Ken's Thougts

Views on Macs from a longtime PC

2009-09-30T23:26:00.001-07:00

I now use a shiny new MacBook Pro because of a recent job change. I've used PCs and Linux exclusively since our family's LC III died years ago. I'm not a hardcore Windows guy, but I really like the Ubuntu Linux distribution which we used at my last job for development.

I've got to admit the Mac hardware is very sexy and there is a lot of eye candy in the OS. I do prefer the Mac built in shell to the Windows command line shell (but putty more than gets the job done). The problem I have with it is that it still has a lot of the problems of Windows. Bad client programs that require frequent rebooting (especially our VPN software) and a lot of pain in the ass driver issues if you want to use non-Apple hardware (like a keyboard that doesn't make your wrists hurt). My Linux box at work had uptimes in months and I'd only reboot if the power at my building went out (which happened more than you'd like) or I wanted a new kernel. I find myself rebooting way too many times to solve problems in various programs (but the kernel seems quite stable).

Also, it is clearly inferior to Linux as a development environment. Its "Activity Monitor" tool looks horrible and needs some visual improvement. You can't set your mouse to give focus to whatever is under it (you have to keep clicking on windows to activate them). Linux (and I'd even say Windows) is much more configurable. Much like Windows, you don't have a suite of developer tools that just work out of the box.

So I think my conclusion is in my ideal world, I'd take the Apple hardware, wipe it and put Linux on it :). I'm hopeful that Snow Leopard will grow on me. I'm also not going to switch out my home computer anytime soon.

Great deals in your inbox: Travelzoo

2009-09-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine pointed me to Travelzoo after he got a fantastic deal on a trip to Las Vegas. I decided to sign up and while I did get a lot of good travel deals (and I took them up on one), I've been more amazed with their local ticket deals on concerts and sporting events. They consitantly have fantastic deals (like 50% off Stanford football tickets or 35% off Wicked tickets) and since its delivered in your inbox you don't even have to look very hard.

The cool part of their technology is that they localize these deals, which is very important in travel. All the deals I see are for the area around SF which is very cool since I can use them all.

They don't actually book travel, they'll just refer you to the appropriate deals which means they can focus on well targetted deals. I've been very impressed.

Melona bars

2009-08-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend and I found Maxim Market #2 in the Cupertinoish portion of San Jose and decided to poke around and see what we could find. We found the motherlode, my favorite ice cream bar, Melona!

Full disclosure here would involve saying I can't stand honeydew melon, which is the core flavor of a Melona bar, but man, I love these bars! They add a hit of creamsicle to an intense melon flavor that leads to a fantastic combination. I first had these bars on the island of Molokai at the liquor store there and they were fantastic on a warm day. The 6 of us bought out the entire collection of Melona bars and quickly ate them in the only town with a store on the island.

I've previously written about the Jazz Apple Revolution, but now I'm going to have to blog more about the Melona Revloution.

Throw it from the mound

2009-07-14T17:52:00.001-07:00

I have a few pet peeves in life and one of them is throwing the ceremonial first pitch from in front of the mound. One good thing you could say about former President Bush is that he threw his first pitches from the rubber. Obama made his left-handed pitch from the rubber as well.

If you ever get the chance, be sure to throw from the rubber.

Vote Pablo!

2009-07-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

My favorite Giant has a chance to make the National League All-Star team, but he needs your help by stuffing the ballot box. There are 5 players in contention for the last spot on the team and he's one of them. He's by far the most fun player to watch, he can play 3 positions, can throw with both hands, and he looks like Kung-Fu-Panda.

Plus at the Giant's fanfest, I let him take a picture with me.

You can vote up to 25 times for him! Extra credit to someone who can write a script to vote for him! Go to the page linked above (the Giant's official page) and vote early and often. (I think you can use a fake email address too).

Marshalls on a Tuesday

2009-06-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have a great job where I can work from home one day a week so most Tuesdays I work from the loft in my condo. It is great to not get interrupted and to really be able to focus on a project. It also means I can do chores at lunch very easily or I'm stuck watching daytime TV while eating microwave food.

Today found me at Marshalls looking for a few clothing items for an upcoming camping trip. I realized that there aren't too many men in Marshall on Tuesday at lunch. Of course, I'm not sure how many men there are there on a Saturday. I almost never shop during the day, so I felt very out of place.

Server Migration

2009-06-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

Good news for your blog readers! We're going to migrate to a new and improved computer with twice the processing power!

Please tolerate any network downtime and we'll see you from a much more powerful machine.

Very happy for Karen Olivo

2009-06-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

In our family trip to NYC this year, we went to see the Broadway revival of West Side Story. Quite possibly the greatest of all American musicals, it moves "Romeo and Juliet" into a singing 1950's NYC. The movie won the Oscar. This year, the revival tried to again modernize the earlier production by adding a lot more Spanish Language components and using real Latinos in the key roles. They took the best actors from In the Heights and used an updated book. It didn't really work out because while the Jets were still in the 50s, then Sharks were in the 2000's.

What did work was Karen Olivo, who was the best thing going by far in the musical. Here is her singing the show stopping "America" on Letterman.

Here is her doing one of my favorite numbers from "In the Heights": In the Club. This is her dancing and this number was completely different with here non-dancing understudy.

Finally, if you want to hear her sing, here is a short clip of her singing, "It won't be long now":

Here is her with Amy and Jake!

Is it Fenway or Dodger Stadium?

2009-06-07T21:54:00.001-07:00

I spent a fantastic week in Boston and one of the better experiences was going to see the Red Sox play the Rangers on a cool Friday night. The old ball park is a great experience and the Sox have done a great job giving it a true "throwback" flair. The signs are crisp and clear but still have a 50's decor. The brick is pretty and the Monster looks good as new. I'd been told the ballpark felt really old and was quite dirty, but other than the fading paint on my wooden chairs, it was very well maintained and a fun place to watch a game.

However, I was disturbed by the sense that this was another Dodger stadium:

1) They both have organs. I still can't get behind these things. Old timers love them, but I'm clearly not an old timer. I just don't get excited by hearing "When you're happy and you know it clap your hands" at a baseball game. I love churches with organs but not ballparks with them.
2) They both have beach balls bouncing up the stands (but not onto the field on Friday). It seems like every Dodger game has a few 1 minute beach ball stops.
3) They both have the wave (some view this as cool for football, but clear a mistake in a baseball stadium)
4) Fans come late and leave early in both places. I was surprised how many empty seats there were at first pitch and last pitch. Granted, it was raining and the Sox lost 5-1 in a game that wasn't as close as the score would make it sound.

Fenway had a lot of vendors, selling everything from chowdah to hot dogs. We were on the aisle, and it was hard to see past all the people running up and down the walk way. I loved the walk ways on the roads leading into the stadium and the positive vibes all the Sox fans had. They cheered passionately for slumping star David Ortiz every time he came up to the plate. Barry Zito doesn't quite get the same positive support. The scoreboard in the Green Monster is seriously cool.

To be honest, I also love Dodger Stadium (other than the 4 points mentioned above), so any true baseball fan needs to make their pilgrimages to both ballparks.

Cheap gas grill

2009-05-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

My dad has been using a cheap propane BBQ for some time for tailgating and camping. I felt it was time to start BBQing this year, so I started looking at these low end grills.

It turns out every hardware store around here sells one for about 25 bucks. They have little feet that also close the top, a long burner and take a 1 lb propane canister. They are a lot like this one, but much cheaper (25 bucks). As you can imagine, as you cut the price of that grill in half, you have to throw out some features.

What you are left with is a metal pyro box with plastic handles. I swear from the parts in that box, you could build a hell of a bomb. All the parts feel cheap and I had visions of burning my apartment complex down when I used it.

But when it was all said and done, I had grilled some delicious Trader Joes marinated ahi steaks that my girlfriend loved. For me, the best feature is gas, which means you can just turn off the grill and its over. No ash to deal with and cleanup was easy. Plus propane is much cheaper than buying charcoal.

So far, I'm a happy customer.

The Jazz Apple Revolution continues

2009-04-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I picked up Jazz apples for 1.49/lb at Nob Hill Foods! That's the cheapest I've ever seen Jazz apples. The greatest apple ever to appear on the face of the earth is spreading to a grocery store near you at an increasingly affordable price!

I've also seen them in bags at Trader Joes! Do yourself a favor and try a Jazz apple and then keep the revolution going by sharing the crispy, tart deliciousness with your friends. My roommate is now a convert.

Viva la revolucion!

Family athletic exploits

2009-04-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Want to give a shout-out to my cousin for her walk-off single to help the UH women's softball team win over the weekend!

Of course, she's going to have a tough time competing with my other cousin who won the state basketball title at Salesian High School this year. Not too bad! Here is him with the trophy.

If that's not enough, another cousin won the state tennis title for four years in high school, but that was a long time ago and I'll focus on the here and now.

Flowers for Easter

2009-04-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

It is well into spring, which means seasonal flowers are coming out. I kept an amaryllis bulb around all year and kept watering it an sure enough, just in time for Easter it bloomed! It is a lot more spectacular than I remember it the first year. I forgot how large and spectacular the flowers are!

I also got a set of the daffodil stems from Trader Joes (they are the yellow flowers in the top picture). Around this time of the year, Trader Joes has a deal where you can get 10 daffodil stems for a little more than a dollar. All you have to do is cut them and put them in a vase and they bloom! Its a really cool way to welcome spring!

Of course, you can see Billy Boxwood year round.

Golf Drying Rack

2009-03-31T10:54:00.000-07:00

See, hybrids really do have a lot of uses! I can hit it off the tee for around 200 yards, hit it from good lies in the rough, crush it from the fairway, and dry my clothes on it. For some reason, I couldn't find my string today. I'm sure this isn't good for the clubs :).

Migraines and Massages

2009-03-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

One thing that helped me with my migraines (besides my favorite product ever, Migrelief) was lowering my stress level. I know when things get really stressful at work, I tend to get more migraines.

A good friend of mine suggested using massage as a way to force myself to relax more and reduce my stress level. I've been getting a massage once a month for over a year now and there is a direct correlation between massage and a lack of migraines. It may be nothing more than having to take time out of my schedule for a massage, but it puts me in a relaxed state of mind that helps carry me though work. Plus it gives me someone once a month to help nag me about being kind to my body :).

If you want to check out a massage, I'd recommend Jen at Innovators in Campbell. Massages make great gifts to yourself or someone else! Jen is a great listener who is familiar with a number of different massage techniques. She's even getting a good number of references on yelp.

Enjoy relaxing!

The internets are scared

2009-03-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

From today's "Good Morning Silicon Valley"

"Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact, it is just the opposite."

— Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang,

So, the opposite would mean the Internet fears the Chinese government? That's food for thought.

Maybe if I keep posting like this, I can get blocked too!

Digital TV Converter

2009-03-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a friend asked me to go shopping with her to go find a digital TV converter box. I figured it couldn't be that bad, since she already had fairly good analog reception (I'm very jealous about that) and she had to coupon already.

We went to Target, where they had a seleciton of 3 devices, but they were all sold out. We drove across the street to Walmart (yeah, Mountain View is weird that they have both of them next to each other) but the noticed there was a Radio Shack. I figured if Target is sold out, there is a good chance Walmart is also sold out, so we went into Radio Shack.

We ended up getting their Digital Stream Digital-to-Analog Converter w/ Pass-through which was 20 bucks after the 40 dollar coupon. I thought this would just be a really simple box that does the conversion and then lets your TV pretend that this is how things have been the whole time, but in fact its a lot more like a VCR where you set it to channel 3 and then use the converters own UI and remote to view the channels.

She was able to get a lot more channels that she could on analog. She got all the major over-air networks (Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC). The quality was much better than before, and the glitching was only minor. We managed to get it set up in time to see Steve Wozniak give a poor performance on Dancing with the Stars. Digital lets each station have multiple sub-stations, so she now gets a couple of weather-oriented stations, a lot of forien programming, and a ton of public broadcasting stuff.

As someone who never had cable until after college, I can appriciate good over the air TV. I hope all my readers can have a smoothe upgrade to digital-TV.

Billy Boxwood's Baby Pictures!

2009-02-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

There is a new member of the household, Billy Boxwood, my new pet plant. He's a pure-bread Faulkner Boxwood from Summer Winds nursery in Campbell.

When he grows up, he want's to be a topiary elephant or a hedge at a nice country club. He enjoys direct or indirect sunshine, frequent watering, concrete, and being read his favorite books, The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying. He's very fussy when he's about to get trimmed, but he's a good sport about it. His greatest fear in life is temperatures below -20 F and golf clubs.

My parents are very excited to be plant-grandparents. They helped me pick out and transplant Billy. I'm working on a registry for him, but in place of gifts, you can make a donation to your local arborist society. Please join me in welcoming Billy!

Adware and programmers and scheme, oh my!

2009-02-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

A few clips for an interview with an adware author. These probably won't make much sense unless you are a computer science major, but provide a lot of interesting insight into how you ruin someone's Windows machine.

About Scheme:

S: You wrote adware. You bastard.

M: [sheepishly] Yes, I did. I got to write half of it in Scheme, which probably means that I deployed more Scheme runtime than anybody else on the planet.

About IE:

IE has a mechanism called a Browser Helper Object (BHO) which is basically a gob of executable code that gets informed of web requests as they’re going. It runs in the actual browser process, which means it can do anything the browser can do– which means basically anything. We would have a Browser Helper Object that actually served the ads, and then we made it so that you had to kill all the instances of the browser to be able to delete the thing. That’s a little bit of persistence right there.

(Warning, even more technical) About writing invisible registry keys:

We did create unwritable registry keys and file names, by exploiting an “impedance mismatch” between the Win32 API and the NT API. Windows, ever since XP, is fundamentally built on top of the NT kernel. NT is fundamentally a Unicode system, so all the strings internally are 16-bit counter Unicode. The Win32 API is fundamentally Ascii. There are strings that you can express in 16-bit counted Unicode that you can’t express in ASCII. Most notably, you can have things with a Null in the middle of it.

That meant that we could, for instance, write a Registry key that had a Null in the middle of it. Since the user interface is based on the Win32 API, people would be able to see the key, but they wouldn’t be able to interact with it because when they asked for the key by name, they would be asking for the Null-terminated one. Because of that, we were able to make registry keys that were invisible or immutable to anyone using the Win32 API. Interestingly enough, this was not only all civilians and pretty much all of our competitors, but even most of the antivirus people.

Mayne Street

2009-02-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

On the lighter side of life, one internet pod-cast I've found entertaining is Mayne Street, a fictional depiction of the life of Kenny Mayne at ESPN. Kenny goes around covering various news stories being his cynical self and he's surround by a crew of flat characters that really seems to work. Or maybe I'm just blinded by the fact his producer is really cute. Its a bit of Office Space meets ESPN with lots of cameos from not terribly famous sports figures.

Someone promoting NyQuil must have paid them a lot to make the series, because you have to watch the exact same commercial before every episode if you watch it on the ESPN site.

Since there are so few of us and we're all so critical to keeping the earth spinning, I'm going to try my best to promote all the important Kennys of this world. Lets face it, where would we be without Southpark? So stay tuned for updates.

This isn't the best episode, but its on youtube and I felt compelled to embed something. Plus this is the first HD embedded video on this blog!

Swiss nudist hiking

2009-01-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

My only question with this link is, did they stage that picture for the article or was it in some archive somewhere. Its definitely one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on BBC news.

How to get a dartboard in your office

2009-01-25T00:59:00.000-08:00

Darts is a classic form of entertainment going back to man's primal need to hunt animals by throwing pointy things at them. However, such a barbaric form of entertainment may seem out of place in the office. In today's society most dart playing occurs on the edges of society in the dark, smokey bars and pool halls frequented by the lower classes.

Clearly we need to refine or primitive hunting skills on the company dime by playing darts, but there is incredible resistance. Darts put holes in the walls, distract coworkers and are dangerous, especially in the hands of people who are drunk at work.

However, it is possible to bring this form of entrainment to your place of work by following these simple steps and by using a lot of grit and determination.

1) Break the ice by giving a dartboard as a gift at the company gift exchange at the company Christmas party. It will be the most popular gift by far and people will snatch it up quickly. This will show the company decision makers that there is pent up demand for darts.

2) Talk to the HR person about how great darts are and how they have been proven with science in studies to improve worker moral and productivity. Try to smile at her when she tells you that you're lying and makes fun of your request.

3) Get really lucky and have the HR person's boss be a former dart rockstar who plays in a dart league. Have him get really excited when the HR person tells him some employees want a dartboard.

4) Have the HR person's boss spend a month hunting around for the best possible dartboard.

5) Have the HR person's boss install a spectacular electronic dartboard right in the middle of the kitchen (and the fridge full of beer).

See, that wasn't too hard. Now its time to play find out is going to be the person to do something really stupid that is the end of the dart board. Apparently at Lockheed it was "long distance darts" that did the trick.

I've already put 2 darts in the wall :). I love CGN!

A little downtime is in my future

2009-01-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm moving my server to a new Campbell colocation, so there will be a bit of downtime. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and we'll be back up in a few days.

Forget stocks, invest in washing machines

2009-01-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

We all know 2008 was a bad year for the stock market. Down, down, down it fell. Well, just like everyone in those infomercials, I have a new sure-fire way of avoiding this downturn and generating a 50% profit: washing machines!

In 2007, I bought a used washer/dryer set for 60 bucks and today I flipped it for $90! That is an unbelievable profit of 50% considerably better than GM or AIG stock over the same period.

Washing machines are a fairly safe investment in these troubled times. Studies show that people wash their clothes consistently in spite of the US economy going to hell in a handbasket. If we look at the last 10 major recessions, clothes washing suffered a mere 5.3% drop while the markets were down on average 27.4%. Demand for clothes cleaning is currently at record levels in the smelly Silicon Valley.

Washing machines, while not offering an annual dividend, can generate create clean, wet clothes. The consume power however so investors should consult with their electricity advisers prior to investment.

As we all know, past results are not indicative of future returns and you can and may lose money! But these desperate times call for desperate measures, buy washing machines today!

My Top 10 Favorite People You Might Know

2008-12-21T21:20:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I think you have to rank people in any top-10 list, but I'll pass over that detail.

*) Sebastian Thrun: Without him, I'd be a considerably worse engineer. Lets face it, he's the best engineer I've ever met when it comes to all around skills from research to project management. Another of the many things German has given to the world.

*) Jon Miller: Without him, summer would be a lot less enjoyable. His book is a must read for anyone with a baseball problem.

*) Jim Harbaugh: Without him, Stanford would still have Buddy Teevens as director of football. I love power running football. I should have been born in Big 10 country.

*) Jim Rome: Without him, who would teach critical thinking skills to the unemployed and all takes would suck. Greatest interviewer I've ever heard, not too bad for a UCSB gancho.

*) Dave Matthews: Without him, I wouldn't go to concerts and never would have tried to learn guitar.

*) Gordon Henderson: Without him, I wouldn't know which foot was my left and I never would have heard Latin jazz, and I never would have know what its like to be a Backstreet Boy, but I would have had more weekends free. "Hondu" is still one of the greatest nicknames ever.

*) Bill Walsh: Without him, I wouldn't be a football fan and the 49ers would be worse than the Bills.

*) Barak Obama: Without him we'd still have Bush as president and I'd have no hapa role models in my life. Its going to be impossible for him to live up to everyone's hopes and dreams, but no matter how things shake out, his accomplishments so far will go down in history.

*) Kristin Chenoweth: Without her, I don't think I could defy gravity or have any new philosophies. I definitely would have delusions of grandeur.

*) Omar Vizquel: Without him, I'd never know how to play shortstop correctly. Probably my favorite Giant the past few years.

Clearly, I need to find some more favorite people who are women. I'm curious how many of these people any of my readers know and also appriciate.