Thursday, June 1st, 2006

I'm moving my blog site, it can now be found at http://blog.phamily.org

category: Journal
updated: 9:17am 2006-06-01
comments: 0 views: 0

Thursday, March 30th, 2006

I almost forgot how easy it can be to write a simple web application....

So for work I decided I would "quickly" whip up a nice little web app. I always use PHP for my web apps, it's just what I'm the most comfortable with. This time it's not the normal PHP & MySql app though, I'm using SOAP now!

Oh on a sidenote, I downloaded this development API, started using it and found it really well written, I was still learning it so I started reading through the code, noticed some comments which looked "familiar" as I learned more and started reading the online forums, I see more "familiar" things... turns out one of my old co-workers from my days at Cal wrote the API I'm using... the world always seems so small.

Anyways, regarding writing apps, it always seems hard to start, but once the ball is rolling, everything seems to just work at the end of the day.

category: Journal
updated: 2:01am 2006-03-30
comments: 0 views: 0

Friday, March 10th, 2006

I'm starting a new project today, to do it, I need to install PHP and Apache... I got a strange sense of happiness setting up my development environment. Funny how you never realize how much you miss things sometimes.

category: Journal
updated: 5:46pm 2006-03-10
comments: 0 views: 0

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

After a few hours of work tonight I have it all working!

If you want to reach my home number, call one of the following numbers, then hit 1 and my SIP number 1-747-642-3572 followed by the # key...

Atlanta 1-678-918-5026
Atlantic City 1-609-840-8027
Baltimore 1-410-372-4173
Chicago 1-708-437-9040
Connecticut 1-860-256-4170
Dallas 1-469-449-2560
Fort Worth 1-817-886-2285
Daytona Beach 1-386-267-2650
Houston 1-832-631-1597
Los Angeles 1-323-908-4167
Miami 1-786-206-4270
New York 1-347-427-9019
N New Jersey 1-973-494-5586
S New Jersey 1-609-873-8119
Philadelphia 1-610-879-1419
San Francisco 1-415-354-1083
Seattle 1-206-219-5789
Washington, DC 1-202-742-5739

After YEARS of not having a home phone, I'm finally going to setup phones in my new place, each phone jack will have it's own number!

category: Journal
updated: 1:45am 2006-03-09
comments: 4 views: 21

Tuesday, March 7th, 2006

I can get pretty annoyed sometimes, I don't think I deal very well with people who have bad communication skills. Not that I'm the best myself, believe me I wish I was better.

What has really gotten to me recently is when someone asks me a question, that is completely wrong. It's like they somehow get the idea that they know what they are doing, but then they really have no idea. Here's an example, someone comes to me and says, "Where is the X file located?" so I point them to the file, and then they say, "Oh what I really need to know is who changed that file..." My first reaction is uhh, we'll why didn't you just say that?

Other times people just blindly ask, "hey what do you recommend for x?" Of course I ask questions, and then I get blank looks like, "uhh what's the difference?" That really annoys me, especially when you can find the answer with a quick google search!

category: Journal
updated: 5:24pm 2006-03-07
comments: 0 views: 0

Monday, March 6th, 2006

today i had saltines and a coke... for lunch at 3:30pm

category: Journal
updated: 4:00pm 2006-03-06
comments: 0 views: 0

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

The other day one of my co-workers bought 5 lotto tickets, three of them matched the mega number, the one you MUST match to win big... Each of the three tickets unfortunatly only matched 1 other number, so they are only worth something like $2... doesn't that suck? In the end he only made $1. I suppose it's better than losing completely.

Then, recently, someone else left my company, apparently he came into a pretty big sum of money and quit... sheeh.

category: Journal
updated: 9:37am 2006-03-03
comments: 0 views: 0

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006

It's taken about a week, but I feel much better now. Still have a cough but at least the miserable feeling is gone.

Anyways, about a month ago I got a new laptop, it's a Dell Latitude D410. It's an ultraportable model, I had one of these with me when I went to Vietnam last year and liked it so much I decided to buy one with all the extras. I got the media base which holds an extra battery and the DVD-RW drive, with dual batteries I'm getting 10 hours or more battery life. The screen is about the only downside, it's 12 inches and only 1024x768 so if I'm doing any work, I'm usually using an external monitor.

Other than that, it has plenty of ram and hard drive space to do all my work. It's like the perfect laptop for me... I've got to get around to dumping the rest of my computers, the old laptop and old exchange server... they need to go.

category: Journal
updated: 12:56pm 2006-03-02
comments: 0 views: 0

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

Not much going on, I slept all day Sunday and after work monday. I seem to have caught my first cold of the year, cough, congestion, fever, etc... basically just miserable.

For my new home I bought a very nice Netgear RangeMax router which has turned out to be complete crap. It's the most expensive router I've ever bought $100, and it kept "crashing" I was able to reproduce it too, I guess it had something to do with a certain packet getting sent through it. Anyways, now it doesn't work at all, and I'm on day 2 with netgear support.

There's so much to do and no time to do it...

category: Journal
updated: 5:49pm 2006-02-28
comments: 0 views: 0

Saturday, February 11th, 2006

is a 10% gain on long term investments considered a good return?

category: Journal
updated: 1:22pm 2006-02-11
comments: 0 views: 0

Thursday, February 9th, 2006

The weather has been incredible the past few days, mid-70's and sunny... makes me wish I was outside instead of at work.

category: Journal
updated: 10:05am 2006-02-09
comments: 0 views: 0

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

okay I realize it now, housepayments suck, I think my home loan is better than most people, but it's still amazingly expensive.

category: Journal
updated: 9:36am 2006-02-07
comments: 0 views: 0

Thursday, January 26th, 2006

I got this Bluetooth headset, works great with Skype, too bad I don't talk to anyone else over Skype...

category: Journal
updated: 8:34pm 2006-01-26
comments: 0 views: 0

Monday, January 2nd, 2006

For some reason today is a vacation day and I came into the office bright and early at 7am... I thought something was wrong when I didn't see anyone by 9:30am.

category: Journal
updated: 11:02am 2006-01-02
comments: 0 views: 1

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

My company is shutdown for a week... I am still working though, at least I can work from home for a good portion of the day. The nice thing is that even if something goes wrong and I have to go into the office to fix it, it is literally 5 minutes away. How I love the way things are...

Anyways, during the late nights I've been painting and setting up the house. I got the Fiber hooked up, I took a screen capture from DSL Reports the speed is insane, something like 8mbit upstream and downstream. Bittorrent was able to UPLOAD! at 2MB/sec without any issues.

I replaced all my lighbulbs with 100W compact flourescent ones, they actually only use 23W, so the package says you save $77/year for each bulb. I changed a total of 20, I hope it makes a difference.

As for the paint, lets see, we got the following colors from Home Depot:

Fudge Bar - 1/2 bath

Fossil Butte - living room

Earth Tone - 1/2 of the staircase

Sunset Beige - 1/2 of the staircase

Painted Turtle - bedroom

It's starting to look nice in here, once the furniture and blinds get here... it'll be ready to have a party!

category: Journal
updated: 12:17pm 2005-12-28
comments: 1 views: 12

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

I remember when I interviewed for my current job, I actually had more than one interview, I think it was two, maybe three. What I remember most vividly was the last interview, the hiring managers were really concerned if I would be happy with this position. The funniest thing was right before I signed the papers, one of the guys told me "you know it's alot of work..."

That was sort of an understatement... he was right though, there's never a dull moment and the startup environment I am loving it, although I think I spend too much of the companies money and alot of times things don't always go according to plan. The long hours and neverending list of things to do are a welcome change from what I was doing before.

category: Journal
updated: 8:32am 2005-12-22
comments: 0 views: 0

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

So I'm back from South East Asia... what have I been doing...

1 - taking pictures, the holidays are busy.

2 - still moving, how did I accumulate all this stuff?

3 - working, funny how alot of things just waited for me to come back.

This is my life, 12 hours of work everyday and then go home to pack, move and unpack... maybe next year will be a bit better.

category: Journal
updated: 8:01pm 2005-12-21
comments: 0 views: 0

Friday, November 25th, 2005

While on vacation in Vietnam:

Okay so we're actually in Hoi An, it's 1:26pm on 11/26/2005, tomorrow morning we're headed for Saigon. We've spent $1,300 in just over a week now... having a great time in the hot humid rain ;) Here's where we're staying in Hoi An www.hoianhotels.com.vn

category: Journal
updated: 10:32pm 2005-11-25
comments: 0 views: 1
photoviews: 24

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005

Well, it might very well be bad timing, but we've decided to buy, hopefully in 2 weeks I'll be moved in and ready to go on vacation ;)

category: Journal
updated: 4:03am 2005-10-25
comments: 0 views: 0

Sunday, October 9th, 2005

I hate slow connections, especially when you have large datasets to work with and not enough time... I've been doing a rsync for the past 3 hours and it's only about half way done.

Anyways, since I just set it and forget it, I spent some time looking at some of my recent photos.

Okay nevermind, I'm out of time and have to run!

category: Journal
updated: 11:17am 2005-10-09
comments: 0 views: 0
photoviews: 34

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005

So for almost three years I drove a car to work 100 miles a day, since I would come and go during commute hours, there was a carpool lane in both directions. I really hate traffic, it drives me nuts, I used to drive in the carpool lane by myself alot back then, not the whole way, but at least through the big traffic jams. In all those years of driving like that I never got caught....

Today I left work around 3pm and went to Frys and Compusa to return some things, I left Frys and headed towards Compusa on Lawrence Expressway.... as I'm driving down an overpass, I see a police officer on the side, he's aiming a radar gun at me... I look down, 45mph in a 50mph zone. Cool I think, maybe I just look like I'm going fast.

I pass him and he keeps staring at me, he starts up his motorcycle and follows me then pulls up next to me and then it hits me as I pass the carpool sign and realize that it's past 3pm (when carpool starts).

So I get a ticket for driving in the carpool lane, I drove in it for maybe 1 mile before I got pulled over, and my exit was only about 2 lights away. The officer asked me if I realized I was getting pulled over for a carpool violation, and I told him initially I didn't know, but after I passed that sign I knew it. He was a nice guy, I told him I work alot and I'm not usually out driving during carpool times, but that didn't work. It wasn't even crowded, the lanes next to me were empty, but none of that matters, next time I'll know.

I bet this is all payback for all those times I got away with it. The officer did say that it's good I wasn't speeding since he usually pulls people over for that, and his last comment to me before letting me go was "beautiful car"

category: Journal
updated: 5:36pm 2005-10-04
comments: 1 views: 5

Sunday, October 2nd, 2005

I just want a break, to not have to worry about life and all its problems. I suppose you could say I've been stressed lately, on top of all the time I've spent at work, I caught a cough from someone and the past week has been tough. Outside of work I'm also looking for a home to buy, but the market doesn't seem to be helping us.

category: Journal
updated: 9:36pm 2005-10-02
comments: 0 views: 0

Friday, September 23rd, 2005

I went to Arrowfest today in Santa Clara, very cool, I came back with a bag of free stuff! I went with some of the guys from work. One guy, he knew everyone there, we couldn't walk around for more than a few minutes before someone recognized him.

category: Journal
updated: 12:21am 2005-09-23
comments: 0 views: 0

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005

I was in the office today until about midnight, originally the plan was to be done at 5pm, but there was so much to do I figured I'll just work through it and get it done. I'm happy to say the phone system is all setup and programmed. Phone systems suck, I liked the last VoIP system I used, but these old PBX things are a PITA to program, maybe back in the late 90's they were cool, but I never want to do this again.

Anyways, I wanted to get back to catching up with what's been going on.... The weekend after labor day weekend the usual fishing gang got together and went skiffing in Santa Cruz. It was so much fun, I've been talking about getting a boat, or at least a kayak, and this pretty much just sealed the deal. Even if I don't go fishing on it, I think the feeling of being out there on the open water is awesome.

So that brings me to last week, it was my brother Kennys birthday, we all went out to Korea House, my parents really liked that. Just this past weekend my parents had their annual karaoke party. And Sunday I went to a wedding, I guess I'll share more about that later.

category: Journal
updated: 1:08am 2005-09-21
comments: 0 views: 0

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

One of my top priorities was to move my new company from one office in Santa Clara to Mountain View, it's only about 6 miles away, but moving an office is never easy. Even though I think I had plenty of time to do everything (the execs were pretty easy to work with) I still find myself rushing days before the move.

category: Journal
updated: 2:39pm 2005-09-20
comments: 0 views: 0