Hongkie Town

My new home

2009-11-18T16:38:00.002+08:00

This is probably my last post here on Blogger. Blogger's been good to me, a nice home for the past 5 (or 6?) years. But it's time to move on.

The all new Hongkie Town can be found here.

Still lots of work to be done. Have imported all the old content but not the comments yet. The theme is just a temporary one, no blogroll or widgets, etc. Please be patient, I'm slowly coming up to speed on WordPress.

My Brilliant Career

2009-11-18T12:50:00.003+08:00

Most of you already know this? I graduated college at the age of 21 with a degree in mass communications, majoring in film production, minoring in art, music and literature. I wanted to direct movies. It took a few years but eventually it became evident that I was not going to get there. I then drifted for a number of years, taking whatever work I could get, until at the age of 35 I went back to school and studied computer technology for a year.

Since completing a certificate program in Computer Technology & Applications at Columbia University in 1990, I've worked steadily in information technology. It took me just a few years to move up from database administrator to management and this path has not only paid me a handsome salary but also taken me around the world, many times.

WB has provided outplacement service for the hundreds of employees they mistakenly laid off. I've been working for 40 years and I think I know how to search for a job at this point. But since it's free and since I don't have much else to do, I went there mostly to kill some time. The guy assigned to me is a nice guy and I have enjoyed talking with him, though mostly we talk about subjects like food in China and getting the most out of Twitter.

The company has a standard methodology that includes taking a battery of tests, and I took one for the hell of it. It was a couple hundred questions geared towards building a psychological profile and then pointing you in the direction of careers that would yield the most personal satisfaction.

These are the careers it determined would be the worst for me:

Petrochemical
Science
Information Technology
Crafts/Technical (mostly construction work)
Enforcement/Security
Consultative Tangible Sales
Accounting
Engineering/Technology
Directive Management - Operations, Manufacturing, Construction, Petrochemical Plant, Telecommunications, Utility Company, Military Officer, Police Department, Grocery Store, Information Center Managers

Jeez, if only someone had told me that 20 years ago!

The best?

Legal (ha!)
Delegative Management - Property Managers, Hotel, Club & Restaurant Managers, Tangible Sales Managers, Intangible Sales Managers, Insurance Sales Managers, Bank Managers, Controllers, Public School Administrators, Nursing Home Administrators
Artistic Careers (sigh) Visual Arts, Literary/Editorial Positions, Performing Artist/Acting, Architecture, Art Sales, Travel Agents (travel agent is an artistic career?)
Social Service/Counseling - Ministers/Priest/Clergy, Theologians, Therapists/Counselors, Social Workers, Sociologists, Psychologists
Educational
Knowledge Specialist - Public School Counselors, Psychologists, Career Counselors, Employee Relations Professionals, College Professors, Ministers/Priests/Clergy, Ministry Managers, Physicians, Lawyers/Litigation Specialists, Nursing Managers
Employee Relations/Training
Medical (double ha!)

The problem is, at my age and with my background, none of those are going to pay me what another IT management role would pay. And I'm still in a position where I need to earn.

On the other hand ~~I have four fingers and a thumb~~ optimistically I will retire in another 5 to 7 years, at which point I can concentrate on artistic endeavors, so another job in MIS won't kill me. Besides, I have the blog (and now the photo workshop) to keep me interested in my "spare" time.

A Bunch of Teenage Twits

2009-11-18T07:45:00.003+08:00

Celebitchy notes that Clint Eastwood has been chosen as one of GQ's Men of the Year.

(That's a pretty freaking amazing photo, innit? Took a look at the GQ website but couldn't find a photo credit.)

They've got some excerpts from his interview in the magazine, including this:

We’re “becoming more juvenile as a nation,” he said. “The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.”

So is he just being as grumpy in real life as his character from Gran Torino or does he have a point?

Well, a few moments later, I ran into this over at FailBlog:

Maybe ole Clint has a point.

I'm Losing Count of How Many Ways #PCCW Sucks

2009-11-17T19:56:00.003+08:00

When this whole roaming nonsense started a week ago, I was told that unless I paid them something like $2,500 in advance, I wouldn't be able to use the Pocket WiFi. And then I got back to HK, many emails and phone calls, a complaint to OFTA and finally PCCW dropping all of the ridiculousness.

Problems over, right?

Not so much. All day long, I couldn't connect to the internet via the Pocket WiFi. Went to the PCCW shop at Wanchai Computer Centre where they dicked around with it for 15 minutes without being able to figure out the problem. And told me to call the service hotline.

Got home. Spent an hour trying to get to talk to someone because after navigating their ridiculously complex menus and being told that I'd be connected to someone and that "the call would be recorded for blah blah blah" the phone would ring and ring and no one would pick up and after 20 rings the line would just go dead.

Finally I get someone on the line. Guess what? Yeppers, that's right. They cut off my service because I hadn't paid the $2,500. The person who wanted to make sure everything was taken care of and that I was happy neglected to remove this little flag from my account.

I didn't yell, I didn't scream, I didn't curse. Yes, feel free to congratulate me on this uncharacteristic display of self-control.

And yes, it's working fine now.

Only 1 day of productivity lost.

Argh. And double argh.

Things He Learned

2009-11-17T06:02:00.003+08:00

Journalist Ken Auletta recently published a new book that's getting attention in certain circles, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.

He pulled one chapter from the book, saying it was "not organic to the book's purpose." But he liked it enough to publish that "missing" chapter online and it's a good read. Found via All Things Digital, it features 25 things he's learned from covering Google and media in general.

While they may seem somewhat obvious, I note that most of these things were completely fucking missing at my former place of employment. Things like:

Passion Wins
Vision is Required
A Team Culture is Vital
Treat Engineers as Kings
The Speed of Change Accelerates
Adapt or Die
Don't Think of the Web as Another Platform
Don't Ignore the Human Factor

Of course Auletta's article isn't merely a list of bullet points. There's full explanations for each of these. A very good read indeed!

Configuring PCs

2009-11-17T05:27:00.003+08:00

Lucky I have a lot of time on my hands. Because lately it seems that one of the tasks I'm spending the most time on is configuring computers. And I'm just pleasantly amazed at how much easier it is to get things done today than it was just a couple of years ago. (Forgive me for not including links in the following. But everything can be easily found easily enough via Google.)

Only three weeks ago, I returned my company laptop, a Dell that I never particularly cared for. And then spent time more properly configuring my MacBook in advance of my US trip.

On the return from said trip, I dumped Boot Camp and installed Parallels. After ten days of relatively heavy usage, I was sick of rebooting between Snow Leopard and Windows 7. (Using Win7 primarily because I haven't found a Mac equivalent to the Usenet client (Newsbin Pro) that I rely on heavily.) The setup of Parallels is pretty straight forward and so far Win7 seems to be running smoothly. Parallels offers full support for Win7, something that BootCamp doesn't do yet.

Aside from saving disk space, it saves me time too. Not just time not spent rebooting. As one example, I was running iTunes under both OS's, each reading the same physical library. And anytime I loaded new files into iTunes on Snow Leopard, I had to remember to load them again when in Win7 or those new albums wouldn't be available to me. Now I only need one installation of iTunes, one installation of Dropbox, Evernote, Firefox, etc.

In short, I'm finding Parallels to be well worth the money so far.

Anyway, still somewhat jetlagged, tonight I slept from around 9 PM to 3:30 AM. Earlier in the day, my troubles with PCCW behind me, I went to their shop at the Wanchai Computer Centre to claim my free bonus for signing up for their Pocket WiFi - a Lenovo S10-2 netbook.

Why do I need both a MacBook and a netbook? Short answer: I don't. Except that the netbook is so much smaller and lighter than my 15" MacBook that it's something I can actually carry around with me every day without feeling the extra weight.

(So my daypack now includes: iPhone and headphones, Kindle, Pocket WiFi, Nikon D300, Lenovo netbook. The netbook is way under-powered for Adobe Lightroom but should be able to manage Picasa.)

Some of you may find the following useful:

Setting up the netbook tonight ... Ninite.com allows you to download almost everything you need at one time and installs it all for you (standard settings) unattended. It's brill.

Of course the first thing is Firefox to replace IE. And then Xmarks, which keeps your bookmarks synchronized across multiple computers, so in a matter of seconds the netbook has all of my bookmarks.

And then Evernote - which keeps all of my numerous notes synchronized across my PC, my MacBook, my iPhone and now my netbook as well.

DropBox - file synchronization - after a couple of minutes all of the data files I need on a regular basis have been wirelessly copied to the netbook.

And then all the other stuff that I use on a regular basis - iTunes, WinAmp, VLC, 7Zip, Skype, so on and so forth.

The point is ... a few years ago, setting up a new PC and getting all the software one needs and all the files one needs was an all day, back-breaking task. Tonight it was just a few mouse clicks, entering some account info into some of the programs, and then moving the netbook off to the side, letting everything get done for me.

And so I can focus on other things. Like the new 40th anniversary edition of King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King. And the latest episode of Californication. And how freaking cold it is tonight!!!!

Stuff I Watched part xxxx

2009-11-17T04:49:00.002+08:00

Sunday, one of the things we watched was the Criterion Blu-Ray release of The Third Man. I wasn't originally planning on buying this - I was going to get by with my standard def DVD until I saw this was going out of print and figured, "better get it while I can." And while it's now pretty much sold out everywhere, I still think the movie is worth a mention.

I haven't watched this in awhile and was just constantly struck, from the first frame to the last, of what an amazing film this is. All of this talent coming together, a "package" in modern Hollywood-speak, yet seemingly working to do the very best they could, coming from an era where the concept of the blockbuster didn't exist. Maybe not quite art for art's sake, but damned close.

Director Carol Reed, writer Graham Greene, star Orson Welles (and Joseph Cotten and Valli and Trevor Howard and Wilfred Hyde-White). And the music, played on the zither by Anton Karas. Academy Award winning cinematography by Robert Krasker. And the amazing production design that fully captures Vienna in 1949, still bearing open wounds from WWII amidst its splendor. It all comes together in the amazing climactic sequence shot in the sewers of Austria - a confluence of talent that is rarely equaled. The photography, the editing, the expressions on Welles' face, that shot of the fingers reaching up through that sewer grating to the street above, grasping for escape or freedom that will be denied.

Welles, in archival footage, also talks about the benefit of a "star part" like Harry Lime - that for an hour, people in the film do nothing but talk about him, mythologize him, so by the time he finally does appear on screen, a face momentarily appearing out of the shadows, he doesn't really have to do anything to dominate the film. Except that this time, here, he does everything.

Orson Welles takes great pains to inform people that he did not co-direct the film, as is often rumored. And equally great pains to inform that he wrote his famous speech, 2/3rds of the way through the film.

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The Blu-Ray disc provides the original British version of the film (Selznick cut 11 minutes for the US release), the far superior version. The opening narration (spoken by Reed himself) sets the tone brilliantly for the film - and this is something that American audiences were robbed of for many years.

Bonus features on the disc are equally amazing. An audio commentary by directors Steven Soderbergh and Tony Gilroy, a second by film scholar Dana Polan. An introduction from Peter Bogdanovich. A 90 minute documentary from 2005 on the making of the film. An hour long profile of Graham Greene from the BBC from 1968. And a whole lot more.

Simply put, if you've never seen this, you're poorer for it. And if you haven't watched it in years, it's time to watch it again and remind yourself what real filmmaking used to mean.

===============================

There is discussion about a remake of The Third Man, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached to the project. Given the way that films are made in Hollywood today, there is no chance at all that they can improve on the original but every chance that they will make a lot more money with this remake. It's sad.

A sad remake that I tried to watch today is the remake of the classic British TV series, The Prisoner, more than 40 years after the iconic original. I watched it because Ian McKellen plays Number Two, but I gave up on it after 20 minutes. Perhaps that's not fair? Perhaps I should force myself to sit through the entire thing before publicly critiquing it? Maybe this actually has somewhere to go during its 6 episodes? Ah, fuck dat shit.

Simply put, they took everything that made the original great and tossed it out. I barely know where to start. And I don't think it's worth my time or effort. So I'll just say, ten years from now, when people talk of the Prisoner, they will still mean the original McGoohan series - this remake will have been forgotten long before then.

Funny How That Happens

2009-11-16T13:02:00.002+08:00

PCCW just called and told me that they will not be charging me the $1800+ for the international roaming. They will just be charging me the $338 that I expected to pay when I signed up for the service.

Is it just coincidence that I got the phone call telling me that I was right and they were wrong less than two hours after sending them an email telling them that I had reported this to the OFTA?

Well, not entirely. Their suggestion was that instead of paying a pro-rated amount of $119 for October 30 to November 9, they would charge me $338 for that period and give me a full 20 megabytes. But that since I had also used the service on November 10th, they would charge me an additional $338 for service from November 10 to December 9th.

Hold on, wait a minute. I said to the guy, you check my records, you will see that I only used the service from November 2 to November 10. My expectation is to only be charged for one month and have all other charges waived.

To which he responded, interestingly enough, if we agree to this, will you drop your complaint with OFTA? And yes, I told him I would.

So that means there's at least one government department in Hong Kong that actually has some teeth?

It also shows how unethical they are - because if they were in the right and I was in the wrong on this, they would have insisted that I owe what they said I owe. They would have charged my credit card, been less amenable in their emails, canceled my service plan.

How sustainable is a corporate model in which profits are based, at least in part, in overcharging customers and hoping that they either don't notice or are too busy to deal with trying to get things put right?

Because I suspect that in many cases, people would go, "Oh, $1500 overcharge, it's not worth the time and trouble to get this set right." But in my case, I'm unemployed. Which not only means that the $1,500 means a lot to me, it also means, as Orquestra Was once sang, "I ain't got nothin' but time."

(BTW, Orquestra Was, a fabulous one-off album from Don Was of Was (Not Was). Most of the songs by Hank Williams, with a roster of guests that included Terence Blanchard, Sheila E, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Kramer, Merle Haggard - and an accompanying film produced by Francis Ford Coppola with Kris Kristofferson. The 13 minute centerpiece, "Lost on the River," just fabulous stuff.)

PCCW - Villains, Thieves, Scoundrels, Rip-off Artists

2009-11-15T16:14:00.002+08:00

PCCW always lives up to expectations. That is, if your expectation is that they will rip you off.

They've now confirmed my earlier suspicions on the huge charge I got for international roaming for their Netvigator Everywhere Pocket WiFi.

Here is what they promise: up to 20 megabytes per month for HK$388.

I used 20 megabytes in the period from November 2nd through November 10th. Here is what they charged me: $1,822.24

How can that be, you ask? That's certainly what I asked.

After checking with our record, I would like to let you know
that due to the bill-cut off date is 9th on every month and the
activation date of $338.00 data roaming monthly plan is 30th October
2009, we have calculate prorate of the related monthly service fee and
usage. Therefore, you may not able to enjoy the full 20MB roaming data
usage from 30th October 2009 to 9th November 2009 and it should be
around 7267KB only.

20480KB (1024 KB = 1 MB) / 31days x 11 days (30/10/09-09/11/09) = 7267KB

Since you have over used 13643KB roaming data service during 30th
October 2009 to 9th November 2009 and the extra usage will cost $0.1/KB,
your bill statement of November 2009 reflected the $1364.30 extra
roaming data service fee.

So I called them on October 30th. I told them I am going to the US and want the international roaming for the month of November. They told me okay. They did not say that there was a cut-off date. They did not say that I could not apply for the service for a single calendar month. They did not tell me anything about pro-rating the service for the first 9 days of the month.

In other words, they ripped me off.

My response to them:

I find this to be a highly deceptive practice and thoroughly unethical.

In essence, you are telling me that you have a service plan that charges $338 for 20 megabytes of data within a 30 day period, I used 20 megabytes of data within that thirty day period, and you are charging me $2,000 for it?

I activated the international roaming in order to accommodate my needs for a 10 day international trip. I told the person on the phone of my needs. I was not informed of any pro-rated dates or periods or usage amounts.

I insist that you should only charge me $338 for the usage of 20 megabytes within that 10 day period that occurred within a single calendar month.

Let's see what happens next.

Party at Spike's Joint

2009-11-15T08:13:00.003+08:00

I'm not Mr. Party Host but I do enjoy having people over to the house and last night threw a BBQ party for my former staff and their spouses. Having returned from the US just two days earlier and still being seriously jetlagged, I was resolved to do it nicely but also keeping things as simple as possible. I had neither the time nor the energy to do a lot of pre-cooking or preparation but still wanted to have a decent spread for my guests. Actually on Friday night I'd only succeeded in sleeping from 11:30 PM to 1:30 AM and then managed to grab another hour of sleep right before the guests started arriving.

Most of the food came from a relatively new place in Sai Kung town. I was drawn to it by the name, Cowboy BBQ. A small shop, they have a huge selection of marinated meats and seafood and other stuff to choose from. We went for chicken wings, pork chops, beef short ribs and three kinds of sausage. (I wouldn't call this gourmet but everything was good. The pork chops and short ribs were really tender and a nice enough marinade that didn't seem to have any MSG. I never got to taste the beef - two pounds were gone within minutes.)

Across the street at the wet market, we loaded up on fresh prawns, a few kinds of fishballs (fish, lobster, squid and beef) and a variety of veggies. I love the wet market, as I've said many times before; I always forget to bring my camera along when I go there. Even though Sai Kung's wet market is said to be one of the most expensive wet markets in HK, I still find the prices reasonable and the quality almost universally high.

We did some simple seasoning on the prawns and put them on skewers with chunks of red and yellow pepper and red onion; had enough so there were at least 2 for everyone, and people basically inhaled them. Very fresh, simply prepared, they were outrageously good. People also seemed to love the corn on the cob that we got there, fresh and sweet. We also sliced up a zucchini and tossed that on the grill as well.

Polished that off with some hamburger meat from Wellcome along with the various dry goods we needed. (We toasted buns on the BBQ and provided lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, pickles for a "build your own burger" bar.) (And there was more, as one guest brought along some marinated lamb chops and another brought Filipino-style meat loaf. I never got to taste the lamb but the meat loaf was seriously nice.)

So all of the shopping was done in just 90 minutes. And the cost for everything was well under HK$2,000. Guests brought along a few cases of beer and half a dozen bottles of wine. I sampled from two of the bottles and there was some nice stuff there.

Everyone commented on both the variety and quantity of the food. But I'm of the "I'd rather have to much than too little" philosophy and also wanted a lot of choices to make sure that everyone could find something they'd like.

Despite the recent drop in temperatures, about half the group was content to spend the evening out on the patio (mostly because there's no smoking in the house), enjoying the view and the peace and quiet that you get up here. And no longer constrained by any loyalty to what is now my former employer, people were enjoying my finally being able to tell them what really happened on various projects we'd worked on for the past 8 years.

It was also fun to note that some of the women who came to the house for the first time were initially so terrified of my dogs that they were scared to come in the house but by the end of the evening, they were sitting on the floor posing for photos with them. My dogs have that effect on people, they always win everyone over.

Anyway, it was a modest way for me to say thank you to my team for their hard work and amazing loyalty through the years. And, as the saying goes, a good time was had by all.

CDs & DVDs I Bought On My US Trip

2009-11-13T14:14:00.003+08:00

In truth, it might make more sense to post this after I listen to all of it but wtf .... 90% of this is easily available in HK, it was just a lot cheaper to get it "over there."

* Where the Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968. Four CD set, the fourth in Rhino's Nuggets series (an expansion of Lenny Kaye's original 2 LP compilation, I think it was on Elektra?). I'd downloaded this but thought it was worth it to actually own it - in part because I love this music, in part because I have every other volume in the Nuggets series and especially because it features an absolutely fabulous book with detailed credits and info for each of the 101 songs on the set. Standells, Byrds, Love, Buffalo Springfield, Captain Beefheart, Lowell George, Iron Butterfly, Bobby Fuller, Rising Sons, Sonny & Cher, Doors, Seeds, Music Machine, Spirit - that's just some of the bands on just the first disc of this kick-ass set.

* Foo Fighters - Greatest Hits - the "deluxe" version that includes a DVD of their music videos.

* R.E.M. - Live at the Olympia - again deluxe version with 2 CDs and 1 DVD, early thoughts are that they've really been a shadow of their former selves in the studio for the past decade but still can cut it live.

* Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland - I'd wanted to get this "collectors edition" that includes a DVD with a documentary on the making of this, one of my all time favorite records, finally bit the bullet when I came across a used copy at Amoeba.

* Glen Campbell - Reunited With Jimmy Webb - for my money Webb is up there with the all time great songwriters and he got even better once he made the conscious decision to stop chasing hits. Campbell, one of the top session guitarists in the 60s, when he feels like it and when he has the right material, is a terrific singer. 14 bonus tracks clinched the deal for me.

* Barry Goldberg - Barry Goldberg - the original mix of the only non-Bob Dylan album produced by Bob Dylan, recorded in Muscle Shoals. Goldberg was my piano teacher while he was working on this record and two songs co-written with Gerry Goffin became big hits for others (Imagination for Gladys Knight, Spotlight for Rod Stewart). Maybe one of the worst album covers of all time. Barry introduced me to Goffin and Mike Bloomfield but I never got to meet Dylan - just as well, what the hell could I have said to his Bobness anyway. Further trivia: during this period Goldberg had an instrumental hit on r&b radio but had to change his name because the program directors said they wanted to play the record but couldn't because his name sounded too white for their stations. So for one record he became "Snake Eyes."

* Rolling Stones - Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out 40th Anniversary Edition - a relatively typical ABKCO disgrace - the first two CDs could have fit on a single disc. Haven't watched the DVD yet. Whatever, the original album was great, and I say that not just because I went to one of these shows but because it was great.

* Flo & Eddie - New York Times - two CD set of tracks selected from their 15 year run of Christmas shows at the Bottom Line in NYC. Flo & Eddie of course being the leaders of the Turtles, members of the Mothers of Invention and two of the busiest session back-up singers of all time (everyone from Springsteen to Bolan), they could do amazing pure pop and biting rock satire.

* Big Star - Keep an Eye on the Sky - long overdue box set for this seminal group. They may not have recorded much, they may not have sold much, but their influence over everything that came after them remains huge to this day.

* U2 - Unforgettable Fire - the original album, a 2nd disc of bonus tracks, a DVD documentary and a really nice hard cover book.

DVDs purchased - again mostly available in HK but cheaper to buy there

* The Story of Roxy Music - More Than This - had been debating on this, again a cheap copy at Amoeba helped make up my mind

* Wings of Desire - one of my all time favorite films gets the Criterion Blu-Ray treatment, no way I could resist because the DVD I have of this looks like shit

* Third Man - I wasn't going to spring for this Criterion Blu-Ray, I'm happy enough with the standard def disc, till I found out this was going out of print. If you've seen it, you know it's a fucking amazing film. If you haven't seen it, what's wrong with you?

* Howard's End - Merchant/Ivory get the Criterion Blu-Ray treatment. (Noticing a trend here? In the past I've bought as many Criterion releases as possible and rarely been disappointed; their Blu-Rays are even better.)

* Monsoon Wedding "and Seven Short Films" - yes, another Criterion Blu-Ray

* Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - the complete 9 disc set sold only via the net by Time/Life

* Food, Inc - bought this because I thought it was important for my mom to see it. I wanted to leave the disc with her after we watched it, told her she should loan it to all her friends, she said none of her friends have DVD players so it stays with me.

Kindle 2 Wrap-Up

2009-11-13T06:04:00.003+08:00

I've now had a Kindle 2 for two weeks - actually 2 Kindle 2's, first the review loaner I got from Amazon and then the one that I purchased for myself.

Pluses:

I love being able to carry so many books with me in such a slim and light weight device. That's always been one of my biggest issues when traveling - balancing wanting to bring a few books against trying to minimize weight in my backpack.

Reading books, navigating on the device and populating the device are features that are mostly intuitive and can be quickly learned by everyone.

I find that for sequential reading - by which I mean simply reading a book from page 1 to the end - the device is intuitive and easy to use. The fact that I can hold and manipulate it with one hand, or even put it down on a table without fear of losing my place, is great. That I can sit down on a bus or train and instantly be at where I left off - or stand on a bus or train and have no problem holding this and turning pages with one hand, that's also incredibly useful.

The almost instant delivery - via wireless or download to my PC - versus having to spend time shopping (usually unsuccessfully in HK) or waiting two weeks for delivery from the US remains a major plus. And I absolutely love being able to get the first chapter of every book for free. Not to mention the fact that in most cases, the eBook version is much cheaper than the physical book.

As I've said before, I believe that having the screen be gray instead of white means noticeably less eye strain when reading for long periods. The ability to select from six different font sizes for every book is also amazingly useful in this regard.

The Kindle app for my iPhone works really well. And they've just released beta Kindle software for the PC along with a promise that Mac software will be released soon.

Last but not least - when buying an eBook reader, one of the most critical factors is how you're going to fill it up. And at the moment, Amazon offers a far wider selection than either Sony or Barnes & Nobles. And aside from the wider choice of titles, they're running constant specials - some special free books and some bundled offers (for example, one of Chuck Klosterman's older books included free when buying his latest one). The second screen on the Nook may be nice, it may be useful, but it's meaningless if the book you want isn't available for that device.

Minuses:

I'm disappointed that the Kindle 2 does not contain native support for PDF files - something that the Kindle DX reportedly does have. I do not want to send PDFs to Amazon for conversion out of privacy concerns - many of the PDFs I want to view are confidential corporate documents and I don't want to inadvertently be the source of a leak. And I've found that converting PDFs on my own, via the freeware MobiPocket creator, is a less than perfect process - sometimes small sections of the files don't convert properly.

Navigation for non-sequential reading is clunky. For example, technical manuals or travel books or cook books. It's better for books purchased from Amazon - use the menu to go to the table of contents and then highlight a chapter, push a button and you're taken there. Converted PDF files feature no such indexing. And for at least one of the books I purchased, the index at the back of the book was not indexed - there was no way to go through that index, highlight an entry and go directly there. The QWERTY keyboard is also really only fit for single-finger entry. I also found myself wishing that there were more options such as "go forward ten pages" (it is possible to do a "skip to the next/previous chapter" which is good but I'd like more.

While images contained in the books come out okay, I was frustrated because they usually seemed to load at a nice contrasty resolution and then, once loaded, "soften" up quite a bit. I looked for a way to manually increase contrast but didn't find it. And while you can select an image and click on "zoom" to have the image increase to full screen, I would like an option to be able to further zoom an image - this lack was especially noticed in books that contained tables of data treated as images; it was difficult to read some of the figures in the tables and I couldn't zoom in any further.

If you are going to buy a Kindle, I recommend that you purchase a protective cover and a small light for it.

I bought Amazon's own $30 cover for the Kindle. There are all sorts of third party covers available but the Amazon one seems good enough.

I purchased the Mighty Bright clip-on LED light with flexible neck, $20 if memory serves. It has 2 LEDs and you can have either one or both lit; it runs on 3 AAA batteries that are not included in the package. The light is more than sufficient to illuminate an entire page in dark surroundings. However, glare from the light was sometimes an issue and I've had to really twist it around to minimize that.

The built-in dictionary feature may be useful for some, especially those for whom English is a second (or third!) language. The ability to create bookmarks and jot down notes tied to specific places in the text may also be useful for some people. And I found the text-to-speech feature worked far better than I expected it to (and I liked that one could choose either a male or female voice).

Note that Amazon seems to have now stopped selling the US-only CDMA edition of the Kindle 2. The only version you can buy is the international GSM version. This change took place after I purchased mine (a refurbished version of the CDMA model at a $40 savings).

I purchased this version using a US credit card and US billing address. This gives me a $2 savings on all eBooks I purchase and access to the full Kindle book store (the international version of the book store has about 15 or 20% less books available) but means I can only download the books to my PC and then transfer via USB from the PC to the Kindle. I can live with this although using the wireless feature in the US was really convenient! (And yes, on Tuesday I went to Barnes & Nobles in NYC, sat on the floor in front of a section I was interested in, and then pulled out the Kindle to see which of the books in front of me were available for Kindle. Maybe I downloaded one or two of them while sitting there.)

Overall, I'm extremely happy with my Kindle 2. It's not perfect, but for me it's extremely useful and works as promised. It goes with me everywhere - from long trips to short commutes, from the dining room table to the bedroom to, um, the bathroom. In recent years, I haven't been reading as much as I used to and I think that having this is going to result in reading a lot more - and no one can say that's not a good thing.

So while I think there's a lot of room for future enhancements to both the hardware and software, I have no regrets about sticking a stake in the ground and buying one now.

Is a Kindle right for you? That's something only you can decide. But I do think that everyone who reads should at least take a closer look at this.

(Note that the Kindle DX, essentially the same machine with a much larger screen at almost double the price, will start being available internationally starting early next year.)

So Happy to Be Home

2009-11-13T03:09:00.003+08:00

This trip was ten days but seemed like forever. So it feels extra nice to get home.

The flight back was relatively painless, or as painless as a 16 hour flight can be for a heavy smoker with a short attention span. I didn't get tagged with any excess baggage charges and the food on board was slightly better than the food ten days ago on my HK/LA flight.

On the flight, aside from my Kindle, my MacBook is my prime source of entertainment now. Electric outlet by the seat and the power adapter for the MacBook is neither bulky nor heavy. I'd loaded it up with movies and TV shows and also about 60 gigs of music - why pull out my iPhone and run the battery down?

The one movie I watched turned out to be almost shockingly bad, especially considering the talent attached to it. Lucky You was directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, 8 Mile). The script was cowritten by Hanson and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Insider, Ali, Munich, Benjamin Button). Starring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore, the cast also included Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr., Debra Messing, Horatio Sanz, Madeleine Peyroux, Jean Smart and a bunch of professional poker players as themselves. Bana is not much of a screen presence and Barrymore's talents are overwhelmed by her quirkiness (and in this case a poorly written character). The story has nowhere to go and takes its sweet time getting there.

I also watched 3 episodes from the current season of Mad Men, meaning I'm almost caught up to the season finale, which aired on Sunday. And the current episode of Californication - I've thought this season is something of a train wreck and yet I'm enjoying it, mostly due to a bravura performance from Kathleen Turner (and a hilarious cameo from Peter Fonda this week). I also tried to watch the Will Ferrell film Land of the Lost but gave up on it about a third of the way in. It was funny in bits and pieces but I just couldn't bring myself to care enough about it to stick with it to the end.

In terms of books, I mostly read Clarence Clemons' book, which is a very mixed bag. It's not told in a straightforward manner, his co-writer is someone who primarily writes for TV (leaving the book filled with vapid cliches) and they admit up front that only some of the stuff in the book is true, the rest is tall tales. (Hustling pool with Fidel Castro and Hunter Thompson? Fishing with Norman Mailer?) But it does give some insight into who Clemons is and the surprise (to me anyway) is that he's a far more complex and interesting person than I would have thought. You won't find much here on how he developed his unique sound and there's very little of the behind the scenes/in the studio kind of gossip. No outrageous road tales (he says he's being careful because everyone in the band has kids and grandkids). But it's a quick, breezy read and I recommend it to all Springsteen fans.

Overall, the trip was a mixed bag. As always, I didn't get to see anywhere near the number of people I planned to see. Once I get there, I'm hit with the reality of my mother's situation - 88 years old and lonely and with me only visiting once a year, I try not to run off on her too much even though being around her for more than 5 minutes at a time drives me up a freaking wall. This also meant that the lion's share of the food I ate was from diners and deliveries, so not quite the gourmet paradise I was hoping for. Then again, in terms of shopping, I got everything I planned to get and a little bit more.

So now I'm home. Of course I've got a bit of jetlag (I slept tonight from 10:30 PM to 2:30 PM). Meanwhile my gf's vacation was in the same time zone so she's peacefully sound asleep right now.

Next couple of days will be spent getting ready for a BBQ party I'm hosting for my former staff on Saturday night. Then next week, will start making some changes (hopefully improvements!) to the blog. And of course looking forward to getting out and about and seeing friends after the long break.

PCCW WTF?

2009-11-11T12:16:00.002+08:00

First off, my regular mobile phone is an iPhone, service provided by 3, and I keep the international data roaming set to "off."

Second, at the end of October, I got the Huawei WiFi modem from PCCW. They have an international data roaming plan, tiered at various levels, and I called before my trip to have them activate the plan for US roaming for 20 meg per month at HK$488. The plan says that if you go over that amount in a month, they'll charge you HK$0.1 per kilobyte.

I've been in the US for ten days and have used the modem every day, but it is not my prime method of connecting to the Internet. I suppose it's possible that I've come close to 20 megs but doubtful. I'm mostly downloading email and using iPhone apps that access the net (like Yelp and Facebook and Tweetdeck). I'm not doing much browsing via Safari, though there have been a couple of occasions when I've used the Google Maps app.

Tonight the phone rings just as I'm trying to sleep, so I don't take the call. A minute later, a beep to let me know I have a voicemail message. Curious, so I check my voicemail. (And since my data roaming has supposedly been cut off, I can't use Skype to make the call.)

"Hello Mr. Spike, this is calling from PCCW. We are letting you know that you are approaching your GPRS limit of 20 meg and we are barring your service so that you don't go over the limit. If you would like to continue using the service, we require a payment of HK$3,500. Please call this number."

WTF? A payment of $3,500? How did I manage to go from $488 to $3,500?

So now of course I'm fully awake. I call PCCW. The girl who answers knows nothing. She checks the record. It tells her nothing. Why do I suddenly owe $3,500? She doesn't know. She claims that because I am outside of Hong Kong, they will not know my data usage until the end of the month. Well, if they won't know it until the end of the month, how come this guy knows it now and has cut me off? She doesn't know. She needs to investigate and will call me back.

If they wanna tell me I've hit 20 megs, I'm fine with that. I'm leaving in 12 hours anyway and will manage without using the modem. But where does the $3,500 charge come in?

So now I'm wide awake. Waiting for a call ....

Over-weight

2009-11-11T09:45:00.002+08:00

The result of a week long shopping frenzy, interrupted only by a Springsteen concert (during which I shopped for Springsteen merch) is that my bags are going to be about 20 pounds overweight for the return flight - and that's with putting a lot of stuff into my carry-on bag. I was 20 pounds underweight for the LA to NYC flight - that means I got somewhere between 30 and 40 pounds of stuff while here? Doesn't seem possible.

Yet, as an example, bought 4 pairs of Levi's today. Yes, Levi's are available in every shopping mall in HK - but they're about 50% cheaper here. Anyway, those four pairs of pants alone are ten pounds. So add on a few books, a few magazines, a few DVDs, half a dozen t-shirts, eventually it all adds up.

Well, anyway, I leave here early afternoon Wednesday NY time, arrive back in HK Thursday night HK time. Looking forward to getting home.

Things are slow

2009-11-10T12:12:00.002+08:00

A bit of shopping and lunch today with a cousin. His first book came out two years ago, he's working on his second and it looks (fingers crossed) as if it could first appear as an article in the New Yorker early next year.

We had lunch at NYC's fabled Shake Shack. Burgers, dogs, fries and shakes, they have 3 locations in NYC and look to be expanding further soon. I've seen this place get multiple raves in multiple blogs. I'm told that at their original location, 23rd Street on the east side, people line up for an hour for one of their burgers.

Well, it was a burger. It was a good burger. It wasn't a great burger. The beef had a nice taste, cheese was good, but the bun was soggy and almost ruined the whole affair for me. Fries were decent, the shake was nice. I think the appeal is that given the whole gourmet burger thing going on in NYC, this is a damned good burger for the price. They say the meat is fresh ground and hand-formed daily. But I wouldn't go out of my way to go back there again. (My cousin agreed.)

Finally got the Frye boots I've been lusting after for more than a year. So glad I didn't buy them online. With most shoes, I always wear US size 11. The guy measured my foot and pronounced me a size 9. I ended up getting a 9-1/2 and it was a damned near perfect fit. (And the best part was, the price was the same as Zappos, so it didn't cost me any extra.)

Also got R. Crumb's complete illustrated version of the Book of Genesis and from what I've looked at so far, it's magnificent stuff. The odd thing is that on Amazon, it's listed as shipping in "1 to 3 months." The first Barnes & Nobles I went into was sold out. But another one not too far away, and they had a huge stack of them. This is something that definitely would not work on the Kindle.

It was both nostalgic and alien to walk around Manhattan's upper west side today. I lived on the corner of 76th and Broadway for 10 years, from 1976-86, roughly. Almost all of the buildings are the same, but the shops have all changed. The shops in my old building used to be magazine stands, shoe repair joints, actual useful places. Now there's a branch of Barney's there. Burger Joint is still there, Gray's Papaya is still a few blocks down, and I can make out where Plato's Retreat and Tower Records used to be. The new Apple Store looks like it will open soon and they've finished the renovations on Alice Tully Hall and Julliard at Lincoln Center.

The odd thing is - I hadn't brought my camera out with me today. Okay, it was roughly 38 years ago when someone pulled a gun on me on the corner of 93rd & Broadway (I looked at the two guys said "oh, come on" and walked away from them, taking the chance that the street was too busy for them to actually pull the trigger) but all these years later I'm still feeling a bit paranoid about walking around Manhattan with any conspicuous display of wealth. I would have liked to have taken photos of the old 'hood though.

Tomorrow, time and weather permitting, I'll walk over to the street where I spent the first 24 years of my life and take some photos there.

Anyway, one more full day here and then the 18 hour plane ride home. And I'm gonna be both glad to leave and very happy to get home. My gf's flight comes in from Manila half an hour before mine, so we get to meet at the airport and go home together. After not seeing her for 10 days, hope we don't do anything to shock the taxi driver, at least not too much!

Some of What You Missed

2009-11-09T11:35:00.002+08:00

I'm told that almost the entire Springsteen show I saw last night can be found on YouTube. Found four clips so far. And found multiple audience audio recordings of the entire show online as well.

Tonight he's doing the double album, The River, in its entirety. Wish I was there again but at least I know I'll be able to hear it tomorrow.

Enjoy these clips:

The opening song:

Two songs from the Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle:

The finale with Elvis Costello:

Is Social Media Fucking Up Your Life?

2009-11-09T00:43:00.004+08:00

Status post by a friend on Facebook yesterday:

I just want all my friends to know that facebook has really fucked up my life if anyone wants to find out more just email me

Then, today's Doonesbury:

Actually, for me, so far so good. I just passed the 400 "friends" milestone on Facebook. I'm spending time learning how to be a better Twitterer and I think succeeding at that, at least in fits and starts.

And also variously reading some books on blogging ... look for one result of this within a week or 10 days as I have some changes in mind.

Brrruuuuuucccccccceeeeeee!

2009-11-08T13:55:00.003+08:00

The short verdict on Springsteen at Madison Square Garden, NYC: after seeing him live about 30 times over 25 years and then not seeing him live for 10 years, my expectations were running high. And he lived up to them! A solid three hours.

I also realized during the show what's missing from every rock concert in HK - an audience that knows how to act at a rock concert. Tonight, 20,000 people on their feet, dancing, singing along, a true party atmosphere that of course feeds back to the band on stage and gives them even more energy and inspiration.

Seeing as how I got to my seat early (and I was alone), I spent time bouncing back and forth between email, Facebook and Twitter. For my iPhone, I have both TweetDeck and Tweetie and found it more intuitive to set up a search on #Springsteen on Tweetie. I got the word that the start of the show was delayed because almost all tickets were "will call" and they were having tech problems at the booth. And someone posted a photo of the handwritten set list, which turned out to be 99% correct. I had a very good seat - alongside the stage, about 10 or 15 rows up, on the Charlie/Clarence side.

During this final leg of the tour, Springsteen's been playing a different album each night as part of the set. Tonight was the first and possibly only time he chose to do his second album, The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle. That's a difficult album to recreate live and the already huge E. Street Band (10 people including Bruce) was expanded to include 2 back-up singers, 5 horns, 8 strings and one percussion (which turned out to be Richard Blackwell, who had played on the original album). An extended version of Kitty's Back, featuring jazzy solos from Roy, Charles (Giordano, who has taken over the second keyboard spot following Danny Federici's untimely death), Nils, Steven, Soozie, Clarence and all 5 horns was possibly my favorite song of the night.

Oh, and he opened the show with Thunder Crack - a true concert rarity and one of my early faves. Clarence is still recovering from surgery on both knees earlier this year and sat for more than half the show. (And during the band introductions at the end, he held up his book. Which I've started reading and finding it better than I expected. But still.)

Another new concert staple - halfway through the show, during Raise Your Hand, people hold up large signs with requests. Springsteen walks around, collects the signs and after RYH, picks one, holds it up for the band to see, and they go into it. And then picks a second one, same drill.

Of course you don't get the spontaneity of shows from 35 years ago. But you do get a lot of energy. I got the feeling that Springsteen still actually enjoys almost every moment of this. Hey, he's 60 now and he's been doing this for 40 years. But he still gives the impression that he cares about putting on a good show, about entertaining the audience, about trying to toss in a little bit of new stuff amidst all the old, and that he will go on doing this for as long as he's physically able.

For three hours he's non-stop action, practically a blur. He still lifts a girl out of the audience to dance with him during Dancing in the Dark - and I mean lifts her up, holds her in his arms and swings her around several times. By the time he finished the 7 songs of Wild, Innocent, it was 90 minutes into the show, just halfway through, and I was exhausted! I was thinking that after they took their bows for that run of songs there might be a 15 minute break but they kept going. And even after the 20 songs of the "main set" were finished, when the lights when dim and the audience was going nuts, they didn't leave the stage, none of this faux encore bullshit.

For those who care, the song list:

Thunder Crack
Seeds
Prove It All Night
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
E Street Shuffle
Sandy
Kitty's Back
Wild Billy's Circus Story
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
New York City Serenade
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Raise Your Hand
request 1 - Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Stret
request 2 - Glory Days?
Human Touch
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run

"encores"
Wrecking Ball (with lyrics adapted for Madison Square Garden)
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing in the Dark
Higher and Higher (with Elvis Costello)

The only negative, if you can call it that - I only brought my Nikon D300 to the US and my gf took the Canon G-10 with her to Manila. I could have got the Canon in and would have gotten great shots from where I was sitting. But I only had my iPhone. Tried taking photos with the camera and several camera apps (Snapture, Best Camera, Photoshop Mobile). Tried a bit of video too. Will look at it later on but I doubt there's anything of even relatively decent quality there. My one attempt at audio recording, using iTalk Light, is so distorted it's painful to listen to. But I expect at least decent audience recordings to show up on the Springsteen usenet group within a couple of days.

Giving up on Linksys

2009-11-07T22:30:00.003+08:00

So I just spent about 90 minutes on the phone with Cisco/Linksys trying to get the wireless G router to work properly.

To recap, purchased this for my mother, the goal being make it easier for me to connect when I come here and give her better firewall protection. Set the whole thing up, got everything working, but speed dropped down to sub-dial-up speed. Obviously not satisfactory.

The good thing about Cisco is the response time on their tech support line. I called at 8 AM EST and only had to click through about 4 menu choices before being put through to an actual person. (PCCW, you paying attention?)(No, of course not.) But that's about where the goodness ends.

The first mistake was mine - about 20 minutes into that call, the guy asked me to cycle the cable modem. I forgot my mother also uses Optimum Online for VOIP, so when I unplugged the modem, the call was of course dropped.

Called back and yes, they did have the record of the previous call so I didn't have to start up quite from square one again. But now, before going any further, the guy tried to upsell me. For 10 smackers, they'd remote connect to the PC and try to fix it for me. But, I told the guy, my current connect speed is slower than dial-up, I don't think your guys would able to actually accomplish something even if they can connect.

An hour later, still on the phone, things were actually in worse shape than before I called. I was getting an IP address but couldn't connect to any web site at all; DNS was no longer able to resolve any web site addresses but in a weird way .... I'd get "connecting" then "waiting for http://www.yahoo.com/" and then after a minute or two it would then say it was connecting me to the google search page and then after another minute would say that it couldn't find that address either.

At least I was able to connect to web sites before I called them even though it was frigging slow. Now zilch. On both my mom's PC running WinXP and my MacBook (running Snow Leopard), trying both wired and wireless.

At this point, the guy wanted me to recycle the cable modem again, knowing that it meant I'd lose the call. He gave me my case number, I wrote it down, repeated it back to him, ended the call.

And then unplugged the router, packed it back up in the box and will return it to Best Buy tomorrow. I give up.

All thumbs - mentally

2009-11-07T13:05:00.002+08:00

Oh what a groovy day. Not.

As always, went shopping with my mother, a little bit for myself, mostly for things she might need around the house, since I'm here to carry and install shit for her.

The thing you need to know for later is that my mother has two wallets - one for cash, one for credit cards and ID.

We get to Costco and she discovers she doesn't have the 2nd wallet with her, no Costco card. She wants to go but like, we're the only ones who've ever shown up without our card? Of course she can get a temporary one. It's a good chance for me to load up on over-the-counter drugs, too. Someone will have to check and tell me how much Imodium is at Watson or Manning, I'm sure it's around 10 or 20 pills for close to HK$100 or US$13. I got 400 of the generic "Kirkland" brand for US$9. And so on down the line. And the fact that she doesn't have her credit cards with her means we don't have to have the usual argument over who's paying, I win by default.

Lunch at Nathan's. Nathan's hot dogs. Yum.

I go into Best Buy. I get the DVD of Food, Inc., because I want her to see it. (And I want you to see it, too!) And I get her a Cisco/Linksys wireless router. It ought to solve my connection problems at her place and after I leave, provide a better firewall for her. Nothing fancy, just 802.11g will be enough.

I pop into Modell's, a sporting goods chain. Everyone else in the world had the same idea. Buy Yankees World Series Champions merch. Coupla t-shirts. Some nice hats but they're sized and they don't have anything close to my size.

Kosher butcher.

Bed Bath and Beyond, some stuff for her bathroom.

Then a discount drug store chain. She wants to load up on soaps and shampoos. I want to get some Dr. Scholl's foot things. These shoe inserts to provide more arch support. They sell Dr. Scholl's in Hong Kong but every shop where I find it, they don't have my size. Here they not only have my size, they have what seems like a hundred more varieties than you can find in HK.

Stop off at a nearby "gourmet shop," kind of a Bronx version of City Super, but bigger and cheaper. I grab some stuff for me for weekend lunches (prosciutto, provolone, etc.) and some cooked things I can nuke for dinner.

Back home.

NOW ... she goes looking for that second wallet. She can't find it. We tear the house apart. When did she see it last? She's not sure. What was she wearing? She's not sure. But she's convinced that I threw it down the garbage shoot. Great. I tell her it's probably in the car. She says no way. So we tear the house apart one more time. Now she's almost at the point of collapse at the thought of having to get new drivers license, car registration and god knows how many credit cards reissued. I don't say a word, put on my coat, go down to the car, and of course it's on the floor next to the seat.

Okay, one crisis averted.

After dinner, we watch Food, Inc. Unbelievably, she's glued to the TV and hardly talking while it's on. (My mother hasn't stopped talking in the 55 years I've known her. I've probably inherited this bad habit from her but it's also why I go for women who can appreciate the zen beauty of silence. My gf can do this, but it did take her a little while to catch on.)(I also come to realize that while my gf is someone I can be with 24/7 without feeling irrationally irritated or frustrated, my mother is best taken in short doses and we've been together non-stop for the entire day. I understand, she lives alone, she's grateful to have me in the house and someone to talk to all day long, but I'm hitting the wall.)

(Actually I hit the wall by lunch, when she decided to try to bash my gf, whom she's never met or talked to. But since my gf is not white, not Jewish, not rich, not other things on the list, she's not appropriate for me. She says, "Try not to get upset but I want to tell you ..." And I cut her off. "Before you start to speak, think carefully. What is the result you hope to get? Do you think if you say something negative about her I'll break up with her because of that? Or do you think I'll just get upset? And if what you want to say isn't going to give you the result you want, why bother to say it in the first place?" Thankfully, that put an end to that conversation. For about an hour ....)

I tell her I want to leave the Food, Inc. DVD with her, that she should loan it to all her friends. But she says none of her friends have DVD players.

Meanwhile, I'm staring at the box that's been delivered. It's a combination cable decoder and DVR that she ordered. Why didn't she get installation? She didn't want to pay the $35. I know nothing about her cable TV provider and have no experience using a DVR. With my luck, I will totally disable cable TV if and when I try to get this hooked in. And then the joy of trying to teach her to use it, since she refuses to read instruction manuals. She still has a VCR, the clock is still flashing at 00:00.)

And then I go to install the Linksys router. Mindful of the problems I had getting my laptop to work on her internet connection, I recycle her cable modem after everything else is installed. It all works after that, except the speed is so slow, it can be measured in Kbps, not Mbps - and I'm not talking 100Kbps or 500Kbps, I'm talking more like dial-up speeds. On both the wired connection to her PC and the wireless connection to my MacBook.

A bit of research online, I figure out how to clone her PC's MAC address on the router, but that doesn't solve the problem. And I'm tired now. Tomorrow I'll call the Cisco help line and see if they can figure it out. If not, it goes back to Best Buy I suppose.

Tomorrow is going to be a joy, at least until I can leave late afternoon and head down to MSG for the Springsteen show.

D-oh!

2009-11-06T18:49:00.002+08:00

Recycle my mom's internet modem; i.e. unplug the bastard, wait a minute, plug it back in. Hello internet on my MacBook. The only excuse I can come up with for it taking me 30 hours to think of this is jetlag. And that excuse really isn't good enough, is it? Am I slipping into early senility?

My mom's internet is seriously fast, too. Being in the US helps as well, I'm sure. Her line is showing as 10Mbps, but just downloading a 700 meg torrent (with 48 seeds) in 17 minutes, which I'm sure is more than 25% faster than I can do it in HK with my 8Mbps line.

I did get 5 hours sleep last night - um, 10 PM to 3 AM. Hopefully can get a bit more sleep this morning before we go out today.

Yesterday's food - not a foodie paradise since we didn't go out all day. A pizza delivered for lunch - not a culinary masterwork by any means but close enough to the NY style pizza I crave. And since it was raining last night, we had Chinese food delivered. It was of course American Chinese food, not real Chinese food, but that's another bit of nostalgia for me. I got some roast pork chow fun, which is hard to come by in HK - I'm told HK people find this an odd combination? But I love it. Simple enough to make at home, gotta start doing it once I get back. At least this place loaded the dish down with veggies too, but they cooked the veggies to death and beyond.

Today we'll get out. I'll take my mom for whatever shopping she needs and that will undoubtedly lead to lunch at a diner or maybe even (gasp!) Nathan's.

My mother's 88 years old. She's got a lot of little health problems. But over all I think she's set to outlive me. At least I think I've finally convinced her to sell the car - almost HK style in that her car is 10 years old and only has 20,000 miles on it. Which means she can take the money from the sale and use it for taxis.

As I'd mentioned, I'd taken all her old photo albums and scanned them - close to 3,000 pictures in all. Copied it all onto her computer, installed Picasa, made a screen saver for her that randomly cycles through all these photos. She spent hours looking at the pictures, as I knew she would. Later she dug out some VHS tapes of old 8mm movies she'd converted to video. One thing on there - super 8mm footage I'd shot of Delaney and Bonnie with Eric Clapton at the Fillmore East - silent unfortunately, but clear. I wonder if there's more stuff like this lurking in some box in the back of some closet. Gotta convert this stuff to digital soon.

That's about it for now. Looking forward to the Springsteen concert Saturday night! (And getting some more sleep now?)

AT&T Completely Bites

2009-11-06T05:42:00.000+08:00

Things are so slow with the Huawei modem that it's inches away from useless. Since the modem works fine in HK, I'm assuming the issue is the AT&T network here. Despite seeing full bars for reception, things load so slow that trying to do anything other than email is an exercise in frustration.

More on my networking issue

2009-11-05T21:36:00.002+08:00

The problem I'm having specifically is that on plugging in an ethernet cable to my MacBook, I get the error message "Ethernet has self-assigned IP address, cannot connect to the internet." Googling this error phrase yields thousands of hits ranging from 5 years old to the present. None of the solutions I've come across have worked for me. (If I hadn't lost my fricking Huawei modem I probably wouldn't be having this problem now.)

The best way to give a full description of the problem would be for me to repost the message I just posted at MacOSXHints Forums.

Hi, I've seen some similar threads here but nothing that's 100% the equivalent of what I'm getting, so hoping by starting a new thread it might yield a few clues.

My hardware - 15" MacBook dual-booting Snow Leopard and Windows 7 (via Bootcamp).

I've had no problems networking the MacBook under either OS until I arrived in NYC last night to visit my mother. Now I'm getting the "Ethernet has self-assigned IP address" error that others have reported under various circumstances.

In this case, my mother uses Optimum Online as her ISP. I have checked her networking configuration (she uses WinXP) and everything is automatic - DHCP, DNS, etc, no user ID or password required for internet access.

I took the ethernet cable from her PC, plugged it into my MacBook, and I get the error with both Snow Leopard and Win7.

I have tried deleting the airport preferences file from the library, I have tried setting TCP/IP preferences manually and then going back to DHCP again, I have the firewall turned off, allow all connections. I have turned off Airport since there is no WiFi. There is no router, wired or wireless.

Because there's no router, trying to fix this is especially frustrating - I connect the cable to her PC, google around a bit for some possible answers, connect to my MacBook, apply the answers, reboot the MacBook, still doesn't work, reconnect the ethernet cable to her PC, google some more, repeat and repeat and repeat!

None of this is working. If I have to spend the next 7 days on her PC it will drive me crazy! (Because it's old and slow, because my files are all on my MacBook, etc.)

I'm almost ready to go out and buy a pocket WiFi travel router (except there are no guarantees that would solve the issue, right?)

Any thoughts, tips, ideas, jokes or lines from obscure movies (except "frankly my dear I don't give a damn!") would be most appreciated!

As it says, any thoughts, tips, etc. most appreciated!

In the meantime waiting to hear from the driver if he's found my Huawei thing or if I'm screwed on that too.

MacBook Networking

2009-11-05T14:48:00.002+08:00

This day is not ending well.

I was using my Huawei pocket WiFi in the back of the cab from the airport to my mom's. Got to my mom's but the modem didn't. It's probably sitting on the back seat of the cab. Fortunately this is a private car service and a driver my mother has been using for years and I was his last ride of the night. Hopefully it's sitting on the back seat (I went back down to the street with a flashlight but couldn't find it) and he'll find it and return it at some point tomorrow.

So in the meantime, my mother is on Optimum for cable TV, IP phone and Internet. She has standard internet settings, DHCP, etc, you plug the ethernet cable into the back of her PC and she's good to go. And last time, I'd simply pop that cable into my laptop and also be good to go. I've looked at the network set-up properties on her computer and there's nothing special there, no login name or password, all the usual stuff.

But my MacBook is being finicky. It shows an ethernet connection, shows that it's set for DHCP, but giving me some error message about the connection and not connecting to the internet. I'm tired, didn't write the message down, got some Snow Leopard books on my Kindle, take a look tomorrow I guess. Until then .... sigh.