Food for thought from TheHuey

This is a follow-up post to my last post Microsoft is desperate. After writing up a quick Anagram solver for Chicktionary, I’ve fixed up the script to handle some other games as well. Now the new GreaseMonkey script can help with Flexicon, Clink, CrossWire and Dingbats. To get the most out of them (for Club Live), you should
continue reading…

While reading the business news on NYTimes today I noticed an appealing ad for an anagram game at Microsoft’s new club.live.com offering. After clicking over and playing their little game, I realized that they are trying to artificially boost their search volume. Most of the games are somewhat intellectual and requires some searching to come up with answers, this is fine and all, but the game Chicktionary fires off a search for every word attempt. This and the fact that they are awarding ‘points’ for the play seems to point at a desperate grab by MS to increase their daily search volume. The implied value of their points is rather high, you can get a Xbox 360 game machine for 35,000 points. Seems to peg 100 points at over $1. Games award between 10 to 20 points from what I have seen so far.

They must have just launched this because I played 1 game of Clink and actually made their high score list! Seems like the existing scores are all random inserts.

I wonder how long before this hits the news? You can find more at Microsoft is Desperate

Monkey See. I was poking around Flickr recently and was amazed at the amount of ‘Interesting Photos’ that users have tagged. Some of the sunsets and scenery photos are absolutely stunning. Naturally, I wanted to fetch and use it as my desktop background. However, (understandably) Flickr doesn’t like people downloading (or referring directly to the images) so they have gone to some lengths to obfuscate and hide the actual image url. If you try to right-click and copy image source, you get an annoying little image called spaceball.gif. How does Monkey get around this?

Monkey Do. Having recently downloaded and installed the GreaseMonkey plugin for FireFox, I searched and couldn’t find a suitable userscript to handle the situation. Being the obsessive type, I went ahead and wrote two quick scripts to help me get at the actual image urls. One, ‘Flickr Img Src Exposer‘, exposes the image url on an individual photo. It adds a link ‘IMG LINK’ underneath the image allowing for easy copying. The second script, ‘Flickr Download Links‘, works when you are exploring the last 7 days’ interesting photos. I got tired of clicking on each photo and then saving the image, so I put a ‘LINK’ under each photo in the page. Clicking on the link takes you to a gallery of all the available image sizes. You can click on the download link to get the image downloaded or copy the images source from the image displayed. The largest size may not be available and you’ll find out if so after clicking on it. I chose not to display the largest image size to save Flickr some bandwidth.

Monkey no get spaceball.gif. This has proved somewhat useful for me and I thought I’d share it with others. You can find the scripts on ‘http://userscripts.org‘.

In this crazy world, we want everything now. I want my coffee now! I want my Yahoo Videos now! But, sometimes, the end result is well worth the wait.

After going past our due date of Sept. 30th and visiting the doc, an induction date of Oct. 5th was set, due to Audrey’s large head circumference. At midnight, Audrey pre-empted our scheduled morning call and sent Yun into labor. After waking me (Huey) up a few times, Yun got up at 1:05 to walk around. Still half asleep and somewhat disbelieving Yun, I vaguely remembered to tell her to grab a towel in case her water broke. At this point, contractions were irregular and about 10 minutes apart. Deciding that perhaps she was in false labor, Yun laid down around 1:25 and almost immediately went into another contraction. Breaking her water on this contraction, I rapidly became alert and started looking for the phone. We had been waiting for this baby for the past 3 weeks (Not counting the whole pregnancy of course) and I was ready to meet her. Calling the doctors office gave me an answering service. After letting them know the situation, I was told the on-call doctor would be paged. After what seemed like an eternity, we got the call from the on-call and we were told to head for the delivery room.

Half expecting a relative quick delivery, with the wife having been at 2-3cm for a few weeks, I was completely unprepared for what lay ahead. After checking in and continue reading…

by Yun,

38th week. Time is ticking. Every night before I go to bed, I’m wondering if tomorrow is the day. Yoyo, that’s her name. When are you ready to meet your parents?

My leave started about two weeks ago. 8 months. Such a long time. I’m tired. Tired from having to get up early everyday. Tired from a full schedule. Tired from walking around with a big belly. Tired generally, especially towards the last few weeks. Now with all the work load gone, I’m at ease. Spent the first week getting ready for the nursery. Crib, mattress, bedding, dresser, changing pad, stroller, car seat…the list goes on and on. Never realized that such a little tiny person needs so many things. And imagine! That’s just the beginning. We painted her room pink, light blue on the ceiling and highlighted with lavender crown molding. She better be a girl. (Ultrasound is never 100% sure about girls).

2006 is a busy year. Quite a few friends and coworkers became proud parents. Reading their blogs and looking at their baby pictures are my big enjoyment. One of my coworkers used to take his cell phone out around 5pm everyday and announced that it was time to look at the cutest kid ever. haha…… btw, his son is very very cute, with really big eyes.

Except for being heavy; having to wobble and stay away from coffee and coke; not being able to sleep well and exercise regularly; pregnancy itself was not too bad when I think about it. People are always very nice to you. Known or unknown, people asked me about my due date or boy/girl. They talked about their own kids and experiences. Recommended baby products to me. My team all took good care of me, although from time to time they teased me “not to piss off the pregnant woman”. Most of my cravings got satisifed. No need to worry about weight (overweighted anyway). Have excuses for not doing certain things. Get away with mood swings. Best chance to do shopping on behalf of baby and motherhood and so on so forth.

Couple of my friends told me to enjoy the last stage of the pregnancy, as it is such an unique experience and honestly will be our last few free days. However, I’m really anxious. Cannot wait to meet this little tiny person kicking and stretching so hard inside me (doing that right at this minute). Maybe I’ll be regretting that thought soon. But that’s later. I’m not worrying about it now.

å?ˆæœ‰å¥½ä¹…没有写blog了，几次æ??笔都ä¸?了了之，上ç?­å›žæ?¥ç´¯æ˜¯ä¸»è¦?的原因，没有心æ€?好好é?™ä¸‹å¿ƒæ?¥å?šä¸€äº›äº‹æƒ…，å?ƒå?ƒé¥­ï¼Œæ´—洗碗，整ç?†æ•´ç?†ä¸œè¥¿ï¼Œå°±å·²ç»?9， 10点了。照Hueyçš„è¯?说，那是到了我的pumpkin time，脑å­?shut down，无法进行任何需è¦?逻辑æ€?维的任务，能å?šå¾—也å?ªæ˜¯ä¸Šä¸Šç½‘，看一些奇谈怪论，已达到休æ?¯å¤§è„‘的目的。

Anyway,说正题。上个� 上个周末，我们�新家了。�美国四年多，最�习惯的就是�公寓，�管怎么装饰，就是没有家的感觉，或者更确切地说是没有安定的感觉。�想添置任何大件的家 具，�想买任何�必�的东西，实在是怕�家的辛苦。寻寻觅觅地想买房�已�有大�年了，几�投标�中，这次终于修�正果，实在是很高兴的一件事，需�谢谢 我们的agent 和亲爱的爸爸妈妈们。

新房å­?(46年新，哈哈）å??è?½åœ¨Santa Clara一个很安é?™çš„å°?区，å‰?门的è?‰å?ªä¸Šé•¿ç?€ä¸¤æ£µé“?树，åƒ?两个把门的。客厅和厨房都有大大的窗户，æœ?å?—。从车库进是family room，长方形，对ç?€å?Žé™¢ã€‚以å‰?的房主在院å­?里建了一个大大的deck，我们很喜欢，以å?Žå¤?天在这里玩è€?，乘凉，都会很惬æ„?。院å­?里现在ç§?ç?€æŸ æª¬æ ‘å’Œ Avacado树，还有几株玫瑰，Huey说å†?清ç?†ä¸€äº›åœ°å‡ºæ?¥ç§?è?œï¼Œè¾£æ¤’，西红柿，大豆苗，都是他喜欢的。我们æ?¬è¿›æ?¥ä¹‹å‰?，主è¦?装修了厨房和厕所，铺了 地，更新了appliance，粉刷一新。之å‰?一直喜欢看室内装潢类æ?‚志，以为轮到自己装修会很有自己的想法，但真正事到临头，我ç»?常犹犹豫豫，ä¸?知é?“怎 æ ·å?šé€‰æ‹©ï¼Œä¹Ÿæ‡’å¾—å?šé€‰æ‹©ã€‚倒是Huey，I like this, I like that，当家作主的气势å?´æ˜¯å¾ˆç››ã€‚æ?¬è¿›æ?¥ä¸¤ä¸ªæ˜ŸæœŸï¼Œhouse is still a mess. è¦?等到全部整ç?†å®Œï¼Œè¿˜é•¿è·¯æ¼«æ¼«ã€‚。。

First off, we only had ~1 hour to play so the blinds were quite crazy. 15 minute rounds starting at 100/200, doubling to 400/800, and then jumping to 1k/2k.

With only 5 players, (Me [button], Shawn, Manish, Sentil, Venkat) I started the evening with some aggresive semi-bluffs and took the first 2 pots. Then, after sensing weakness, pushed all-in on two pair (K3AA on the board) against Venkat. With a rags kicker, he wisely laid down his hand. I had pocket QQs against Shawn’s Ax one hand and the Queens stood up. Then, continue reading…

What a wonderful year and a day it’s been! Since June 14th, 2005, I have married a wonderful wife, learned that I will be having a baby girl this year, and found a beautiful house in a great neighborhood. Even though I haven’t quite made it yet in my career, my outlook on life has been only getting rosier. From my awesome parents, a loving wife, great relatives, and stellar friends, it’s hard to find a gripe.

As some of you may know, we entered into a contract earlier in the year to purchase a house in Santa Clara. Unknown to us at the time was that the seller had taken out a second and a third loan/loc against their equity and needed a cash infusion to close the deal. Since we were unwilling/unable to give them more money, (It was already priced at the high end of our price range) the deal fell thru (and the unsavory characters are still refusing to release our earnest money) and we had to go thru quite some hassle to secure new housing (We lost our lease and had to find a new apartment within a very short amount of time). Fortunately, we did find a very nice apartment complex (Arioso apartments) in Cupertino that appealed to both Yun and I. It’s been quite nice to be there in a new and bright environment.

So the trigger for that debacle was Yun and I learning that we were going to be parents. We were a little hasty and should have done a little more due diligence regarding the seller’s finances, but how are we supposed to know that? The good thing is that we learned and bided our time until we found the perfect house. It is an old house but the original owners (!!) took good care of it and it is in very good shape. Lots of mature bushes keep the yard quite private but I’m probably going to remove some of them for a garden.

On top everything, at 5:24 AM on my birthday, I got a gentle wake up call in the form of a magnitude 4.7 earthquake. It was 44km (28 mi) away so I only felt the bed shake a bit and the room creak. I was awake already so knew right away that it was an earthquake. Funny enough, it was the first one I’ve ever conciously felt. I’ve been thru a few 3 point quakes over the past 6 years.

So while I hope my next year will be just as exciting, I’m going to be just fine with a less eventful one.

Best wishes to everyone and hope your next year is as wonderful as mine last.

-Huey

On my birthday, my gift from my wife was that I can play in the evening poker game. After receiving her blessings, I half jokingly touted that I was coming home with the winnings. Our games usually run until 8pm or beyond so when I called her around 7:40 and told her I was coming home, she didn’t broach the subject of who won. Only after getting home and spending a few minutes talking to her about it did she realize that I had won.

What a win it was, continue reading…

Game started late at 6:30pm and ran till about 8:05pm. We had 9 players and 3 rebuys for a pot of $60. First place winner, Pinank, was getting quite a few lucky hands towards the end. His A2 beat Mike’s A9 by catching a 2 on the turn (after all-ins after the flop). Second place winner, Huey, let go a few small pocket cards that turned into monsters (96s for a full house), and went heads up with a miniscule stack. Losing pocket 6’s to Pinank’s pocket 7’s. Third place winner ?? got their money back.

Stay tuned for next week’s update, we’ll try to track the winners here.