Music from the Meister

Leah and I were at the Lincoln Center last night attending John Williams’ performance with the New York City Philharmonic.

It was fantastic hearing the master of cinematic composing conducting his own music. The program contains a wide varieties of scores from John Williams’ collection. I was disappointed that Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Born on the Forth of July were not on the program. But the performance of the theme from Schindler’s List was excellent and we were treated with three encore performances, one of which was the Star Wars main theme!

It was, by far, the best birthday present I have had.

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I like eXtreme Programming, honest!

My new job involves developing a desktop application for tax related purposes, mainly targeted at multi-national companies. The development team is pretty small right now (6 people plus the CTO). The CTO tries to implement XP (extreme programming for those who mistaken it as Windows XP, the OS) for this project and thus we are encouraged to pair program. (If you have read my previous post about XP, you will see how much I like the whole XP concept!)

However, there is (always) a silver lining to this. To facilitate pair programming, each of us are issued two monitors connect to the PC with dual output video card! So for the very first time in my professional life (or any other life) I have multiple screens/desktops setup! Imagine the amount of desktop real estate I will have (1280×1200 X 2 = 2560×1200)! I can have VS.NET opens in one screen while FireFox and/or Outlook open on the other. And I can move MSDN help off VS.NET into external help and have it displays on the other screen at the same time as my code. Too many possibilities to think of!

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My love of glass

This weekend I spent my time assembling new furniture. Leah and I bought a new bookshelf and desk from Crate & Barrel last week using gift certificate I got using my AMEX points (courtesy from my business travels last year).

As I love glass top desk, of course I chose it when I saw that Crate & Barrel has one. And since I have to transfer everything off my existing desk to the new one, I also did a tidy up. Now the printer, which used to occupy the right side of the desk, is under the desk on top of a storage box. This free up the right side so my PC laptop can be placed there. So now I can finally have both computers on the desk and work on them at the same time! Very cool!

Picture of new desk with both laptops

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From P900 to Z600

With my new job vastly different from my last (programming vs. coordinating), my need for the PDA function of a smartphone has dramatically decreased. Now I am more interested in getting an improved cell phone than an all in one smartphone.

I would love to go back to Nokia as I had great experiences with their phones but none of the phones in their current lineup (that works in the U.S., i.e. tri-band) take my fancy. So I turn to Sony-Ericsson again and the Z600 seems to fit my requirements. I especially like the built-in antenna which is one of my primary reason for not liking flip phones.

Despite receiving great reviews (MobileBurn and Mobile-review.com), none of the U.S. carriers have plans to supply it officially on their network. And with my T68i locking up randomly throughout the day, I am forced (!) to purchase an unlocked Z600 when my first paycheck arrives later on this month.

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Spectacles Saga

After waitng for two months for my Oakley eye glasses, they’ve finally arrived in the optician and should be ready by the end of next week. Can’t wait to have new glasses to wear after over 6 years!

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