The AMEX letter has arrived yesterday with details on where I have to send my damaged Treo to complete the claim. I’ve just dropped the package off a Mailbox etc. on a UPS 2nd Day Air. So now I won’t have a cell phone for at least two weeks. Even the extra old cell phones we have in the apartment don’t help since they are locked to the old AT&T network and now I am with Cingular. Damn those stupid phone locking business! The whole point of GSM is so we can just use our SIM card on any phones in the world but no, these American carriers are too short-sighted to see the advantages and stuck at the revenue models of the mid-90s.
Painful Read
I’ve read many books of difficult subjects for the past 10 years. Ranging from scary (The Hot Zone), to hopeless (Deliver Us from Evil), to heroism (D-Day : June 6, 1944) and many in between. But, no books is as difficult for me to read as the The 9/11 Commission Report.
Reading history as recent as 2001 and as involved as I did, it was almost like reliving that day again. And memory I have of the WTC is as vivid as 2001. I can still remember the shopping mall layout in relationship to the Chamber Street subway station exit, or the Courtlandt Street station exit. I remember the shops that were next to the stations. I remember the lunches that we had in the courtyard between the towers. I now understand why the relatives of those who perished that day won’t want to listen to the FDNY/NYPD/PAPD radio conversations, or the audio tracks from the four hijacked aircraft, let alone released to the public.
But read I must because I am a information/history freak, but more importantly, how else would I be able to make informed decision without the necessary information to put my decision in correct context? Am I suppose to just trust the American media to inform me?
Wow, 16 years already
I was 13 when Tiananmen Square happened. No more need to be said.
And here is the CNN coverage. I am kind of surprise that they devote such a long piece to an event that has no major American interest.
Second Shower
I’ve just taken my second shower within 6 hours. Not because I didn’t do a good job the first time (I smelt great when I stepped out of the shower!), but because I’ve just came back from two hours of tennis with T.J. When will the fairy come around and give me enough money to live on so I don’t have to work and able to do what I did for the last 7 days, but for the rest of my life? I don’t ask for much, just so I don’t have to work 9-5 at a desk. Flexible hours is fine with me so I can play golf or tennis during the week. I think my friend T.J. has gotten it right. Being a personal trainer means he can just rearrange his clients schedule to suit his own schedule. I am better at software development than personal training so I guess I will have to wait for my turn…
Leah will be back this evening so my secluded life will be ending this afternoon. I think I will order some Chinese takeout for lunch/dinner, watch TiVo, play video games, and read. Basically things that I normally have to wait till Leah has gone to bed to do.
Is computer profession a profession?
I love food and preparation of food, e.g. cooking, so naturally I like the Food Network channel on the cable TV. But I never seem to be able to watch much as Leah’s TV schedule doesn’t leave me with much time for ‘my TVs’. Unsurprisingly I have been gorging on Food Network for the last few days! Emeril Live (whom Leah has nicknamed ‘Greasy Gnome’), Boy Meets Grill, and Iron Chef America to name just a few.
Of course one thing in common is that all these shows have a fully kit-out kitchen, and this got me thinking. Why is it Ok for other professionals such as chef, painter, writer, musicians, etc. to have they tools of trade in their house and get appreciated comments from friends and family, while computer professionals like myself get the ‘wasteful’, ‘excessive’ looks when friends and family discover I have more than one computer?
Why is it Ok (or in fact encouraged) for chef, or painter, or whoever, to practice their trade in their own home, e.g. cook for their friends, paint a picture for special occasion, etc., while it is considered anti-social, nerdy, for computer professionals like myself to spend my leisure time on the computer/internet? More puzzling is that if my time spent on the computer is for something creative, let’s say working on digital photos verses developing my own application, that’s considered time worth spending. Why is it not Ok for me to have multiple computers when others can have multiple ovens, cooking pans, knives, paint brushes, etc.?
Is this because computer industry is still very young and the majority of the population still does not consider computer job as a profession? Or is it because the work we do is so complex and nebulous in compare to others (like cooking) that most people does not, and will not try to, understand what we do and thus do not value our work?
Lost in Colonisation 