2 English tourists, 5 hipsters to find a Chase ATM.

Now, with Duane Reade as ubiquitous as Chinatown-ripoff aviator sunglasses, Chase has managed to extend its reach all around Manhattan, and into my why-would-I-need-to-take-out-more-than
-40-bucks-each-time-at-the-ATM-heart.

tap tap tap

2006-08-13T01:32:00.000-04:00

the other day, i was in a Rite Aid, gettin some stuff. i waited in line for about 5 minutes; meanwhile, i was checking baseball scores on my slowass phone browser to kill time.

it was finally my turn and after i put my 3 or 4 items on the counter, the cashier scanned each item. i swiped my CC in the thingy and while that was processing, i resumed my phone surfing. meanwhile, the cashier had one white iPod earbud in one ear, bobbing her head to some Chamillionaire while picking up her RAZR to text message her friends. i think it was about 15 seconds of pure silence, except for a few tap tap tapping sounds of me on my phone and her on her RAZR (and some "...tryin to catch me ridin dirty..." in the background). we were both facing each other at the counter, yet our eyes were focused on our little mini-devices. finally, the transaction was processed, she bagged my stuff and i said "Thanks" before heading out. that was weird.

hollywood's lack of creativity

2006-08-06T23:13:00.001-04:00

well, this isn't a new concept, but i was looking at the trailers at Apple's site and it's just boggling how all the movies coming out in 2007 are all remakes or adaptations of books or TV shows...a sampling:

- Ghost Rider- http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/ghostrider/
(for some fanboys but will bomb)
- The Departed- http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/thedeparted/hd/
(U.S. remake of the HK classic Infernal Affairs, looks good)
- Transformers- http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/transformers/
(can't wait)
- Rocky Balboa- http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/rockybalboa/
(this is really reaching, Sly)
- TMNT- http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/teenagemutantninjaturtles/
(looks neato)
- Flicka (no interest)

- and what's up with all these kids' book classics being turned into movies or remade movies:
- Charlotte's Web (http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/charlottesweb/)
- How to Eat Fried Worms- http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/howtoeatfriedworms/

Obviously, Miami Vice is not an original movie either.

I'm waiting for a Ramona the Pest movie...i'm sure one is in the works this very minute.

2006-08-03T13:54:00.000-04:00

Tea Partay

i wuold think much of this funny video if:
a) if it were the first time this idea has been done
b) it wasn't a commercial

2006-07-29T00:55:00.000-04:00

i never knew...

...that i liked a Toto song (Rosanna doesn't count).

2006-07-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

man i feel old...

...when i see these kids.

this video is sweet.

favorite show

2006-07-26T23:56:00.000-04:00

i am probably one of the only people left on earth who doesn't have Tivo, so i have to watch TV live. yes, LIVE, i say.

anyways, i always seem to catch ESPN's Cheap Seats on TV. this show is hilarious. if you ahven't seen it, it's MSTK3 + The World's Strongest Man contest.

mo'pants

2006-07-20T16:47:00.001-04:00

today on the subway, i saw a girl today reach down into her pants to get her mobile phone. rather, they were being held in place by her panty/undies.

do many women do this?! i had no idea. what if i did that, but suddenly it just fell, right through my pant legs and onto the floor? like as if i were laying an egg.

2006-07-18T15:52:00.000-04:00

my fave video

i don't get to watch too many videos these days, because:
- MTV is now a reality tv network where aging "stars" such as Eric Nies (remember the Grind?!) can compete in ass-melt-ice competitions
- you can't sit on your couch and watch videos, you actually have to (shudder) type in a URL and search for them or log into iTunes!
- videos are too serious and uncreative (what rap video these days doesn't have a slow mo money shot of bikini babes writing around the rapper)

anyways, i'm likin this video...

Ted Stevens internet rant on Daily Show...

2006-07-18T15:34:00.000-04:00

This is a funny clip of Sen. Ted Stevens Internet rant lampooned on the Daily Show...

Ted Stevens, Internet Expert, Goes National - Wonkette

I can't blame Ted Stevens though...how will we understand technology when we're 80 years old:

"Yeah, the P2P chromohypertransmogrifier uh, works somehow to and it like, er...you know, gives me the hypernet, even when it's like, clogged."

chinese people don't drink

2006-07-08T00:35:00.000-04:00

j and i recently went to have dessert at chickalicious in east village. we don't typically get desserts but we decided to try something that we always put off in the past...especially now that we were no longer in the neighborhood, it seemed a bit more interesting.

anyways, the place was packed full of asian people. like usual. using my asia-dar i figured that out of the 20 or so people in there, the 16 asian people sitting there were mostly chinese. i think a japanese or two in there, but mostly a variety of chinese kids. some queens/flushing types. some taiwanese.

it pretty much backed up my theory that the reason why this place was so full of chinese people was because chinese people don't really drink, when compared to typical americans, or even other other asian cultures. so instead of hitting the bars, the "traditional" post-dinner chinese social activity is karaoke, bubble tea, or eating some desserts.

the japanese have their sake and post-work drinking. the koreans have their soju, booking clubs, and drink the most. but chinese people don't really socially drink. they definitely do drink and some of the worst sloppies (ahem-F'n FRANK!) i know are chinese, but overall, the chinese tend to drink over a meal, not socially, post-dinner. this also explains why happy hour was only an ex-pat concept when we visited Shanghai last time.

of course, this doesn't mean chinese people don't drink. it's just not as ingrained into the culture as it is with those of japanese and korean societies. many chinese-americans don't pick up that behavior, even when growing up in the U.S.

am i right or am i right?

scrobblin and foosball

2006-07-02T23:38:00.000-04:00

i decided to finally play with audioscrobbler and so downloaded the winamp plugin. basically, it is a tool that tracks what you listen to. you can share it with others, build charts on most popular artists/tracks, or get recommendations. i put a chart on the right side of this blog. let's see how many times Meatloaf gets played.

i haven't yet figured out how i can track what i listen to on my iPod, since I've already dumped iTunes for Winamp and ml_ipod.

j and i decided to take a break from our apt (does it ever end?) and catch some of the FRA vs BRA game yesterday at a bar...holy crap! Zidane and Henry kicked Ronaldo, Ronaldhino and co's asses yesterday. i've never hated soccer but have never really gotten excited about it. but watching this whole World Cup has really gotten me psyched for these sorts of international competitions. i guess the World Baseball Classic kinda follows the same vein. when people can cheer their countrymen on and unite over these sorts of common bonds, while drinking, carousing and having a blast, i guess that is what makes it so appealing.

there's been some articles about how Nielsen ratings have shown that other than during the U.S. games, ratings have been low in the U.S.. maybe in f'n Nebrasksa, but everywhere i walk by in NY it's almost as if I'm in Europe: cafes and restaurants have their windows open, while people crowd around and spill out of doorways, all trying to catch a glimpse of games, cheering and groaning to every save or shot, beers and drinks in hand. some fans are even draped in flags. maybe it's because NYC is so international. anyways, it's been refreshing to see this type of spirit; "Mets suck" or "Go Yankees" gets kinda old, you know?

free internet tv...aka watch the world cup at work

2006-06-24T00:41:00.000-04:00

wow, probably will get shut down, but watch some TV, including ESPN and some Star TV on the Web for free:

http://www.tvunetworks.com/downloads/index.htm

greentech and Gore

2006-06-06T12:58:00.000-04:00

this is a cool article on Gore and his mission...

Wired 14.05: The Resurrection of Al Gore

this is the movie: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

google office?

2006-06-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

i guess it's pretty obvious already...

they already have a word processor, now a spreadsheet...

Welcome to Google Spreadsheets (Limited Test)

life hacks and bomberman

2006-05-24T11:01:00.001-04:00

Originally uploaded by schav.

movers are coming tomorrow. i feel like bomberman. our apartment is a mess with boxes piled up on boxes and no room to move around. to get my socks i have to push a series of interlocking boxes in the right combination and order to create a passageway. i can't blow anything up though as bomberman does. i need those dishes.

meanwhile, walking around St. Mark's last night, we realized that we were finally leaving our neighborhood and how SPOILED we've been. grand street will be much quieter and spacious, but most things are closed there after 9. we'll miss this place. (to put in perspective though, we are really moving like 20 blocks away i guess)

i also realized i haven't been practicing the whole life hacks thing. going through my stuff, i keep on digging up so much junk. several things i ended up keeping cuz you never know:
- my old gravis PC joystick (in case a game like X-Wing ever comes out again)
- old stereo wires (in case people start buying ultra large stereos again and hate ipods)
- old michigan t-shirt (ah, freshman memories)

free yourself

2006-05-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

this site allows you to create cool text effects on the web without having to mess with photoshop. note how i was able to convey feeling, emotion and general sassiness in such a cool graphic, now that i am freed from the shackles of magic lassos, embossing and layers:

i wanna see what cool text graphics you, my loyal readers, can create, now that i have bestowed this great enabler of artistic liberation upon yourselves.

Telemundo is awesome.

2006-05-03T00:17:00.000-04:00

Telemundo is awesome.
Originally uploaded by schav.

How come there is always some Spanish show on where adults play kids...the men wear beanie caps and sailor outfits and the women wear...nothing...

songs man, for your pleasure. -->

2006-05-02T00:56:00.000-04:00

been playing with webjay and embedding it into the blog. kinda slow to load though. --->

A full time job

2006-04-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

No more wall
Originally uploaded by schav.

Man, house renovation is tough, but apartment renovation i think is equally tough. Our contractor started this week and is moving fast...but it's been headache after headache dealing with the coop and its strict rules (you can't do this, do that, use that elevator, get that pass, get this pass). The toughest part has been trying to juggle this and choose parts over the internet that you hope will fit into your place, but the full time job thing and not having a car to easily buy and browse at a Home Depot make this a bitch of a headache.

Not that I am complaining though. Just am happy to see things moving.

J and I were discussing, hey, our contractor seems to be pretty good so far. But then again, anyone can knock down shit.

Chase Field

2006-04-19T01:27:00.000-04:00

Chase Field
Originally uploaded by schav.

in Phoenix for some training. at first, i had no desire to come here. i mean, the dry heat, sure, that's welcome right now with NY being so cool, but what a waste of time.

but the hotel is near Chase Field and where the Suns play. hoping to get to a Suns game before i go.

tonight i went to Chase Field for some last second cheap seats ($1!!!!!), italian sausage and semi-expensive bud light. enjoying my stay so far.

btw, it is really sad for a team when Craig Counsell is the star.

PPS. almost saw Bonds hit one out tonight but instead it was a ground-rule double. oh well. nothing historic tonight.

busy

2006-04-11T17:51:00.001-04:00

been very busy this past week or so...

- went to a conference in Vegas last week. I'm not really a gamblin man, so did a lot of walking around post-show. went with some coworkers to some company-sponsored cocktail events then met up with some friends and others to go eat. if you ever go, avoid the Mesa Grill's and other overpriced, scenes...go to Battista's for homestyle italian, unlimited free red and white wine and just plain ol good food in an old-school Vegas place.

(side story: some guy i met that night was telling me this story of his life in japan and how his "friend" went to some sex club there, where he played "rock, paper, scissors" on a stage against other competitors. in the middle was a russian woman spread out and tied to a table. the winner basically got to do her. in front of the audience. those zany japanese!!!!)

- this past weekend, j and i did a tonna stuff. 1) we negotiated and signed a contract for our contractor, Mr. "Chinatown" i will call him.

2) J attended her weekend Saturday class at Stern

3) RunDn3 had a game and we won our 2nd game in a row! (I was amazed i could even walk after a week at Vegas)

4) we went to ikea via Port Authority and bought nothing but ate Swedish meatballs

5) then, in the same day, we took public transport AND hiked all the way to Red Hook, Brooklyn to check out Home Depot

6) then, we also went to Lowe's nearby that same day

7)
then we watched the Special episode of BBC's The Office. Highly recommend it.

8)
AND THEN, had to do taxes. Turbotax rocks.

Anyways, am damn tired. This week, I think I won't do any work and just surf this site.

p.s., since when did i become so "girly" and start writing diary-type entries?!

The beginning of the end...

2006-04-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1 o'clock, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

This will never ever happen again.

Is Trader Joe's really worth lining up for 1/2 hr for?

2006-04-01T16:18:00.000-05:00

Is Trader Joe's really worth lining up for 1/2 hr for?
Originally uploaded by schav.

snakes on a mo' f'n plane...

2006-03-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

the hype and buzz has been building on the internet over sam jackson's next movie, "Snakes On A Plane".

how AWESOME is that title?

here's the wikipedia entry which provides some good background of it.

i'll be first in line to see this guy.

Grease premiere tickets!

2006-03-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

Grease premiere tickets!
Originally uploaded by schav.

Zoiks!

Liza's autograph!

2006-03-18T09:22:00.000-05:00

Liza's autograph!
Originally uploaded by schav.

More junk

2006-03-18T09:20:00.001-05:00

More junk
Originally uploaded by schav.

Paul Davis print. Worth anything?

2006-03-18T09:20:00.000-05:00

Paul Davis print. Worth anything?
Originally uploaded by schav.

Study or guest room

2006-03-18T09:19:00.000-05:00

Study or guest room
Originally uploaded by schav.

Cleanout

2006-03-18T09:18:00.000-05:00

Cleanout
Originally uploaded by schav.

After a record 1.5 years of waiting (we signed the contract in Oct 2004), we finally closed on our apt this week. Today some removal dudes will be hauling out all the leftover junk.