Personal Dork Assistant

Dog Days

Sam's heading back to Duke to finish his last year, and Michelle is starting hospital rotations, right after a month in Botswana volunteering at the Butler clinic. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much time or place for the dog, so Laika got to take his first plane ride to a new home. There's more space here for him to run around anyway, with the yard and the park across the street, and boy does he like to run around. At least it's only playful energy, without inflicting furniture damage, although he does like to lie down on the nearest carpet in mom's way. Taking him out for a walk makes for a good upper body workout along with the jogging, as he strains against the leash to check out all the new territory. He probably wished he drank more water before heading out. He kept trying to mark every single telephone pole along the way, but he ran out of pee. The small hunting dog genes were obvious. He kept sticking his nose into drainholes and loose earth. He must've smelled something along the golf course, when he began vigorously digging for whatever poor rodent he was gunning for. The little dude can sure excavate. Even after we get home I had to let him off the leash and run a few laps around the house to bleed off the excess energy before he'll come inside.

Michelle decided to take the Board exam (don't you love multiple-choice questions that go down to J?) in Alameda, so she was busy studying for most of the week. That left Sam and I on the couch with split-screen baseball/basketball triple-header action. The MX-700 remote handled it all perfectly. Also watched Kill Bill 1 (on DVD) and 2 (at the theater). Watching them close together was definitely the right way to go. It was all perfectly entertaining, but I'm sure gobs of film-geek references went whooshing right over our heads (David Carradine as a story-telling, flute-playing, kung-fu master, ha ha). Very clever to have a tall white woman in a role usually played by stocky asian guys, but I'm not sure if that automatically freshens up all the clichés. Not sure how I felt about seeing said white girl emasculating Asian men by the dozens in Volume 1, either.

Michelle filled up her iPod with my music for her month in Africa. A big chunk of the stuff on the iPod was from my iTunes collection originally, but now I have all my CD's at home. She wanted the Yo La Tengo. Who knew? I guess I have perfect musical tastes for the liberal college chick. I just need some more feminist-correct soul and hip-hop. Maybe some Missy Elliot or Erykah Badu. I bet Lauren Hill's fallen into the bargain bins by now.

What I learned from Sam this week

Dog + Party Hat = Instant Comedy

In other news, the crazy kids decided to get engaged. More of an evolutionary step than a big bang, really. No ring or anything, no point in taking a big rock to Africa, although you know mom's just dying to hit the jewelers in HK.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Why, you went to college-admission camp, didn't you? I don't remember it being this hard when I went through the process. Of course, I did take a short-cut by doing Early Decision, and I had a pretty good backup school in UC Berkeley via the Accelerated Program. And it looks like the alma mater has gotten more picky, as they now say not to even bother apply early if you don't have calculus and physics by the end of junior year. Still, does it really take $3K plus two weeks to write some college essays?

All three programs include preparation for the SAT, writing essays and guidance on college selection, interview tips and college visits. The Musiker program — $2,899 for 12 days at Northeastern University or Georgetown, offered in partnership with The Princeton Review — includes more college visits than the others. Bob Musiker, an executive director, said about 120 students had enrolled so far for 200 openings.

Let's face it, anyone who's dropping the bucks for these programs was going to get into someplace good anyway. I hope they weren't planning on the Claremont Colleges, though.

"This is just sick," said Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona College in California. "I can't imagine how it's going to help, and it sounds like such a ridiculous waste of money that it distresses me that parents would be so obsessive-compulsive."

A-fucking-men. If you couldn't slack your way into something, it wasn't worth doing anyway. Apparently cousin Alan only got 1100 on his (10th grade) PSAT. I think his chance to become a productive human being may be gone.

To The City

Went to SF to visit that busiest of busybodies, auntie Dai. Aunt drove so dad and I were just kind of extraneous bodies to fill the table at the restaurant. Kinda silly to take an S500 into SF and try to squeeze into a three-car garage meant for one-and-a-half, but mom didn't trust my navigation skills. She's staying at her daughter's place just off Geary in the Richmond. It was a convenient place to live while she was going to USF law school, and the mortgage makes for a nice tax break for the sister at Morgan Stanley (i.e. the one with money). It's a little sad to see all the nice houses in the area subdivided into a zillion little apartments, but how else are you going to cram all the people in? Besides, splitting up a house and selling it four ways probably nets you at least twice the money. It's a great area, though. A million little ethnic restaurants, Clement St. and New Chinatown is the next street over, and it's within walking distance of Golden Gate Park. Went to lunch at a nice Korean place down the street. The obligatory meats were nice, but had the tofu soups for the first time and they were quite tasty, especially over rice, which came in large clay pots, and you can't go wrong with the panchan. The fun bit was when they scooped out most of the rice from the big pot, they poured in some hot water which loosens up the burnt rice stuck to the bottom of the pot and made for a light soup when mixed with the leftover tofu.

Auntie Dai was here on her usual US-HK-Taiwan circuit, but Tom Lin and his family are here, too. Part of it is to visit his sister and mom, part is for a family vacation, partly for business, as he went over to New York for a few days to get briefed on his new job. It's good to get away from Taiwan once in a while anyway, and especially now just in case his old bosses decide to sue him for jumping ship. They have a little two-year old daughter who's active and cute and everything, but if you thought Taebee was a spoiled Asian princess, I'm afraid you ain't seen nothin' yet. That's what you get when you have a shopping fiend of a grandma (and lots of Filipina maids), I guess.

Blowing Up

Inflation had seemed virtually extinct in America. So much so that there were worries of deflation not so long ago. But was it all an illusion? In fact, much of the pricing pressure on manufactured goods have been exported to other countries, especially in Asia. Normally, all the importing by the US and the ensuing trade deficits lead to higher interest rates and/or devalued dollars, which brings things back into equilibrium. However, Asian governments have subsidized the US buying binge by buying up dollars (in the form of Treasury bonds) to keep their own currencies and goods relatively cheap, in order to keep their own factories running full-bore.

Any significant drop-off in Asia's seemingly insatiable appetite for the greenback would trigger a rise in interest rates that could slow U.S. growth and depress a job market only now showing its first signs of recovery. "Right now, it is Asians who are helping keep U.S. interest rates low," summed up Kenneth Courtis, Asia vice chairman for American investment firm Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Why would this ever end? After all, it's a win-win for Asian workers who get jobs, and US consumers who can buy more cheap stuff. Unfortunately, the real world intervenes. In the end, you still need raw materials to make all this stuff, and artificially supported consumer demand will cause inflation in commodities prices. Well, guess what?

As managers of businesses across China opened booths here on Thursday at the nation's biggest trade fair, the common refrain was that prices of everything from rice to steel were rising sharply, and that prices of exports to the United States, Europe and elsewhere would have to follow.

All the dollars flowing into the Chinese market is swelling the bank vaults with cash that in turn are lent to increasingly speculative or shady deals. It makes for great headlines, as the economy is expected to grow by 9% this year, but how much of that will come crashing down when the bad loans come due? Guanxi will beat out economic common sense every time.

To make matters worse, China's banks are widely described as very corrupt and vulnerable to political pressures to lend money to well-connected borrowers who are unlikely to repay their debts.

Of course, all this worry could be plain old xenophobia. A while ago we were worrying about China causing global deflation, now the danger is bubble inflation. They're all just actors playing out in front of a persistent background of domestic economic worries.

With fears of deflation dissipating, Mr. Roach at Morgan Stanley has taken to a more upbeat view of China's influence on the world: "We ought to be thanking the Chinese," he wrote last month.

But Americans probably won't

Blame Canada

Doesn't a name like "The Chic Geek" just scream "WANNABE"? There's more to being a geek than just accumulating an endless array of gadgets. Apparently most of said gadgets now feature a blue LED as an indicator lamp. Normally I wouldn't care about some newspaper columnist regurgitating pre-digested technical pseudo-advice to the ignorant masses, but he's trying to take food off our table here.

OK, I'll admit I actually thought blue LEDs were pretty neat when I first saw them. I was fascinated by something shiny and new. But my original rhapsody in blue has winked out as these new LEDs have gone from innovative curiosity to pervasive annoyance.

The blue ray of hope I'm clinging to is that things usually reach this level of overkill right before the balance tips and they become extremely uncool. Like neon-yellow T-shirts, Rick Astley albums and Flock of Seagulls hair styles.

Nononono, we want more blinking lights. The more the better. The brighter and bluer the better. Their margins are higher. And I've been meaning to pick up a Flock of Seagulls CD, too. Sony's been doing a good job going all-blue-all-the-time, but apparently the pachinko machine makers make better customers. They love lots of colorful flashing lights, and they're not as nearly as picky as Sony.

Opening Dayz

The start of the baseball season is a little strange this year as there were multiple starting points, depending on your point of view.

1. Opening Day = The day when the first game is played. March 30th.

   The Yankees play the first game of the season versus the Devil Rays at the Tokyo Dome in Japan, five days before any other teams take the field. The question is, if they play an American League baseball game and no Americans saw it, was the game played? I mean, it started at 2am in the morning in New York, which gives the folks something to do after last-call, but not something the kids are going to enjoy. The ESPN announcers didn't even bother to leave the comforts of Bristol, preferring to call the game via video feed. Maybe they had a few before last-call, too.

   At least the Japanese folks got what they wanted to see. We overpaid for Hideki Matsui last year as he struggled to find his power while adjusting to Major League pitching. It must've been the ballparks that was the problem, as he promptly blasted a home run when he came home to the Tokyo Dome. We got our fantasy money's worth, though, as Jorge Posada blasted two three-run homers to get us out the gate fast in the RBI race. Even Julio Lugo chipped in an RBI double.

2. Opening Day = The day when the first game is played in the U. S. of A. April 4th.

   Well, it's not really Opening Day per se, as the one game didn't start until 8pm Eastern time, and is 43-degree weather with 20-degree wind chill really baseball weather? Apparently not for Pedro, as the most expensive roto pitcher in the league got knocked around the revamped Orioles' O as he struggled to break 90mph on the radar gun. Manny was his usual self as the foundation of many a fantasy team, with two solid hits and an RBI. David Ortiz didn't look great in his at-bats, though. We knew even when we kept him that he might regress a bit from his career year last year, but he did draw a walk, and patience is always good, especially in our league which counts on-base percentage rather than batting average.

3. Opening Day = The day when your team plays its first game. April 5th.

   The Giants were opening in Houston, where they are hugely optimistic after upgrading their rotation in the offseason. It was Roy Oswalt starting on Opening Day, though, and he seemed like a fine choice as he mowed down the Giants early with dominating stuff. Meanwhile, with Jason Schmidt on the shelf (good thing we didn't keep him?), the Giants had to send out Kirk Rueter as their #1 guy. A soft-tossing lefty in the Juice Box didn't sound like a good idea, and Kirk was teetering on the brink all through the first couple of innings, leaving the bases loaded both times. He settled down, though, and gave the team six decent innings. They were behind, but they were still close. Then Alou decided to use a Brewers' reject as his first option out of the pen, who promptly gave up two more runs. Up by three runs in the 8th, Oswalt was beginning to struggle, giving up two singles sandwiched by a strikeout. Now Barry Bonds is up as the tying run, and Jimy Williams comes out of the dugout to chat with Oswalt. Barry's already working on a perfect day, going opposite field for two doubles plus the obligatory walk. Jimy leaves Oswalt on the hill, presumably after warning him to be extra careful. Oswalt tries to throw a fastball away off the plate. Apparently it wasn't away enough. Barry decided to heck with opposite field, and ripped off a screaming line drive straight into the first row for a game-tying home run, single-handedly dragging the Giants back into a game they had no business being in. The rest of the game was almost academic. The Astro's newly anointed closer came in to pitch the 9th in a tie game (the right strategy, IMHO), and gave up the winning run with a hit-batter, who advanced to 2nd on the sacrifice bunt, went to 3rd on a wild pitch, and scored on the sac-fly. Our luck with fill-in Giants closers continued as Matt Herges got the big save by going through the top of the Astro's order.

   The A's game was almost as exciting, as Kenny Rogers and the Rangers stuck right with Hudson and the A's the whole game. We faced the classic fantasy dilemma, as Mark Teixeira smashed a go-ahead, two-run homer to dead-center on a cold night at Oakland Coliseum. So our guy did good, but our team is losing. The good old Texas bullpen came through for us, though, when Eric Byrnes, who admittedly is no Barry Bonds (even if he along with Barry carried our fantasy offense for the first half of last year), also came up with a huge, pinch-hit, two-run double to win the game for the Athletics.

And in the end, after all the Opening Days, our real teams were at the top of the standings, and our fantasy team was also at the top of the league. All downhill from here, I guess.

Wired on Wireless

Wired is running yet another parable about the vagaries of doing business in China. In this case, it's Motorola in the crosshairs. Once again, the home-grown company started at the low-end, then climbed the price scale as the cell phone market exploded in China, until they can now take advantage their broader distribution channels even as they chase down the Western company in technological innovation. Not all the Chinese innovation is in code and chipsets, though.

It's a safe bet that Hattie and her friends would have been smitten with Ningbo Bird's recently announced 5100 (price still to be determined) if it had been on the shelves when we were shopping. This is the his-and-hers phone set for young lovers. Hers comes in a lavender hibiscus-blossom pattern with cubic-zirconium highlights; his is a little more, well, masculine. A commitment, yes - and yet easier to get rid of than a tattoo.

Tailoring the product to the local market is a great business idea, but sometimes I do wonder what the hell is wrong with Asian people.

Hattie's guy friends think Sony Ericsson is really cool - great for games, with sound quality that's good enough for karaoke (cell phone karaoke is almost as big in China as in Japan).

I'm not a big fan of karaoke, but at least the people singing are usually in their own homes or in some soundproof booth at a KTV. Combining crushing crowds, jabbering cell phones, and bad singing just seems like the most awful idea in the world. I wouldn't mind picking up a Sony-Ericsson phone, though, if only for the cool value of controlling the Mac through Salling Clicker.

Funhouse Statistics

For amusement value, you can't beat the recent factoid that the number of unemployed college graduates has exceeded the number of unemployed high-school dropouts. Of course, that's mostly due to there being a lot more college graduates than high school dropouts. Nevertheless, the unemployment rates of the college grads has jumped by a more significant fraction than for the dropouts.

Meanwhile, Open Source Guy argues that he is saving jobs in Silicon Valley by outsourcing to India, since his company (selling software for "collaborative software development," nudge, nudge, wink, wink) might've folded without the cheap manpower.

At an engineering offsite in the Marin Headlands, soon after the announcement, a "V.C.-type" speaker came in to put the company's move into a larger economic context, developer Leonard Richardson, 24, remembers.

"He talked about how the agricultural economy had become the industrial economy, which in turn had become the knowledge economy. Someone asked him what comes next, after outsourcing takes its toll on the knowledge economy. He said that if anyone had any ideas he was interested in hearing them," says Richardson.

Kevin Maples, another programmer, dubbed this vague notion the "I don't know, you think of something" economy.

The rank-and-file don't seem convinced. Meanwhile, at least the job picture seems to be improving at home.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that for the week ending March 27, new jobless claims filings declined by a seasonally adjusted 3,000 to 342,000, the lowest level in two weeks.

Woo hoo, it's like, a new record, or something.