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9/11/2008 Rant of the weekBefore the Chinese holiday break I wanted to get out a rant, and seeing the world is still here its as good a time as any. Its election year politics. Even my Chinese friends are coming up to me and asking really good questions and sharing outstanding insights into the candidates and their platforms, more so then most Americans I know, shamefully so. Remember folks, political ads and pamphlets are all slanted as are a vast majority of news stories. Get facts! Look at political records, responsibilities in office, and other public information. Find the candidates platforms and dig down past the rhetoric and spin to see what they really stand for. If you can’t name 8 basic points of a platform of BOTH candidates then you are not well informed, if you can name the priority in which they believe in them, you are well ahead of the game and I solute you.
Pigs in lipstick? Who is writing Obama’s speeches?!? I hear his campaign strategist is an old guard Democrat who has run the last 6 failed Democrat attempts at the white house, he did not run Clintons. I hope it was written, if not then add this to Obama’s comments on rural Pennsylvanians being bitter remark and it seems he is out of touch with main stream middle of the road America, lets hope not. The GOP is testing the copyright issues by continuing to use Heart’s Barracuda song without permission and I smell a lawsuit. Funny how neither of these headline making political stories highlight any politics. Where are the outlining of issues and positions we were promised? What is funny is that the DNC and RNC had the highest TV ratings of the summer! 10% of the American public tuned in and watched all the conventions for the nights they were on, 10%, that is 30 million people! Oddly enough the largest audience was to watch John McCain’s acceptance speech, huh?!? Sara Palin’s was second followed by Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. The only one that did bad with Joe Biden’s but that is because he is about as exciting as, well, a painted rock. It seems people are interested, or just bored with summer re-runs, bad movies, and not much to do. I hope the interest can be maintained so that the candidates have to work harder to get their messages out, it can only be good for the nation.
I told you so, sort of… Russia just landed 2 long range strategic nuclear capable bombers in Venezuela as a show of defiance over the Georgia support and Poland missile shield treaty signed last month. Things are starting to look an awful lot like the ‘60’s again there and that isn’t good. Bush promised to bring back 8,000 troops and double up efforts in Afghanistan and still gets slammed for it, oh well, he is a lame duck and despite authorizing not so covert ops in Pakistan it seems he could care less then he did 4 years ago. Kim Jong Il is sick, no he is dead, no he is alive and in hiding, no he had a stroke, no he is joining his son trying to run for the border to get to Disney with a Portuguese passport. It appears he did have a stroke, French and Chinese doctors did a little brain surgery and he is going to make a partial recovery. We did find a missile base and can see they are rebuilding their nuclear efforts, again. Of course even if he dies it isn’t a big deal, his father ruled the country from the grave for some time before Kim took over anyway. Hopefully the doctors told him to cut back on the cigars and wine.
Sports wise, Detroit sucks. The Tigers fell apart with bad pitching proving yet again that money can not buy a championship. With the 3rd highest payroll in baseball and all that talent they went nowhere and are struggling to finish the season at .500. The Lions, well when you let the youngest and one of the worst teams in the NFL have a record setting running day at your expense and offer flat offense it looks like a really long and troublesome season. How does Matt Millen keep his job? I can see the Ford influence in the team, Ford has been losing money and market shares in the auto industry for a decade now and is carrying on that tradition into sports. Speaking of football, I joined a public league with Fox Sports this year for fantasy football. My team stinks. The only good thing in being last is you get the #1 waiver pick the following week. My running backs were either released, placed on IR, or just did not play. Time will tell if I can salvage the season. Running backs are the key for a good fantasy team, remember this and it will serve you well. The Olympics concluded with Beijing impressing the world with more then just massive human capital and theatrics but by bringing home a solid 51 gold medals and coming in second in total medals with 100, second only to the US with a total of 110 medals but a measly 36. This Olympics, sports wise, was one that had little controversy relatively speaking and many records falling. China was a good host and the world saw a first rate spectacle of show and sport. First Brett Farve and now Lance Armstrong, guys please give it a rest. Now a 42 year old is going to play for the Red Wings!
On to science, The LHC, or Large Hadron Collider was turned on, ran a test, and we are still here. No black holes, rips in time and space, or resets in the fabric of the universe, yet. We just have to poke and prod anything we can to see how it ticks, one of these days it will bite us in the butt, hopefully not by opening up a massive black hole under the Alps. The space program is trying to get a few more years out of the shuttles. It turns out the ISS is pretty darned expensive, but not when compared to the school breakfast program, condoms in schools programs, the war, or most other things we don’t think about every day. The ISS has not even been completed yet and there are people calling for its retirement! Our short attention spans and instant gratification mindset is getting too out of hand. Hurricanes are popping up left and right in the Atlantic and poor Haiti and Cuba are getting hammered. One bright spot in all this that is not being mentioned enough is how it is erasing a decades worth of drought on the US Gulf Coast. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and many other states of the region were getting baked and one thing the autumn hurricane season does is replenish the water tables before the winter. While not good to have they do serve a vital role in our environment and need to be demonized less and shown that they are just like anything else in nature, totally neutral in their dealing with us and our desire to put things in their paths. Speaking of weather I noticed how each storm is now a killer or catastrophic or violent or destructive. Is it me or has the weather reporters decided to turn all weather events into a gang of murderous malicious marauders hell bent on causing cataclysmic calamities everywhere they go?
Finally, it is a solemn day for us Americans. 2,998 people are gone, some not confirmed. They were from many different nations, religions, ages, and backgrounds. They had different goals, views, and motivations. None of them thought for a second that their fate would be sealed as it was 7 years ago today. The hatred and commitment for revenge that spawned those attacks still lives on today and has to be checked, but we can not let the fear of this shape our lives or restrict our freedoms to such a degree that we are permanently changed for the worst by it. Seven is a lucky number in our culture so let us all pray that we can turn the corner and rebound stronger and smarter from the events of this day. We, as a species, tend to only grow when we face adversity. Let the events of 7 years ago force us all to grow a bit and become stronger. 9/10/2008 Mid-Autumn Festival almost hereThis weekend marks the lunar Mid-Autumn Festival here in China (15th day of the 8th lunar month). Aside from the new day off of work we get this coming Monday we also get to enjoy a large bright moon, moon cakes, and for me and my wife time spent with our daughter as we will be traveling to Guangzhou. My wife has been there for a week on business and I will leave on Friday. We have some Hagen Das ice cream moon cakes for when we get back to Shanghai and I have some to take with me to Guangzhou. Moon cakes are traditional dessert cakes filled with different kinds of things and enjoyed while watching the full moon rise. I won't be singing any songs or reciting any poems but will be enjoying the time with family and take in the festivities. Moon cakes are exchanged quite a bit here, I have already taken a box to work to share with all my co-workers. The holiday is very traditional and important in Chinese culture and fun to share in as much as I can. There is a funny story to my getting of moon cakes this week. I was unable to find the correct location this past weekend, still woefully terrible in my speaking of Chinese but I can understand much more then I could last year. Anyway, I got help to find a location to pick up the box of cakes last night. The location was just off the largest tourist area of down town Shanghai, this is important for later. I got turned around a few times and thanks to the super aggressive massage peddlers, female one night companions, and street vendors I was able to finally get back on track and get to the location just before they locked the doors. Walking back to the subway station at East NanJing Road so I could get back home I decided to go to Burger King around the People's Square station, the largest subway station and at the center of the down town area. On the way I was strolling among the hordes of Chinese and foreign tourists with my box of moon cakes, work bags, and being a bit haggard I seemed to look like an easy mark. I noticed some flash of blue as I was walking along listening to Rage Against the Machine and when I looked to my left found a women about my age signaling for me to take my ear phones out. Have any or you ever been to a store with a high pressure pushy sales staff person? Well, in the middle of the tourist area this girl started asking me for drinks, dinner, chatting, ice cream, you name it she wanted to go do it. I politely tried saying no, quite often and always not being absorbed. I mentioned wife, daughter, work, sleep, none of it was an excuse worth while. The woman finally decided to show me strong arm sales, literally. She grabbed my arm and started pulling me then pushing me towards this restaurant or that bar and the more I resisted the more physical she got. At this time I noticed the small guy who was intently watching from a safe distance and when he noticed me looking at him got really nervous and trying to turn away but not. Now I have been here for a couple of years and I am not naive enough to not know what was taking place here. I was just surprised that the tactics here were much more aggressive then in Thailand at the bars there, and this is the middle of the neon tourists area! Needless to say I said no so many times, in 5 languages with only 1 left I could use if need be, and was left alone after 10 minutes of doing everything except shove or push this woman. So with the moon cake episode completed I at least have an amusing story to tell. For my Asian readers, how will you be spending Mid-Autumn festival this year? Traveling home or spending the time with friends out on the town? With a long weekend there will be opportunities to do either or and if your family is close by both. What does Autumn Festival mean to you and your favorite memory of it as a kid. For my Western readers, check out the Wikipedia or Google Chinese Autumn Festival or Chinese Moon Cakes and try some of the recipes for something different to try. One thing that is cool about the festival, if you are single it is a good opportunity to get a date or reason to go out and spend time alone watching the moon, and if you are apart you can watch the moon and know your friend can do the same in a different location at the same time. 9/6/2008 A couple of days with the Asus EeeAfter a few days I must admit I am surprised with the speed and performance of the Eee. At 2/3 the size of my wide screen PC and almost 2 pounds lighter it has the same speed CPU, same amount of RAM, and same size hard disk. The new Intel Atom CPU is 1.6GHz and uses much less power giving off much less heat. Performance wise there is not a large difference but it is a noticeable amount in opening programs.
With a much smaller foot print the Eee is much better for trips or taking a PC with you in the event you may want one, for downloading pictures just as you take them, a meeting with lots of dead time between, commuting on public transit and other times when you have time to kill and want to do something beyond the iPod or PSP thing. With 802.11n/g/b and Bluetooth connectivity is pretty simple. The screen includes a 1.3 mega pixel web cam and stereo microphones, but its quality is similar to that of my Motorola V3 cell phone, grainy. Video is about 20 fps at best. Video chat and taking pictures if really easy and straight forward, thanks to Asus software. Speaking of software. We bought the Eee at a Asus stand in the bottom of one of the malls close to my office. That stand is permanent and they have been there longer then I have been working in the area. The price was competitive with only online stores cheaper and not by more then $30, so we opted for a store so we can take it to a real person if anything goes wrong. The Eee 1000H comes in 2 colors and 2 types. High gloss black or white. Black shows way too many finger prints, the white conceals finger prints and thus far does not attract dirt that much. The two versions are separated only by operating system. One is Linux, the other Windows XP Pro. We got the XP version, this PC is for my wife of course and XP has matured into a fairly stable and reliable OS. When we bought the PC the staff pulled out a USD backpack drive, a thumb drive and right out of the box they began building the software package, this made me a bit nervous. The image was stable, decent but only included a video player, a zip file program, and some light weight version of Office 2007 standard. After getting the PC home I did not see any Asus software so I went to the web and downloaded all the latest drivers, utilities, and other programs they had for this model. It took half a day but the PC is now has all the factory software, updated BIOS, and drivers along with SP3 and and updated web software. As the PC had no bloat ware applications I had to get anti-virus and spyware removers installed. Then the issue of not having an optical drive came in. While my wife will not be doing hard core gaming on the PC we do enjoy playing Age of Empires and Star Craft together over the LAN. To get these programs on the PC took a bit of extra steps. The store was out of the cheaper USB DVD-Roms and wanted to sell us the higher priced DVD-CD-R/W drives, we passed. I first tried to load ISO images onto a USB thumb drive but only got mixed results, and it was slower then I thought it should have been. I ended up having to share my Toshiba's optical drive over the network to speed thing up. Alas, no CD drive makes getting the games to work an issue as they need the CD to run. I loaded a virtual CD-Rom emulator and loaded the ISO images but again, mixed results. I had to resort to cracked EXE files, at least Star Craft supplies them on their web site. Everything tested fine and works like a charm. Battery life did not meet the 6+ hours on the box, it was closer to 4.5 but this was running 2 USB thumb drives, a network share, internet downloads, and me constantly customizing the OS and program properties. With "normal" use the batter should last over 5 hours, being a 6 cell that is much longer then even its own class rivals. Performance wise the little PC stacks up and even edges out my nearly 2 year old Toshiba at 1/3 the price. Is it a replacement for my PC needs, of course not. I use my laptop for DVD watching, editing digital pictures and movies, gaming, burning optical discs, and reading news and magazines. My laptop is 30% larger, heavier, and only leaves the apartment if I am going away for a week or longer. The Asus is better suited for email, chat, web browsing, and downloading files so for the tasks it is designed for, it is far superior. One word of caution, the screen is small after an hour or so there is eye strain and a sore neck from trying to get closer. It is a great PC and a great bargain if you need a second PC but not the power of the full size models out there. 9/3/2008 Asus Eee 1000HIt has been a while since I added a technology post, so here is one. Last night we got a new Asus Eee PC for Coco, a white model with XP loaded on it. While I don't have the time to get into the PC at the moment, or the buying experience which is a story within itself. So far, after a night of updating and dinking I must admit I am really suprised and impressed with the micro PC and its preformance. Loading SP3 was fast and straightforward and getting it onto the home network was effortless as all I had to do was put in the security key and properties of network.
While small the PC is not full sized but for the most part it is as quick and capible of dealing with full sized computing needs and tasks without breaking a sweat. First impression is very good, and from me that is saying a lot. The PC is cheap (from $550 in the US to $650 outside the US) and for the intent of its use is very well built and designed. With a 6 cell battery the life is estimated at 6 to 8 hours, will be testing that later on of course. I have yet to do any through tests or use all the bells and whistles yet, but over the course of the next few weeks we will have time to check under the hood a bit more.
The micro lapop, actually it is the largest of the Asus micro line, has quite a lot packed in. Intel Atom super efficient CPU, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1.3MP camera/web cam, stereo microphone, SDHC MMC card reader slot, 3 USB 2.0 bays, 802.11n and Bluetooth wireless with Ethernet port, 10 inch wide screen, VGA out, 6 cell Li-io battery, just under 3 lbs, and a 110~220V power supply so we can use it here and in the US. The CPU is fast, it loads programs quickly, and there is pleanty of space for programs and multi media.
Now for the detractors. There is no internal drive, optic or floppy. To use a CD or DVD based program I will have to either; configure a network share on the home network and have 2 PCs running at the same time to transfer the files, or rip the program to a USB drive and load emulators or hack the intall code to allow it install from USB (this is more of an issue for games requiring the CD to run, easily cracked but not 100% ethical or legal). An external DVD/CD drive is cheap, they didn't have any instock and having a R/W version is kind of silly as the PC will not be processing photos or videos and if it did I would utilize my USB external drives as they hold and backup all the pictures, video, and audio files we have. Next is the keyboard and touch pad. I love touch pads, but they are an aquired taste. The keyboard is of course small, but the right hand side keys are really small and crammed together. The pouch pad's left and right buttons are hard to press and and don't "feel" right. My wife will be using her wireless mouse so that is not a big issue. The screen has a rough matte finish, however the colors are good and it is bright. Lastly is the software we got with the PC. The US version comes with XP SP3, MS Works (I hate this version), Star Office, Skype, Live Messenger, IE7, and that is it. No bloat ware, which is great, but our version... An illegal copy of XP SP2, Office 2007 (most likely illegal too), some codec for playing cracked DVD and media files, IE 6 and an old version of Messenger. See anything missing? No Anti-virus or maintenance software. I downloaded AVG, Java Cool's Spyware Blater, and Spy-bot Seek and Destroy 1.6 and installed them before allowing the PC on the network. After that I went to Windows, installed SP3, IE7, Live Messenger what ever version is the latest, Media Player 11, and all the security updates to help shore up the holes Microsoft leaves everywhere.
After all this, preformance seems about the same, things open super fast. Spy-bot Tea Timer and AVG are keeping the PC safe and I now have the firewall and auto updates enabled (XP now has a valid key and passed all authorization and validations needed) and the preformance is still quite impressive with little HDD space taken up. Coco took it for a test drive on the web and it preformed very well, no stability issues, lock up, or issues with multiple browser windows open or her opening web based multi-media. She seems pleased and at 1/2 the price of a bargin laptop or home PC and 1/3 the price of capible and good laptop it will serve well as an Internet, email, and light media style PC. It will also be a good first PC for Sophia as we can load it up with educational and learning software and teach her how to use a PC without too much worry as there is little she could do to break it, except for the obvious breaking the screen or droping it. I will report more on this when time allows. |
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