Taiwan, Part I

It's our third night in Taiwan and I finally got a broadband Internet connection. We're currently staying at the Plaza International Hotel in Taichung and it's the first day of our 5-day tour of Taiwan. I'm still a bit jetlagged so I'm trying to stay awake for a couple more hours. There are only 8 people on the tour: my parents and me, and another family from the U.S.

We left LAX Friday morning (Pacific Time) and the lines were pretty long, both at Singapore Airlines and at the baggage scanner. While we were lined up for take off, I noticed that our flight was behind a EVA Air 747 to Taipei, and a China Airlines 747 to Taipei as well. Our 777-200 was pretty full so there must be a lot of traffic from LAX to TPE.


Arrival board at TPE. There seems to be a lot of flights from California.

After being picked up by a couple of my dad's old classmates from military college, we drove an apartment near Youth Park (SW Taipei); it belongs to one of their friends in Canada who lives in Taipei only 6-months each year. I had trouble sleeping for the first couple of nights, probably a combination of jetlag, an incredibly hard mattress, and noise. The area around Youth Park is like every neighborhood in Taipei. People either live in large apartment complexes or in shorter buildings along the street, typically with a business on the ground floor. There is a small night market around the corner and a million 7-Elevens.


View from our 10th floor apartment


My room with the incredibly hard mattress/bed. Good thing there's an air conditioner.


Mmm... street vendors!

On Saturday, we were invited to a Mother's Day buffet lunch at a hotel near Taipei 101 and on Sunday, one of my mom's relatives and her family visited then we went to my dad's friend's house for dinner. Interestingly, while we were walking around the neighborhood and checking out the night market, some guy stopped my dad. It turned out that he was in the same class as my dad but graduated 2 years earlier. They probably have not seen or heard of each other for 45 years yet the guy recognized my dad. I don't remember people from UCLA and that's only 15 years ago.


Obligatory picture of Taipei 101

This morning (Monday), the tour bus picked us up at a hotel near the main train station and took us (and the other family) to Sun Moon Lake. It appears that it's a popular honeymoon location. It turned out my parents, the old couple in the other group, and the tour guide all had their honeymoon there. Maybe I should have gone there instead of Europe. :) It was foggy and occasionally rainy due to a typhoon to the south of Taiwan. The tour guide took us to several temples and a couple tourist traps where we could buy stuff.


Lunch at some cultural center. Our reservation was around 1:30pm and we were the only table of people in the room. It made it kind of awkward when the aboriginal dancers asked for volunteers to join them on stage.


Sun Moon Lake


I think this is a hotel for teachers. My parents stayed here on their honeymoon.


Dinner for three: NT$190 (~US$6)

Arg, the ADSL connection at the hotel is flaky. I'll upload more pictures later. I must have bad luck at hotels. I usually get a smoking room and end up having to switch rooms. I already switched from a smoking floor to non-smoking floor but this room smells of smoke too. Sigh...

Work

It's been a long two weeks at work. With my parents staying with me in my tiny apartment and working late/weekends, I'm not even sure what day it is anymore. I just got home from work (1:45AM) after struggling with this month's forecast and there's a lot more to get done before my vacation to Taiwan.

I turned on the TV while eating some leftovers and G4 is showing an infomercial from Saving Lives Across America where you can make unlimited amounts of money from selling vitamins on the web. For $15, they set you up with a website and you get money when someone buys product or sign up as a "director"... typical MLM crap. Only if it was so easy to make money :)

Lake Verse?

The Lakers just lost game 6 of their series with the Phoenix Suns. I don't have cable so I listed to the game on my clock radio (AM 570). They sounded terrible in overtime.

Anyway, I was getting dinner earlier at Wahoo's and the game was on TV with close captioning turned on. Each time the commentators said "Lakers", the caption would show LAKE VERSE. I wonder if it's some kind of computer voice recognition system (which would be awesome since almost every other word was transcribed correctly) or the captioning person is not a basketball fan.

The Campus Concierge

Wow, "just like home" eh? I never got gift baskets or my laundry washed and folded at home. Then again, I went to UCLA... not Harvard.

==========

The Ritz-Carlton Boston

PACKAGES & EXPERIENCES

The Parents Are Back!
Available through December 31, 2006
Rate: Starting at $599 USD

Cure student anxiety with the professional assistance of The Campus Concierge. Whether it is Parent's Weekend or simply a surprise visit, treat yourself to a wonderful evening while pampering the student with a specialty gift basket and having their laundry washed and folded — just like home.

The Parents Are Back! includes:
- Deluxe overnight accommodations
- Amenity for parents
- Amenities for student — special gift basket or favorite comfort food prepared by chefs and a week's worth of student's laundry (40 lbs.) washed and folded
- Breakfast for two
- Overnight valet parking

NewSong Work Day

It was a big day yesterday at NewSong NOC; I got up yesterday at 5:30am and didn't get back to my apartment until 5:00pm. In addition to the regular two services, we had a live jazz band (Andrew Carney) and a BBQ lunch outside the theater. Inside, setup took longer than usual since it's the first time I ran FOH with Wilshire's built-in wiring instead of using an audio snake. I got a couple of cables reversed and it took awhile to figure out what happened.

I took some pictures of all the stuff we need to load/unload each week:


It take two trucks to haul all the equipment around each Sunday


Stuff


Some more stuff


Sound equipment (the big black "box" under the blue plastic bin is one of two JBL SR4719X subwoofers; they weigh 188 lbs. each)

Roses

Roses from the Brea house. I hope the new owners takes care of the flowers.

Goodbye, house

I went back to the house in Brea again today to unlock the door for the buyer's appraiser. The appraisal only took 10 minutes but I was there for several hours since I was doing laundry as well. While waiting, I went and bought some stuff at Home Depot and washed the 4Runner. I think this is the last time I will check up on the house and do laundry (I just need to dispose of Kevin's mattress somehow). My parents are coming next week and then we're headed off to Taiwan. Hopefully escrow will close before I get back.

I sat for about 10 minutes in the empty room we used as an office. I remember spending an entire weekend plus a few nights just to paint the walls of the office and the guest room when we first bought the house. Now the room looks the same as it did three years ago except the carpet is blue instead of green. As I sat there, I felt a deep sadness... it's as if we never lived there. The only evidence that someone lived there are the indentations in the carpet from our furniture.



Sometimes I feel the past 6+ years was nothing but a dream. I would now occasionally wake up in the morning confused, wondering where I was [strange apartment] or whether I was really married for so long. Maybe this "life" now is a dream and I'll wake up any minute now...

New Hire

Yay! The USC undergrad candidate that we offered my financial analyst position to accepted today. I think six of us interviewed each candidate (three senior directors and three senior managers) and most of us ranked her as #1. The only downside is that she won't be able to start until August 7th. Maybe I can give projects to one of the incoming MBA interns this summer until my new employee arrives.

1990 Eta Kappa Nu Survey Results

I found this gem as I continue to unpack all my stuff at the apartment. At UCLA, I think I barely qualified for Eta Kappa Nu (Electrical Engineering Honor Society) one quarter so I quickly joined. I found the results of a survey we conducted in Winter of 1990 (n = 200+ upper division EE students). Some of the questions (and answers) were pretty funny.

7. Have you ever told a technical joke?
Yes 54%; No 46%
[OK, I got one. A passenger jet was flying in from Warsaw to New York. As it was coming in for a landing, the pilot said, "If you look out the window, you can see the Statue of Liberty." All the passengers rushed over to look causing the plane to flip and crash. The moral of the story? Keep your poles off the right half plane. Ha ha! Get it? Get it? I didn't the first time I heard it.]

11. What is your ethnic origin?
Caucasian 21.9%; Asian 63.5%; African 1.0%; Latino: 8.3%; Other 5.3%
[Maybe we should have had sub-categories (i.e., Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.)]

20. Have yo ever tried to construct anything MacGyver has built?
Yes 6.5%; No 93.5%

27a. Do you plan to pursue a higher degree after graduation?
Yes 91.3%; No 8.7%

29. Would you prefer to marry another engineer?
Yes 10.9%; No 89.1%
[Good thing that Yes number is low; I don't thing there are enough female electrical engineers.]

31. Do you own or have you ever owned a Radio Shack mini-electronics laboratory kit?
Yes 31.8%; No 68.2%

32. Do you own any engineering laboratory equipment? (you may mark more than one)
oscilloscope 7.5%; curve tracer 2.5%; signal generator 6.0%
soldering iron 33.5%; multimeter 25.5%; power supply 16.0%

I never owned a Radio Shack mini-electronics laboratory kit. Maybe that's why I'm in finance now instead of engineering. BTW, I'm still not quite sure what a curve tracer is used for (something to do with transisters); I can't believe undergrad students owning one.


Tektronix 576 Curve Tracer ($2,500 used!)

Sauna Concert

Since the concert was outdoors, the City of Irvine set up a huge tent for the musicians and the audience in the city hall plaza. The only problem was that the rainstorm was over by Sunday morning and it was sunny this afternoon. The tent has a clear plastic roof which let the sunlight in then trapped the hot air inside. During practice, it felt like we were playing in a sauna... or outside in Singapore (only not as hot nor humid).


Hot air... trapped!

Luckily the orchestra played first and by the time we were on stage, the city hall building blocked most of the sun. The mayor of Irvine showed up and all the chairs in the audience was filled by 4pm. I thought the concert went well. I didn't play too many wrong notes but I was pretty tired at the end and missed a couple high notes.


Orchestra on-stage

Next concert is on May 3rd at the Irvine Barclay Theater.

Free Concert

I'm playing trumpet in the IVC Wind Symphony

Sold (maybe)

We accepted an offer on our house last week and hopefully we can sign escrow papers next week. The house has been on the market for almost two months but the offer was fairly close to our listing price. I still have some stuff inside the house I need to donate, give away, or toss in the trash.

Once the house is sold, it will be easier to close this chapter of my life and move on.

Wannabe Musician

So Tascam finally released a FW-1082 driver for Intel Macs and I just got a version of Cubase LE that works with the latest OS X.


Tascam FW-1082

I installed the new software and connected the FireWire cable to the Mac instead of the PC and everything worked! I still can't get the MIDI keyboard to work on the PC so now I don't have to worry about that anymore; everything is connected to the Mac Mini.

I attached a Shure BG3.0 microphone and my guitar to two inputs and recorded myself playing and singing. The Tascam/Cubase setup has either 24 audio channels or 8 audio/8 MIDI channels as default; maybe I'll add a bass track and importing some drum loops from GarageBand. I was surprised that everything worked on the first try although I sounded pretty bad. I'll try inserting a reverb effect on the vocals and EQ-ing both channels to see if I sound any better. I guess I'll need to stick with the finance thing as my day job for now. :)

For some reason, I can only get two inputs to work. I think I still need to upgrade the RAM from 512MB to 1GB which should also help everything run faster. I still need to try out boot camp to see if the 1.62 GHz Core Duo CPU runs Windows faster than the 1.6GHz Pentium M in my Dell D-410. Maybe I need to go to 2GB... you can never have too much memory.

Accounting Fraud

Liar or Incompetent

Skilling Tells Enron Jury He's 'Innocent'

He repeated what he said twice before congressional panels in 2002, that Enron was "in very good condition in the middle of August (2001) when I left."

His lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, asked if he had any clue that Enron would flame out in scandal less than four months later.

"Not in my wildest dreams, no. It's almost inconceivable now what happened," the ex-CEO said.

"Would you have left if you thought the company was going to experience the events that later transpired?" Petrocelli asked.

"No," Skilling replied matter-of-factly.

==========

There is no way that a CEO would not know about something as big as the Enron collapse four months before it happened. He's either lying or incompetent as CEO. Skilling must have seen what was coming and jumped ship.

100k Miles

I just noticed that the 4Runner has reached 100,000 miles on the odometer. It must have happened this Tuesday, probably when I was driving home in the rain.



We bought the SUV new in Aug-99, right after we got back from our honeymoon. It was a wedding gift from Shirley's parents (I think we just paid the sales tax) so I think it's the right time to replace it with something else. It took us 6 1/2 years to drive 100,000 miles. I've been getting pretty regular oil changes and service so it still runs pretty good. The only things broken are the power antenna and the 6-CD changer. I wonder if I need to fix that if I want to trade it in?

Rain

It's raining again; I don't remember it raining this much in SoCal. It's times like this that living in an apartment sucks. At least the walkpaths were not all flooded like last week.

I just got home from work. I was planning on going back to the house to put away the trash bins but it was too late to drive an hour round-trip. I'm still short-staffed and work is piling up since it's quarter end. I spent all afternoon and evening struggling with an Access database that I create last summer to calculate third-party royalty payments. I guess when you step back, the whole process is quite meaningless. We pay millions of dollars in royalties each quarter which we use in part to make millions more. I know all this impacts people's lives, including mine since I get a paycheck, but it just seems so detached from actually accomplishing anything of significance.

Maybe I'm just depressed now that I have no goals in life. It's been five or six weeks since I moved here and I still haven't put stuff away. It's just easier to step over stuff than to plan on where to store everything. I was going to look at some work stuff but I think I'll eat some ice cream and go to sleep.


The ogura (red bean) ice cream is really good; not so sure about the green tea one

Sigh... the rain is starting up again, this time with thunder. I hope my BBQ outside on the patio doesn't rust.

==========

Oh, I got a coupon for a free Jamba Juice smoothie in the mail today. It was addressed to resident. Something unexpected and good for once.

UCLA Losing

UCLA is sucking right now, down 63-49 with 3:31 left to go.

I'm going to blame Leon for the loss.

Churchgoers Live Longer

I think it must be the exercise I get from moving heavy sound equipment every week at church.

==========

Churchgoers Live Longer

Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
LiveScience.com
Mon Apr 3, 1:04 PM ET

There are many things you can do to increase your life expectancy: exercise, eat well, take your medication and ... go to church.

A new study finds people who attend religious services weekly live longer. Specifically, the research looked at how many years are added to life expectancy based on:

Regular physical exercise: 3.0-to-5.1 years
Proven therapeutic regimens: 2.1-to-3.7 years
Regular religious attendance: 1.8-to-3.1 years

UCLA Won!

UCLA won again... and once again, I missed the game. I was checking the score on my Treo every two minutes though. This means I definitely have to miss watching the final game on Monday so UCLA can win.

Busted

Since I'm on the unofficial USC finance recruiting team, I've been getting a lot of resumes. The problem with getting 38 resumes at once and having to choose interview candidates is that most resumes, especially undergraduate ones, are poorly written and don't tell you much (I got a resume that had "sending faxes" as a job description). One of the things I've been doing is googling the resumes to find out more info. Sometimes that leads to class projects online or dean's lists and most times I get no hits, but other times it leads to Xanga or Blogspot sites. Well, one of my searches (and subsequent browsing) led me to a candidate's ex-boyfriend's Xanga site and he was able to track me down (I deleted his comment in the previous post because it had her name).

The main question is what to do with any information, either good or bad, you find on the Internet. I know you're not supposed to ask questions like age, marital status, religion, and other stuff during an interview but the candidate can offer the info themselves. One of our MBA interns this summer put on her resume that she was the starring actress in a Bollywood movie; of course I had to check that out. However, most people are not expecting future (or even current) employers to read their personal blog even though it's a public forum.

I guess the lesson is that you're not as private/anonymous as you think you are online. I'll need to remember to shut down this site (and my old Xanga account) if I start looking for another job, although there is a famous architect with the same name and he gets all the hits. :)

FX35

I've decided. After my parents leave in June from their visit, I'm going to trade in both cars and get an Infiniti FX35. The 4Runner was a wedding gift from the in-laws and the 350Z will always be Shirley's car.



I think I'll end up getting the blue one since the other color options are essentially white, gold, silver, gray, and black. The two cool colors (Autumn Copper and Beryllium) I really like cost an extra $4k.

I don't like the way Infiniti structures the option packages though. It appears that they're all interlinked so if you want one option, you have to get a whole bunch of other stuff that you may not want. I thought about getting the sports package ($1950) with the 20" pimpin' wheels but that requires the hands-free package ($600) which requires the touring package ($1300). I don't get it, why do I need to get a Bluetooth phone and a sunroof in order to upgrade suspension/wheels/tires? I'll probably end up only getting the towing hitch ($600) so I can carry my bike rack that I hardly use but have nowhere to store since I moved to the apartment. I think I can get the FX35 for less than $40k before trade-in.

In addition to the 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet, my boss also bought a Mercedes-Benz ML500. I got to drive that around the block too and it feels more like a luxury sedan than a SUV. He thinks that I should get one as well. I'm not sure if I want to spend the extra money for a V8 but the ML350 may be an option, althought the option choices are even more confusing than the Infiniti, and leather seats are not standard. I was also considering the Acura MDX but unless they come out with a new model for 2007, the MDX exterior looks kinda dated and boring. Finally, the Lexus RX350 models make you choose one of two $4k+ option packages so effectively raising the base price to about $44k. I still need to go and test drive all these SUVs too.

Sad Song

Everywhere I look I still see your face,
Each time I listen I can hear your voice;
At night I dream of how we used to be,
But each morning I wake,
I can't remember you...

Bunny Rabbit

I saw a rabbit huddled next to the curb in our work parking lot. It was pretty windy and cold but I thought that rabbits had lots of fur to protect themselves. Anyway, I took a couple of pictures but didn't get too close... I heard rabbits bite.

BTW, I was offered kung-pao rabbit when I was in Beijing but I didn't have any though. After someone suggested Donkey Flesh King for lunch, our motto became, "Beef, pork, or chicken only. Please, no strange meats."


Yes, it's a rabbit


Yes, I took the picture with my Treo

TV

So I decided today that a little bit of TV was better than no TV at all. Since I don't have cable TV or even an antenna, I've been only watching DVDs since I moved into the apartment. I just attached a coaxial cable splitter to the incoming cable and now I get three cable channels on my TV: CBS, CSpan2, and G4. I didn't have G4 in Brea but it appears to be a cable channel for nerds... cool! Anyway, the first TV show I watched was CSI on CBS. I think the FinalFour is on CBS this weeked so at least I'll get to watch UCLA.

==========

OK, CSpan2 doesn't really count as a channel so I removed it from my remote. Now I only have two channels programmed so whether I push CH+ or CH-, I get the same (other) channel. As soon as I clean up my apartment, I'm getting cable TV.

Nigel: These go to eleven

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Owners of recent iPods will now be able to set how loud their digital music players can go. Apple Computer Inc., facing complaints and a lawsuit claiming the popular player can cause hearing loss, made the setting available as part of a new software update Wednesday. The free download applies to the iPod Nano and the iPod models with video-playback capabilities.

Parents also can use the feature to set a limit on their child's iPod and lock it with a code, the company added.

"As the leading provider of digital music players, Apple continuously brings iPod customers innovative and easy to use solutions," Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president for iPod marketing, said in a statement. "With the increased attention in this area, we want to offer customers an easy to use option to set their own personal volume limit."

Earlier this year, a Louisiana man filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the iPod can cause hearing loss in people who use it.

The devices can produce sounds of more than 115 decibels, a volume that can damage the hearing of a person exposed to the sound for more than 28 seconds per day, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif.

Although the iPod is more popular than other types of portable music players, its ability to cause hearing loss isn't any higher, experts said.

Apple ships a warning with each iPod that cautions "permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume."

==========

Sigh... I should have gone to law school. Evidently you can sue anyone for anything. I actually wanted to get more volume out of my iPod. I have to turn the volume all the way up when I use it with the cassette adapter in the car or plug it into a stereo.

To the idiot in Louisiana that filed the lawsuit, "Turn down the volume!"

Cassette Tapes

[You can tell I've got no life since I'm posting a lot lately.]

In my attempt to clean up all the stuff I moved from my house to the apartment, I found a crate of cassette tapes. Some of the stuff is recent but there are tapes that I brought from Canada with music from the early 80's. Since I still have a tape deck attached to my stereo, I'm listening to some of the tapes, especially those without any labels. I'll post updates on any gems I find.

==========

1. Recording of some meeting at Ingram Micro. Not sure if it's Chip Lacy speaking or Bronson Ingram. [trash]

2. Unknown Cantonese singer. [keep until my parents come and ID the singer]

3. Girl I'm Gonna Miss You by Milli Vanilli. Where did that come from? Must be Nancy's tape. [trash]

4. The Thin Red Line by Glass Tiger. Hey, they're Canadian. Hey, they sang Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone) and it's on this tape! [keeper... until I find a mp3 of their only hit song]

5. Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. For you young kids, this is the hypnosis song in Zoolander. It's a cassette single so that the only song on the tape; I can't believe I bought a cassette single. [not sure]

BTW, I'm willing to part with any of these rare tapes if the price is right... :)

6. Hoi Polloi. I searched on the Internet (not using Google) and there are a lot of bands named Hoi Polloi; this is not the more famous one from New Zealand. My college roommate, Craig, used to be a member in this band and we saw them once playing at the Troubadour in Hollywood. I think Craig had to quit the band when he got to UCLA because he needed time to study, or was it his multiple (concurrent) girlfriends. [keep until I find Craig again]

7. Mix One. I made a bunch of tapes with different songs and I think I got to Mix Fifteen before I found out about CD-Rs. Here's side A of Mix One, recorded on a Radio Shack 60 minute tape:
• Ghostbusters
• Burning Down The House
• Maneater
• Babe
• Victims
• It's Raining Again
• Lucky Star
[I'm keeping this one... even though I'm a bit embarassed about the song selection]

8. Platinum Blonde. I've got not one, but two albums by Platinum Blonde. I had to double check on the web but indeed, they're from Toronto. I saw them in concert at Maple Leaf Gardens; also performing was The Spoons and Cory Hart. The Spoons were a local band from Burlington (just west of Toronto) and they had a cute, female bass player, Sandy Horne. I think I went to the concert just to see her in person.


Everyone in Canada dressed like this in the 1980s

Yup, 80s music on tapes actually recorded in the 80s.

MiniMac

I've had the new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini for about 3 weeks now and I'm having mixed feelings about it. I've been a loyal Apple customer ever since I bought a Apple ][+ a long time ago. Sure, for the past 10 years I had to live exclusively in the Wintel world but the new Intel Macs were supposed to be fast and cheap. Well, $800 is not that cheap and they're not too fast. Maybe because all the software are coded for the G4/G5 processor and I need to upgrade to 1GB of RAM, the Mac Mini feels a lot slower than my work PC (1.6GHz Pentium M w/1GB RAM). Applications also seem to crash quite often but nothing catastrophic like the Blue Screen of Death on Windows. I've been mostly using it to rip DVDs to my iPod, patiently waiting for Tascam to write a new FireWire driver so I can use it to run my FW-1082.

I hope Steve Jobs is enjoying his 10 million shares of restricted stock (5.4 million after tax). That'll teach me to be the first on my block to buy new technology.

New Car

...but not mine. My immediate boss bought a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet yesterday and I got to drive it around the block earlier this afternoon. I like it! I got to about 70mph in 3rd gear and it has six gears. It weighs about the same as my Z (3200 lbs.) but it has more horsepower (325hp vs. 287hp) and a manual transmission. My butt definitely felt like the 911 accelerated faster than my Z. The convertible top was pretty cool too; it goes up/down with one button and the whole process takes only a few seconds. And it has rear seats... but for small children only.

I still like my Z and the 911 does cost about 2.5x, but if I had $90k to spend on a car, hmm...

LOTR

I just finished watching Lord of the Rings extended DVDs that I bought awhile ago. Actually I watched 5/6 of it since I'm still missing the 2nd half of The Two Towers. Anyhow, why couldn't Gandalf just get one of the huge eagles to fly Frodo to Mt. Doom and drop the ring into the lava?

My favorite part of the movie is still the mountain flare scene although it would suck to be the one that had to sit in a mountain hut all day and watch for the signal. The trebuchets in Minas Tirith were pretty cool too.

HP 6110xi all-in-one

OK, I installed all 90MB of drivers and software for my HP printer on the Mac. I grabbed the first thing I could find as a test scan. It was the entrance ticket to the National Palace Museum in Taipei. I think it turned out okay; I just need to find out what the other 716 items installed were.



On the back of the ticket it says: This ticket entitles the holder to one additional visit to the National Palace Museum free of charge anytime through December 31, 2006. I guess they did that because the museum was under renovation and they didn't have much out on display. I think my parents want to go there for our Taiwan trip this May so I'll save NT$100 (US$3) to see the jade cabbage again.

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.

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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