Today marks two years since Sydney was born. It’s amazing how fast she grew yet remains to be so cute. I’m so sorry that both of my girls have to celebrate their birthdays together.
I’m deeply concerned as my deposit is now gone from my bank account. The good thing is that the deposit came from my business account. At least I’ll be able to trace it. Not being able access your money is extremely frustrating and is causing all kinds of problems.
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?
As a perpetual early adapter, I was thrilled with the price of Snow Leopard and promptly upgraded to the latest Mac OS. Well, it turns out that I have to shell out more money.
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).
I knew it was coming. The popularity of functional programming languages are on the rise now that processors are expanding horizontally(SMP) rather than vertically(clock speed). It’s also rather difficult to scale anything written with training wheels.
My initial bet was on Erlang, but with its unnatural syntax and different thought process, it’s not catching on among young kids just graduating from extremely high level languages. It’s really hard to think anything other than objects these days, and that is the root cause of Erlang and Haskell’s lack of popularity. I remember when OOP was a new concept. Now, everything is object. Interesting…
Well, after brief review of Scala, it’s pretty clear which functional programming language will win. Scala runs on top of Java VM, yes, Java. You can find out why I came up with this conclusion by reading Programming in Scala by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon, and Bill Venners.
I was excited about Vonage’s announcement of unlimited international calling until I read the fine print. Take a look at below.
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’ve been incredibly busy since the beginning of this year. Then again, lot has changed this year. I finally made the leap to start my own business.
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?
I love my iPhone, but absolutely HATE the network it’s on, AT&T.
Why?
The biggest reason is that its claim to be the fastest 3G network is a lie. I have no idea how they can make that claim? I tested Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint for work and found AT&T to be the slowest and the least reliable. This is the reason why I have EVDO from Sprint.
I’m also sick of dropped calls. Once again, AT&T claims that it has the fewest dropped calls. Really? I haven’t had any dropped calls with my Verizon phone, but with my AT&T phone, it’s the norm and accepted fact. Geez, another lie.
The most bars? You’re kidding.
AT&T created a campaign based on lies and twisted truth. I understand now that the same people behind the lies are heading a VOIP company based on the stupidity of people.
I just didn’t have the time to get to it.
Sorry.
You’ll noticed that all pictures are gone. Well, that’s because I accidentally deleted them. I’ll try to post them in coming weeks.
Amazon announced a new version of its Kindle. Kindle is the eBook reader that is hailed as the favorite tech device by Oprah.
Here are some interesting facts I gathered:
- eInk technology is the real thing. As an owner of Sony eReader, I can testify that I much prefer reading on eInk device that paper.
- New York Times can distribute Kindles to every subscriber and push the news wirelessly instead of paper. Doing this, they can save more than half of their printing cost, even if they give away Kindle for free! If you think paper is cheaper, think again.
Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:
Dear Customers,
Today, we are excited to introduce Kindle 2the next generation of our wireless reading device.Since launching the original Kindle a little over a year ago, the customer response has far surpassed our highest hopes — and we’re grateful and appreciative for that. More people are reading more books, newspapers, and blogs on Kindle sooner than we ever imagined.
We kept everything readers love about the original Kindle — the convenience of reading what you want, when you want it, the immediacy of getting books wirelessly delivered in less than 60 seconds, and Kindle’s ability to “disappear” in your hands so you can get lost in the author’s words.
We chose the same 3G wireless technology used in advanced cell phones, so you never need to locate a Wi-Fi hotspot. But unlike cell phones, there are no monthly wireless bills, no service or data plans, and no yearly contracts. There is no software to install and no syncing required.
Improved battery life means you can read up to four days on a single charge. Its new, streamlined design makes Kindle 2 as thin as a typical magazine and lighter than a paperback. We added more storage, allowing you to carry over 1,500 titles. An advanced display provides even crisper images and clear text for an improved book-like reading experience. Our favorite new Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you.
At Amazon, we’ve always been obsessed with selection, and we know that even the best reading device would be useless without the books you want to read. Today, the Kindle Store has more than 230,000 books, including 103 of the 112 New York Times Best Sellers, plus top newspapers, magazines, and blogs. We added over 40,000 new titles in just the last three months. Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language, all in under 60 seconds on Kindle.
We hope you enjoy Kindle 2.
Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com
P.S. If you’d like to have Kindle 2 ship to you the day it becomes available, we recommend preordering today to reserve your place in line.