I am waiting outside Stacks restaurant in Menlo Park for a RJC friend
and a table. It will be 30 to 40 minutes before a table is ready.

Just uploaded some photos I took of The Niles Dog Show 2008. The event was held on last Saturday (July 19, 2008).

I finally finished picking and uploading photos from my Taiwan trip way back in May of this year. Click on the mosaic to go to the set.

So less than 2 weeks after I proudly proclaimed my reluctance to upgrade to iPhone 3G (see comments here), I went out and bought an iPhone 3G, the 8GB version.

I certainly didn’t plan this. Just 3 days ago my stand against iPhone 3G was still, as the CEO of my former company liked to put it, “rock solid”. Then 2 days ago my wife told me that a colleague of hers has a friend who wants to buy my old iPhone. Since I didn’t mind the contract and the old iPhone’s non-replaceable battery was already a year old, I quickly crumpled from my original stance and decided to rejoin the dark side.

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Life has a funny way to hinting at us, unfortunately most of the time we are just not aware of it. Case in point:

Yesterday afternoon I spent 2-3 hours cursing at MySql because my stored procedure just didn’t work. The syntax looked fine. The condition check worked correctly by itself but just not inside the sproc. I was not a happy camper.

This morning I was helping to troubleshoot an issue that arose in test environment. Turned out the problem had to do with MySql’s case insensitivity. This was different from Microsoft’s SQL Server, with which I had more experience.

After lunch I continued with my MySql stored procedures. I grabbed a colleague to help, and he pointed out that the cause was with MySql’s case insensitivity, again.

So the test issue this morning was code-monkey king’s way of hinting me at my sproc bug, but I was just totally oblivious to it.

According to reports (here is one), Apple is sneakily installing MobileMe software when users set up iTunes 7.7. I came home tonight and double checked my desktop, and true enough, the dreaded MobileMe setting is in my Control Panel. No where during my iTunes 7.7 installation was I prompted about MobileMe.

Just yesterday I had to deal with a similar annoyance. Along with a Java update from Sun Microsystems came an option to install Google Toolbar for browsers. I was clicking so fast on the ‘Next’ buttons during installation that I accidentally allowed it to go through.

I guess it’s okay for media darlings such as Apple and Google to try this stunt. If Microsoft was to try this, I am sure it would have been sued to the last penny. And I am guessing the European Union would be the most raucous.

我们家附近的“大四川”饭馆下礼拜二就要关门了，那里的小笼包是我记忆里最棒的，今天中午我们特地跑去点了两套，好好地开了一个离别午会。

Turns out the HTC Touch Diamond is more of a dud than nirvana. Sure it has a fantastic VGA screen, but its TouchFlo 3D interface got hammered by reviewers for non-responsiveness. With a $700 price tag for an unlock Europe version, it’s too rich for my blood.

That’s why Gigabyte’s GSmart MS820 interests me. (Sorry, a tad lazy to download and re-upload a picture of MS820 from the source.) Not only does it have a VGA screen, but it has a 4.9MB camera! So far so good. I just hope for three things:

1. the camera quality is good,
2. the 520MHz CPU is fast enough,
3. and it doesn’t cost an arm or a leg.

Let’s see how it pans out in the real market.

[Via PocketNow]