Hong Kong Day 1

Ahhh I'm finally here after the sucky 14 hour red eye flight. Got here at 6:30am and didn't check in until 8:30am. Then the chick at the reception desk was very nice and gave my parents and I upgraded rooms to the hotel. Woohoo. My room actually has down comforters and pillows! I feel so privileged.

First thing my parents and I did after checking in was to go downstairs to the ghetto Chinese restaurant downstairs for some good jook and beef cheung fun. There's just something about these restaurants that makes it sooooooooooo good. Oh one more interested change here is that they've just passed a law to prohibit smoking from all restaurants, indoor buildings, and parks. Just like the law in California, but even stricter. Sorta hard to imagine such a law here since the majority of the people here smoke like chimneys.

Afterwards we met up with all of our relatives for lunch to discuss about the things that we are going to have to do. And after that I walked around a bit by myself, got a good foot massage, and met up with a long lost friend for dinner.

Was going to meet up with my long lost cousin at night but I was way too tired to go out. I passed out at 10pm, and got up at 4am this morning. :-(. I might as well stay up for another hour to wait for the google earnings to come out on CNBC.

Oh one more thing that happened tonight. The phone in my hotel room rang for 2 seconds for some reason at 4am!!! Who the HELL was that?

Off to Hong Kong I go again

Cya guys in a week! Rico and Jon -- Promise me you won't watch the superbowl until next Tuesday! We will have alcohol, chips, and everything else to go with it!

I don't give a crap about latency

I haven't been able to get cable modem at my condo for the past year since SBC had signed some exclusive deal with the complex where nobody in the complex could get internet service from anyone else. Luckily, the contract was voided a month ago, and Comcast began to wire in their service here. Woohoo, finally I can watch videos on youtube without having to wait!

In order to lure in new customers, the Comcast sales rep are here this afternoon at the clubhouse to take in orders.

While I was there, this nerdy looking guy (he kinda looked like Jim Carrey from dumb and dumber) asked this sales rep lady a question: "Do you have someone technical here who can answer about bandwidth and latency?" The lady turned around and said "I'm not sure, but there are definitely technicians here who can answer your questions."

Since I had done some research the night before, I went ahead and told the guy that downstream would be 6Mbps and upstream would be 386kbps, and that is much better than our current DSL (386k upstream and 386k downstream).

Then... He asked the inprobable question: "What about the latency?"

WTF dude. Latency to what? Google? Your favorite porn site? The comcast backbone? Who the HELL cares. Do you really think you will get anything more than 30ms to your backbone? What are you, a die hard counter strike player who sucks so much to the point where you need 10ms less latency to shoot some dude in the head while you're camping? All I care about is the ability to watch streaming videos online and download tv shows at lightning speed! PERIOD!

Ok I'm done ranting. I'm looking forward to welcoming the comcast technician in the next hour with a wonderful can of Coca Cola.

How to Get in the Zone When Coding

In the world of programming, there is a term called being "in the zone" which is often used to describe instances where, while you're high quality writing code, you are completely oblivious to what is happening in your surrounding.

For most people, they often get themselves in the zone by being alone in their office with the door closed. Some people may listen to their favorite music, and some might choose to pull an all nighter with no interruptions whatsoever.

For me, personally, I get myself in the zone by putting a lion above my head, like so:



How do you get in the zone?

David Blaine on youtube!

I really didn't want to post this here: