Chris Drumgoole

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

Is that me?!?

I came across this photo on the net. Is it me? Short answer, no. But I spent the better half of an hour trying to figure out.

It started with going to the blog plaxoed! [Mark Jen’s life @ Plaxo] after seeing it on my colleague’s computer monitor. (A side note, he, Oliver is a real Plaxo fan, and actually converted me some time ago to use Plaxo) I was reading some of Mark’s entries, and after seeing his photo on his site, I thought to myself “man, I know this guy…”. My colleague, Oliver, told me he was famous many months ago for being fired from Google due to his Blogging habits. I don’t remember that. So I did some Google and A9 searching.

Turns out, he’s got a Wikipedia entry. Short, but to the point.

A9’s image results (I guess these are Google Image results), showed me this image. It looks like me! (It’s not). But then I got to thinking… Could it be me? It might be. Silver watch band. Big arms. But, I don’t pull up my long sleeves like this guy does in the photo. Well, I went to investigate more, to www.decheung.com, as that is where this photo is resident.

I found the entry where this image is linked, Remix of my Scoble and Mark Jen photos, which turns out to be a photoshop’d image by a guy in India named Manu Sharma. The white guy in the photo is a guy named Scoble.

So, not me.

But I know Mark from somewhere. I think it was University…

Those of you who have had the pleasure of purchasing a relatively cheap air ticket may have experienced what I am about to say. Those of you who plan to purchase these in the future, read this. Unless you have lots of money laying around.

Some time ago (I am deliberately being vague to protect the innocent, or guilty, however you want to look at it), I went on a trip with someone. We utilized the services of a rather large discount ticketing agent here in china. [see eLong.net](http://www.elong.net). The tickets, round trip, were on average 35% the cost of ‘normal’ tickets to this same destination. Great. Saving some money. And, it happened to be with a decent airline too.

That’s all fine and dandy, **if** you happen to get to the dang airport ON-TIME. We happened to be 5 minutes late (past check-in cut-off) and the ticketing agent told us that basically, we were shit out of luck. So much for a cheap ticket. Not transferable. Not refundable. Not nothing! We ended up having to purchase a full-fare return ticket. Nice. and how convenient - all the freaken airlines flying back to Beijing had the same price!! What ever happened to competition?!

In the U.S., it is common to see 2 or sometimes 3 gas stations at the same intersection, but they would have different prices - different by pennies. You look at the Mobil across the street that happened to be 3 cents more than the one you were at, and you would wonder “who the hell would go there when it is 3 cents cheaper here?!”. I guess that doesn’t work in the airline industry when it comes to full price fares.

Did my little analogy make sense? It should of, or you need help.

While Wednesday is winding up for most people here in the UTC+8 timezone, I’ll be sticking around work for a while longer. The following have caught my eye today:

- [Engadget](http://www.engadget.com/entry/3597362272750250/) is running a story of how an 11 year old boy in central China attempted to sue his mother for **not buying him a computer**.

- Started using **[del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us)** to manage my non-company-specific bookmarks. You can see my bookmarks [here](http://del.icio.us/cdrum).

- As everyone and their mother have posted, **[Firefox 1.0](http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/)**. I installed it yesterday and have been quite happy with the bug fixes since the last preview release. A bit peaved about the fact the [Google Bar Extension](http://googlebar.mozdev.org/) **isn’t working** with 1.0 yet…

- How do you like [this one](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/11/09/domain_transfers_and_hijackings_to_become_easier.html) about the new rules from [ICANN](http://www.icann.org/) stating domain transfer requests will be automatically approved if action from the current domain owner is not taken within 5 days. Hmmm, ok… So, that makes sense. I guess if I was on holiday for 6 days to a place without internet access, and someone happened to attempt to transfer my domain(s) out from under me, I would be pretty much **helpless**? But I guess Domain Locking will stop that. __Maybe…__

I reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop at home last night in an attempt to get things organized, as I have put off the purchase of a new computer for for an undetermined amount of time. Need to get a desk, **then** I will be all set!

Well, Today I was in a meeting at a client from 10:30 to about 1. I ahve a conference call tonight at 8, so once again, its another long day.

Read some interesting bits of news:

* **[iPod Halloween Costume](http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/31/2248203)** - Seems someone from my University ([Univ. of Michigan](http://www.umich.edu)) kind of screwed the [EECS Department](http://www.eecs.umich.edu) webserver(s) due to the [Slashdot](http://www.slashdot.org) effect. Heh… Jee, I think I’ve seen that [guy](http://www.engadget.com/entry/3238236478279992/) before…

* **More iPod fun** [Engadget](http://www.engadget.com/entry/8818248724858804/) has an interesting bit about a laser add-on for the iPod. There could be a market for this - I know my Parent’s dog goes nuts with these things.

Was looking at buying a new computer this past weekend. Boy, am I behind! Socket 939, Socket 754. Whatever happened to Slot 1 and Socket A??? Need to do a bit more research. And when did ATI become a viable alternative to nVidia?! aiya

And finally, I think I have settled on getting this [Canon](http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/s410.html). Or maybe the 5 megapixel model… Guess it depends what kind of mood I am in while at the shop.

For the past week to 2 weeks, I haven’t spent much time at my desk during the official 9-6 work day. For much of the time, I have been in a meeting room… discussing… Last night, I was in a meeting room until ~1am. I tried to get up at 6:30 this morning so I could get to work to get some stuff done, but my body said no. I think I’ll try it tomorrow.

Sure would like to have a proper office with a lock and a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Maybe in a few years.

Its Friday morning, I arrived at the office at 7am to meet with two collegues to make a conference call to another country. Are they here? no. So I searched the web a bit.

* **Google** has [Desktop Search](http://desktop.google.com) now! (beta) Still waiting for the dang thing to finish indexing my comptuer files..

* I still want one of [these](http://www.apple.com/powerbook/index12.html) and one of [these](http://www.apple.com/ipod/). I accept Paypal donations [here](http://www.paypal.com). Contact me for info.

* **Dell’s** MP3 player is ugly, don’t want one of [them](http://www.engadget.com/entry/4103333787821856/).

* 18 days to elections. I still haven’t received my ballot. Of course, I did send in the application a week before Michigan’s deadline (1 month before elections). Plus, airmail from China could be slower than expected.

Here we go… A tutorial on how to speak Singlish…

Terms for downloading Plan 9: