IBM Songs

In PBS’s documentary DVD "The Triumph of The Nerds," I happen to know that there exists an IBM song book, which has long been an important element in the old-school IBM corporate culture. No offense to any IBM veteran, but the following IBM song really made me laugh to death, and it motivated me to find its lyrics online eventually. Maybe my mind is too corrupted, and some word shouldn’t have been interpreted as it is today. But I still think it is very hilarious from whatever perspective you take.

 

It’s indeed a very simple song. Try to sing it, you will love it! 🙂

 

OUR I. B. M. SALESMEN
             Tune: "Jingle Bells"

I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
   Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
   I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
   In his service to mankind-that’s why we are so gay.

Three Types of Lies

Today I heard the following funny remark from one of my labmates. He said:

 

There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and simulation results!

 

The above saying is not totally original though. It rephrases the famous quote "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics," which was popularized by Mark Twain. But it’s so true about research, well, at least the research in EE and CS, that I like the wit from the words immdiately after hearing it, and can’t agree with it more. For a guy like me who conducts theoretical research all these years, research is nothing but the following cycle: 1) reading the related work in the literature, 2) finding a hole in these works to patch, 3) dervie a (not necessarily better) solution, 4) hurrily run some (selected) simulations to arguably show that the new solution is indeed better, and 5) eagerly looking for a venue to get the "better" results published. The cycle keeps going year in and year out.

 

I am not totally disputing this type of research approach. In fact, I am happily practising it right now and everybody else is doing it as well. But that doesn’t mean most of us have no idea how realistic our research assumptions are, and how true the stories in our papers tell. Unfortunately, that’s the way how one can rack up his publications and that’s the way life is. So, like what’s said in "The Shawshank Redemption", perhaps one day we will all get instituitionalized. Eventually, we will become the real Ph.D. — Pretty Huge Dumb, and having yet another Ph.D. — Permanent Health Damage.

Faint!! Mobicom~~

I just found out that the acceptance rate of this year’s ACM Mobicom is, guess what, 100%!!!

 

For those of you who are not familiar with Mobicom, let me tell you that Mobicom is one of the top notch conferences in the areas of EE and CS. It is very prestigious only because it’s highly selective. In the past years, the average acceptance rate was less than 10%. Simply put, if you have one paper published in Mobicom, then basically there is no need to submit this work to any other journals (yes, even top journals). Sometimes a Mobicom paper is ranked so much higher than a so-so journal paper.

 

Seeing this, you might be able to understand why I still couldn’t believe what I saw from Mobicom’s website, after rubbing my eyes for hundreds of times. Jesus, guess what went wrong this year? The answer is, Mobicom 2006 only got 16 submissions! Mobicom is a single-session conference, and the average number of accepted paper in the past years was around 20. So, to make the conference possible this year, every single paper has to get in!!!

 

But this ridiculous acceptance rate is not the thing that pissed me off. The thing that really bothers me is that I didn’t even try to submit a paper to Mobicom, because I thought my paper was not solid enough. Instead, I submitted my paper to Globecom and got it accepted. The submission deadlines of Mobicom and Globecom happened to be the same day this year. Damn it a thousand times!!! Had I tried to submit my paper to Mobicom, I may have had my first ever Mobicom paper in my life by now!!

 

I know I am so pathetic whining the funny 100% here! Shame on me!

 

New Homepage Launched

The website is: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/kevinlau/. I know perhaps there are very few people in this world would make such a shabby website and then show off on his blog. Real shame on me! 😦

 

I do this for two reasons:

1) Using this blog to add an inbound link to my homepage such that my website’s Google ranking would (hopefully) get higher.

2) Putting together things I have done in past few years so that I can get myself ready for the soon-to-be-coming job hunting.

 

I vaguely remember someone said that one of the best ways to motivate yourself for a better career is to update your resume every three months. Another equally well-put statement is "work for a better resume." Indeed, while making the webpages, I was getting so panic, realizing how little I have done all through these years. Alas! right now the work-for-resume thing becomes so compelling, because I really don’t want my butts got kicked when graduating…

What The Hell Is This?

I really don’t like this new appearance! It really bothers me. Everything looks so ugly, especially the big commercial banner on the top. One of the reasons I kept using MSN spaces for so long is that it looks much neater than other blog sites. But now, it has become one of the ugliest things ever. And the damn thing is, it is enforced by Microsoft, and you really can do nothing about it!

 

After Bill Gates is gone, perhaps the day of Microsoft also comes to an end.

A Little This, A Little That

It has been so long that I haven’t updated my blog and it looks really dusty by now. It’s not that I am lazy. In fact, in the past two months, there happens so many things that I have wanted to write about. The World Cup-related stuff like the crazy "Commentator-Gate" by Huang Jianxiang and the infamous head-butt by Zinedine Zidane, interesting movies that came to theaters, great books that I have just read, my nice vacation trip to Virginia Beach again, and my complicated feelings at my friends’ getting their jobs etc.

 

Sometimes I just feel like, if I put something in my TO-DO list, it never gets done again. It’s weird that whenever I feel that I am compelled to write something, I can always find some other things more urgent to do, and the blogging really could wait. However, once I let go the mood of writing, it’s so hard to pick it up again later when I am free. The impulse is gone, it’s forever gone. Writing sometimes requires so much energy, not only physically, but also mentally, and this is particularly true for a guy writing in his second language. But I hope this would no longer be an excuse for keeping this blog so dusty. Okay, keep up the good work, Kevin, and keep up the blogging.

Reinstalling a Dell Laptop

Helping Qian get rid of the Windows XP Home Edition on her Dell Inspiron 6000 Laptop and replacing it with a more powerful and secure Professional Edition has been in my TO-DO list since the laptop was bought in April last year. For a computer geek like me, installing such a dumb operation system like Windows XP Pro is like nothing but a teeny-tiny piece of cake. However, this small piece of cake winded up being a super huge fatty pizza that took me almost two days to swallow.

 

So, why this laptop came in with a "Home" edition? Well, the truth is we are poor students. If there is any possibility that could save our money, we will just do it. This machine was bought in last April when there was a super HOT sale from Dell going on. Applying numerous rebates, discounts, and my savvy configurations (yep, I am extremely good at that), I managed to cut the price of the machine to less than $700. Among those savvy configurations, not choosing XP Pro was one of them. This item alone saved us 50 bucks! Plus, using the education agreement between Microsoft and Virginia Tech, I can download an XP Pro for FREE in a totally LEGAL way. Cool, huh? If I were asked to name a list for the Top 10 Money Saving Tips in America, DIY (Do It Yourself) would be definitely in. I have seen so many omnipotent people who could do virtually any household thing, even like growing vegetables (maybe someday I can write another blog entry on this). I am not so talented as they are, but dealing with computers is my expertise. Also, it is said that "Guys are useful only in fixing stuff." So there I was, so proud of taking this job.

 

This Dell laptop is quite a fancy one, equipped with an Intel Pentium M 725 Processor (1.60GHz/2MB Cache) plus internal wireless, 512MB Memory, 15.4” Widescreen TFT Active-Matrix Display (resolution up to 1680×1050), 64MB ATI Mobility RADEON X300 Graphics, and 60GB hard drive. Unfortunately, the more fancy the machine is, the more drivers it needs, which in turn means it’s more likely that the original Windows XP Pro won’t support these fancy devices. Just as what I expected, the machine looked so ugly when it loaded XP Pro for the first time: no sound, no wireless network, very low display resolution, 4:3 screen stretching to 16:9, and tons of devices unrecognized under the device manager. A computer expert like me, though, will never be intimidated by these small problems. After the installation of drivers downloaded from Dell, all devices on the machine worked perfectly and the machine looked fabulous.

 

Oh…wait. There was still one more important step to do — Activating the Windows XP. Without doing so, my XP Pro would be locked up in 30 days. As you may know, activation is a notorious method Microsoft takes for piracy protection. However, this stupid thing doesn’t stop any pirate copy, but add way too much trouble to people like me who use authorized products. Anyway, just like what Ennis said in Brokeback Mountain, "If you can’t fix it, you got to stand it."

 

I connected to the activation website shown on the activation wizard. Surprisingly, the returned page said "Your product key has already exceeded the maximum number of activations. If you are using authorized Microsoft products, please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx for additional product keys." So I could do nothing but frustratedly follow these Microsoft’s rules and dial this damned number. After a short while, my call was put through and very gentle female, No, a very gentle automated voice machine, was heard. "Thanks for calling Microsoft, I can help you activate your Windows XP. Please read the installation ID to me. "Fine, everything you want me to do, I do it for you!", I was murmuring to myself. "Sorry, I could not understand you, please read the installation ID to me." The gentle female machine was heard again, and at the moment I realized that it was useless to complain to a machine, be it sounding like a female or male. So I began to read the installation ID shown on screen, which is divided in 10 groups, and each group contains 6 characters! Fortunately though, my pronunciation doesn’t carry too much Chinese accent, and the gentle female machine was able to recognize all what I said. But at the end, again, the female machine told me in her unique gentle voice, "Sorry, your installation ID was not found, please hold while we’re transferring you to our customer support representatives. This call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes…blah blah blah…" and then, the music started to play.

 

"What the hell is this?! How dare you tell me the 60-character ID you generated by yourself was not found?" I was completely pissed off. The music kept playing until 3 minutes later when the gentle female voice was heard again, "Sorry, our customer representatives are experiencing high call volume. Your call is very important to us, please continue to hold…" I looked at my watch, which showed it was 9:30pm on a Saturday night. If what the female machine said was true, then Microsoft’s products really suck big time! Three minutes passed, another three minutes passed… After the gentle female machine soothed me NINE times, my call finally got through.

 

This time, a not-very-gentle female with Indian accent was heard. Alright, now I understand why it took so long for them to pick up my call. The reason was that my call traveled through half of the Earth before finally hitting a Microsoft customer representative in India!!! Anyway, I was really feeling lucky that I can eventually talk to a real person. However, this time it was the Indian accent starting to give me troubles. No offense to Indian people (I have a lot of Indian friends at Tech), I REALY have difficulty in understanding their English even when talking face to face, not to mention on a phone call. After several minutes’ ineffective communication, in which I was trying to explain what product I was using and what happened to my machine, I can only understand one word from her, "Sir, I have no information for your product, contact your university for license help!", which sounded quite rude by the way.

 

Hanging up the phone furiously, I clicked, No, PUNCHED the "Activate" button on screen again to let out my angry. Suddenly, several words popped up and said, "Your Windows XP has been successfully activated!" Seriously, I couldn’t believe what I saw. I am not a guy who believes in miracle, so I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t in dream. Ladies and gentlemen, this is our lovely Microsoft, who came up with this "smart" activation system.

 

 (The bottle reads, "We suck more! and that’s guaranteed.")

 

However, when I thought the dust was about to settle, another nightmare was just getting started. Soon, I found a very bizarre problem: I couldn’t maintain a stable access to the Internet with my wireless connection! What the hell was going on? My internal wireless device seemed functioning well, I got full bars of the signal, I had a correctly assigned IP address, I was able to "ping" through my gateway (in fact I was able to successfully ping through whichever website if it exists), DNS was okay, everything else looked fine. But the problem is I just couldn’t maintain a stable access! I can visit some websites successfully for a couple times, but all of a sudden, Bang! an empty page showed up in IE, saying that "The webpage is not available…tada tada…". The only thing I can do was to reconnect to my wireless router again, but after several successful access attempts, the whole thing repeated and I could visit nowhere again. This was probably the weirdest problem I had ever met. I forgot how many commands like "netsh", "ipconfig", "arp" I had typed that night, trying every possible trick that I know to tackle this problem. However, the networking problem still remained at the end of the day. So I had to sleep with the job undone because it was already past midnight.

 

The ensuing morning, I got up early and worked on it again. Struggling three hours and having no improvement at all, I finally admitted that this wasn’t a problem I can fix. So I called Dell’s technical support. You know what, if there exists a ranking for worst phone call support systems, I may rank Microsoft No. 5 or No.6, but would definitely rank Dell as No.1 of all-time worst!! I was hanging in there waiting for almost one hour before someone picked up my call. Dell is so lazy that they wouldn’t bother to set up background music. The call was completely silent, with a not-gentle-at-all female machine saying "Please continue to hold" once in a while, reminding me that my call was still alive. After I finished describing my machine’s problem, the Indian (yes, again) gentlemen said, "Sorry, Mr. Liu, this is the department for Dell Desktop PCs. I will transfer you to our Notebook department." "Wait, could you please tell me…" I wanted to ask him if he could give me the number of their Notebook department just in case my connection got lost. But it was a little too late, and my call became silent again.

 

So there I was, roaming through their Desktop Department, Notebook Software Department, Re-format and Installation Department, Wireless Department, and, again!, Desktop Department, talking to different people but all from the same place — India. Every time I had to repeat the same information to them: my name, my address, my phone number, and my machine’s service tag number. Likewise, they all did nothing but transferring me to yet another department. Two hours later, no one really started to look into the problem. I became so numb that I even forgot to make myself angry. Fortunately, my perseverance finally got paid off. A person from the Wireless Department picked up my call, and thank god, he sounded like an experienced person who knows how to tackle the problem. This technical support is from Pennsylvania, he sounds like a Native American. For political correctness sake, I need to clarify that I have NO the least discrimination to Indian people. But it happened to me that this guy from Pennsylvania is much more helpful.

 

The Penn guy worked with me to examine every possible wireless networking configuration. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any mistakes after two hours’ tweaking as well. Finally, he asked me one very useful question, "What’s the installation order of the drivers you installed?" "I couldn’t recall. But it seems to me that no such order is required." I replied him. "Well, there certainly is. But most people don’t know. Every time when we install drivers, we always follow the following order: 1) Dell System Software, 2) Intel Mobile Chipset, 3) PCMCIA driver (if any), 4) Video driver, 5) Audio driver, 6) Modem driver, 7) Ethernet driver, and last, 8) Intel PRO/Wireless drivers." I told him that although I couldn’t recall what my installation order was, but the wireless driver wasn’t the last one for sure.

 

"Well, you got to follow the correct order, man." he said once again.

 

"Alright, if the installation order is so important, why didn’t you guys put this information on your website??" I asked.

 

"Oh, That’s…that’s…uh…that was really our fault." he said awkwardly.

 

Following the correct order, I finally ended this energy-consuming and time-consuming drama.

 

——————————————

PS. This blog entry is long overdue. I should’ve been able to finish it earlier. But every time when I was trying to finish it in one shot, something always came up. Also, I was getting busy lately. So writing this entry ends up being as painful as installing the machine. But I really appreciate all of you who are patient enough to read thus far.

Car Accident

It was the first car accident in my life. Fortunately, the damage was not serious, and I was not hurt. But it’s still quite scary. Let me just recap what happened.

 

Yesterday has seen the most severe weather in recent three years. Heavy freezing rain started early in the morning and kept pouring throughout the day. Snow and sleek ice made driving extremely difficult. In the afternoon, snow storm alarm in Roanoke and New River Valley area was announced and expected not being expired until 9am on Friday morning. All elementary schools, high schools, community colleges, and universities in this region were closed due to the severe weather condition. Virginia Tech, the largest university in the state of Virginia and having the best facility in coping with snow emergency, had to announce its closing at 3pm in the afternoon, although yesterday was the last day of final exam week for Fall 2005.

 

I went on working in office till 4pm and then decided to leave. When I started my car in the parking lot, I changed my idea from going home to shopping at Walmart. I was hoping that in such a bad weather, there should be much less people in Walmart so that I would be able to check out my stuff real quick. Plus, it’s around one week away from Christmas, there must have been some holiday sales going on. Getting some holiday deals without waiting in line to check out, sounds terrific, huh?

 

So 15 minutes later, I found myself in Walmart walking with a shopping cart already. To my surprise, Walmart was still packed with crowds and the parking lot at Walmart still jamed. I have to admit that the name of Christmas speaks for itself: people are still crazy even though in such a day that was not supposed to be a good one for shopping. Perhaps everybody in the shop, including me, was too smart, or too stupid.

 

After the check out which took forever to finish, I eventually left the shop and got into my car again. As always, I stopped on the slope at the exit of Walmart’s parking lot, waiting for the light turning to green. At the time, there was a Toyota SUV in front of me. I knew the weather was not good and the slope was slippery, so I maintained a safty distance a little further away than usual.

 

Perhaps the driver in the front car must have lost her mind. She must have thought that the lights had turned green, which didn’t unfortunately. She started to move forward but found out her mistake immediately. So she wanted to back off to her original spot. What really pissed me off was that she lost her mind for the second time. She didn’t even look through her rear mirror to check the situation on her back. She kept on backing off, and it really scared me. All of a sudden, two alternative solutions poped into my mind: 1) I backed off as well to yield her, and 2) I honk as soon as possible to make her stop. Since things were happening so fast, I have no time to check the situation on my back, so I chose to honk immediately. It seemed that my decision was correct. That driver noticed me right away and brake immediately. But it was way too late. Plus the sleek ice on the slope, her car just wouldn’t stop and kept on slipping. So "Bang!", her car hit my front bumper.

 

I was really frustrated, so was she. We both got off and checked the damage. Since there was a hook sticking out on the back of her car, this hook directly ran into my front bumper and my front bumper was cracked. Thanks also to the hook; her rear bumper had no damage at all. I was quite angry because it was all her fault. But I try not to lose my temper since that woman looked quite sorry. "Don’t panic, let’s find a place to pull over first", I soothed her.

 

People always tell me that if you got trapped into a car accident, be it your fault or not, call the police as soon as possible. However, I have no idea what the police number is, so I had no choice but dial 911. Luckily, a cop just passed by before my call got through, which saved me a lot of effort on phone. The police officer quickly examined my damage, exchanged the insurance information from both sides, and let us go home because it’s a non-reportable accident (<$1000 lost).

 

As soon as I got home, I call my insurance company and claimed the case. Since my insurance is with the policy having only liability and no collision, my insurance company encouraged me to call the insurance company from the other side as well. Thanks to this "first" experience in car accident, I learn a lot of car insurance jargons. This morning, that driver’s insurance company, Progressive, called me and issued me a $390 paycheck soon after.

 

So that’s it, the story of my first car accident ends here. A couple of things can be learned out of this fussy and scary experience:

1) DO NOT drive under severe weather conditions, it’s no fun;

2) Always maintain a safty distance far enough to the car in front of you. You alwasys cannot predict what will happen in the next second on roads;

3) DO NOT panic or lose temper after the accident happens, call the police and your insurance company ASAP; and

4) Look for a good car insurance company such as … (omitted for commercial reasons)

Riding Bus

I couldn’t remember when was the last time I took bus. It probably has been 5 years? I rarely took bus even when I was in Beijing. Instead, I always ended up with hopping into a TAXI whenever I want to hang out. Okay, I admit that I was just a squanderer at that time.

 

Having stayed in the States for 2.5 years, still, I rarely take bus. It’s not that I hate bus or any other public transportation. In fact, the Blacksburg Transit (a.k.a. BT in town) was called one of the best bus systems in the nation. It serves Virginia Tech and Blacksburg for years; It’s fast, it’s safe, and most importantly, it’s FREE for all Virginia Tech students (of course it’s free only after you pay tuition and fees). But I still drive to school everyday, even though it’s just 2-minute driving from my apartment to campus. But hey, don’t call me a sqanderer anymore. Every dollar I earn here, I earn it hard. I know how to make my dollars worth their value. The reason for driving is that it makes my life easy, it gives me freedom (I am a Sagittarian), and it’s affordable.

 

However, I have to give up driving and start taking bus lately because of the skyrocketing gas price. In Blacksburg, it soars all the way from $2.00/gallon to $2.50/gallon (regular unlead) at the end of this summer. What’s worse is that the Hurricane Katrina boosts the price even as high as $3.60/gallon a week ago. According to the local newspapaer, almost all gas stations were out of gas last Wednesday since panic people lined up buying gas, fearing gas price would get even higher. In fact, Virginia is always considered one of the states where gas prices are lower. I really couldn’t imagine how high the gas price has become in metropolitan area like New York City and Boston.

 

Alright, I might as well stop whining like a woman. In fact, I enjoy taking bus quite a lot: no headache in fighting for a parking spot, no hassle in terrible traffic, and having time to enjoy the fabulous view of Fall in Blacksburg. But what if the gas price remains so high when winter comes? Will I still enjoy waitting bus in chilly wind?

 

 

PS. The lowest price in town today is $2.85/gallon, at Hess.

Do you believe in God?

I am not religious. But sometimes, things just happen and make you feel like "wow…this is unbelievable."

 

A bunch of Chinese colleague had lunch together today to throw a small farewell party on "Grand Aunty". She is a very nice lady who is leaving the company where I am doing my intern recently. We went to a Chinese restaurant called "Tian Chu" in Chelmsford neighborhood. The lunch was quite cheerful and we all had a great time.

 

As always, everyone was given a fortune cookie at the end of the meal. This is a routine while you are waiting for check out in US’s Chinese restaurants (Don’t know why I rarely saw fortune cookies in China though). In each fortune cookie, there is a small piece of paper where you can find a short sentence. Usually, this sentence is nothing but a blessing, or something not even making any sense at all. But this time, it’s a little bit different.

 

After opening the cookie, Grand Aunty looked quite sad. She then read out the sentence to us, "Everything that has a beginning has an end." All of us suddenly fell into silence and don’t know what to say for a while. It’s just like this cookie suddenly appeared by magic and looked so odd. Now I start to wonder whether or not the God is watching us from behind.