Category: Post

Trans-Atlantic Communications

So I had been thinking about giving my mum a call this week. Let me explain that I don’t generally call my parents unless it is an emergency. When I first moved across to the U.S. from the U.K., my mum will call once a week. Then gradually, the calls went to couple of times a month, then once a month, and recently once a few months. Probably because I never call her back. Even when I was on the phone with her, I never can think of things to talk about. She would asked about how thing is going, I would just answer “Fine”. Strange? Perhaps, since Leah doesn’t seem to trouble chatting to her mum about anything and everything.

Anyway I digressed. The reason I was going to call is because since my visit to the U.K. last month and bought her a new computer, she had not give me a call. Even though I sent her an email about how to set up Microsoft Office on her computer with detail instructions and explicitly said that to give me a call if she runs into trouble. I was 100% expecting a tech support call from her but no, na-da, nothing, not a ring.

Anyhow, tonight the phone rang and Leah thought it was the DNC because they called earlier in the week and promised to call back later. It was my mum instead when I picked up the phone. Apparently they have finally sold my beloved car (but I forgot to ask how much they managed to sell it for). They are also going to sell their house and move to rental house/apartment to save money. Mind you, the current house has 4 bedrooms for the two of them! They bought it just when I finished college, looking for work, and I was staying there during that summer so we did need the space.

And apparently I misjudged her computer skills because she installed Office without trouble. Even managed to follow my instruction and converted one of her Access database to the new format too.

Crap! It’s 3:13 a.m. already! And I need to wake in just over 5 hours to go to work on a Sunday! If I go to some sort of haven/hell when I die I am going to ask for a refund for all the time I somehow lost…

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Fair or Not Fair

A lot of comments are being made on DrunkenBlog about the legal case Apple is bringing against the persons who leaked a copy Tiger (next version of OS X). Most of them seems to be in the theme of “they (the defendants) are poor students and can’t afford to defend themselves, so let’s go easy on them”, or “they didn’t mean any harm, suing them is too heavy handed by Apple”, or “Apple has made their point, these people have been punished enough already”, etc.

Speaking in a personal capacity (Adriaan, my ecto partner, had already made an ‘offical’ comment) I think everyone need to take responsibility of their own action. Whether you are poor, rich, young, old, illiterate, or educated; you are still doing wrong. Just because these people did not leak the copy of Tiger in malicious intend, that doesn’t mean they did not do wrong. If they were found guilty of their accused crime, their personal circumstances should, in an ideal world, be taken into account by the judge when sentencing is served. Not that we are living in an ideal world, mind you, but that is the concept nonetheless.

Of course one can argue that since they are poor, they are unable to hire attorney to defend themselves against a multi-billion dollars company that is Apple. Guess what? They should have thought of the possibility of being sued when they shared the file.

I doubt that if the defendants are middle aged software engineers earning 6 figure salaries, there will be as much ‘sympathy’ towards them as these young students. I think fair should be fair, no matter the circumstances.

In closing, I can’t honest believe the defendants are completely innocence about sharing any files on BitTorrent.

I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn’t a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.

“Foolish” is right and he admitted that he is a frequent BitTorrent downloader. So he must knows that once the file is in the open, there is no stopping at “5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics”. Blind trust is a great thing but the real world doesn’t work that way.

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The Weekend

Leah and I had a busy Saturday.
Central Park Gates  – 7Just before we left the apartment for my usual gym session at midtown Manhattan, we decided to go to Central Park afterward and see what the fuss is all about The Gates. I took Leah’s compact digital camera with us and took some photos there. The park was packed full of gates as well as people. The orange fabric makes the park looks very zen/Buddhist-like.

But we couldn’t find somewhere we wanted to have lunch near the park so we decided to walk all the way back to midtown and had Japanese noodles instead. The round trip must have been at least 3 miles. Well it was 10 blocks up and down town between the park and the gym/noodle place as well as our walk up and across the park. I persuaded Leah to try out the pork curry ramen noodle and she loved it. Now that becomes her favourite dish, replacing chicken katsu don. We shared the gyoza and they are probably some of the best gyoza I’ve tasted! (I am sure there are better ones but hey, I am easy to please)

Then in the evening later, we went to a Sinatra party in downtown Manhattan. Really it was just an excuse to have a party and get ourselves drunk!
Sinatra Party – 1 We were supposed to be there by 9 p.m. but I had some shirt problem and PATH train problem so we didn’t get there until way past 10 p.m. Still we had a great time there drinking and chatting with people I work with. By the way, the ‘classic’ martini tastes pretty bad. Perhaps it is the gin but I am not sure why people like it. So I had a Baileys to balance it out 🙂 We didn’t leave until 2:30 am when the owner of the place more or less kicked us out.

I joked to Leah that since we have the keys to the new apartment in Battery Park City, just across the street may be we should just stay there instead of trekking home. She didn’t buy it and so we had to wait in the freezing platforms at WTC then at Grove Street before we got home at around 3:30 p.m. Good job I didn’t go to work the next day like I planned to!

The next day I woke up at 11 a.m. by Leah’s departure to the cinema with her friend (her reason/excuse of not staying at our new apartment). I stayed in bed and surfed the net for awhile then I got up and worked on ecto for a couple of hours. By that time Leah had came back with Thai food so we finished watching the last two episodes of Long Way Round DVD* and other TiVo shows. Then took some photos of my film camera body which I will be putting onto eBay for sale very soon. More TV then ensured and after that, I played like 4 hours of Halo 2 and went to bed at 3 a.m. I need more days like this one.

* There are a bunch of negative reviews about the book of their trip on Amazon. I am not sure whether it is because the reviewers are jealous that Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman were rich actors, or that they realise they didn’t get off their collective asses and do the trip themselves. Either way, Leah and I enjoyed the DVD. It is certainly not the Round the World in 80 Days by Michael Palin but it never pretends to be.

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The House of Chocolate

Leah and I had previously agreed that we don’t need presents for each other on Valentine’s Day as we are trying to save money. But I surprised her with chocolate from La Maison du Chocolat. We have always lusted after chocolates from there when we lived in Mid-Town Manhattan. Leah once bought a small bag of assorted chocolate from them many years ago and they were good! We’ve only had three pieces each tonight and they definitely lived up to expectation!

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The other side of the coin

So I had my annual review at work today. Nothing formal like in my last job with questionnaire and crap. Just a quick chat. The good thing that came out of it is that I got a 20% pay rise! It is not as much as you think because when I first took the job my salary was below market average. Now it is average. This definitely make me feel better after my tax payment revelation couple of days ago.

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