After scouring the web for other customer complaints, it appears that the Netgear and D-Link routers have problems sustaining wireless connections. This is especially true if your neighbors use w-fi routers that are labelled “Extreme” or some kind of enhanced mode that boosts the 802.11g spec to greater than the 54Mbps allowed. For some reason, their signals interfere with my signals, with my signal ending up being disconnected. This had not happened a month ago. I am guessing that one of my neighbors recently bought one of these “enhanced” routers. Anyway, the moral of the story is that you get what you pay for, and D-Link and Netgear needs to get to the root of this problem. Otherwise, there will be a whole lot more Linksys switchers.

• Apple iPod video
• Apple iPod Nano
• Any cool iPod accessories. i.e. iPod dock to go with the above iPods.
• DVR (digital video recorder) – anything that works with both cable TV and Dish Network.  I’d even accept a computer-based solution like the Elgato EyeTV products.
• Star Wars Episode III DVD
• XBox 360
• Laptop bag/case – compact size, nothing too bulky.
• A Swiss Army watch
• Acoustic guitar – I need a good one to replace my old one that is having some slight tuning problems.
• A nice camera cellphone that can be used on T-Mobile or Cingular.  Maybe Motorola RAZR v3, or one of those Windows Mobile Smartphones.

UPDATE: Looks like my SpyMac mail finally came back online (on Monday evening). Fortunately, some of the emails that were in route to me during the outage, did come through. However, there was the issue of my archived mail folders being lost. After calling them up and leaving them a message, I finally got my archived mail back today (Wednesday). Even though, they got me back to the state where I was before the outage, it was still unprofessional as to how they handled this “planned mail server migration”. I hope they learn from this mistake, because this user has just lost its trust in SpyMac. I assume many others feel the same. I will be backing up my email regularly from now on. I will also be on the lookout for another email address. Unfortunately, the pickings are slim. Gmail (free) and Yahoo ($20/yr) both provide 2GB mail accounts, but they don’t provide IMAP, only POP mail. Hotmail ($20/yr) also has 2GB accounts, but only provide access using Outlook using their proprietary HTTP mail server and POP. Why is IMAP mail access so important? It allows you to connect from different PCs/Macs and synchronizes your mail and folders automatically between them all. Without it, all of us who access our emails using our email applications from home, work, and other machines, would all be out of sync.

And here’s the good news — a lot of people are building machines you’ll be able to buy. The article is located at CBS’ 60 Minutes website entitled “Flying Cars Ready To Take Off“.

As far as keeping busy during that time, I’ve been picking up skills in PHP and the whole L.A.M.P. open source development architecture. Even IBM seems interested in supporting it by partnering with Zend (the PHP optimization company). On February 25, 2005, IBM announced an agreement with Zend Technologies to develop the industry’s first integrated solution designed to help developers build and deploy applications and services based on the popular PHP Web language. You may be curious why I chose to learn PHP and MySQL. I do have a special project under tight wraps that I am hoping to release in the next couple months (all using L.A.M.P). I will be partnering with my close colleague Jason Bagorio and his company BizwareTech to release a special version of his current website PlaceAdz.com. Anyway, I can’t really say too much, so look for it in the upcoming months.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

For now, this service is completely free. In my mind, it has some very interesting marketing potential. At the moment, it does one thing and does it well. I did have some performance issues during peak internet hours and I did get a 404 error during that time. Some future enhancements that I can think of are to include a favorites/bookmarks import/export feature in the same manner that Yahoo! Bookmarks does it. Anyway, here are my public bookmarks at del.icio.us. Enjoy!

• One minute goals
• One minute praisings
• One minute reprimands

Just remember the following tag lines: Set goals; praise and reprimand behaviors; encourage people; speak the truth; laugh; work; enjoy. If you are interested in what I briefly explained, go buy the book “The One Minute Manager” by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.

Anyway, enough of my bitter ranting. If any readers of my blog wish to give an experienced web developer/designer a chance at career bliss, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My resume is available here online. If anyone from Apple, Google, and any major web design firms come a knocking, I’m ready to listen.

What he has done has brought up a very important legal topic for today’s electronic age. What happened to Mark Jen has happened to many bloggers. If you read the Washington post article titled “Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs“, you’ll notice a trend. Free speech in the constitution does not apply to corporate settings. I took one law class in my Masters degree program at UoP, and there was a case that set a legal precendent that allows employers to fire employees for inappropriate behavior using email. It would be interesting to see if this precendent can be applied to the blogging world as well. In any case, companies should clearly have blogging policies, since it is becoming a very hot trend in the online world. This way, there is no grey legal issue if someone writes something inappropriate on their blog about the company they work for.  

JHymn Goes Behind Atoms and Apple To Bring DRM-Free Music
by Howard Wen describes the newest successor to Hymn that allows iTunes purchased songs to be freed from their shackles of DRM.

Microsoft worker wants to be Trump’s ‘Apprentice’
describes how TV’s Apprentice contestant Verna Felton is going for the title of Trump’s apprentice. She even has her own following at Microsoft and her own website.

Besides having a Microsoft representation in the show, Apprentice contestant Stephanie Myers works at IBM. Since, I work at IBM also (as a contractor), I was interested in seeing if I could locate her in the Intranet directory. Hmmm… looks like she still works at IBM, but her telephone number is not publicly made available. For legality reasons, I blurred out her email and building location.

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it.

Enough said. Buy me one at http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/6ba5/.

“The new labor-market-clearing real wage has been lowered by this version of dynamic fair free trade,” Mr. Samuelson writes. But doesn’t purchasing cheaper call-center or programming services from abroad reduce input costs for various industries, delivering a net benefit to the economy? Not necessarily, Mr. Samuelson replied. “To put things in simplified terms, he explained in the interview, being able to purchase groceries 20 percent cheaper at Wal-Mart does not necessarily make up for the wage losses.”

Reference: An Elder Challenges Outsourcing’s Orthodoxy – Steve Lohr

• Gmail – 1GB storage, 10MB attachments
• Hotmail Plus – $19.95 per year, 2GB storage, 20MB attachments
• Hotmail free – 250MB storage, 10MB attachments
• Yahoo Mail Plus – �11.99, 2GB storage, 10MB attachments
• Yahoo Free – 100MB of storage, 10MB attachments
• Lycos UK Personal – �41.88 per year, 1GB storage, 50MB attachments
• Lycos UK – free, 10MB storage
• Spymac – free, 1GB storage
• Ask Jeeves – free, 250MB storage
• Ask Jeeves Excite Gold – $19.99 per year, 2GB storage
• Shiremail – �42 per year, 1GB storage  

By the way, I’ll give a review of how my new Google Gmail account in the upcoming weeks.  Thanks to Ha and Chris for the Gmail invitations!  

The Calgary Flames game 2 against Tampa Bay Lightning really sucked.  Half the team gave half effort and the result showed.  If the team wants the championship, they’ll have to start sticking it to the Lightning players.

Ok, this journal entry will be the last entry till June 6.  Until then, tah tah.  

Aggressive driving, including speeding, rapid acceleration, and braking, wastes gas. It can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent when driving at highway speeds and by 5 percent when cruising around town. This 5 to 33 percent is equivalent to gasoline savings of 7 to 49 cents a gallon. Observing the speed limit can also help. Gas mileage decreases quickly at speeds above 60 mph. For each 5 mph driven over 60 mph, you’ll pay an additional 10 cents per gallon. Using cruise control on the highway helps maintain a constant speed that can help you save gas. Also, take the time to clean out that trunk before a big trip. The heavier the load in your car, the more gasoline used. Use the air conditioner sparingly. The A/C puts more force on the engine, forcing more fuel to be used – about 20 percent more.

Anything from a filthy air filter to under-pumped tires can put a strain on your engine. AAA estimates that a driver can burn about $90 a year just by neglecting their tires. The rounder the tire, the less energy it requires to roll.

The situation for the consumer is expected to get worse before we see any relief. Don’t forget, the federal government allows you to take tax breaks when you buy a hybrid. But you better do it soon, because those breaks are scheduled to phase out 2007.  

Wednesday May 19th has been formally declared “stick it to them” day and the people of this nation should not buy a single drop of gasoline that day. The only way this can be done is if you forward this e-mail to as many people as you can and as quickly as you can to get the word out. Waiting on this administration to step in and control the prices is not going to happen. What happened to the reduction and control in prices that the arab nations promised two weeks ago? Remember one thing, not only is the price of gasoline going up but at the same time airlines are forced to raise their prices, trucking companies are forced to raise their prices which effects prices on everything that is shipped. Things like food, clothing, building materials, medical supplies, etc. And who pays in the end? We do! We can make a difference. If they don’t get the message after one day, we will do it again and again. So, do your part and spread the word. Forward this e-mail to everyone you know. Mark your calendars and make may 19th a day that the citizens of the United States and Canada say “enough is enough”.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to buy a drop of gas that day.

In hockey news, the Calgary Flames win on the road again. I wonder if playing at home makes the team lose focus or what. I’ll make a bold prediction that the Flames will get their act together for game 6. Go Flames go!

Now for the hockey news. The Calgary Flames lost again today to the San Jose Sharks. It doesn’t look too good now that San Jose has the momentum. We’ll see how strong this Flames team really is come Monday night. Keys to a Flames victory are the powerplay and more focus on getting to the scoring areas. I think we’ll see a different team tomorrow.  

may be afraid of death and dying. Alternatively, ghosts are representative of something that is no longer obtainable or within reach. It indicates a feeling of disconnection from life and society. This dream may be a calling for you to move on and abandon your outdated modes of thinking and behavior.

It is possible that the ghost is the “Grim Reaper”. According to the same website, the Grim Reaper represents

the negative, rejected aspects of your personality. It represents aspects of yourself that you have repressed. Alternatively, it symbolizes death or the end of something.

This is scary. I am not sure what will happen now.  

By the way, go Flames go! The Calgary Flames are looking for the sweep in the playoff series with the San jose Sharks after Tuesday’s win to lead the series 2-0.

Another bit of news worth mentioning is that the offline Playfair project is finally back online. I am quite curious to see if the Apple lawyers will find another way to shut this project down again.

I rented and saw “The Last Samurai” last night and it was pretty cool. The samurai fighting sequences kinda reminded me of all the Aikido lessons I took when I was younger. I attended religiously for 4 years at Calgary Aikikai. I’ve tested and received a 5th kyu ranking. However, I know most of the techniques needed to get brown belt (3rd kyu). In Rochester MN, I attended the Aikido of Rochester dojo off and on for a couple years.

Oh by the way, go Flames go! Hopefully, tonight we’ll go up 2-0 in the series.

By the way, for you ladies or guys with wives or girlfriends you can take a look at some bargains for cosmetics and beauty products at my sister’s Mary Kay website.  

It is a very conservative town, with churches in almost every neighbourhood. Initially when I came here, not known for its cultural diversity, the city has started to attract more international visitors. Soccer fields are also very common in this city. That’s where you can see the many different cultures of the city come together. I keep fit by playing in the city leagues whenever I can.

I realize that Rochester is not the best city for entertainment and nightlife, but it is fairly safe and a great place to raise a family. I am not sure if I’ll live here my whole life. I doubt it, but until circumstances dictate otherwise, I’m sticking with it.

Here’s some useless information. Did you know that I attended St. Patrick’s Elementary School when I a kid?

St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. Apparently, he was famous for driving out all the snakes out of Ireland, but that is just a tale.

Hi, my name is Thomas Yung. I am 29 years old. I am currently a web developer employed by AIC to work at IBM. I enjoy what I do. I design and program web pages and applications.

I was born in Hong Kong, brought up in Nigeria, raised in Canada, and now find myself in the United States. Well-traveled? Not quite. The only continents that I haven’t been to are South America, and Australia. I still have time. Maybe, after I make my first million.

I am a geek. What can I say. I enjoy tinkering with technology. I’ve even built my own PC when I was only 15 years old. Now, I just buy one from Dell.

Besides technology, I enjoy all kinds of music. I listen to all my music on my iPod.

I can play the guitar reasonably well. I love to watch hockey and play all kinds of sports, including soccer, hockey, and basketball. My favorite hockey team is the Calgary Flames.