Off we go!

Along with hundreds from the Bay Area, this is what we'll be doing...

s/work/2 weeks of vacation in Taiwan/g

Shot himself in the foot

By now, we're all been inundated with Elliot Spitzer news in the last 48 hours, right?

Short recap: The New York Governor did something stupid by using an escort service prostitute and then more stupid, got caught!

On the way to work this morning, I heard something interesting on NPR radio. So how did he get caught? It all came down to some of his own suspicious bank transactions. But that's not the whole story. You are probably aware of the $10,000 limit on any transaction that banks are required to report to the government. In addition to that, banks also have a Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) list which they cross check. Back in 2001, a New York State General Attorney worked diligently to tighten the rules regarding banks reporting transactions in regards to PEPs in order to prevent crimes such as money laundering, etc.

Guess who that attorney general was? Elliot himself! Doh!

I got published

I'm no Ph.D candidate or some big shot, so I don't write papers or anything important that people would want to read. But I got published today :-) I do write a diary (yeah with paper and pen), but even Jean doesn't get to read that.

OK, so it's not on the NYT. It's not even in an article. It's a thank-you email I wrote two SJ Mercury staffs which got printed in the reader's feedback comment section today. Still kinda fun.

So what intrigued me to write the newspaper? This past Sunday, Gary Richards a.k.a. Mr. Roadshow of SJ Mercury news wrote a "Why I drive" article. Opposite of his story on the front page that day was his colleague's counter "Why I don't drive" point of view. After reading both of their views and learning more about the staff themselves, I felt the need to drop them a quick note and say "thank you".

I agree with both of their views on why one needs a car and the other gave up his car. If we could have our way here in the south bay, we would give up our cars too. We're known to walk all over Cupertino and sometime all the way to Saratoga to run our errands on weekends and weekday nights. We try our best to not even move our cars on the weekend. Walking is by far the best way to exercise, for both of us and Charlie. An invaluable side benefit is that the walk slowss down our lives and allows us to have conversations without any interruption (yes, I try to leave my iPhone at home during our walks)

Below is a screen shot of the actual email I wrote Gary and Joe and underneath it is the screen shot of the 'edited' version.


Screen shot from SJ Mercury.

So much for dwarf orange tree

We bought a dwarf orange tree 2 years ago and planted in the backyard. The label that came with the little 2 feet tree indicated that they should be no more than 5 feet. Two years and one storm later, it is now about 8 feet and we got our first crop this week.

But does that look dwarf to you?

Twitter in Plain English

Still don't understand what Twitter is or why I twitter? Best 2 minutes and 25 seconds you'll spend. Thanks to the people at Common Craft who makes these cool videos to explain complex technologies in simple English.

I've moved from Apple... to Apple

Waaayyy too excited!!! We got news!

No, we're not moving out of Cupertino.

No, we're not having a baby (yes, few have asked...)

This is related to my job. No, I'm not leaving Apple either. I'm moving to another group within Apple. But the interview process was no different than if I were moving to/from another company.

For the last two years, I've been on the iTunes gift card team. Working hard so we can sell more of these colorful cards and make the world a better place.

It has been a wild ride working on the system and learning the business and processes that surround selling iTunes gift cards. Still amazes me the volume of these plastic things Apple sells and the amount of transactions we handle. I truly enjoyed the great teammates and I'll truly miss them. See ya all around at the beer bashes.

So where am I going?

.Mac (dot Mac). I'm very excited about this move for various reasons, but two stands out. One is the potential .Mac has and the future it holds. The second reason is the team. During the interviews, I met the whole team including the director and I'm truly impressed with all of them.

Now what am I going to be working on? Come on, you know the rules here at Apple and how we roll, besides, I really don't know yet anyway :-)

So wish me luck in helping make .Mac something everyone wants to use (and pay for it), hooyeah! I'm ready to start drinking from the fire hose.