This morning, I was tightening the quick-release plate onto the bottom of my camera when I heard a “shickt” sound. The top threads of the tripod socket stripped when I tightened the screw, making it impossible for me to attach the plate to the camera. This is not the type of thing that should happen to this camera, especially since the one-year warranty expired yesterday!

I wound up going to Home Depot where Don helped me find a longer screw. It wasn’t a perfect fit, so we placed a washer between the screw and the mounting plate. After that, everything tightened up properly. Phew! On my way down to San Diego next week, I’ll drop by the Canon Service Center in Irvine to see how much and how long it will take to repair it. In the meantime, consider it fixed… MacGyver style!

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Thanks to the efforts of Fanny, the former crew of the Content and Access Division at Palm has kept in touch following the aftermath of Palm’s frequent downsizings. A number of us have left the company for new opportunities and greener pastures, but fortunately our friendships remain. Today, we went to Benihana in Cupertino for our annual White Elephant holiday lunch.

The food was pretty filling, and it’s always entertaining to see the neat tricks that the chefs do with their tools as they cook our food. I was able to catch our chef flipping a shrimp (or was it a scallop?) onto Chung or Greg’s plate (see animation to the right).

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Sophia organized a surprise birthday party for Eric this evening at Buca di Beppo’s in Palo Alto. Safe from the howling wind and the driving rain, Mike, Emile, Zhenya, Sophia, Benjamin, Rae, Mandy, Elliot, and I celebrated the newest entrant into the late twenties in grand style, downing plates of linguine, vegetarian pizzas, “porketarian” sausages, fried calamari, and 1.5 litres of Chianti.

The only thing that seems to stop me from updating this web site are power outages. We had a large one the other day from 10:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the morning of the next day. There’s a hum, an electrical one, that permeates through every house (unless you’re the Unabomber). When it’s gone, the sound is replaced by an eerie quiet sound, a feeling of peacefulness. To pass the time, one might read a book or clean out the closet instead of browsing the web, watching TV, or nuking some food in the microwave. Granted, power outages can be inconvenient, but one every now and then never hurt anyone or anything… so as long as you’ve invested in a good UPS!

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In September, I delved into the heart of Lake Tahoe’s Desolation Wilderness for six days of solo backpacking admidst granitic peaks and rockbound lakes. I participated in a very tangible dance of physical exclusion from civilization. Days and nights would pass without me seeing more than one or two people, if any at all. The experience was invigorating for both my body and mind.

For the past six days, I’ve been alone on a trip through another wasteland of images, hopes and fears, and memories. Entrenched in the house’s computer room virtually non-stop since Thursday (or was it Wednesday?), I’ve been coding like a fiend. It’s all been a blur, as if the past six days was one long day. There’s slots to my right and soups to my right, with print statements raining down on me like November Rain.

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Following Vienna’s performance at the Tower Records in Fremont, I headed to Straits Cafe in Palo Alto to attend Salim’s birthday party. Last year, we went to a similar restaurant, P.F. Changs in Sunnyvale, but my opinion on the Asian Fusion culinary concept remains the same. Why? The presentation of the food was top-notch, but there was something missing in the taste of the food. Though the nan and samosa’s were yummy, the Chinese-inspired dishes were not so good. Fortunately, the food wasn’t the main attraction at Straits!

May makes the coolest party gifts. Large green leaves adorned with gold inscribed names let us know where our seats were. The champagne glasses with the little candies were also a nice touch. I certainly see a future in the wedding planning business, May!

Here’s an assortment of photos from the evening. Happy Birthday, Salim!

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I haven’t slept for over 40 hours. I’ve been coding non-stop for nearly two straight days on a program for my Newton. A Newton, you say? Isn’t that dead and obsolete technology?!? Well, take a look at some of the software packages that have come to the Newton since its untimely demise in February 27, 1998:

• MAD Newton and MAD Max: MP3 Player and codec!
• MP3DecoderDef: Receive and play MP3’s from your SimpleMail inbox!
• SimpleMail 4.0: POP and IMAP client that actually works, unlike some Palm offerings (sorry, MultiMail).
• ATA Support: One of the coolest programs ever made. ATA Support allows one to use CompactFlash cards and other current storage media on the Newton. All you need is a PC Card Adapter and you’re set!
• Newton Personal Data Sharing: Turn your Newton into a web server!
• Waba: lets you run a Java virtual machine on your Newton.
• IEEE 802.11b Wave LAN driver: Use your Newton wirelessly anywhere!
• NewtFTP: FTP client software for your Newton.

For technology that’s been obsolete for nearly five years, it sure beats the pants off of many of today’s handheld computers. The great thing about all of these products is that they’ve been developed by a small but generous and devoted community of developers. How long has it taken Palm to get Java over to the Palm? How about their ARM-based product? The Tungsten-T (what a horrible name for a product) doesn’t even ship with MP3 playback out of the box! What’s up with that?!?

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Lately, Vienna Teng has been making the rounds in music stores in the Bay Area like Tower Records and Borders Books & Music to promote her album Waking Hour. This afternoon, I went to the Tower Records in Fremont to hear her sing with my cousin Cynthia. After several hours of interviewing with high-tech companies, she no doubt enjoyed Vienna’s live performance. Towers of Hanoi and CS brain teasers, Vienna’s not!

I’ve always wondered why some singers sound great on their CD’s but just terrible in concert. After years of blaming it on their sound systems, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people just don’t perform well live. This is one reason why I tend not to attend many concerts of big name performers; I’m afraid they are going to suck up the joint.

On the flip side, there are some bands where music plays second fiddle in their concerts. For instance, people don’t go to KISS concerts for their wonderful songs, but for their awesome live performance. I went to a Las Vegas concert of theirs a few years ago not having known one song of theirs. During the concert, it was so loud that I could barely make out what they were singing.

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