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advice and tips Edu-and-Ladue-School kids Life Life Tips

It’s a pleasure to be your cool dad

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Note: I also published this to Medium, and the friend link is here.

Our younger daughter turned to 10 the day before yesterday. And our older daughter is about 4 years older, so basically I have been a dad for a bit over 14 years.

Being dad is not an easy job. Last few years are getting a bit more challenging, as my older one is becoming a teenager, and also with pandemic, we were worried about the lack of social activities etc. Below is some of my observations and thoughts on the topic of “raising kids”, which is my main task or job at this stage of my life. In theory I can do auto pilot too, but I am just not that kind of cool or laid back dad. I was trying to stay away from the other extreme as well: aka the micro-management, or sometimes people call the practice “helicopter parenting”. I am by no means perfect, and I had my setbacks and failures in many aspects, from big to small. I recall in my recent trip to China, we met a dad, and he said he never missed or be late for the morning drop-off for his son (that’s 7 years of no late or tardiness).

I do believe he is a quite dedicated and meticulous dad, for me I tried but I think I failed here and there in terms pickup. Quite a few times: my 14 year old would text – dad, where are you? I would answer: 5 minutes away. And honestly sometimes I don’t know whether it’d going to be 5 or 10 minutes. But for the most part, my 14 year old still thinks I am a cool dad. And sometimes if I am not cool, she would say: chill 🙂

Adolescent / adolescence:

I have some reflections here on this topic, see below

Ankle Injury And Recovery – 从哪里摔倒就从哪里爬起来

Move Families And Kids To Better School Community

My Zhenhai Middle School Days我在镇海中学的日子

PS, corresponding to this Zhenhai Middle School; 镇海中学) piece above: I felt this summer our 14 year old seriously got into the math self-study. She wanted to do the math acceleration even since she got this idea from her 8th grade math teacher, and she was working hard on it since our summer 2024 China trip). From my perspective, I have zero complaints, and the main thing I need to remind her is “don’t sit in your room” for too long, go out and stretch, and “get some sleep” 🙂

(Update 08-09-2024 am) In terms of self motivation, and learn math on her own, I felt our 14 year old is at “friction point of the clutch“. But this morning, the hell broke loose. I think at about 6:10 or 6:20 am, I got up and heard my 14 year old sobbing. I didn’t go and ask why (as I know that alone may make things worse). Turns out she was studying for the math acceleration, and she planned to go to bed at 12 am last night, and again to get up at 2 am and study – except she didn’t woke up to the alarm. She slept through. I know she really could get some more sleep in last month, because she is exhausted studying math most of this time. I went out and was going to walk/jog in the neighborhood – but I had my 2nd thoughts and quickly came back home and went to Bread Co. and get some breakfast. A while later, I asked our 10 year old – did big sis wake you up early morning? Our younger daughter replied: yes, at 6:52 am, because I looked at the clock 🙂

So there is our 14 year old’s growing pain. Not to mention I dropped her off the high school (for test), and came back getting banana/water for her 🙁

I am not complaining actually – I think in terms of I enjoy what I am doing, if I compare myself to an empty nester: a lot of my high school or college mates are empty nester now, because I had my 14 year old when I was 39. But one day if I get lucky enough to be an empty nester, I would try to be happy too – just need to find something meaningful or interesting to fill my day.

(Update 08-09-2024 pm) So our 14 year old didn’t pass the day 2 session of the math acceleration (Advanced Geometry). But I am glad she is not giving up. She said: I am going to get the Algebra 2 book and study this year (aiming for a similar acceleration next summer). We just ordered the used book at eBay.

Each kid is different

What a novel concept or idea. Of course we know everyone is different, and child is no different. But at the same time, may I ask: don’t we used to do things like: for a guy (or a girl) with hammer, everything is a nail. No? Congrats that you already do much better than many other parents.

Categories
advice and tips China Life Tips Travel

A quick review of our summer 2024 China trip

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Since pandemic, I have been back to China twice, last year in the spring break of school year 2022/2023, which was the 1st time I visited China since pandemic, when the PRC (People’s Republic of China) just relaxed in-bound travel in Jan 2023, and I booked ticket on Jan 29, 2023 via Expedia.com – refer to this blog post China Trip Spring 2023 – Logistics if you like to learn more. I also wrote another blog post China Trip Spring 2023 – Observations And Thoughts shortly after the trip.

This most recent trip is the 2nd trip since 2020.

Visting China mainland is a bit more challenging since pandemic, overall. One main factor that people often talk about is the cut back of the direct flights between two countries: I recall it used to be in the range of 150 weekly flights. This Reuters article has more details, and I will quote some content below. Keep in mind that the regulator approving more flights does not mean the airlines will add them. This is especially true in the USA, because all the airlines are private owned, profit driven. 油管上弘哥有关于这方面的分析，我觉得比较客观。

Chinese passenger airlines will be allowed to boost their weekly round-trip U.S. flights to 50 starting on March 31, up from the current 35, the U.S. Transportation Department said on Monday, returning the market to nearly one-third of pre-pandemic levels.

……

More than 150 weekly round-trip passenger flights were allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but until August 2023, Chinese and U.S. carriers could each fly only 12 a week between the two countries.

The number rose on Sept. 1 to 18 weekly round-trips and then to 24 per week starting Oct. 29. The USDOT approved 35 for Chinese carriers in November.

FlyChina.com

If you happen to know Chinese 如果你会中文, the flychina.com website has a complete list and collection of updates (for example, you can click on this “今年已增航班班详细公告” on the up to date US/China direct flights. The website has English version too, but I have not checked or verified how good are the English content there.

Anyway, amid all this aka the new normal (reduced direct US/China direct flights), we booked air ticket quite early and I talked about it in my blog post here too – Bought Air Ticket For Summer Trip To CHN. We were somewhat nervous because this is complete new route to us, and there are some uneasiness of going this route: STL <=> ORD Chicago <=> YVR Vancouver <=> HKG Hong Kong. We took Amtrak for STL to Chicago union station (and took Uber from the union station to the ORD airport or hotel near airport). We also built in some sleepovers in hotels (Chicago one night, Vancouver 2 nights, and Hong Kong 3 nights. We also tried to use the hotel airport shuttle bus when I stayed at hotel near airport.

Note both my wife and I are from mainland, so there is one more leg after reaching Hong Kong. We took the air route. There are land route aka the high speed train (Gao’tie) as well. We book those separately via trip.com.

Places we visited in China

Both my wife and I are originally from Zhejiang province (you may be interested in this blog post Hometown Is Always Special). In addition to seeing families in Zhejiang, we also stopped by Shanghai, where my wife and I met in 2006, to see her side of families and friends. I also still have families and friends in Shanghai too: but I kept my head low to focus on my supporting role. Also the few days we were at Shanghai we had quite high outdoor temperature.

Overall score: pretty good

Now that we are back, and I am happy to report that the trip is a success in terms of the new route and the overall experience. We didn’t have any major hiccups. We do have one minor thing when we leave Hong Kong hotel for the airport. Right out of gate at the taxi, our 14 year old said: I forget my hoodies in the hotel (in the closet). Let me emphasize at that time we already checked out the hotel, and we are in the taxi, and the taxi was about to leave 🙁

Minor hiccup

To say I was annoyed is definitely an understatement. First let me say after this is all over, this scene is not new to me, and I recall at the 宁波北仑世茂希尔顿逸林酒店 (note the local people call it 希尔顿逸林酒店) that I stayed since 2017, and I saw this scene in the elevator video (they haven’t changed the video since 2017 🙂 Let me repeat, in the scene the hotel staff tried to catch the minivan in which the guests are leaving for airport, and make sure the little boy has the “lost” stiff animal. Sweet, ah? The real life is not usually like that.

Anyway, let’s back to the topic. I immediately asked the hotel reception desk, and she suggested I go up to the 22nd floor lounge, and asked for help there. The lady at the lounge listened to my issue patiently, and typed something in her system, mainly notifying the house keeper. And my 14 year old and I waited there, for about 25 minutes, with my daughter much more composed than me. Eventually the house keeper showed up, and delivered the missing hoodie to us, in a nice bag. We tipped him the housekeeper $100 (Hong Kong dollar, worth about $13 USD). We offered tip to the the lady assisted us at the lounge too, but she didn’t accept. After we got back to the taxi, I immediately tipped the taxi driver 100 HKD. The driver was happy and he drove very well in terms of the time it took us from the hotel to the #HKG airport.

Lost and Found

As a postpartum or post mortem review with our 14 year old, I told her that we (my wife, her little sister, and myself) are not going to be her “lost and found department” forever. She needs to step up her game and be responsible for her own belongings and so on. I said that in the light of two “thew away retainer” incidents last semester – read this blog post I Am Exhausted, But I Will Soldier On if you are interested to know more. I guess I may have ranted too much there or here – but my intension is help her be responsible. Personally I don’t think physical things are do or die, but if one does not pay attention to his surrounding, especially as a girl at a wrong place or wrong time, things can get bad pretty quickly. That’s my main worry as a parent. Not an broken iPhone or missing stuff animal or hoodie 🙂

Things I learned or relearned: some odds and ends

When leave Vancouver for Chicago, the “entering US immigration and customs” are done at YVR. After we landed at ORD, we just exit and get our luggages like a domestic flight.

In China it’s still best to have a local mobile phone number with cellular data. We need it for WeChat pay (or Alipay), rideshare apps (Didi Chuxing or Gaode Map), as well as ordering food and drink in many places via WeChat Mini Program 微信小程序. I actually documented some of all those tips and tricks in my Twitter (X) thread. I think FlyChina.com has some quite practical advices on those related topic as well, such as this one and that one.

Get cash in HK, which is needed for taxi and the MTR (subway), I used Schwab debit card, and it has no foreign transaction fee, and offers unlimited ATM fee rebate. I had this card for a few years now, and I am glad I put it to good use for International travel eventually.

Must see places in Hong Kong: Victoria Peak aka 太平山(day, tram starts near Hong Kong Park), and Victoria Harbour (night view, looking from Tsim Sha Tsui). Please refer to my other blog post – Some Random Thoughts During My Recent China Trip – 我2024年夏天中国行的一些观察 if needed.

Starbucks are everywhere. But in China they don’t have cake pops that my 14 year old like. In YVR Tim Hortons is as popular as Starbucks. I used credit card for the purpose at YVR, the Starbucks US app does not work at YVR.

In Vancouver I tip in USD. It seems USD cash is fairly widely accepted there: as I saw a sign in the hotel lobby talkong about taking 25 CAD or 20 USD for the shuttle to the cruise ship. You got the idea.

I knew in Vancouver there are a lot of ethnic Chinese people: some moved from HK to Vancouver around 1997. I also noticed there are quite a few Indian (or south asians) immigrants at hotel and at the airport as well. Canada is q quite diverse country. The YVR has 3 languages for most signs: English, French and Chinese.

Last but not least, the Boeing planes. I noticed the Boeing 737 Max 8 of Air Canada has a very quick acknowledgment of flying over native people’s land and water. Some may say that’s “woke”, I say that’s good. Also both Boeing 737 Max 8 and 787-9 have modern infotainment system, and I played chess a lot during my trip. This is aso the 1st time I rode a 737 Max, I believe. I rode 787-9 once on American Airlines ORD to PVG once before pandemic.

Summary

Overall this is a decent route if we want to save some $ and have some extra time to spare. An added bonus is we took kids to see places we normally don’t go often: Vancouver and Hong Kong. Although I admit it’s still hard to persuade my American girls to try Tim Hortons over Starbucks 🙂

Categories
China Life Life Tips Travel

Some random thoughts during my recent China trip – 我2024年夏天中国行的一些观察

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This article is also available on Medium, and blog.wenxuecity.com

航空公司

发现加航🇨🇦的loyalty member (Aeroplan)在飞机上用微信，手机短信等是免费的。不用花钱或点数买inflight WiFi：感觉又赚了一个亿[捂脸]。航空公司其实很难赚钱：成本在那里，固定成本和浮动成本等。但是另一方面愿意额外付钱的客户不多：比如说inflight WiFi, 比如说duty free product sale等等。股神巴菲特也说过类似的话：我估计他老人家在上回pandemic 那次卖了航空股以后就不会再玩航空公司的股票债券了：他老人家今年有93或94岁了。|| 我个人觉得纯从商业的角度出发，信用卡公司的商业模型business model 比航空公司好太多：她们基本上就是高速公路和谷歌的收买路钱的方法。不过在中国大陆感觉支付宝和微信支付基本上打遍天下无敌手，Visa 和万事达两大巨头基本上可以洗洗睡了。前两者的对商家来说成本比信用卡低太多。Alipay 和WeChat Pay 在香港也很拼，有不少商家也开始接受人民币的微信支付/支付宝。不过香港的payment 有点复杂：感觉基本上是八达通Octopus, 信用卡💳包括digital wallet Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Alipay, WeChat pay等；还有出租车也就是的士🚕和地铁🚇需要的港币现钞。我用CS debit card 直接在银行的ATM机上取了些港币现钞。感觉在大陆用现钞的地方比香港少很多，基本上微信和支付宝都可以搞定。|| 离港上飞机之前有个小插曲，紧张程度有点类似于我上次工作中play as tech lead for production release：中间也出了点不大不小的问题，好在最后在超级队友的支持下，有惊无险。我感觉自己还是在这些大大小小的事情中，不断学习，提高自己[微笑]

中国好还是美国好

我被问到的一个常见的问题是：中国好还是美国好？我觉得各有千秋吧。比如说火车：美国的火车客运还停留在中国的绿皮车年代，中国的高铁确实挺牛。Amtrak 没有固定位置: no assigned seat 💺 on Amtrak – reminded me of southwest air the $luv stock ticker. 但同时，有一次当我看到拉莫多人在站台上抽烟🚬，甚至有人把烟头往轨道上仍的时候，我很无语。这次我在一些高铁火车站看到有标语提醒大家不要往轨道上扔烟头。还有比如酒驾开车违章等：感觉国内比美国抓得严一些。酒驾确实应该抓。违章，比如说摄像头直接寄罚单，扣分等，这样的事多年前我碰到过两回：olive / 270 上装了自动摄像头，有一年我不小心闯了两次，一个方向一次，一次罚款一百刀，不涨分（相当于国内扣分）。One year later: 我发现有一张20刀的支票，原来是因为这个自动照相并罚款的机器被人告了，我所在的城市承认错误，拆除了这些东东，并赔款。香港大概是中西文化交汇的一个地方了。我个人感觉不错：前面也遇到了。上海也还可以。美国也不是铁板一块：在从芝加哥机场到芝加哥火车站的顺风车上跟司机聊了聊，他是在约旦出生，英国留学，在那里碰到他的老婆美国人，后来就来到美国。他讲到上个礼拜他开Uber的轶事。跟我介绍了一下约旦。

香港一日游 (下面的图我还没有贴）

7/12 游香港岛的最高点太平山Victoria Peak (我们是坐tram 上去的，起点在香港公园/中环附近）。我们没有额外加钱上到图五/六的那个顶。我们感叹在香港这个寸土寸金的地方，还有个清净的山和山路供老百姓走走，真不错。山顶有咖啡店，饭店，和购买旅游纪念品的商场，邮局等等。|| 圣路易斯附近没有什么大山，如果想就近走走，我个人觉得 laumeier sculpture park, powder valley 和Creve coeur lake 旁边的bootleg trails 都还不错。图七，八是此次行程我们在港岛住的旅馆。两个旅馆都不错，北角north point 的凯悦中萃虽然离维多利亚港湾有两公里，但是她的位置还是非常方便，傍边有非常多吃饭的地方，有港铁和city bus. 最后一张screenshot 是此次旅程我用到的一些app。从机场到北角来回打了大名鼎鼎的香港🇭🇰红色的士(都是丰田的，大部分人较老，少部分较新），需要港币现金。我用我的CS debit card 在机场和中环的银行取款机上取了点：这个卡不额外收手续费，没有foreign transaction fee.

Categories
China Life

Hometown is always special

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This is the last night before leaving mainland CHN for this trip, I am listening to 浙江之声 (浙江之声 via 蜻蜓FM) this time (last year march 2023 it was Love Radio 103.7 FM in Shanghai). I could not fall into sleep 💤. I am going to listening to it more via 蜻蜓FM once I get back to my current home by the Mississippi River.

In last few years as my time spent in the US gradually approaching and exceeding my time lived in China, I almost treat STL as my home. But now I realized childhood home (hometown) has a special place in my heart. Probably for many other people too – especially for those left their hometown after college. For me it’s a bit more – I left the country I grew up.

不少江浙人有较浓的家乡情节。我记得我去武汉上大学的时候，第一次离家这么远，有浙江同乡会办中秋晚会，主持人说到”吴山清越水秀的故乡”，我差点掉了眼泪。在学校的路上走，偶尔能碰到江浙沪的老师，从她/他们的口音和方言里可以听出来，会觉得很亲切。因为大多数时候听到的是普通话和武汉话。

Somewhat related

心安即是归处 (google search): 心安即是归处，意思是让人不必强求，不必攀比，一切顺其自然，做真实的自己。 我们不必为人生的不完美而感到遗憾。 法学教授罗翔在给学生讲解正义与良善时，曾用圆圈做过一个生动的比喻：客观上理想的圆是存在的，可人类无论借助任何精密的仪器，都无法画出自然界中完美的圆。 我们对完美虽不能至，却心向往之。

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

One usually remember mom’s (or dad’s, or other guardian’s) favorite cooking. I remember my mom’s cooking as well as my uncle (my mom’s brother)’s cooking too.

醋溜带鱼羹 is one dish they made and I enjoyed.

PS: (08-04-2024)

Something came to my mind this morning when I was at a group exercise class at the J. Why mothers are always special. I think most people will say mom reminds them of the hometown. On the opposite, when people start to curse at each other, there is a very common one, son of the bit*h: in Chinese *子养的，why? Because I think by talking down the other person’s mom, deep in mind, the aggressor probably get a sense of the other person is not worthy. I think those are also likely the rationale behind:

谁不说俺家乡好 (Wikipedia, YouTube)

子不嫌母丑，狗不嫌家贫 (ximalaya)

Categories
Fun kids

Stop by Hong Kong

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I happened to see this on twitter/X, and I would say the Middle Westeners have both (kind and nice 🙂

I am in HK right now with my family, and my 14 year old commented STL is not as famous for tourism compared to Hong Kong. True. We are on the way from the US to mainland China to see our families (here is my post on the air ticket shortly after we bought it).

Also I commented if she doesn’t do the online PE, I would not have the opportunity to hangout with her, such as walking on the Hong Kong street.

This also somewhat reminds me when I went to Wuhan for college in year 1989, my dad took me to Shanghai, before I onboard the boat from SH to Wuhan.

Last but not least, I am writing an X/Twitter thread for my summer 2024 trip here.

PS: I posted the above content (similar content) on FB and they flagged and deleted my post right away. I think from now on I will limiting my posting there. All major social media platforms have a lot of power. One thing I noticed is YouTube deletes any comments with a link to another website.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School kids

Health and PE courses from the Launch

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My 14 year old chose to do both Health and PE from Launch, an online program from Springfield MO school district. And she was doing camp or camp counselor duty as well, with Before Care responsibility for the counselor job. It seems this is more like regular school in steroids or turbo-charged.

I think I failed as a parent that I didn’t do the due diligence on those two online courses. Earlier I thought me sweating over the USPS shipping (potentially losing) the Garmin heart rate monitor was a bit stressful. Now I think about it – my 14 year old trying to make the heart rate monitor happy is much harder. She needs 7 or 7.5 hours per week of physical exercises, with heart rate needs to be above a certain threshold. Hope she can get some more sleep over the weekend and after the camp counselor duty soon.

Categories
gadgets Software development Windows

High CPU processes on Windows machine

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I received a new HP EliteBook 645 G10 for work recently. Note I wrote about Desktops, Laptops And Virtual Desktop Infrastructure VDI For Work 我在美国上班20多年用过的那些电脑 recently too.

I recall with my 1st new work laptop, an IBM ThinkPad, as I was working from home in 2008, I would be somewhat concerned if the laptop fans goes off nonstop.

I didn’t mention it in the above article because it arrived and I started to using it fairly recently – in the last one or two months or so.

High CPU processed I observed – may not be a complete list – will add as I saw them

AntimalWare Service Executable

Microsoft console based script host

Realtek hd audio universal service (more from Microsoft forum: High CPU usage of Windows Audio & Realtek HD Audio Universal Service)

The symptom of High CPU is usually fans running non-stop

Categories
Investing Software development

Avoid apparel and shoe brands and stocks, some thoughts on Apple stock

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Some random thoughts I had on consumer products companies stocks: I think it’s probably better to bet on $V and $MA instead of $LULU, $NKE, $DECK, $CROX, $SBUX and last but not least: $ONON which I have a small long position, thinking selling it around summer Olympics. I just sold few $LULU shares and I did a little comparison between Lulu and Alo/Vuori.

I recall in year 2006 when both CROX and MA were new IPO stocks, both were at between $20 and $40. Both did well in last 18 years. Also note CROX is probably the best performing shoes stock from year 2006.

Both Crocs and Mastercard IPO’ed on 2006, this is their stock performance since then.

Apparel and Shoes business are very hard

Many apparel and footwear companies stocks came and gone: and yours truly happened to traded this one called Heelys. Fun facts: Heelys IPO’ed the same day as $ALGT All Giant Travel the discount airline (quite unique business model). I actually bought ALGT that day, and I quickly sold it unfortunately. ALGT did much better than HLYS (which is the Heelys ticker symbol, it was a fad and I saw the Jurney’s footwear stores still sell them?). Other apparel makers that are in decline in recent years and yours truly managed to trade it for a loss: VF Corp $VFC.

That also on the other hand, shows Nike did a tremendous job to stay relevant. It got fierce competition in the running shoes and sneaker side from upstart such as HOKA (Deckers Outdoor $DECK), and ON Clouds ($ONON). We all saw Under Armour came and gone in terms of its threat to Nike. I already touched slightly on the potential threat from Alo and Vuori to Lululemon.

Apple Stock $AAPL

I rung the register on $AAPL today: one share at a time. I hope it can test $200 on Monday w/ WWDC, but hope is not a strategy. || I fully understand the “one more dance or one more drink” mentality because I have been there many times – and got caught without chair 🪑 when the music suddenly stops.

Q: Why Apple stock went up and down in the last 12 months?

A: You ask me, I ask who.

Seriously good question.

I guess things $AAPL bears 🐻 don’t like: its near zero revenue (sales) growth in last few years, people holding on their iPhones longer, increasing competition in the CHN market, mostly using financial engineering (stock buy back) to boost its stock price, failed car project and lagging behind in Gen AI…

PS, 06-07-2024, I just saw Mark Gurman of Bloomberg published some scoop on the upcoming WWDC 

New WWDC details:

– Apple Intelligence

– Emoji Tapbacks and scheduled iMessages

– Multipage, customizable Control Center

– Old school wallpaper packs on iOS 18 and macOS 15

– New Health app + AirPods hearing aid details

– Reminders in Calendar

On AI

Apple’s AI initiative will be opt in, a beta and require an iPhone 15 Pro or M1 device or newer. It’s going to be called Apple Intelligence.

My take on Apple intelligence- Apple AI

Recall probably in year 2015, at about 2 pm on Saturday afternoons, as I hop into the car, my iPhone would usually pop up and show the time it takes from the our condo to the Creve Coeur ice rink (under 10 minutes). At that time S was taking a private skating lesson. Apple probably got this Saturday afternoon routine of mine (or my daughter’s skating lesson) either from calendar, or past Apple map navigations. Then it just serves as a friendly reminder just like an assistant tells the boss. Again this is “non invasive, I am happy with it”.

I expect on Monday Apple will build on what they have now, and adding some Gen AI capability from a partner (Google or Open AI?).

Categories
Software development

Performance test and performance tuning

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Below is from a tweet/X thread I wrote last year. I wrote similar but shorter version on LinkedIn too.

#Performance testing is important. At the same time, we don’t want to the performance tuning too early, or set an unrealistic performance goal. A better way in my opinion is to tune/optimize the app (or web services) performance as it scales up (getting more users). In my career, I observed quite a few examples of “performance tuning too early“, “unrealistic performance goal” and “unintentionally impacted production systems during perf testing” (exchange server, for example). #AppPerformance #PerformanceTesting #PerformanceTuning

For the second category, unrealistic performance goal is one reason the Ascension One Nurse app wasn’t successful – (below link is no longer available, unfortunately) https://ncoe-static-public-site.pub.cloud-03.pcf.ascension.org (the iOS app is no longer in the App Store either). I was briefly involved in the development more than 2 years ago, fill in as architect. But the new dev manager and his boss were obsessed with some unrealistic performance matrix before the launch. Guess what? It never got launched completely.

Category 3, unintentionally impacted production systems during perf testing, once when doing perf testing we overloaded the exchange servers as we forgot in our code we sent email first. The exchange server admin had to intervene manually to make sure the company wide email system is working properly. We should use the exchange server testing environment instead of the production environment.

Btw, I believe the company likely spent millions of dollars on the app development – mostly thrown away for now as the app is no longer in the #AppStore. Some of the backend web services could be used in other scenarios. For that matter, if app code is reused then it’s not thrown away.

This is the screenshot of the admin or support website


Pet Project

This project was one of the reasons I left that place to pursue other opportunities. I feel the management on my work place is mostly spinning on the wheels: and try to scape goat the vendors for any mistakes. #officePolitics || A funny part of all this is: I believe the project eventually got cancelled after they spent all the money. Note from the vendor (the contracting company who provided dev/qa etc.) point of view, an open ended project (bill by hour) is the way to go. But in real world, even an executive (more on LinkedIn) sponsored project usually has a budget. I don’t think the unrealistic performance testing alone sunk the project. But it did contribute to the ultimate failure or put the nail on the coffin (if I may).

Also, this is not the 1st time I worked on an executive’s “pet project”. I recall long time ago, when I was working for my 1st US employer, I worked on a project like this. The main difference though, is we did deliver something. I think one way to counter this “never going to production” tendency is to follow Josh Long.

Interestingly enough, in another place and another project, another executive sponsored application re-write project (MyMercy) failed too – that one failed early and failed fast, so in a way that’s a good thing.

There are other failed projects that I was a part of it: maybe someday I will write more about them :-(. Remember the saying we all learned more from failures than from success. I guess ideally it someone else’s failure. Hopefully someday I will write more on the topic in terms of failed projects: why they fail. Statistics shows IT projects have a high failure rate (personally I recall this EDS/Navy project), especially the rewrite ones (refer to Reddit – Why exactly does most software rewrite fail?)

A related observations over my years working at corporate is: what if we especially the higher-ups treat companies’ money and resources more like her/his own (assume he/she is thrift just like Warren Buffett 🙂 I have seen many managers treat companies’ money as if he/she won the jackpot.

Success Outcomes

Last but not least, I did have some successful stories to tell on performance tuning: I recall in year 2006, I did quite bit on work on this for a CAD translator; in year 2013/2014, I worked on an interesting problem at Mercy (modeling the Salesforce hierarchy inside Java); then in year 2017/2018, while at Mastercard, I participated in some performance tuning work for web services which happened to have 9 fold increase of usage and our goal is 100 transactions per second. Then at Ascension, we were scaling up the Covid Screen and Go app quickly (the email outage issue happened because of we were not careful), and also at one time, we noticed the auto scaler is not working properly. Or in other words, the load balancer was sending traffic to unhealthy nodes, or instances, and we were able to correct the health-check and fix the root cause of the issue.

Some of the tools I used: Dynatrace

Categories
gadgets

My smart watch over the years

Reading Time: 4 minutes

On Oct 13, 2015, I bought this Martian Watches Notifier Smartwatch – White from Amazon ($50). Note this is just a notification watch, and it can send the text message from phone to my watch. The reason I wanted it is because at that time, I was worried I could miss the text message over night during sleep, when I was doing on-call duty (a part of the job). Btw, I just noticed I talked about the experience of on-call and notifications here. So I mainly wear this watch before I went to bed. You may wonder I can just make the iPhone louder and that way it will be harder for me to miss the text messages in the night: the reason I didn’t want to do that is I don’t want to wake up my young kids and my wife. A vibration type of notification, or a nudge on my wrist is much better.

Looking back, I think I probably should have bought the Apple Watch instead, to avoid all the troubles. But note Apple Watch was released on April 24, 2015, and in general I don’t like to be a guinea pig of “version 1” product, that includes the Apple iPhone too.

I used Fitbit for a while too (blog post 1, blog post 2), before eventually switching to Apple watch in Jan 2017. I vaguely recall I didn’t like the FitBit charger feel on my wrist. Apple Watch feels more natural. Interestingly enough, recently I sold a charging cable for FitBit on eBay. On the other hand, I recall FitBit has longer battery life and also can records sleep (Apple Watch could not do that in its early days, also the battery life was not ideal). Before Fitbit I used Jawbone UP band briefly (see my blog post here). My recollection is Jawbone UP band had some quality issue.

I am happy with Apple watch since then. Recently I bought the series 9, which is my 3rd Apple Watch. My 1st Apple Watch is Apple Watch Series 2 Nike version (42mm). That one had some issues and eventually I was able to go to the Apple store and receive a replacement (it was still under warranty, under a year). Note all the Apple Watch warranty is honored by Apple, even the Nike version (I bought it from Nike.com online store then).

My 2nd Apple Watch is series 5 and this time I got a smaller version which is 40 mm and it fits my wrist better.

For my new series 9 I intend to use its cellular feature so that I don’t need to carry the phone all the time. Recently I realized being parent is 24×7 on call duty too: especially when we talk about 14 year old. But it will take another 6 month or so for me to get a cellular plan for my watch because right now I am MintMobile, and they don’t support the Apple Watch Cellular yet. I plan to switch over to the Visible mobile after my current contract with MintMobile is up.

One thing I noticed is the series 9 got some new watch faces, including the UVI (UV indicator). This is probably useful metric. Also, I am using the grey color modular face for now, this may (or may not) save some battery. (Confirmed 06-03-24) from last week’s usage I would say that watch face, plus the new watch (battery) helped – the old series 5 needs to be charged every day, now series 9 can last at least 36 hours (likely more).

Btw, the price of the Apple Watch seems fluctuates, I just noticed this Midnight Aluminum Case with Midnight Sport Loop is cheaper than the product red I got (by about $70; product red was $399). But the product red version I got has more character 🙂

Also, I don’t recommend getting series 8 at this time, as we expect Apple releases series 10 later this year. Apple usually does annual release of new watch. Series 9 was released last Sept.

I just sold my series 5 on eBay for $85 (was $299 bought new at Walmart about 4 years ago), btw. Similar watch is selling at about $150 at Amazon Renewed Store (more on Amazon Renewed Store). This is a little like the Plato’s Closet used clothes store that my 14 year old recently got interested (or obsessed), in terms of concept and less guilty on consumerism (YT video 1, YT video 2).

I vaguely recall I sold my series 2 on eBay in year 2019 too.

FAQs

Why I switched to Apple Watch, or bought Apple Watch?

Besides it has a better watch band (a more natural fit on the wrist), I found out from my coworker at Mastercard, that using Apple Pay via watch is much easier than using the iPhone.

Do I take phone calls on Apple Watch?

Yes: I do. I recall I do that when I was holding my baby (Sophia), and when I was driving. Fun but relevant and I strongly recommend you don’t do it: on the days I worked for Mastercard, on some days and during the commute, I texted coworker on the Skype Business on the work iPhone.

How long does Apple Watch last?

Per CreativeBloq: There will always be exceptions, but on balance, based on the experience of our own reviewers and the comments we’ve seen from users online, I would say that an Apple Watch provide five to six years of good performance.

(Update 04-24-2025) CNET: Apple Watch 10 Years Later: The Feature That Changed Everything for Me