Chris Drumgoole

Ok, I only took 3 photos… Here they are (click on them to see them in flickr)

I landed in Portland, Oregon in the early morning of Friday, 6:30AM to be exact. Immigration and Customs was a breeze. My next flight, to Las Vegas, isn’t until 7:15PM this evening.

So, I took the light rail downtown - will be meeting with an old college buddy who lives here (although not for long) for lunch. Right now, I’m killing time at a Border’s bookstore cafe on a 24-hour US$10 internet connection.  Stupid country with their non-free WIFI….

As I said, it’s Friday morning, and the city is quiet. I was expecting lots of activity: people going to work, getting their starbucks coffee, etc… But, I suppose that as Portland isn’t Chicago or NYC, (it’s much much smaller), there isn’t a whole lot of activity downtown any way… It’s a nice quiet city…

This is my second time coming to Portland - the first was last year (2006) in September. I was in the U.S. on a business trip with my former company (specifically Michigan and Texas), and decided to fly through Portland on the way back to China to see Matt (who I’m seeing today), his wife Joanne, and another good friend Loren, who unfortunately for me, no longer lives here. I liked the city last time - Loren took me to a nice microbrew… If you’re interested, have a look at my Portland flickr set. I’ll try to take some more photos today - if something looks interesting, that is.

Portland sort of reminds me of Seattle (Melanie and I went for the first time in October of this year), in that there are a lot of scruffy looking people here - I’m going out on a limb here and assume most of them are tree hugger types… I know many of them aren’t homeless bums as they are enjoying their US$4 Starbucks latte while chatting with friends on their Apple MacBooks, but why they choose to dress like bums is beyond me. I’ll ask my friend Matt when he finally gets downtown, maybe he has some insight. I remember last time I visited, he told me Portland, as well as most of the Pacific Northwest, tends to attract environmental-types…  Maybe because of the excessive logging in this area…  Or maybe environmental types like rain…

But hey, whatever floats their boats… Who am I to judge?  (Quiet!, those of you who know me…) But, regarding the “bumness”, maybe it’s a way to reduce the risk of getting mugged - if you look scruffy and poor, why would a thief bother you? Kind of like buying a 200 RMB local-brand bicycle in Beijing instead of the fancy 2,000 RMB Giant from Taiwan - everybody and their brother has a crappy bike - no need to steel yours… O.k., maybe this analogy is a bit far fetched… Anyone care to comment?

Any way, changing the subject so I won’t dig my hole any deeper… If it weren’t for the strange Oregon State law regarding gas pumps (it is ILLEGAL to pump your own gas in Oregon), I would add Portland to my “short list” of acceptable U.S. cities for living, should I ever decide to return…  The list is short…  This strange “law” sounds like a socialist strategy to reduce unemployment, you know, methods countries like China “employ” (no pun intended) to “hide” their unemployment.  Hmm, I’ll stop this subject right here because I’m not really sure where I’m going with this…

Great, Matt just called saying he’s getting on the train to come downtown soon - ETA: around an hour.  He lives out in Intel and sushi country - Hilsboro, you could say a suburb of Portland.  (I say Intel county because apparently Intel employs some 10,000 people in the area.  Who knew that chip designers were environmental types?)

Wow, this is actually a pretty long post… Maybe I’ll stop here.  You can thank me in the comments for not continuing on blabbering about nothing.  I’ll write a post tomorrow or Sunday about Las Vegas.

I got an email today in my company email box from the conference organizer that I dealt with couple of months ago (for the BCP conference).  The email was a Christmas Greetings.

It’s classic!

Go ahead, click on it to see the full size!

Imagine all the little people graphics are animated.  They’re jumping up and down (including Santa), doing whatever it is they’re doing…  My favorite is the “If you are a girl, wish you more beautiful (pic) more considerately (pic), where the first pic is of the girl nitting, presumably a sweater, and the second is of her making eggs.  “Make me eggs, woman!”

Pure classic.

And the big bunny at the bottom, well, he’s just walking in place…

But, don’t get me wrong - I like it.  It’s certainly the thought that counts!

Not sure if you’ve been following my flickr photo stream, but I posted a photo I took the other day of a notice in my elevator.  I knew it had something to do with turning off electricity as it had the “dian”, or 电 character, a date (Dec. 20), and a time range (00:00 - 02:00).  So I pretty much guessed what this was about.

Thanks to one of my few loyal readers, Ray, who can read Chinese, he translated it for me in the flickr photo comments:

Power outage from 00:00 to 02:00 on Dec 20. Affected area: South region building 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, Kindergarten, Office building and elevator.

Well, I’m in building 7 (By the way, that’s 6 numbered buildings, and the office buildings, which is pretty much the whole complex! [almost]).

I’m a great pre-planner!

I went out to dinner last night (Dec 19) with some friends, we then had a few drinks, and left for home around 11:30pm.  Plenty of time, I thought. 10-15 mintues to get home - time to spare!  Ha!

I did get home around 11:45.  The lights in the building were still on - a good sign!  I enter my building, and low and behold - they turned off the elevators already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Both of them!

People: remember, I live on the 26th floor.  Minus the superstitious floors, so I effectively live on the 23rd floor.  Ouch.

I managed to get into my apartment before the whole building shut down…  No TV for me…

Ray requested I post some photos I have taken with the N82.  Well, here are some, but go ahead and check out my flickr site for all photos tagged “N82″.  There aren’t many yet, but I intend on changing that!

Oh, and it seems that Shozu is getting much better at geotagging the photos automatically!

That may be true, at least when it comes to technology.

I bought a Nokia N82.

Oh, here we go….

What happened to the iPhone idea? Well, I’ll give you the short straight-to-the-point explanation so as to avoid boring you to death.

First of all, signs aren’t pointing to a complete solution to unlocking the newer iPhones by this Friday. It may happen, but I don’t want to risk it. The last thing I want is to go to the U.S. this Friday (yay!), buy it, and then, just look at it for a month while I wait for the crack.

Plus, it looks as Apple will be releasing a minor and major update to the iPhone in 2008. (yes yes, you can end up waiting an eternity for the “right” gadget”)

So, I pretty much nixed that idea over the weekend.

I was pretty happy with my N95, really…. Especially with the latest firmware, it was pretty speedy. BUT, I couldn’t buy the same one. So I was looking at the N95 8GB model - more SDRAM, larger screen (but same resolution as Dutch Tom brought to my attention), better external key layout, and a cool black color.

But, I would have to spend around RMB 5,000 for it. Do I really want to spend that kind of money? It is awfully bulky, too.

Eureka! I remember a former sort-of colleague of mine, Michael, was looking at the yet-to-be-released Nokia N82 (this was back in November or October of this year).. He eventually settled with the iPhone (whcih kind of started the whole iPhone thing for me…) and couldn’t be happier, from what he has told me. Michael: feel free to leave a comment trashing the iPhone…

I did quite of research yesterday on the N82, including comparing it with the N95 8GB. The essential comparison points for me are (in favor of N82):

• Smaller screen size, but same resolution
• Not as bulky
• Same processor and SDRAM (whcih is a major improvement over original N95)
• Same camera
• BETTER flash - Xenon!
• All the other bells and whistles, GPS, etc.

So, the N82 is essentially the N95 8GB, just repackaged as a candybar, and without the restrictive 8GB of memory (you can get 8GB microSDHC cards now, so this is a moot point).

Best of all, the N82 is priced RMB 3,900 here in Beijing.

As a tradition of mine, I went out during lunch today to buy it, you could say, on impulse.

First Impressions

1. Solid as a rock! The build quality is way way improved over previous N-Series devices. (Ok, it’s a candy bar, but, hey….)
2. The smaller screen with the same resolution improves visual quality.
3. The keys are small! I need time to get used to these…
4. The flash is sweet!

Ok, that’s it for now. Will post some more info about it later…

Over the weekend I finally got around to uploading my photos from Chicago and Seattle (that I took in October of this year.)

I was lazy and didn’t put any captions, but pictures speak a thousand words, right?

Chicago

Seattle

Enjoy. I’ve got Xiamen photos to upload at some point…

I woke up today to the first snow of 2007. While it’s not a nice thick dry snow (it’s actually thin and wet and the roads are gross), it was a nice sight, nonetheless. But then I remembered “SHIT! I’ve got to get a taxi!!!”

Good thing that I’m getting in the habit of waking up earlier (7:20 as opposed to ~8 - which means I can get out of the door by 8 instead of 8:30 whcih gives me an hour to get to work - for the just in case moments we all love…)

Waiting for a taxi wasn’t too bad - 20 minutes or so - and it was a “hei che“, not a proper taxi (i.e. unofficial car-for-hire - hei means black, che means car.) Normally if I take a taxi, it costs ~30 RMB to get to the office (depending on traffic). The “hei che” normally charges 40 RMB. The driver this morning charged me 35 RMB - I think he was a reletively new “hei che” driver as he probably should have charged even more due to the snow…

Oh well.

Picture Time!

The above is a picture of the road and trees in front of my office. You can see the snow isn’t real thick.. but it’s a start for the season!

As China is getting in the yule-time spiri, Christmas Trees, like the one pictured above, are popping up around town. This one is in front of my office. Sorry for the out of focusness (hmm, that’s not a word…). Also, the flash on my camera was unintentionally on, so it gave a neat (I think so) effect reflecting off the falling snow.

So I guess I should retire the ‘ol “N95″ category for this blog.

“Wait, What?!”

…you may be asking yourself… Yes, I did just buy it in June of this year, so that’s… 5 months and a few days of ownership. Man, I think that’s a record for me!

Here’s the reason:

I want an iPhone. There. I said it.

My dutch friend (yes, the fact that he is Dutch has just about zero relevance here) accused me of “flip flopping”. Yes, I would agree with that….

I went from using an Apple for my first computer, to hating Apple, to buying an iPod, then Airport Express, then a Powerbook, to hating Apple again, to installing Linux on my Powerbook (a post is in the works), and now back to wanting to get an iPhone.

Can I not just make up my mind and stick with it?!

Simple answer: No. With technology, I cannot make up my mind. 

Great, but didn’t I just buy the N95? Money don’t grow on trees, son!

Read the title of this entry: I sold the N95 for RMB 2600 (yes, he did a good look over today and found all the nicks and scratches….). I’ll be in Portland, Oregon on the 21st of December. I’ll buy the iPhone there for US$399. Tax free. That’s around ~2950 RMB. So, it’s a NETT ~300 (depending of exchange rate fluctuation from now ’til then) for a new phone.

The ONLY two things I am going to miss are the 5mpx camera and the GPS mapping. But I can live with that. I have a nice 6mpx Canon point-and-shoot, and maybe I’ll get the Garmin Nuvi. Maybe not…

China don’t have no 3G, so don’t need that shiz.

One of the things I critisized theiPhone was in the past was the lack of earth-shattering technical advances - specifically that it only packed 2.5G (Edge).

The N95 worked on just about any network available on earth. quad band GSM, UMTS, WCDMA, X59TQP, AJAX75, POS1000, whatever blah blah. (Ok, not the U.S. 3G network, but I don’t live there, so…) I now realize: who gives a crap!? I don’t travel much outside of China…

Seeing that China won’t be getting 3G (or at least a western-standard for 3G) any time soon, it doesn’t make any difference.

Also, let’s not forget that Beijing just upgraded to EDGE. So the iPhone fits perfectly here.

So, Chris is a Mac geek now!

Not so fast there. I am perfectly happy with my Linux set-up at home. I still don’t like OSX, for various reasons. And I still don’t support Apple’s sadistic genius business model(s), as a consumer, that is.

But remember - I won’t be using the iPhone in the states. I’ll be hapilly using it, unlocked, on the China Mobile network. No profit sharing from me! I’m sticken it to the “man”!

About 20 minutes after I posted my blog post on Google’s new Google Maps Mobile client, I noticed I got a pingback, or whatever it’s called. This pingback goes to a website http://0d1.info/gps/, which looks like a Google Adsense farm rss aggregator. This means, they’re taking other people’s blog posts and putting Google Adsense adds on them.
Here, have a look (click on the image to see the full size screenshot). Look at all the ads! They didn’t even keep my photos! I wonder if they’re spidring the net for any post with “gps” as a tag?

I don’t think so…

Time for a cease and desist?     (See here for the infringing URL)