Month: January 2013

Categories
advice and tips

If I could treat everyone like Hope community (family)

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Last Updated on January 31, 2013 by omaha

Did not get much sleep last night, as I had to go to airport to pick up my in-laws at 2 am. This morning, after drop off my daughter and I was trying to change lane to get to Panera Bread, the car behind me was not happy, and honked. I honked in revenge. Not good. Later on at Panera I gave up better nice to a few older people as good well gesture.

This evening when I was picking up my daughter, I waved at the car waited for me in parking lot. My wife asked “do you know the person?” I replied I don’t. But it’s good to behave good in Hope community, because I feel we are like a family. But outside Hope, my feeling was different 🙂

Categories
advice and tips

My thoughts and prayer on today’s event

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Last Updated on January 22, 2013 by omaha

(Update 01-23-13) This morning I talked to my daughter school director about this.  He is older and wiser (like my uncle). We talked various topics from teaching kids to the new town incident, and yesterday’s incident. His thought was some people will do anything for fame (name recognition). I agree. The best way is probably just ignore those people, while get prepared by ourselves. Pray a bit for us and for them. Don’t lose cool.

(Original 01-22-13) It was quite eventual day today, as the place I worked has some protest, and at one point, the fire alarm went off (turned out to be false alarm, trigged by the saw cutting the chain of protesters). To be honest, I had a lot emotions today, from the initial surprise, to excitement (as some protesters doing some singing and chanting downstairs), to angry (why did they invade my work place, and disrupt my work, my co-workers and all the other tenants’ work), to more angry as I saw pregnant woman also had to came out in this cold due to false alarm. By the way, she took it better than me as she joked she could use the ambulance on the site if she delivers. I talked to my wife and one of my daughter’s teacher about this (as I was picking up Serenity after work).

Now as I read a bit more on protesters’ background, and our daughter Serenity goes to bed, I do the normal prayer, I think forgiving is the right approach. I was very much blessed with my parents, my siblings and my relatives, friends, teachers, co-workers in my upbringing, from growing up in a rural village in Ningbo (Zhejiang, southeast China), attending Zhenhai Middle School (a top high school in Zhejiang province and in China), doing the farm work while in summer, and seeing the rapid opening and development of China (esp. costal) in 1980s and 1990s. I also was very fortunate attending Huazhong University of Science and Technology, a leading engineering school in China, then University of Missouri at Rolla (a leading engineering school here). Again the people I met in both places are just amazing.

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Categories
Uncategorized

Who is doing the dishes at school: lessons learned from teachers :-)

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Last Updated on January 18, 2013 by omaha

I (actually we both my wife and myself) learned quite a bit from our daughters’ teachers. A few months ago Serenity does not like to leave when we picked her up in the late afternoon. I recall one evening we were the last car to leave the parking lot 🙁

One evening, she said she wants to get a drink (water). Thought it’s a benign request, I took her back to classroom. She used 3 cups, obviously did not finish them all. I did not thought too much that day (evening) as eventually she leaves with me. Another evening, she’s doing the same in the classroom, and would not leave. Luckily the teacher was there, and talked to her about “just use one cup”, at that time I realized who is doing the dishes, not my mom, not me, not my wife, it’s our teachers 🙂

We should teach our child to be respectful of others. Another example is in the restaurant, initially I did not what to say when my daughter makes large noise, after a while I came up with this answer: we are here as guests, we should be respectful of other guests (not making noises). This is better than “don’t do that”. From negative to positive.

Categories
Software development Web Windows

Consuming a PHP SOAP web service from C# client

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Last Updated on January 17, 2013 by stlplace

I need to create a SOAP client in C#, and in order to test it I need a SOAP web service. Since my hosting company uses MySQL/PHP technology stack, I am using this PHP Soap web service example.

For the C# soap client, I am following this example on stackoverflow. But there is one problem when I tried to run the example. I got the error (exception) like the following:
The content type text/xml; charset=ISO-8859-1 of the response message does not match the content type of the binding (text/xml; charset=utf-8). If using a custom encoder, be sure that the IsContentTypeSupported method is implemented properly.

Again I found this thread on stackoverflow which seems relevant. It talked about the custom message encoder developed by Microsoft, and Paul Morgado’s addition to the CustomTextMessageEncoder class (just add his method at the end of the class). There is one more thing, the configuration file for the app. In my case, it’s something like the following: (note the messageVersion and bindingElementExtensions definition, there was some error in the Microsoft documentation regarding the latter one).

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Categories
Software development

Set up SVN (Subversion) on local machine (Windows)

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Last Updated on January 10, 2013 by stlplace

I need to do some development work on Windows, using Visual Studio. I like to have a simple source code control system, in recent years I have used CVS, Subversion and git (on Mac). I did a google search on Subversion and found some instructions regarding setting up Subversion.

Setting up Subversion on Windows

and this one

Installing and Configuring SVNServe and TortoiseSVN on Windows

Download/install the SVN server and starting the windows service was relatively straightforward. So as the Tortoise SVN client. Couple things keep in mind:

1) Some sites requires registration or install additional software, I chose sites that does not require registration.

2) I found sometimes I can not open up svn://localhost successfully, in the same command prompt window where I start the SVN service. After I close the command prompt and tried again, it worked. The commands I used are:

set SVN_EDITOR=c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe
svn mkdir svn://localhost/myproject

Categories
Fun

18 rules on iPhone

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Last Updated on January 8, 2013 by omaha

From a Massachusetts mother to her 13 old son.

NPR Talk of the Nation has a discussion on this today.

Very much applicable to myself (though not a teenager).

So in summary, no TV, limited iPhone, happy parenting 🙂

Categories
Fun

Funny things about Yoyo

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Last Updated on January 5, 2013 by omaha

Hair cut

Mommy just cut Yoyo’s hair.

Mommy: wo yao kan kan wo de cheng guo. In english: I would like to see my fruits (results).

Yoyo: cheng guo ke yi chi ma? (Can I eat the results 🙂

Reading

Also, these days she just likes to be teacher, “reading” books to us. Sometimes she insists we sit on the carpet (that’s how it’s done ins her school).

Laptop

Seeing both my wife and myself are using laptop on bed, she got her VTech laptop and laughed at us 🙂

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Career Life

2012 Year in Review

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Last Updated on January 3, 2013 by stlplace

I took this cue from Kurby Turner, the independent Mac/iOS developer, as I think it might be helpful to reflect a year’s work, life, effort, etc. As the old Chinese saying goes “Ji Wang Kai Lai” (learn from past, and look forward to the future).

New job: Software Development
Today is my one year anniversary at my new employer. Looking back, from the initial ramp up to more comfortable work on my own pace, and then deliver the first iOS (iPad) app to the field, back end work, report work and support. I feel good about my effort and the support I got from my coworkers. Sometimes my wife will ask me “why it took so long for you to complete a project”? Because it’s not trivial to do it.

I also wrote a few blog posts on iOS app development, and the back end (.Net) web service. I plan to do the same as times goes. Generally speaking, now I have more confidence doing customized app development, full life cycle, and from front to back end (all tiers).

Family
Our daughter goes to the Hope Montessori Infant Toddler Community at Creve Coeur (off Manson road, near Olive Blvd). We are truly blessed with the teachers and staffs at the Hope family (I consider them as family, both adults and children, because sometimes they are better than family 🙂 . Serenity (Yoyo) learned English and all kinds of things there, which laid a good foundation for her future. For us, we learned parenting lessons there. Sometimes I wonder how much quality time I spent there, from afternoon pickup, to field trip, to social (work-day, Fettuccine, Montessori and Vino, the FMV movie). We watched the FMV movie with great fun, my wife and my friends (couple) did not attend the FMV event, and really enjoyed the movie after I showed them.

Trips
We did one family vacation, and I had 2 business trips in year 2012. We went to Orange Beach, Alabama in the Memorial Day weekend, with Chinese friends. We drove there. It’s funny Yoyo would not go to bathroom on the road, she wants to use bathroom in the hotel or condo (destination). For the business trip, I visited 2 mines in West Virginia, the 2 hours I spent in underground mine is both interesting and a bit unsettling. That’s the first time I visited mines (both surface and underground). In November I visited Las Vegas, stayed in Palazzo (Venetian), which I stayed 3 years ago when I attended AU (Autodesk University, the developer/user conference) in 2009.

Personal Finance
As I wrote this post, I found I made both good moves and bad moves on this topic. I did well in 401k accounts (because I did nothing). But not in the Scottrade brokerage and IRA accounts (because I tried to do too much). Overall I still did ok, because majority of my assets are in 401k (both existing accounts and new account).

Today (01-03-2012) as I listened to Charlie Ellis on the Consuelo WealthTrack podcast, I can not agree more on one comment from Charlie: we all strive to be above average in school or at work. In investing being average is actually not too bad. I understand what meant: 80% of mutual funds perform below average (the index), hedge fund and individual investors are not doing better. So in other words, being average is actually in the top 20% 🙂

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