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    <title>Joe Chin</title>
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    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008-03-31://3</id>
    <updated>2008-12-16T09:49:51Z</updated>
    <subtitle>Software develop, technology, thoughts, and life.</subtitle>
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<entry>
    <title>98% gets the job done</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000149.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.149</id>

    <published>2008-12-16T09:05:00Z</published>
    <updated>2008-12-16T09:49:51Z</updated>

    <summary>Well it&apos;s been a year and a half since I built the Mediacenter PC. So far everything goes well or mostly well. Hardware has changed in the mean time and my Radeon HD 2400 Pro is 2 generations old. The...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Gizmos &amp; Gadgets" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Hardware" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        Well it&apos;s been a year and a half since I built the Mediacenter PC. So far everything goes well or mostly well. Hardware has changed in the mean time and my Radeon HD 2400 Pro is 2 generations old. The hard drive feels small with all the TV shows, movies, and music stored on it. And for some reason with very little actually installed Windows Vista has managed to chew through a 40GB partition. Leaving just under 6GB of free space. When I first installed the system it had ran consumed 20GB from a fresh install. This doesn&apos;t really bother me but, eventually, strange things start to happen when disk space gets really low.

As with all Windows system. The computer gets slower and slower from the accumulated sludge of system updates, software updates, restore points, and fragmentation. The only solution is to do a clean reinstall. But for a device that only does one thing, doing this can be really inconvenient. Even more so by the fact that I&apos;m not the only one using the PC. My son has his cartoons and DVDs, my wife has her TV shows and movies. 98% of the time this setup works normally with no problems. It&apos;s just the last 2% that I can&apos;t stand. That really make me want to start over. But the family thinks everything is fine and for the foreseeable future that&apos;s the way it&apos;s going to stay.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>µTorrent is out!</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000148.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.148</id>

    <published>2008-11-27T09:45:40Z</published>
    <updated>2008-11-27T09:59:53Z</updated>

    <summary>My favorite bittorrent client has been released for the Mac. I&apos;ve just finished downloading and was looking through the screens and configurations. I didn&apos;t have a chance to test it yet because I had a download in progress on my...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="All Things Mac" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="bittorrent" label="bittorrent" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="macintosh" label="Macintosh" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="utorrent" label="uTorrent" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[My favorite bittorrent <a href="http://mac.utorrent.com/beta/">client</a> has been released for the Mac. I've just finished downloading and was looking through the screens and configurations. I didn't have a chance to test it yet because I had a download in progress on my current client, <a href="http://www.transmissionbt.com/">Transmission</a>. When I get home later I'll be sure and try it out. Transmission has been doing great, but I always felt the speed of transmission was consistently underwhelming. Maybe it was the clients I connected to but when I ran µTorrent Windows in a XP VM it got the job done in half the time. Plus the memory footprint and filesize was minute compared to just about every other client.

I just remembered my previous favorite client was <a href="http://sarwat.net/bittorrent/">Tomato Torrent</a>. It was nothing more than a window dialogbox showing the progress of the current download. The memory footprint was relatively small, but as you spawned more downloads each one would take up the same amount of memory. This was 2002 and memory was cheap, but even 1GB of RAM cost a little bit of money. So accumulating 8-10 open windows used about 20-40% CPU and 150MB or RAM.]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Signed, sealed, sent</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000147.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.147</id>

    <published>2008-10-28T15:33:47Z</published>
    <updated>2008-10-28T16:08:47Z</updated>

    <summary>After sitting on it for a few weeks I have excercised my rights and voted for the next president of the United States. If you haven&apos;t figured it out by now, my demographic fits the profile for someone most likely...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Crainial Drain" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="europe" label="europe" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="us" label="US" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="voting" label="voting" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[After sitting on it for a few weeks I have excercised my rights and voted for the next president of the United States. If you haven't figured it out by now, my demographic fits the profile for someone most likely to vote Barack Obama. For one, I'm a person of color, college educated, in the 18-34 age group, and have views that are considered liberal by American standards. Living in France, I've met liberals and by there standards I'd be considered a true conservative. After witnessing the collapse of the company, too many wars, and the evisceration of the "Bill of Rights" I can not support the current regime. Living in a different country I feel insulated by the current events in the US. Even with the power of <a href="http://digg.com">digg</a> and my local newspaper website I feel a little less interested in what goes on over "there" a little more each year. But, I have payed attention to the election as have a lot of my friends here. Even though Obama is considered a bit of an elitist in the US, for most Europeans he fits the bill of what a politician should be; highly educated, world travelled, moderate values, and above scandal.

From my view of things politicians are quite different here. They have gone to the top universities and grand ecoles, majored in Political Science or Business or some sort of management. After graduating they usually work within the ranks of the political party they hope to lead one day. And the resume history will look like the following: party clerk > civil servant > city mayor > senator > secretary or minister > president or prime minister. Now, I am basing this on what I have observered here (Sarkozy primarily) and this is the way it works in this part of the hemispere. While there is the occassional dark horse who challenges the incumbent parties to lead the nation (eastern europe or former soviet blocs) most proceed like the example I have shown.

On the other hand the US is more prone to be influenced by the personality of the candidate rather than the credentials of that candidate. Sarah Palin, for example, went to a university not considered elite, was a TV weather girl and beauty pageant contestant, and then entered the political arena later on. First working in the city council, becoming mayor, and finally becoming governor. She is being considered for the 2nd most powerful position in the world. And according to a lot of people they don't think she is ready for the job. Among Europeans Obama has a 90% approval primarily because he embodies the ideal politician. John McCain is considered too inflammatory and his years of being in the senate has built him a huge pile of scandal and unpopular positions that he can't hide from. His approval here is very low here but about even with Obama in the US.

Why is it? One of the big difference between here and there is the US views politicians as representing all of us. Even when we hold unpopular opinions. France,UK, Germany the politicians usually represent the best ideals of the people; eloquent, educated, thoughtful. Which one is correct will never truly be show. Here there is more latent racism and a Senate unwilling to acknowledge or do anything about it. There, there is more blatant racism and the government and media are much quicker to acknowledge it.]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>26-inches is stoopid huge</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000146.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.146</id>

    <published>2008-10-23T06:48:03Z</published>
    <updated>2008-10-23T23:47:24Z</updated>

    <summary>After weeks and weeks of waiting the new LCD finally arrived. It was worth the wait. I do wish the website on materiel.net reflected what was in stock. Now I&apos;ve got a LG W2600HP-BF which has all the bells and...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        After weeks and weeks of waiting the new LCD finally arrived. It was worth the wait. I do wish the website on materiel.net reflected what was in stock. Now I&apos;ve got a LG W2600HP-BF which has all the bells and whistles of the Dells and HPs of the same size. But it has the real advantage of being S-IPS instead of PVA, or crappy TN panels. Whats the difference you ask? Well go into your local big box and put the $1200 Lacie next to the $200 Acer. It&apos;s the difference between seeing the colors of what your monitor is trying to produce instead of seeing what the software is telling the monitor it should be producing. The 19-inch Samsung this monitor replaced looked really washed out and the colors were dead.

And 26-inches of monitor desktop is huge when the screen is only a few feet away from your eyes. I remember there was a time I had a TV smaller than this thing. It&apos;s being able to see everything at once. Deep down I wish I had bought two. Using the screen at work seems so boring compared to this baby. Like driving a Porsche on the weekends and coming into work on monday to putt around in a Fiesta.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Note: Having food in the fridge gets you girls</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000145.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.145</id>

    <published>2008-10-22T14:08:14Z</published>
    <updated>2008-10-22T14:12:06Z</updated>

    <summary>I don&apos;t know if this is true or not, but having food in your fridge gets you girls. I say knowing how to cook every now and then and having good conversation gets you girls....</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Only on the Internet" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="coolaid" label="cool-aid" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="fridge" label="fridge" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="girls" label="girls" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="youtube" label="youtube" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[I don't know if this is true or not, but having food in your fridge gets you girls. I say knowing how to cook every now and then and having good conversation gets you girls.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IBRL7D0wcXM&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IBRL7D0wcXM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>This vote won&apos;t count</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000144.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.144</id>

    <published>2008-09-22T08:12:22Z</published>
    <updated>2008-09-22T09:09:46Z</updated>

    <summary>I requested and received my absentee ballot in the mail this weekend. As a US citizen I feel it&apos;s my duty (more now than ever before) to vote in the coming presidential election. I&apos;ve used absentee ballots in the past...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Crainial Drain" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="mccain" label="mccain" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="obama" label="obama" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="racism" label="racism" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="voting" label="voting" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        I requested and received my absentee ballot in the mail this weekend. As a US citizen I feel it&apos;s my duty (more now than ever before) to vote in the coming presidential election. I&apos;ve used absentee ballots in the past ,even though I lived a few blocks away from the voting station, because my county had switched to electronic voting and I didn&apos;t trust the machines as they were designed. This was the same county that had the butterfly ballot incident of 2000 so my fears in the electoral board weren&apos;t unfounded.

The absentee ballot I filled in 2004 was vastly different than the one I have today. First it came in a thick manila envelope with detailed instructions, some legal speak about who could vote, a short statement on each candidates views, and it was translated in the three popular languages of the area; English, Spanish, Creole.
Not long after that, I moved to Miami and had a new voting station to register at. I mailed my ballot request lastweek and updated my details. I also received my ballot by email. I thought that was sorta cool. This one  has just one card, the presidential candidates. No sheriff, senators, judges, state legislators, or house representatives. it&apos;s a disappointment because I was going to call my friends and ask them who I should vote for.
But the title of this entry is &quot;This vote won&apos;t count&quot; and the reason for that is absentee ballots are only counted when there is a very small margin between candidates (49%/50%). This is why news stations can predict the winner even though votes from abroad or military bases haven&apos;t reached their destinations yet. Even though I hope my vote will count I have a feeling that John McCain will ultimately win this election. Not because he would make a great president, but because there is a slight undertone of racism in this presidential race. It comes in disguise as talking points that don&apos;t hit on any issues. Obama has been &quot;mistakenly&quot; rewritten as Osama. They&apos;ll purposefully pronounce his middle name &quot;Hussein&quot; with a lot of vitriole. He&apos;s been mistaken for Muslim and then they&apos;ll hit on his association with a church pastor (the irony) who had some unkind words about the USA.
I&apos;ve heard things like this many times, the &quot;I&apos;m not racist, one of my best friends is black&quot; bullshit. This person most likely wouldn&apos;t help their &quot;black friend&quot; if they needed it, wouldn&apos;t invite them over for dinner or party, and the only time they would even talk to them is if they needed something illegal. I&apos;ve met girls in college like that. Southern belles who wouldn&apos;t give me the time of day, but all of a sudden show interest in my, perceived, abilities to acquire weed due to the fact I&apos;m Jamaican. Not everyone from the islands smokes!

Finally, a lot of things can happen once the curtain closes in that booth. While quite a few people have publicly supported Obama and will speak on how the US will finally lose the stigma of institutionalized racism. Deep inside there is that fear of do I really want this man, a black man, running this country. They&apos;ll pull the lever and their vote will disappear into a trapdoor with millions of other anonymous votes.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Getting started on the iPhone SDK</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000143.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.143</id>

    <published>2008-09-04T10:14:03Z</published>
    <updated>2008-09-04T10:50:54Z</updated>

    <summary>Last night I bit the bullet and downloaded the iPhone SDK to my Mac. It includes the new XCode 3.1 so that and all the files were updated as well. On a side note it reinstalled CHUD which was giving...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="All Things Mac" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Programming" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="apple" label="Apple" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="iphone" label="iPhone" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="sdk" label="SDK" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[Last night I bit the bullet and downloaded the iPhone SDK to my Mac. It includes the new XCode 3.1 so that and all the files were updated as well. On a side note it reinstalled CHUD which was giving me errors since upgrading to 10.5.3. Now I can disable 3 of my cores and see how a single 2.4GHz Kentsfield really work. It was still very useful and quick running on just one core. I wouldn't try that with VMWare Fusion running.

After getting all my files installed and setting my IDE I went on the web and was looking through various tutorials. <a href="http://theappleblog.com/2008/08/04/tutorial-build-a-simple-rss-reader-for-iphone/" target="_blank">Here</a> is one I liked but I'm sure there are many others. As soon as the NDA is lifted or defined about what can and can't be shared I will look at buying one of the programming books.]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Back from Vacation</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000142.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.142</id>

    <published>2008-08-27T11:13:22Z</published>
    <updated>2008-08-27T11:19:00Z</updated>

    <summary>The Chin family took a much needed vacation for a few weeks. I&apos;m finally back at work and can say I&apos;m glad to be back. I&apos;m still loading up all the photos and videos, finding a place for the receipts,...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Travel" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="morocco" label="Morocco" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="sahara" label="Sahara" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="vacation" label="Vacation" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        The Chin family took a much needed vacation for a few weeks. I&apos;m finally back at work and can say I&apos;m glad to be back. I&apos;m still loading up all the photos and videos, finding a place for the receipts, cards, and postcards in our non-existent scrapbook. And getting around to pay monthly bills for things that haven&apos;t been used for a month. Life is pretty sweet.
As for the vacation. It was Morocco in August. Think of the hottest place you&apos;ve ever been. Add some sun, a few wild animals, and a little pollution. I&apos;ve got great pictures of our first night. We all woke up with completely puffed out eyes due to allergies or something. Every picture has a story behind it and as soon as I can I&apos;m going to give them to you.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Invasion from abroad</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000141.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.141</id>

    <published>2008-08-03T09:40:13Z</published>
    <updated>2008-08-03T09:55:08Z</updated>

    <summary>Twice today I read almost the same article on the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. The article was reporting on the weak dollar bringing in loads of tourists from abroad. Most cosmopolitan cities are expensive. The short list...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Rants &amp; Raves" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="dollars" label="dollars" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="euros" label="euros" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="tourism" label="tourism" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[Twice today I read almost the same article on the New York Times and <a href="http://www.iht.com">International Herald Tribune</a>. The <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/01/business/envy.php">article</a> was reporting on the weak dollar bringing in loads of tourists from abroad. Most cosmopolitan cities are expensive. The short list is Moscow, Tokyo, London, Paris. New York has been pushed down somewhere in 20s which means it just that affordable. But it's become a summer and travel right. Just about everyone has a similar strategy of flying to New York City with an empty or partly filled suitcase and loading it up. I've only done this once on a trip to Miami because I had most of my clothes in my closet at my parents' house. Even when we were there I felt a little guilty buying semi-expensive things. Gadgets I wouldn't normally look at until they were on sale became much more affordable. Hell even my student loans don't appear to be the "dreaded, monthly evisceration of our bank account".
But in the long run this will be a good reminder to the US that things won't always remain constant. It can happen where one day you won't be on top. And it's starting to reveal it's way to a lot of Americans. The precarious position they are in on an international scope. When the dollar was weak loosing value against the euro it was easily cast off as temporary, just inflation on the european central bank. But as Canada, Australia, and other nations have risen against the dollar at the same rate we've come to realize the dollar has actually been weakening.
No matter what the talking heads tell you, when planeloads of tourists start arriving from war torn central asian countries, you've entered a new era.]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Do you dream in code?</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000140.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.140</id>

    <published>2008-07-15T08:58:35Z</published>
    <updated>2008-07-15T09:04:45Z</updated>

    <summary>Imagine for a moment you are about to go to sleep. You&apos;ve just been reading one of your favorite technical literary works and now it&apos;s time to go to bed. After finally falling asleep you don&apos;t have your normal dreams...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Crainial Drain" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Programming" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Software" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[Imagine for a moment you are about to go to sleep. You've just been reading one of your favorite <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216112417&sr=8-1">technical</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216112417&sr=8-2">literary</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns/dp/0596007124/ref=pd_bbs_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216112417&sr=8-8">works</a> and now it's time to go to bed. After finally falling asleep you don't have your normal dreams of family, beaches, and crazy stuff. Instead you dream of computer code. Pages and pages of it. And you're working on it. And it actually looks pretty good. But the alarm clock goes off and just like pulling the plug everything goes black before going to light.

Or does this only happen to someone like me?]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Stumping dummy</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000139.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.139</id>

    <published>2008-06-23T14:41:32Z</published>
    <updated>2008-06-23T15:07:27Z</updated>

    <summary>While working on a problem at work today I had a thought...about my younger days working as a web developer in a university. The weather was hot and approaching unbearable just like today. Unlike this office, the state university office...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Crainial Drain" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Programming" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        While working on a problem at work today I had a thought...about my younger days working as a web developer in a university. The weather was hot and approaching unbearable just like today. Unlike this office, the state university office had air-conditioning. So one day we were having a go at each other after lunch. I was a real bookworm so I always had an answer for just about everything computer related. And my liberal arts degree handled just about everything else. One of my colleagues decided they were going to test my SAT test taking skills and asked me some random question from one of the hundreds of biology books stored in the office. By this point my last biology class was freshmen highschool years (about 8 years). While I can&apos;t remember the question, nor the answer, now I do remember the look on everyone&apos;s face when I answered correctly.

In some ways I astonish myself because I&apos;ve acquired a lot of things in the head over the years. Most of this is outside of my core competances. But you never know when someone will call on you to see if you know something completely outside your field. I&apos;m a software developer and I rarely delve into the Active Directory stuff these days. I&apos;ve had that brief spark of clarity where a network problem stumps someone else and I&apos;m able to answer the question.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>The problem with &quot;It just works!&quot;</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000137.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.137</id>

    <published>2008-06-02T08:28:22Z</published>
    <updated>2008-06-02T08:59:41Z</updated>

    <summary>Software development is still an industry that is still in it&apos;s infancy. I know there are a lot of computer scientists out there. I know a few of them. These guys and girls are just as inquisitive as I am...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Programming" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Software" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="softwaredevelopment" label="software development" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        Software development is still an industry that is still in it&apos;s infancy. I know there are a lot of computer scientists out there. I know a few of them. These guys and girls are just as inquisitive as I am about working with computers and how they work. And sometimes, like me, they encounter a phenomenon that fails to reproduce itself. Or if it reproduces itself it mysteriously vanishes back into the ether.

At our company we ship regularly. But our clients are quite slow at the uptake when it comes to deployment. I recently had a client with 2 previous versions of software in the testing pipeline. That means when they encounter a bug we fixed in a later version they can only complain about it. It sort of makes us look bad because the end user thinks we are unresponsive and slow.

Recently, after an update we encountered a bug that defied every method we tried to fix it with. What made it worse is the section of code where it was occuring hadn&apos;t been touched in this release so the bug couldn&apos;t have come from there. And it was only coming from a few servers. So we had no idea why it would occur on one server and not another. After much trial and error we discovered there might be a bug not in our software but in the operating system. After getting all the clients to run a serious of patches that may not work. We were in luck. The debriefing afterward was more like &quot;blame it on Microsoft... they probably introduced a bug and then corrected it in a system update&quot;. Yeah, we blamed it on someone else.
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Unreliable laws of physics</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000136.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.136</id>

    <published>2008-05-19T08:52:38Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-19T08:59:38Z</updated>

    <summary>I walked into my office and my twitter client was still running. Here are some of the more interesting items that came up on my screen: The Non-Newtonian laws of physics of Anime. Someone really likes Obama/...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="Only on the Internet" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[I walked into my office and my twitter client was still running. Here are some of the more interesting items that came up on my screen:
The Non-Newtonian laws of physics of <a href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1394377" target="_blank">Anime</a>.<br>
Someone really likes <a href="http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/8461/obama420qp1.jpg" target="_blank">Obama</a>/<br>
 ]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Great video by Dennis Liu</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000135.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.135</id>

    <published>2008-05-15T12:40:34Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-15T12:54:09Z</updated>

    <summary>At first I ignored because I really hate spiral marketing but after watching it I was thoroughly impressed. And it wasn&apos;t a campaign but some guy cutting a demo real....</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
        <category term="All Things Mac" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
        <category term="Only on the Internet" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
    
    <category term="birdandthebee" label="Bird and the Bee" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="internet" label="Internet" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="macintosh" label="Macintosh" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    <category term="musicvideo" label="music video" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[At first I ignored because I really hate spiral marketing but after watching it I was thoroughly impressed. And it wasn't a campaign but some guy cutting a demo real.
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6kxDxLAjkO8&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6kxDxLAjkO8&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

<entry>
    <title>Through the long weekend</title>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="/movabletype/archives/000134.html" />
    <id>tag:www.joechin.com,2008://3.134</id>

    <published>2008-05-13T14:48:03Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-13T14:48:03Z</updated>

    <summary>Every year it never fails in the fact that May in Paris is probably the best of the 12 months in the year. In the span of 2 weeks you get 4 holidays. This year 2 of them fell on...</summary>
    <author>
        <name>Joe Chin</name>
        <uri>http://www.joechin.com</uri>
    </author>
    
    
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.joechin.com/">
        <![CDATA[<p>Every year it never fails in the fact that May in Paris is probably the best of the 12 months in the year. In the span of 2 weeks you get 4 holidays. This year 2 of them fell on a Thursday. Which means you have the option of coming into work on Friday with that huge hangover bouncing in your head. Or you take a bridge day &quot;Le Pont&quot;. I did neither of those. Instead I worked through the mind numbing heat clearing up workload and getting ready for the weekend.</p>  <p>Also the sun is setting progressively later. Which makes it almost impossible to get the little guy to sleep at any decent hour. Before it was 8h00, 8h30, now we are lucky if he's asleep by ten since the sun won't go down before 9. </p>  <p>But all this great weather means it would be neglectful for me not to take my son to the park. Which I've done almost daily this month. I could enjoy the park more but I loathe the older kids. My son is just learning to walk. And I could lie and say he's great at it, but he does that slightly goofy baby walk parents will etch in their memory and save on a dvd for special occasions. Well that special walk he does makes him prone to stumble. I could give him wrist guards since his palms are turning into grated cheese. But man has been walking for millions of years and this is just a thing he's going to have to learn. So the big kids at the park generally stick to their side (big swings, jungle gym, table tennis, etc) until one of them gets the big idea to go to the sandbox. And like an invading hoard they all descend on it with the swiftness. A few of them assume they can take whatever shovel or bucket from the little tikes in their. Others will ask the parents. They prefer to ask me, because I look at them like I have a laser trained on them and will fire at the thought of someone jackin' juniors' toys. Usually their is a lot of sand being thrown and an occasional bucket of water.</p>  <p>On quite a few outings I've run across the parents smoking in the sandbox. I'm normally nonchalant about smoking and not as militant as some others about smoking. But I do think it's rude to smoke in close proximity to kids. I chastised one woman that was smoking in the box right next to my son. My colleagues says their is nothing wrong with that (her smoking). But I reminded them that she has the entire park and the box is infinitesimally small compared to the rest of the park. If they have to light up they can go anywhere else. Which they did to the other end of the box.</p>]]>
        
    </content>
</entry>

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