tech toy week

Not only did we get the iPhone this week from Apple. For some weird reason, we decided it is time to cave in and get a Wii.

We've played it several times at cousin's and friend's house, but never thought we'd be the type to actually buy a game console. But after Jean found out that DDR would eventually come on Wii, that did it!

We get our ads on Saturdays, so we knew 1 day early that both Best Buy and Sears would have it this weekend. Got up at 7:30AM on Sunday morning and the adventure begins!

We first went to the BB at Santana Row at 8:30AM only to find a note taped to the front door "all Wii vouchers have been passed out". Then zoomed down to Sears, but no one there knew where to form the line, so we decided to head down to the other BB down at Sunnyvale.

There we stood in line for about an hour along with 50 other people getting a nice tan! Finally at around 9:45AM, the store employees came out and passed out the vouchers, woohoo!

we gotz lucky!
All the voucher holders had to come back to BB between 11AM and 12PM to purchase the Wii. Here's the line (for the 2nd time).
Still can't believe we just bought a Wii! Now if you are a Wii owner, you probably already know how much fun it is to make the Mii character, are we the only ones who are addicted to that part?

I haz iPhone

Nameste Steve!

Even internally, there was a line to get the free iPhone. I was #5 in the particular location I went to.

By now, you've probably read a dozen iPhone reviews, including Pogue's hilarious musical, so I'll spare you of more reviews, instead, just pictures. Enjoy...

Old and new, side by side.
Even opening the package was funFollowing internal instruction, performing surgery
Ready to start!After entering all the "special secret code" for Apple internal employees, guess I gotta wait like everyone else...
Guess 3 minutes wasn't long enough, now I'm sitting patiently waiting for an email...
Updates (after few hours):
After talking to a very nice AT&T lady dedicated to Apple employees, they were able to "push" my activation through and now I'm on! Not completely use to the keyboard yet, as you can see.

Jury Duty

I have been called for jury duty before (just once), but didn't get selected after a full day of waiting. But this week... juror #9, I am

As you probably expect, I can't talk about what the trial is about except that it is about ____ and that ___ is the defendant who has been charged with _____ by _____

Without breaking the law, I thought I'd shed some light on what the process has been like as it was a first for me as well.

Juror Selection
Bring something to read! And an iPod if you can. I can almost guarantee you that in the group of 50+ candidates, *someone* will be yapping on their phone. You first check in at the jury assembly room and wait there until the courtroom is ready for your group. That will be the first time you see the judge, clerk, the amazing person who records everything in some weird keyboard (I am still amazed at that person!), the bailiff, attorneys and the defendant.

The end goal for them is to select 12 jurors and some alternate jurors. In our case (no pun intended), it took them just 1 working day. Eighteen people were called initially (into the box) and then for any of the following reasons, jurors are "excused", new ones are called into the box, repeat and rinse, until we have the 12 + alternates.

• You can be excused if the judge agrees that you'll suffer financial difficulties or that people around you might not be able to live w/o your presence during the day time. Fortunately, Apple is *very* generous and pay up to 12 weeks of pay while we're on jury duty and that Jean and Charlie can do just fine for 8 hours on their own.
  
• If you have a "pre-existing" (what the judge called it) condition, such as a planned vacation trip during trial time with tickets bought already.
• If you answer to any of the questions which either the judge or the attorneys find that you might be biased against either side. The judge will always ask you at the end of those questions if you can put "that" aside and look at this case subjectively. Lots of people tried real hard and they eventually got off.
  

Most of the questions the judge asked were to see if we have any preconceived views regarding the defendant or the subjects related to the trial. But what I find most interesting is that we were all required to answer some basic but quite personal questions. Where do you live (city)? Where do you work and what do you do? What is your spouse's name, profession, company? Who do you live with and what do they do? If they're retired, what they did before? Any kids?

Trial
Now, this is the fun part and it has only been one day. All I can say is that all the episodes of SVU that Jean got me addicted to is coming live in front of my eyes. I'm not even exaggerating, but this is really how they speak in the court room.

"May I approach the witness, your honor?"

"Can the People move the exhibit A into evidence?"

"CSI this.. CSI that.." It appears that CSI will be in our regular vocabulary for the coming week.

"For the record... " so that amazing super-human can type it down on the weird keyboard

"Objection!" "Sustained." really... not kidding you

"Objection!" "Overturned." yup, just like on TV!

So wish me luck and hope you enjoyed reading this while I and my fellow jurors strangely stares at the defendant for the coming days.

Tourist

Two weeks ago while cousin Jessie was in town, we played tourist up and down the Bay Area. While it was hectic being a tour guide, we had lots of fun. I even got to ride the SF cable car, which I have never done before even though I've been in the Bay Area for over 20 years now. Here are some pictures from that week...

Stanford "MemChu" where we got married.
Jessie's favorite event of the week. Monterey Bay Aquarium
Famous tree on 17 Miles
Powell & Hype cable car, yay!When in Chinatown, must visit Golden Gate Bakery!
Top of the windy Lombard Street. Isn't Jean photogenic? hee hee, I'm biased
Huge a** iPhone
Go go go! Since this picture was taken, AAPL is at $137 as of this writing, yeepee! Got lucky with joining Apple last year.

A different perspective

The last week has been hectic for us and all the relatives in the Bay Area as we've had 2 weddings within a week. Lots of relatives flew in town, both from within the States and all the way from Taiwan. All the cousins including myself made numerous trip to either SJC or SFO to make various pick-ups and drop-offs.

Late Friday night, I had a pickup at SJC. I got there a bit early, so made about 7 loops and got to know the routes of Terminal A & C real well. I told Jean about it later

"I had to circle SJC about 7 times, the loops with all the construction going on were hecka long!"
"If they were shorter, you would've had to make a lot more loops, right?"

See, she always has a different perspective, love my wife!

Spock review

I couldn't remember what Spock was when I got an email few days back inviting me to sign up. So being a good alpha/beta testing whore, I signed up and then it hit me! (2 mins later)

Spock is essentially a find-that-person Google service.

"Stalkerati, meet Spock"

It is still an invitation-only beta service, but if you're kind to me and won't waste an invitation, I have a few to spare.
Once signed in, it is very similar to Google. I, of course (like you will), "spocked" myself.

Wow, there are lots of "Thomas Han"s out there. In my case, I think there were 2 matches that might be me (guess which ones?). I went ahead and clicked on the "Claim, this is me!" link on both profile pages. This is my theory. Because Spock found me on LinkedIn.com, in order to claim myself, they needed me to confirm that is indeed me, so they asked for my LinkedIn.com username/password. But once I entered that, I was presented with this page... I waited... waited.... nothing happened. (Update below)
Oh well, then I got bored and spocked Jobs. Didn't know our CEO's middle name is "Paul".

Update:
It turned out I entered the wrong LinkedIn.com email (user error!). I tried it again and this time I got. So hopefully now I can claim two of the "Thomas Han"s
Nope, no can do. After I got the verification email, clicked on the link and got this...
Cool, but on a good note. I just noticed that my review got picked up by Spock's "Buzz" on the right of their blog.

Pownce review

Buried in all the iPhone noise last week was the launch of Pownce. It looks like another micro-blog tool similar to Twitter.

Pownce is started by 4 people including Digg's Kevin Rose. It is currently by invitation only. After some begging, I was able to score one from Jeremiah (thanks!)

I have not moved over to it (yet) as most of the people are still on twitter, but I did download both the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and the OSX client.

Few comments I have regarding the OSX client so far...

• Unlike Twitter, Leah C. of Pownce and team were smart and released client for both Mac and Windows right out of the gate. Twitter started only with web and thus various unofficial clients started sprawling out.
  
• Each entry in the client requires a click to expand what ppl write. I was wondering why ppl write incomplete sentences until I realized I needed to click on each message.
• I know the OSX client is still in alpha, but a few things jumped out at me.
  
• There is no auto-login, I'm forced to click on "Sign In" every time when the app starts.
  
• It is not intuitive that the "X" button on upper right hand corner actually quits the application, not just close it.
• Command-W also quits it, not just close it (as I was expecting it to).
  
• Only Command-H would hide it away.
• I also constantly get the below error message
  

Now I just have to figure out who I can get onto Pownce...