Solar Eclipse

I read in the news that there will be a total solar eclipse on March 29, 2006. Unfortunately, the visible path is going to be in northern Africa and across the middle of Asia with the greatest eclipse occuring near the border of Libya and Chad. No chance I'll be there. :)



I have been near two solar eclipses though. The first was on January 3, 1992. I just graduated from USC with my MSEE and was still looking for a job. I think I was taking C++ programming (or Japanese) at El Camino College and caught the very end of an annular* solar eclipse that occured mostly across the Pacific Ocean. I even had a piece of silver-ish film to look through at the eclipse. I remember it got a bit darker but not much else.

*An annular eclipse differs from a total eclipse in that the Moon appears too small to completely cover the Sun. As a result, the Moon is surrounded by an intensely brilliant ring or annulus formed by the uneclipsed outer perimeter of the Sun's disk. The solar corona is not visible during annular eclipses.



The other was a total solar eclipse on August 11, 1999; Shirley and I were on our honeymoon in Europe. That day, the eclipse path went through northern France with the greatest eclipse occuring somewhere in south-west Romania.



We had signed up for a tour of Monet's garden in Giverny and the Château de Versailles. On our way to Giverny from Paris, we noticed a lot of cars on the road headed the other way. I think a lot of people were headed for the maximum eclipse boundary somewhere north of Paris while Giverny and Versailles were southwest of Paris. Anyhow, when we got to Monet's garden, the place was completely empty. Our tour guide said that the garden was usually packed with tourists, especially during summer. I think only one other tour group showed up while we were there so I was able to take a lot of good shots of the garden. It's all on regular film so I'll need to scan the photos before I can post them.


Aerial view of Monet's garden

After Giverny, we took the bus to Versailles and stopped in the parking lot/entrance to see the eclipse. Even though we weren't in the path of maximum eclipse, I think we were close enough to be in the high 90%. The sky was a bit cloudy but it did get a lot darker and noticeably colder for about two minutes. It was going from noon to dusk and back to noon in a couple of minutes. I did get one shot of the sun with our camera but I'll have to figure out how to scan that photo as well.

On a side note, I'm trying to install the scanner driver for my HP 6110 on my Mac Mini and all I can find is a 90MB install file on HP's website. I'm sure it's going to be a waste of hard drive space but I can't find anything else. Arg, items remaining to be installed: 717... :(

Anyway, I found a map on NASA's website with projections of future total solar eclipses. I think I want to experience a total eclipse at least once, and be at the point of greatest eclipse if possible.



I think my best chance is the on on August 21, 2017, 11 years from now. All the other eclipses seem to occur over the ocean and the August 1, 2008 eclipse seems pretty hard to get to since it's in northern Russia. Maybe the July 22, 2009 eclipse may be an option since the path of maximum eclipse goes through Shanghai, although there may be too much air pollution to see anything.

==========

I plugged in the coordinates for the greatest eclipse on August 21, 2017 into Google Earth and it's near Hopkinsville in Western Kentucky at the corner of Hwy 91 (Princeton Road) and Quarry Road. There seems to be a farm on the corner. I guess I better start looking for hotel rooms!

Neighborhood

I found a WaMu branch and a Stater Brothers supermarket close to my apartment today. I've been living here for almost a month so I'm trying to find out what's around the neighborhood. The Stater Brothers is actually quite nice and modern, not at all like the one I used to go to in Brea. I bought some groceries to make soup; it's not much but cooking will make it feel more normal.

There is also a Ferrari/Maserati dealer right next to the WaMu branch. I wonder if they'll let me test drive a F430.


$192,484

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It's 3:43am and I'm still making soup. I guess I won't be helping out with sound production tomorrow at NewSong at 6:30am. I'm not scheduled this week anyway.

UCLA Basketball

Wow, UCLA won again. I haven't watched any games yet since I don't have cable in my apartment. I did listen to the UCLA-Gonzaga game on the radio since I was in my car... unbelieveable.

I think if I keep not watching, maybe they'll keep winning.

More Mammoth Pictures

View out the window from the loft in our condo


View of the condo (Horizon 4)


My 4Runner, all covered with snow


Looking back on Eagle Express (chair 15)


Looking uphill on Eagle Express

Anyone here for finance?

My manager, another co-worker, and I went to USC earlier this evening to do a recuriting presentation. This time, we were looking for undergraduate finance and accounting majors. They put us into this tiny conference room in the basement of the student union building; it took them almost 10 minutes to get the doors open (first it was locked, then it was stuck). As students were filing into the room, I thought to myself, "Hmm, this reminds me of my engineering classes." Basically the room was full of badly dressed Chinese and Indian guys and only one or two of the 40 were girls. Not knowing this, my manager ran through the 40+ slide presentation, focusing on financial data, skimming through most of the engineering slides, and pausing to explain engineering terms and acronyms. At the end, people started asking about engineering positions which was weird since this was supposed to be a finance recruiting session. We asked for a show of hands and it turned out all but one person were engineering majors... sigh. We were actually recruiting for 3-4 finance positions so this turned out to be a complete waste of time.

And... the one finance guy's resume wasn't even that good. :(

Skiing, Day 1

The chains from Hell

Actually, I was kind of glad we put the chains on the night before. Otherwise I would have needed to put them on the next morning since the roads were covered with snow and ice. However, I think we either put them on incorrectly or they were too loose. Every time I get to about 25-30mph, something on the chain would bang away at something in the wheelwell, and it was loud.

The first morning, we left the condo at about 7:45am in order to rent skis. We went to a local ski shop to rent equipment. In hindsight, it was probably easier to rent at Canyon Lodge at Mammoth since we don't have to lug everything around with us. I rented the same type of skis I rented at Snow Summit except these were a bit longer at 160cm. It turned out to be a pretty good length; maybe I'll buy a pair before next season.

The weather in the morning was really nice and we got on the slopes at around 9am. It looked like there were a lot of people but the lift lines were really short. Since we were skiing Saturday and Sunday, I bought a two-day pass which cost $130. I don't remember paying that much for lift tickets but it's been awhile since I skiied at Mammoth. The snow was much much better than what we had at Snow Summit. I met up with some co-workers, including my manager, and skiied down an intermediate run.


My manager's 4 year-old daughter; I had a hard time keeping up with her

In the afternoon, it started snowing for real. The sky was cloudy and it got a lot colder. I spent the afternoon with Sunny and Steve on Eagle Express (chair 15). This is all the way to the left when you look at a trail map of Mammoth. It's mostly beginner and intermediate runs and we stayed with the green dots. The snow was really good but it got cold cruising down the slopes.


Lots and lots of snow

Mammoth

After about 8 hours, we finally arrived at Mammoth. The first 80 miles took about 3 hours on the I-15 freeway. I think it's all Vegas traffic; once we got on the 395, I was able to drive at 80mph without any problems. There were lots of CHP cruisers, especially in the 25mph zone in town. My radar detector was going off all the time, even in Ka band.

Right after dinner in Bishop, it started to snow. There was not a CHP checkpoint but everyone pulled off the road to put chains on. I had just got new chains for my 4Runner so it was an experience trying to put them on at the side of the road. After several tries, I think we got it on pretty good, even though it was banging something loudly near the rear-left wheel. We stopped to check several times but could not see anything wrong. It was a good thing we put them on; the parking lot of the condo we're staying at is covered with snow plus there's a layer of ice underneath.

==========

It's 3:25am and I can't sleep. I hate when this happens: usually it takes me several days to get used to a particular bed. I'm actually pretty tired from driving for so long but here I am, wide awake and blogging away on some random wireless LAN connection. The one notible exception was in Thailand. That was a crazy schedule with basically a different hotel each night. I noticed that if I got a massage, I was so relaxed that I slept through the entire night without waking up. Maybe I'll look for a Thai massage parlor in town today.

Sigh... we have to "get up" in three hours so we can go rent skis. I guess I'll try to go back to sleep. Both my roommates in the loft snore but I probably snore louder than either of them. Arg, right now someone's car alarm is going off right outside the condo. I know it's not mine since I have the crazy Viper alarm; even if it was my car, there's no way I'm going outside in 8 degree F to turn it off.

Empty House

Living Room


Kitchen


Dining/Family Room


Master Bathroom


For Sale Sign


Orchid

Skiing

I'm going skiing this weekend with some co-workers. Actually, we're leaving at 1:30pm for Mammoth and I'm driving a bunch of co-workers. I bought some tire chains last week in preparation for the ski trip and it looks like I will have to put them to use this weekend. The last time I drove to Mammoth with chains was the late 1980s; that was a 11 hour ordeal Leon's old Camry.


(not Leon's actual car but real close)

New Car... maybe

I'm seriously thinking of trading in both my cars (2004 Nissan 350Z and 1999 Toyota 4Runner) and getting a new one. I think I would still want a SUV since I'm used to carrying/moving stuff in my car but I want something more car-like instead of the truck-like 4Runner. The first car that came to mind was the Infiniti FX35 since it has the same engine as the Z, but at $40k, there are several other choices:



Infiniti FX35
Lexus RX350
Acura MDX
Mercedes-Benz ML350



They all have 3.5L V6 engines and are about the same size. I know only two people read this blog but... any opinions? Should I just keep my two old cars? I was thinking of getting rid of the Z anyway. I can probably get about $28k for both cars if I can trade in both.

Car Fixed

I just walked over to the body shop and picked up the Z. Of course, the final amount of the repair was more than the estimate... final damage = $2,087. I guess one good thing is they replaced the front bumper/air dam. Both of us have hit a few curbs and scuffed it up pretty good. Now the car looks brand new... maybe I should sell it before I mess it up again.





I also got a bill for additional car insurance premium. At first I thought, "Wow, that was fast... I just had the accident a couple of weeks ago." It turned out that when Shirley took herself off the policy, I lost a "professional" discount. Evidently, if you add someone to your policy without tickets or accidents, it may not increase your premium. I quickly went to AAA's website and found out that engineers get a discount too. You don't even have to be an engineer now as long as you have a degree. So now I have to find my UCLA diploma(!) and fax it to AAA.

Crazy Weather

I was moving some patio furniture to a friend's house Saturday and got caught in a sudden hailstorm. In about 10 seconds, the road was covered with 1/4" sized ice particles. Some drivers decided to pull over to the side of the road; me, I took pictures.


View out the windshield


I stopped to get some gas and took a picture of the front of my car. By now the ice was already melting.


The hailstorm only lasted about a minute but there was a lot of ice. There was still a lot of rain, even when the sun came out. It was hard to see where you were going due to the glare off the pavement.

MIDI Keyboard Controller

I got tired of messing around with GarageBand with the regular QWERTY keyboard so I went out and bought a M-Audio Keystation 49e MIDI controller. It was only $100 at Fry's; I found it while I was looking for a PCMCIA FireWire adapter for my work laptop. I was going to find a more expensive keyboard with semi-weighted keys but since I can't play piano anyway, it probably doesn't matter.



This time, unlike the Tascam board, I plugged the keyboard into the USB port, clicked on GarageBand, and everything worked. Pretty cool. Of course, I don't play piano or keys so I'm going to learn. Once I get the Tascam board working, I'll have a mini studio in my apartment. The board has 8 regular inputs so I can plug in my microphone, guitar, bass, keyboard (via MIDI), and use either the GarageBand drum machine or the Cubase LE drum kits.

Maybe I can quit my day job... not!

Mac OS X Browsers

There are a lot more Internet browsers for Mac OS X so I've been downloading and trying out different programs. The computer comes with Apple's Safari browser but I've already had problems trying to log in to Blogger. I also downloaded Firefox and Camino from Mozilla.org and I know Microsoft has a version of Internet Explorer for Max OS X.

Right now I'm trying out Camino 1.0 as my default browser since it is a universal binary version that runs natively on the Intel-based Macs. It does feel much faster than Safari or Firefox.

I'm still trying to get used to using the "Apple" key instead of "control" for copying and pasting.

==========

Dang! I tried to download Yahoo! Messenger and Camino insists on making an MS Excel file. The download works fine using Safari. I guess it's back to Firefox for now.

==========

I checked the Microsoft site and they don't have Internet Explorer for Mac anymore; instead they tell people to download Apple's Safari browser. Hmm...

Intel Macs

After holding forever on the phone, I was told by Tascam tech support that they don't have drivers ready for the new Intel-CPU Mac Mini and it won't be ready until June! I can't believe it takes 3+ months to modify a driver... maybe they should outsource their software development group. Also, there was no notice on Tascam's website. The only "requirement" was Mac OS 10.2.8 and above (I have 10.4.5). Now I probably have to get a PCMCIA FireWire adapter for my work laptop; I bought the Mac Mini so I didn't have to use my work computer to run the Tascam board. Sigh...

New Toys

I bought three new toys in the past week:

• Motorola RAZR V3 (so I can have a "home" phone number)
• Tascam FW-1082 (part of a group buy with NewSong Church sound team)
• Apple Mac Mini w/Intel CoreDuo (so I can use the Tascam FW-1082 as it reqires a FireWire port)

The last Mac I bought was a Mac IIsi from the early 1990's. I think it had a 25MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 17MB or RAM and a 80MB HDD. I stopped using it when I had to buy a WinTel notebook computer (Gateway Colorbook) for business school.

Now all I need is another bedroom to put all this stuff... :)

==========

Having problems getting the FW-1082 to show up on the Mac. I'm on hold with Tascam support; it's my 4th call and I haven't spoken to anyone yet... not impressed.

Banned in China

Leon emailed me from Chengdu today telling me that he could not access this blog. Wow! At first we thought that it was because I had blogged about subjects censored by the Chinese government. Topics like religious freedom, Taiwan independence, or Internet censorship. I then asked him to try other Blogspot blogs and it turned out he could not access any of them. I guess the Chinese government blocked the entire blogspot.com domain. Interestingly, he could still access my old Xanga blog without any problems.

He also called me at work using Skype and it sounded pretty good. At $.03 per minute, it's really cheap to call anywhere. I remember calling Shirley everyday from Beijing back in 1998 for two weeks and it ended up costing me over $800.

Exotic Cars

On the way home from work last night, I saw a strange sliver car in front of me. As I pulled closer, I saw "JAGUAR" on the back of the car and the license plate (Oregon) said "XJ 220". This is the 2nd XJ220 that I've seen; a co-worker at BRCM has one as well.




Later, as I was coming back to the apartment from my house, a black SLR blows by me on the freeway. This was also the 2nd SLR I saw on the road; the first one was valet parked at South Coast Plaza. I tried to follow it to get a picture with my Treo (great pictures, eh?!). I was driving 95mph one-handed on 55-South in my 4Runner which was full of miscellaneous stuff I just picked up from the house.



This reminds me of one Saturday morning several months ago. A couple of us went to get breakfast at IHOP by John Wayne Airport after loading the sound truck at NewSong. As I was pulling in the parking lot, I saw two Ferraris on McArthur Blvd. and another one (Testarossa) in the parking lot. We don't see this kind of stuff in North OC...

Starry Nights

If I could live anywhere, I would find a place where I can see lots of stars at night, and still be within 10 minutes of good Chinese food! It seems like these two things are mutually exclusive... :(

Car Damage

Just got the quote... a little bit over $1,700.

Things to fix/replace:
• left front fender
• left front alloy wheel
• front bumper
• small scratch on left door
• front-end alignment

I guess it's not too bad. They couldn't find a used fender so I'm getting a new one. My only worry is that they match the paintjob with the original paint on the rest of the car.

Spam

Wow, I just logged into my comcast.net email account for the first time and there were 18 messages... 17 of them were email spam! None of them were directly addressed to me so hopefully there's some type of glitch.

Oh well, I'm probably not going to use this email account since I have so many already.

Moving Day... Done

What a long day. We finished moving all the large items from my house to the apartment; there are only a few things left to move next week with the SUV. I want to thank everyone that came out to help: Andy, Z, Ali, Tim, and Dave. Sorry my apartment is upstairs.

I just put together the bed so I can take a nap.

Oops

I accidentally took out my own car this morning with the moving truck. For some unknown reason, I parked the Z in front of my house. After picking up the rental truck, I was trying to figure out where to park it in front of my house so we can use the lift. Well, I came a little bit too close to the Z and the rear lift of the truck caught the front left fender of my car. I think the damage is cosmetic but still significant so I called my insurance already and they'll have it fixed next week. Sigh... $500 (deductible) down the drain.

House Fixed

The contractor finally finished fixing my house today. After the mold guy left, he had to rebuild the water heater closet doorframe, put up lots of drywall, and repaint everything. He even filled some cracks/holes in the stucco... all for $500. We'll see how it looks after the walls dry. One good thing is that I finally have hot water again in the house, after about two weeks of showering at work and at the apartment. I'll also get to do some final "free" laundry before I move out this weekend. I was going to take some pictures of the repair but I was too lazy.

I think I'm about 80% packed for this weekend. I ended up buying about 15 file storage boxes to pack books and other office stuff. You really don't know how much stuff you have until you have to move all of it somewhere else. I'm going from 1617 square feet down to 735 square feet so it's going to be tight. I can't imaging how our family of four moved from Mississauga to Los Angeles 20 years ago with only 8 check-in suitcases (all filled to 70 lbs.) and 40 boxes that we shipped. I think we sold or gave away everything. When my parents moved back to Canada last year, it took half a trailer plus my sister driving their car across the continent.

I'm probably going to buy something again once I get tax-shock this year, being single and not owing a house. Maybe this time I'll donate all the furniture and rebuy everything from IKEA.

Hong Kong

A co-worker posted a picture of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak and mentioned that often there is a heavy haze. Here is another picture from our trip to Hong Kong last summer that demonstrates the "heavy haze"... actually, it was raining that day. We couldn't see out more than 30 feet into the fog/clouds.




Once again, here's my favorite picture from Hong Kong :)

Greeting Card

"I Love You" Is My Lasting Promise to You

Love is a word with many meanings.
So when I say "I love you,"
I want you to understand exactly what I mean...

I don't say "I love you" expecting something in return
or just to make you feel better.
I say it so that you know that no matter what else is happens in your life,
there is at least one thing that you can count on: me loving you.

I'll be there to
hold your hand in hard times,
calm you in distressed times,
and offer my help even when your pride may keep you from asking for it.

My love is unconditional, and it will always be there.
Even when everything else seems lost
and there is no hope in sight,
just remember one thing—
"I love you,"
and my love is genuine.

—Erica Denmark

Posting in Chinese

I had tried posting some stuff in Chinese before; it would paste in the editor but when I post, it always shows only question marks. I finally figured out that my settings were set for Western encoding instead of Unicode. Now all I have to do is to learn how to write Chinese better (or at all, since I can really only write my name).

Below are lyrics to a song by A-mei I really like, especially line #7. Loosely translated, it says "many things are better understood after rinsed/cleansed by tears". I ran it through Babel Fish and got "some many matters let the tear laundering understand"... say what? :)

剪愛

人變了心 言而無信 人斷了情 無謂傷心
我一直聆聽 我閉上眼睛 不敢看你的表情
滿天流星 無窮無盡 我的眼淚擦不乾淨
所以絕口不提 所以暗自反省
終於 我掙脫了愛情
把愛 剪碎了隨風吹向大海
有許多事 讓淚水洗過更明白
天真如我 張開雙手以為撐得住未來
而誰擔保愛永遠不會染上塵埃
把愛 剪碎了隨風吹向大海
越傷得深 越明白愛要放得開
是我不該 怎麼我會眷著你眷成依賴
讓濃情在轉眼間變成了傷害
我剪不碎舊日的動人情懷
你看不出來我的無奈

SWI'T

OK, I found some pictures of the K-Pop group SWI'T. I also found out that it's pronounced like "swee-tee". Evidently they only released one album in 2003 called I'll Be There. One of the songs on the album is a cover of Hotel California by The Eagles; the actual song title is 호텔 캘리포니아 which I think phonetically sounds out Hotel California (I'm verifying with a Korean co-worker). I thought it was done really well but the Korean accent is pretty heavy. I found out about them through a music video of one of their songs, Everybody Get Down.

2nd Moving Day

I moved some more small stuff over to the apartment today. I spent about 2 hours last night with the tape measure trying to figure out a way to squeeze all my furniture into the apartment. I think I just have too much stuff, especially in the office. I'm trying to fit all three tables, a lateral file, a bookshelf, queen-sized bed and dressers/nightstands into one bedroom. I think it will all fit but will be difficult to walk around the room. The living room will be about the same since I'll need to fit the futon in there as well.

The apartment is just not as comfy as the house. I think the main problem is the carpet. It's not bad... but not the same as the expensive carpet we put in when we bought the house. There also seems to be multiple "leaks" in the different doors so there seems to be a draft somewhere. Oh well...

The cable guy came and installed the cable modem. He had to run a line under the carpet and through a wall to reach the corner where I'm putting my office table. Once again, I just ordered cable modem without cable TV. Hopefully the basic cable signal will come through as well so I won't have to pay for cable TV. I won't know until I move the extremely heavy 36" tube TV next weekend.

Mori Living

I was surfing on the web and saw this new apartment in Tokyo. I thought I was paying a lot for my apartment but the 700 square feet one-bedroom apartment in this complex is going for ¥1,150,000 per month; that's about $10,000! Yeah, it's Tokyo and it's new but still... unless they're getting paid a lot in Japan or two families are going to share this apartment.

Passport

I got my U.S. passport in the mail last week so I can travel again. I had to turn in my green card at the citizenship oath ceremony so for the past two months, I could have used my Canadian passport to leave but I couldn't come back to the U.S.

I guess I won't have to renew my Canadian passport (it was a drag to have to renew it every 5 years)... unless I travel to the Middle East.

K-Pop

Ever since I got my iPod last month, I've been listening to some K-Pop (K = Korean). Sometimes it's better not to be able to understand the lyrics. I had downloaded some music by S.E.S. long time ago but I found a couple more singers/groups I like: Fin.K.L, Jewelry, BoA, and SWI'T (I've only found one song for them so far). It's actually easier to find and download music videos than good quality MP3s. I've been looking for Chinese Pop as well but since I can't read very well, it's hard to know what I'm looking at... :) I did find a co-worker with a lot of new Chinese songs so I'm going to copy some files off her computer. Interestingly, most Korean songs have an English title; not sure if the meanings are the same. For Chinese songs though, they just use PinYin so not only are the song titles hard to say, you still don't know what it means.


Fin.K.L (Fine Killing Liberty... whatever that means)


Jewelry


BoA album cover

Skiing

I went skiing for the first time in over 10 years. I had to load sound equipment at NewSong this morning so I could only go to Snow Summit for 1/2 day of skiing. I don't think I've been to Snow Summit for over 15 years but I still remember the drive and everything looks the same. The snow was not too good today; it was too warm so the snow was pretty wet. I had only bought boots (and thermal underwear) at the ski show so I had to rent skis. The 1/2 day lift ticket was $50 which is a lot more than I remembered and the ski rentals were $18. I did get to use the snowboarding jacket I bought at the Columbia factory store in Portland.

Since I didn't get there until 1:30pm, I only got to ski for about four hours which was going down Summit Run about 8 times. I was wearing jeans so I didn't want to push my luck on black diamond runs. I did go down Miracle Mile (intermediate) once but the snow as really clumpy and I couldn't see very well since I was only wearing my glasses. There were a lot of people on the slopes and since they made Summit Run a beginner's run, there were lots of people sitting down with their snowboards. The lift lines were pretty short though so maybe it took people a long time to get down the slope. Hmm...

The drive from home only took about 90 minutes. In high school, I remember meeting at Haley's house at 4am to go skiing at Snow Summit. I also remember Carlos losing control of his car on the way up and crashing into a guardrail. Hard to believe that was 20 years ago.


View of Big Bear Lake from the upper portion of Summit Run


Looking back up the slope from the same place

Notice that there is only snow on the runs and not anywhere else. Hurray for snowmaking!

Sorry, that was the last one

I was at the La Habra Costco last night at around 8:20pm and decided to get a Chicken Bake for dinner. As I was walking up to the window, there was a woman standing there looking up at the "menu" board. Being a nice guy, I paused and let her go ahead of me. To repay me for my kindness, she went ahead and bought the last Chicken Bake so I had to find dinner elsewhere.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Darker Days in China as Sun Gets Dimmer

Interesting story about smog in China. It must be all the coal they're still burning to boil water and make steam to heat buildings during winter. Probably don't have to do smog check every two years on their cars as well.

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Smog is blocking sunlight in China and making much of the country significantly darker than it was half a century ago.

Using nearly 500 instruments spread throughout the country that record the amount of sunlight reaching the ground, researchers found that solar radiation has decreased by about 2 percent per decade since 1954.

The country is roughly 10 percent darker on average than it was 50 years ago.

World Impact Winter 2006

Last weekend I volunteered to help out at the World Impact Winter 2006 retreat. World Impact is an organization that reaches out to inner city kids and this retreat was a chance for these kids to get away from their everyday environment. Even though I've live in large cities my whole life (Taipei, Toronto, Los Angeles), the only experience with the "inner city" was attending USC. Even then, I avoided the surrounding neighborhoods. The retreat went from Saturday morning to Monday afternoon; I only stayed until Sunday night since I had to work Monday. The camp was called The Oaks and was located about 40 minutes north of Magic Mountain. The first part of the drive was fine, however when we got off the exit, there was 23 miles of twisty mountain roads to drive, and it was raining pretty heavily on the way up.

I guess a couple of people on the NewSong worship team has helped out in the past but this time they wanted some production people to come along. The auditorium we were in was really nice with lots of new equipment. I think the hall only seats about 250 people but they had 10 2400 watt QSC amplifiers driving 4 subwoofers and 8 other speakers... crazy! Their sound board was a Midas Venice, the exact one we have at NewSong NOC so that was good. I ended up being the video guy since another sound tech from NewSong Irvine took care of sound. The other two people on the production team worked the lights and did lyrics/graphics. I think all of us brought our laptops so we had five computers on this little table and we used all of them. We ended up working the entire weekend since there were programs in the morning and the evening along with practice times. Sunday night was the craziest. First we had to set up for the worship team. Then during a 20 minute break, we had to tear down the entire setup and replace it with the remaining program which was Stomp, two rap groups, and a high school punk band. Two things I remember the most: me fanning the smoke coming out of the fog machine we rented, and the high school band's bass player asking me over and over whether "they" will hear him out there. I kept reminding him that we had 10,000 watts across 4 subwoofers; people down in LA will hear him!

Overall, it was a fairly positive experience. The accomodations were pretty nice as well. I brought a sleeping bag expecting the worst but didn't need to use it. The food was not too good but typical for camp. It got really cold at night; my car was covered with ice when I left Sunday night at 11pm. I think the kids had fun as well and many accepted Christ during Sunday night's service. Since they used my computer to run photo slide shows, I have a lot of pictures on the computer. I'll post some below before I delete them off my PC.

Stupidity

Quitters never win, winners never quit,
But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
Amen!

Video iPod

Wow, the iPod just arrived at work. I placed the order Saturday morning and Apple managed to engrave it and ship from Shanghai to Irvine in 3 days.

Promotion

Just found out today that I got promoted to Senior Manager. With all the job rotations recently (I lost both my staff), I guess everyone was thinking that they needed to rotate to be promoted.

Not sure how much money (if any) is involved right away since we have our annual review in a couple of months. Regardless, I bought myself a video iPod (black 30GB) to celebrate. I have 13GB of MP3's in my iTunes already.

Song with highest play count: Dancing Queen by ABBA :)

Microsoft Shuts Down Chinese Blog

By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 6, 1:47 PM ET

Microsoft Corp. has shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese blogger that discussed politically sensitive issues, including a recent strike at a Beijing newspaper.

The action came amid criticism by free-speech activists of foreign technology companies that help the communist government enforce censorship or silence dissent in order to be allowed into China's market.

Microsoft's Web log-hosting service shut down the blog at the Chinese government's request, said Brooke Richardson, group product manager with Microsoft's MSN online division at company headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Although Beijing has supported Internet use for education and business, it fiercely polices content. Filters block objectionable foreign Web sites and regulations ban subversive and pornographic content and require service providers to enforce censorship rules.

"When we operate in markets around the world, we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms," Richardson said.

Richardson said the blog was shut down Dec. 30 or Dec. 31 for violating Microsoft's code of conduct, which states that users must be in compliance with local laws in the country in which the user is based.

The blog, written under the pen name An Ti by Zhao Jing, who works for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times as a research assistant, touched on sensitive topics such as China's relations with Taiwan. Last week, he used the blog to crusade on behalf of a Beijing newspaper.

Reporters at the Beijing News, a daily known for its aggressive reporting, staged an informal one-day strike after their chief editor was removed from his post. The editor's removal and the strike attracted comments on Chinese online bulletin boards, which censors then erased.

Texas 41 - USC 38

My boss's office door the day after the game... obviously he's a USC fan. The box of tissue is a nice touch.

Happy New Year!

I hope 2006 will be a better year than 2005.