Reading Time: 8 minutes A touchy topic. I have been in the tech industry for almost 23 years, and I have seen my share of the layoffs. I saw the layoff very early in my career, and the most recent ones in last year or so (amid the big tech post pandemic layoffs). Layoffs are usually not pleasant. But

Reading Time: 5 minutes Update (09-06-2023) Just heard the proposed Bayer campus redevelopment project will have 1,000 apartment units. Note this will be much bigger than the other completed or ongoing projects. Think a school district impact study is needed here (between the developer, the City of Creve Coeur and the Ladue School District). Original (09-03-2023): we live in

Reading Time: 3 minutes Agent brown is the name my girls gave to the AirTag I used to attached to the car key (it has a brown holder) and later my older daughter attached it to her brown wallet. We lost agent brown. Saturday, to be more precise, 8/19 evening, at about 6:42 pm I got a text message

Reading Time: 6 minutes (Update 04-01-24) I sold a few surprising items last few days, things I didn’t expect to sell. A generic Fitbit charging cable : I bought it from Taobao in year 2016 as I lost mine in hotel in China. A filter for sun eclipse: a Mastercard souvenir in year 2017 we had sun eclipse. A

Reading Time: 6 minutes (Picture above Hilary Hahn, who plays the violin for Suzuki book 1; the piano was played by Natalie Chen) (Update 12-14-2023) I realized my daughter’s violin teacher also knows how best to keep the kids engaged and interested. Couple things: 1) The practice sheet, he has a worksheet which looks like a printed out Excel

Reading Time: 2 minutes Background Years ago when I think of AI, I only think about the autonomous driving (driverless car or self driving car). The tech behind it is so called “deep learning“, and it’s a part of Artificial Intelligence. Now it’s all the Chatgpt and Generative AI, or in Chinese tech community, AIGC (AIG generated content) is

Reading Time: < 1 minute I found this one Costco potato corn dog (Eat With Emily post; The Daily Meal post) at my my local Costco (U city), after seeing it from a friend. I made a small mistake when cooking it at 1st try, I put it along side with the Hamburger on the outdoor gas stove (for BBQ),

Reading Time: 4 minutes On this past Sunday evening, I learned a harsh lesson on the fast food and order food via mobile apps. It’s not the 1st time I waited a loooooooong time for the food. During pandemic I recalled once I waited probably one hour at the Panda Express not far from where I live, when I

Reading Time: < 1 minute This is probably my only successful merge arbitrage speculation so far. By “success” I meant I am out after the recent US FTC failed attempt to stop the merge. Note the UK authority could still pose challenges or stop this thing completely. Although the market does expect the deal to close eventually. I didn’t speculate

Reading Time: 5 minutes (Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example