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Fun iOS iPhone app

Fitbit is losing momentum

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Why I am saying that?

I am the only active person among my “Fitbit friends”. So I assume it could means a few things:
1) All my friends stopped wearing Fitbit;
2) All my friends did not sync (or their Fitbit could not sync, which I admit is a real problem for Fitbit);
3) All my friends got Apple watch (or something nicer, good for them 🙂

IMG_5651

The stock (NYSE:FIT) has been absolutely horrible YTD, or to be more exact since its IPO about 15 months ago. I am glad my trades worked out this year though 🙂

FIT_trades

I am speculating one reason is Apple Watch is taking off. Although I tried to stay away from that $300+ “need to be charged daily, always on” gadget, it seems it’s the inevitable with the so called “series 2”. I feel the nike+ version with the swimming is the way to go. Now if I could offload a few items on ebay to make the $300 bucks…

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advice and tips Fun kids Uncategorized

Transition to first grade

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Serenity started 1st grade this fall. Same school. I have some ideas on first grade, mostly around the homework, “more serious school” vs. the kindergarten which has more play time. I learned from fellow parents last year when they talked about it after MFS (I volunteered there).

Seeing is believing. Serenity now has been in 1st grade for over a month. Some impressions:
1) More work, either schoolwork or the work we gave her.

2) More seriousness, definitely, she got a tardy slip (her first) because we were late in the morning, we were probably late for 2 or 3 minutes (but still late, no excuse here), as I saw we were the only car in the car pool lane which is the only time like this.

3) More pressure, or expectations, besides on time, they were expected to listen more carefully when the teacher talks, and follow directions quickly, etc.

Those are my initial impressions, after a bit over a month school.

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Fun

What kind of person I like my daughters to become

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1) Confident, independent (not blindly follow other or influenced by others opinion), strong (not easily quit, grit, or perseverance) ;

2) Empathy, humility, know how to wear other people’s shoes and feel other people’s pain (同情心);

3) 不卑不亢（english translation? It seems bullet 1 covers this too. List it here as this is my father taught me, likely from his own life experience.);

4) Grounded, down to earth. Don’t take self too seriously, have a sense of humor. 平易近人, 幽默感。

Categories
iPhone app Software development Technology

How to root T-mobile Samsung Galaxy S3 SGH-T999

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Did my first root of Android phone. I had two Android phones before, but I never rooted it. This time I had a need for root to add the Chinese language to a Samsung Galaxy S3. The specific model is T-mobile SGH-T999 (shown in the Download or Recovery mode, but the model number on the settings says AT&T model number, which caused some issue for me later down the road).

The main reason for doing this is to add Chinese language support. It looks like by reading the article we can only get it work by rooting. I also looked at another article on the language support that suggested both MoreLocale2 and Language Enabler. Tried MoreLocale2 first but it seems needing root. So I started looked at the root tutorial. Because of the “wrong” model number, initially I thought this is an at&t device (model number at&t samsung galaxy s3 i9300, and here is an tutorial for that). Note the two tutorials are similar (t-mobile root tutorial here), the main difference is the at&t one is more verbose, and it has a link to the mod5 file for the at&t model. The odin program did not work for me initially because I was using the latter mod5 file (mismatch between hardware and mod5).

After that mistake the device was stuck in the Download mode (link to get into the Download mode), and could not reboot. I googled I have to download a Samsung software to get it restored. There were other hiccup too, one being the device cannot connect to my Windows 7 laptop (a bit old HP elite book), even after I install the driver. Had to reboot to make sure they connect. Back to topic, I was able to root after I switched to the mod5 file for t-mobile device. And it worked like a charm. After that I installed the rootCheck and SuperSu app from the Play store.

After the root, reboot I installed the Language Enabler app by Wanam from Google Play store (again refer to the language article above).

Final impression: the Samsung s3 is a relatively old device by today’s standard, but it works as a basic smartphone and adding the Chinese language to it, in my specific case, could potentially save an iPhone purchase (SE starts at about $400 in the states). It just takes some work to get it work, from enabling the developer mode/USB debugging on the device, to the odin software root.

Happy rooting 🙂

Categories
Software development Technology Web

Production, production, production

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I first learned the “production environment” in 2010, when I worked as contractor for a major railway company. Before that I was mostly in CAD software development and consulting environment the word “production” did not come often. To be precise at Siemens PLM/UGS as developers, we did have access to various production releases and did validation for bug and bug fixes from time to time. Our code goes to release per year or per quarter. But production is not as significant as the maintenance releases, so this is the world of shrink wrap (engineering) software world.

Came to the world of business applications, or web. The first thing I learned is it’s not a good idea for newbies to touch production data. Or for that matter, not good idea for devs to touch that either. Very few people has production access, besides admins (database, web), the few people have access are usually product owner, business analysts, or product support people. And fast forward 5, 6 years, I became one of the latter. This is a privilege. Something I learned over past year:

1) Start from baby steps: e. g., if we want to update 1000 records: start from one or two records, do the update, validate and if everything looks good, do the mass update. This goes th way of divide/conquer too: so for example, if I need to delete 3 or 4 million records in one script (one run), I know it will be a long operation, and I don’t want the operation hang or fail in the middle. So what do I do? I divide the deleting operation into a few, each operation deletes half a million, much more manageable, and I will get the it complete much faster or get feedback much faster.

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401k and Personal Finance Software development Technology

Contractor or employee ?

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A common question for software developer is to be an employee (full time, perm) or be an contractor (W-2, or 1099). Strictly speaking the 1099 is more like a small business, and I have not done it personally. I heard some experienced people did the 1099; I will share if I have that exp. down the road.

I spent most of my career so far being an employee (8 years for Siemens PLM/UGS was the longest); I also spent some time being an contractor (total 3 places, about 28 months). Each option has pros and cons. A few things I learned from my own exp.

1) People have all kinds of expectations for contractors, usually the higher pay, the higher the expectation. For employee, they are a bit more patient.

2) Contract to hire. I found this is usually promised or at least suggested at the beginning, as personally I still prefer to be employee long time. But in two cases, I found they were not the case. All types things happen at client, but in one case looking back I felt the client may never had intention to convert. So this is something to keep in mind as for some people the longevity/conversion is important factor.

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iPhone app

Soft spoken, killer app, killer instinct and no news is good news, software update

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I am a soft spoken person. I got to know this word when a recruiter gave me feedback in 2000, when I applied for a consultant position at software company. That’s ok most of the time, except in certain cases we need to be clear: we cannot be vague, and we cannot waiver. Some examples include communicate with clients or customer when we work on a project, we need to be clear about the responsibility of each party, the expectations and the timeline or milestone.

A related topic is the “killer instinct” or “killer attitude”. We all know “killer apps”, the apps that knock the ball out of the park. Similarly, by killer instinct I meant in certain cases, we have no choice but to fix the issue, and we have to deliver. An example is the crisis situation, customer was already unhappy with the situation, we need to turn it around. I had couple instances like that recently. The solution usually involves putting head down, looking at the code, ask question or solicit help as needed. The solution will come eventually.

On the other hand, I have seen very intelligent people that are soft-spoken but don’t have the killer-instinct, or the drive to solve or fix a problem. This is ok, as long as the team has other people with the attribute above. But for the person without that trait, he/she may hit a career glass-ceiling soon. Because in real world, stressful situation/conflict arise and it usually needs that skill.

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Categories
advice and tips car finance

Switch to Ting wireless, mistake on car insurance

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I decided to switch my wireless carrier again, from H2O wireless to Ting. I stayed with H2O for over a year, mostly satisfied, except recently I started using its per minute data, which seems burn my money quickly. I heard about Ting from friend before, but I forgot to do the referral. 🙁 Anyway I switched my wife’s T-mobile prepaid to Ting last week, and I just did mine this evening. The only thing Ting needs is the IMEI number of iPhone, the account number or the pin from the older carrier. In the case of t-mobile, it’s last 4 digits of phone number; the the case of the H2O, it’s the last 4 or SIM card number. Here is how to find it on iPhone: Settings => General => About => ICCID number. IMEI number can be found in similar fashion.

By doing this, essentially I combined my phone and my wife’s phone into one account. Besides that, my wife also gets some data usage, which she does not have previously.

Car accident and the rental coverage in car insurance
I used to have the rental coverage in my car insurance. But in recent review, I decided not to keep it for my 2012 Sienna to save some money (about $13.25 per 6 month), as I thought the extended warranty (service contract) will cover in the case of repair. A mistake on my side. Yesterday my wife got into an accident while driving sienna, and I need to bring it to car bodyshop, which also means I need a rental car. The cost is about $30 per day from Enterprise. So I think I will shell out about $200 (assume 7 days) while trying to save $13.25. 🙁

Also, looking back I really should not have bought the extended warranty (EW) for the used certified Sienna. For 3 years besides the routine maintenance, the main cost is to fix the squirrels chewing the cables, and replace four tires. Both were not covered by the EW. Obviously they don’t cover accident either 🙁 I would put my money in my own pocket next time.

PS: the minivan is already in shop. It’s a bit surprising that I mostly used the Geico app for appointment and status checking.

PS2: it appears Ting is using T-mobile network, the signal is not as good as AT&T which is used by H2O wireless. There is network degradation or no signal near my work place 🙁

Categories
iPhone app

Podcast I listened recently

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I used to listen APM: Market Place (NPR) and the Nightly Business Report (PBS => CNBC). I was a business news junkie, and was into stock market. I also listened to a more in-depth podcast: the weathtrack by Consuelo.

More recently, I expanded my podcasts a bit, as you can see from below.

NPR hidden brain: I grew interest in psychology in recent years. It’s very much applicable in the business, work place, and the home.

Developing Perspective: david smith, note he moved on to the under the radar with Marco recently. But very good stuff from indie dev perspective.

Under the radar: by david smith (web, twitter) and marco arment (web, twitter). This is the new podcast launched by David and Marco (the lead developer of tumblr and famous tech blogger).

Release notes: this one is more geared toward developing iOS/Mac apps for business.

raywenderlich.com: I used to listen quite a bit, but have not followed as close as before since I am no longer doing iOS apps.

Categories
Site Info Software development Technology

Moved domain registrar from bluehost to godaddy

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Followed this instruction move away from bluehost; and move domain into godaddy. Most instructions are accurate, except one needs to ping pong couple times, started from bluehost first, then at godaddy website, after that I received email from godaddy asking about the transfer, go ahead and use the information in the email to start the official transfer, at last I go to bluehost website and approved the transfer. The interesting part is the entry of name server on my web host (digitalocean) gets updated automatically once I approved the transfer by clicking the link on bluehost. This really surprised me as I was expecting to make changes manually on my own 🙂

You may ask why I bother to transfer? I have actually moved my web hosting from bluehost to digitalocean (shared host to dedicated hosting) a while ago. This is the last step before moving completely away from the bluehost. No ill feeling towards bluehost (although couple years ago it did give me some headache). It’s just the cost between the two are comparable and I like to have more say on the web hosting.

Last but not least, if you have Amex card, check if you have the godaddy $20 off $50 offer. I found it from one of my Amex card, and I used it for domain transfer ($9.99 x 5 years plus a bit tax/fees). So the total will be about $30 after Amex offer. 🙂