Growing up right across the Hudson River, July 4th meant watching awesome fireworks and BBQ. I used to get excited about celebrating America’s independence, which for me, used to mean freedom, liberty, and equality of all men. I firmly believe that those ideals are dead as we move closer to socialism, but that’s another conversation.

I don’t know when it changed, but I now believe that I’m not and will never be an “American”. Why? For one thing, my wife got harassed by a lady in supermarket who told her to “go back”. I get compliments because I speak natively. If you’ve been to Korea, don’t ask me about certain places because I don’t know.

Sad, isn’t it?

Well, Happy Birthday America, and I just pray that you don’t do what you did to me to my children.

Are you that stupid?

If you think about it, Google put the best phone on the market on the network nobody’s using. It is a phone after all, and they could’ve made a killing picking up all the people pissed off with AT&T, including me. Trust me, it’s not about advertising when my family knows about Nexus One.

The way I see it, it’s not the Nexus One that will kill iPhone, but it’s the AT&T in US.

Just released Droid phone from Motorola is a new challenger in dethroning the iPhone. Well, is it?

As far as I see it, it’s no longer about the iPhone. What will kill the iPhone is not the phone, but the network it’s on, AT&T. I had no choice but to get a Blackberry from Verizon so that I can in fact use the phone functionality. I still have iPhone as a music and video player.

What about the apps?

Any apps that require a network connection simply does not work consistently enough to be useful. I found that my Twitter client and the Facebook app do not work unless I’m on WiFi. If this is the case, why not just go with iPod Touch?

I see more and more people divorcing iPhone, and like me, carrying two phones. The timing is perfect for Motorola and Verizon to take over. It’s really up to the leadership of Verizon and Motorola, and that’s the biggest problem. The leaders in both companies do not possess a half brain required.

If you bank with TD Bank, you’re probably going through the same thing and I urge you to change your bank to others. I currently have business accounts with PNC and CapitalOne. They both offer same services and pricing as TD Bank (Commerce Bank).

On another note, do you really trust a bank that can’t handle computer system? What does that say about their system in the world of electronic transactions? Aren’t you concerned about their security? As a programmer, if the system can’t operate correctly, that usually means that security was never addressed. How can you think about security when you can’t get it to work?

For one, my MindManager won’t work. I have the version 6 and resisted the upgrade since version 7 didn’t offer anything for me to upgrade. This is THE most important app for me and it really really sucks that I have to upgrade when I don’t want to.

I realized that I have to upgrade other costly softwares I own (yes, I BUY my software and you should too), and that can run into thousands unless the software makers offer free update (yeah, sure).

Vonage will still charge extra per-minute fees for calls to mobile phones in most countries under Vonage World. Lefar said the prices would be competitive with the cheapest competitors, like Skype and Google Voice.

I’d like to note that there are countries where additional fee is not charged.

The problem I have is that people in other countries do not use landlines anymore. All my relatives in South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia do not have landlines. I also saw from my previous dealings with the Scandinavian countries that they’re just about all migrated to cell phones.

I just realized that it’s August, and I can’t remember what happened past several months. I took this weekend to take a breather and realized that time is passing by much faster than I’d like. My girls are growing up so fast and it appears that I’m going back to the same place I left. Is there a way to have both career and family?