The World of Little Little Bird

I got my EAD card today. It took USCIS around 1 month to process my OPT application. I'll start my first job on May 23rd. Good luck to yaping~~~

I'm getting old. I am no longer the sharp kid any more. My brain is becoming a single thread processor. Once I'm thinking about one thing, I forget anything else. For example, like today, when I attended a one day workshop from Synopsys, I was too tired to think of asking questions, my papers, and etc. Even when I got home, I just wanted to relax by surfing on the internet. I totally forgot I was heating my eggs on the stove until my poor soysauce eggs burned. Poor me. It seems that even now, I'm still sort of aimless.

Since I registered my first ID on SJTU bbs four year and a half ago, I have spent a lot of time on it and enjoyed it. It accompanied me in those years when I was applying US school, when I was interning in HongKong, when I was lonely in US.
Here is my current status on bbs.
Logged on: 1563 times, Age: 1486 days, Post: 2177
Now I will not be able to post on SJTU bbs due to the new bbs regulation in China. In early last week, users outside SJTU are not allowed to post between 12am and 8am at night. Today, when I logged in, I was told that only users with a xxx.edu.cn email account were allowed to post due to the new 实名制. So from next week on, unless someone in SJTU is willing to let me use his email accout, I will say goodbye to SJTU bbs. I will miss you, fella.

When I graduated from SJTU, I didn't go to any job fair. I hear that there are so many people at those job fairs. Not until today, I have a chance to see the photos from BLOG:CHINA. I am lucky, and my only comment is WTF.

I played badminton this Friday night. Maybe it is because of Easter, we were lucky enough to get a court. I played for more than 2 hours. I find myself a much better player than 1 month ago. Though I only played less than 1 hour in this month. I'm so gifted in sports. (Hey, you! Don't throw eggs, tomatoes. You are not allowed to waste food.) Actually, there are no tricks. I just hit the shuttle with all my strength every time. Those high long balls keep my opponent restricted to the base line and can't make drop shots. Then skill is not a greater factor than stamina. It was fun, and I can't wait for more badminton next Friday. The only complaint is that I'm sour all over now. :(

Top 50 is here.

After 4 days' of training, I'm back to office working today.
There was a SRC e-workshop on Open Access this afternoon. Four guys from LSI, Intel, Cadence, and Si2 gave their talks one after another. The intel guy sucked. He spent 40 minutes talking nonsense. More than half of my group fell asleep during his talk, including me of course. When I woke up, that guy was still speaking. The Cadence guy mentioned Zhong's placement tool and was very proud of his work for Cadence Research Lab, Berkeley. He even quoted Rob Rutenbar's comments on Open Access. I'm proud of Zhong too. :)
During the talk, something fun happened. Because this is an e-workshop, every party dialed in. In the phone, some one didn't mute the phone on her site. We could hear a female speaking Chinese from time to time since the very beginning. When the intel guy almost finished his tedious talke, She was saying something like, "噢，还是那个Open Access啊?" We laughed a lot. My big boss thought she was speaking Japanese. But my manager said it might be Chinese. I 装憨.

check it out from Amazon.com
Features:
10.00 GHz AMD Athlon
2000 MB DIMM
30000 GB IDE Hard Disk

Listening to "神呀!救救我吧!" from 陈小春 reminds me the famous flash produced by Showgood. Back to my Master study in STJU, I watched this flash with Kelvin and Xurefu in their dorm. I reviewed this flash and some other good ones that we watched at that time. They remind me a lot of my past years. I can't stop remembering my life in China and my life in Pittsburgh.
When I first arrived at Pittsburgh, Kelvin and I lived in an aparment on S Millvale Ave. Zhong, zz and rong lived upstairs. We spent 1.5 years in that apartment building with many black bros. That neighborhood is not safe. Our apartment was once broken into. And my packages from UPS lost twice. The apartment was hot in the summer but without air conditioner. However, I had a great time there. I could sit on the floor in Kelvin's room and chat with him after meal. I could attend zz's parties and play cards till midnight. I could walk to school through Devonshire and the parking lot discussing with Kelvin on whatever we liked, in sun or in snow.
Now I live in a much better apartment in Austin. It is in a very good community with fitting room, pool, air conditioner. I drive to work everyday. I earn more money than I did in Pittsburgh. But I feel not as happy as before. From yesterday, my feeling lonely gets stronger and stronger. I tried to sit down and write my paper, but I couldn't concentrate. I just refreshed some websites that I often visit again and again or watched some nonsense TV programs aimlessly in order to make myself feel better. I don't know. Maybe I should work harder to forget everything else. Maybe it is just because the song is too sad.
Anyway, I should be happy with what I have. Compared with many others, I'm fortunate enough. I just can't get rid of the feelings once a while.
Tomorrow is better, I believe, I'll be fine!

1. The training ended this afternoon. When I was at the training, I found it pretty dull. However, when I got back to working in my office, I started to miss the workshop. Frankly, though the labs are boring, the lecturer did a good job to make it fun. I registered another one-day workshop from Synopsys the end of this month.
2. I got my 2004 tax back today. It was direct deposited into my banking account. I'm glad that I did a clean tax return job. :)
3. I added a small feature to my blog today by putting in a mp3 playback. Great job again! :D
4. For some reasons, SJTU bbs now doesn't allow posts from outside IP's during night. I have to wait until 8am (BJ time) to make a post.

The training is boring, but the food is good. We get free continental breakfast and lunch. Yesterday's lunch was awesome. We ordered BBQ from the famous County Line. The beef ribs are fantastic. I had two beef rib, one chicken drum, 2 sausages, and several pieces of brisket. Texas BBQ is soooooo good. If you come to Austin, you should definately try the BBQ's here. The two best BBQ restaurants here are the Salt Lick and the Country Line.

The training is pretty dull. There are 6 people in the class. It is like a Visual C++ workshop. Half of the time is lecture, and the other half is for labs. Labs are very time consuming. I'm the only one without previous experience on AMPLE. But it turned out that I'm the fastest on the labs. Maybe I'm the only C programmer. :)

I'll attend an AMPLE workshop from Mentor Graphics. It is a 4-day workshop at Mentor's office close to my company. The tuition fee is crazy. Mentor charges $2250 for one seat. Hope I can learn something so that the money is not totally wasted.

Happy little bird
My paper was accepted by a conference. It is my first paper in US. I'm very happy about it.

Hot weather
It's getting really hot in Austin. When I got out at 1pm, it was over 85 degrees. I felt like that I was sitting on an oven when I drove on the highway.

Machines down
It was hot, and I don't have much to do at home. So I went to my company to work overtime. It is my first time going to work on Saturday. Unfortunately, the unix system was down. No matter how I tried, I could NOT log into my account. At last, I worked a little bit on a public windows machine.

I got fainted this morning. There was a free cholesterol test for AMD employee. I went there with fasting. The staff got one sample of blood from me, but couldn't get her machine work. So she had to take another sample. That made me nervous and fainted. She made me lying on the ground and after 5 minutes, I felt better. I always get fainted when someone extracts blood from me. It sucks.
Larry was at AMD giving a talk on VPGA this morning. Glad seeing him. About one month ago, Rob was here too. Two more weeks back, Andrzej was here, though he was not in the north design center. It seems AMD is pretty interested in CMU professors. The only pity is that we don't get free lunch today. :(

There is an activity called Dinner Around Austin for all Co-ops in AMD. People go out for dinner together in good restaurants every week. Previous DAA's are too far away, most with over 10 miles to drive. This week, DAA was at Carrabba's Italian Grill on Wedneseay. I went to it. The food was good. I ordered Pork Chops Marsala, Two 8 oz. center-cut chops grilled, topped with mushrooms, prosciutto and their Lombardo Marsala wine sauce. I like it very much. The better part is that I could only eat up half of it so that I had my lunch for the next work day.

Lv will arrive at Houston on Saturday evening. The protest is put off to Sunday. I decided not to go to Houston this weekend. :) I wanna stay at home and watch Rockets vs. Kings on ABC.

I'm going to Houston to protest Lv Xiulian this weekend. hiahia

Manifestation again Taiwan Pro-independence

Lv Xiulian, one of the most stubborn Taiwan pro-independent leader and
the vice-president of Chen Shui-bian, will transit through the United
States to a third country this week and will be in Houston on Saturday,
March 12. This is a very good chance for us Chinese to show our passion
and determination to keep our great mother country united under one
name CHINA -- to all the Taiwan separatist and the whole world! China's
sovereignty and territorial integrity are inseparable, and the
One-China Principle is an unshakable fact!

The UTCSSA hereby call on all the Chinese people in Austin to take part
in this Saturday's manifestation against Lv Xiulian and all the other
Taiwan pro-independence activists in Houston.

We will assemble at the IF bus stop at the Dean Keeton / San Jacinto on
Saturday morning and start to Houston together at 8:30am.The UTCSSA
will rent a bus if necessary or reimburse the gas expenses.

Lunch, supper and refreshments will be served on the spot. And if time
permits, the UTCSSA will organize a shopping tour around the Houston
Chinatown.

Let's organize together and show our strength of solidarity!

UTCSSA
All members

From EETIMES

Intel criticizes, AMD applauds Japan anti-monopoly ruling

By Peter Clarke
Silicon Strategies
March 08, 2005 (4:57 AM EST)

MUNICH, Germany — Intel Corp. has criticized a "recommendation" from the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) relating to Intel's business practices, sent to its subsidiary Intel K.K. AMD has praised the recommendation and called for other regions to punish Intel.

Intel did not specifically refer to the recommendations in a statement but according to reports Intel has been told to take certain incentive clauses out of sales contracts for its microprocessors. Intel has approximately ten days to respond to the Recommendation.

Intel said it continues to believe its business practices are both fair and lawful and that it is evaluating the assertions and the recommendation before deciding next steps. Intel said it was concerned that the JFTC's Recommendation does not appear to take into account antitrust principles commonly accepted worldwide.

"One of the core principles of competition policy is the notion that such policies should be based on sound economics," said Bruce Sewell, vice president and general counsel for Intel, in a statement. "There is a broad consensus that competition regulators should only intervene where there is evidence of harm to consumers. It is apparent the JFTC's Recommendation did not sufficiently weigh these important principles."

According to AMD the JFTC found that Intel negotiated proportions of non-Intel CPUs to be used within particular product families and used advertising support funds as an incentive for Japanese notebook makers to comply.

Specifically, the JFTC found that: one manufacturer was forced to agree to buy 100 percent of its CPUs from Intel; another manufacturer was forced to curtail its non-Intel purchases to 10 percent or less; Intel separately conditioned rebates on the exclusive use of Intel CPUs throughout an entire series of computers sold under a single brand name in order to exclude AMD CPUs from distribution; the mechanisms used to achieve these ends included rebates and marketing practices that includes the "Intel Inside" program and market development funds, AMD said.

The JFTC imposed a number of restrictions on Intel. Among them, it must notify its customers and educate its employees that it may no longer provide rebates and other funds to Japanese computer manufacturers on conditions that exclude competitors' CPUs, AMD said.

"The JFTC found that Intel illegally manipulated the market to exclude competition, hurting PC users around the world," said Thomas McCoy, executive vice president, legal affairs and chief administrative officer for Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., in a statement. "Using market power illegally to limit innovation and, more importantly, consumers' freedom to choose, cannot be tolerated. We encourage governments around the globe to ensure that their markets are not being harmed as well."

McCoy continued: "The evidence of harm to consumers is obvious. By preventing PC manufacturers from using CPUs of their choice, Intel's misconduct deprived consumers worldwide of the freedom to purchase computers that best fit their needs. Efforts by an avowed monopolist to artificially set market shares to exclude competition clearly violates antitrust standards globally."

After almost one week's rain, it finally cleared out this afternoon. The sun shines and brings the high temperature to 80. Summer is here in Texas.
The gas price surges today to a nationwide average $1.999. And it is predicted to increase much further.

I bought wonton wraps and baby choy from local Chinese stores, ground meat from Walmart. Here are my products before cooking. I haven't had wonton for a long long time. So I like them very much.

On Saturday, I volunteered to be a secret judge for Austin Science Fun Day. There are 13 booths hosted by kids from local schools, aged from kindergarten to middle school. My task is to talk with them, know what they demonstrate, and give scores in different catagories. Judging criteria include how they understand their stuffs, whether the presentation is intriguing, how active the kids are to the visitors, and so on. I visited each booth without showing my identity and tried to get enough information by chatting. The full score is 50. The high that I gave was 46 and the low 36. One booth is from some kindergarten kids. They are really cute. They show information about the metamorphosis from egg to butterfly. They use rice as egg, spaghetti, macaroni and some other pasta that I've never heard of to represent different butterfly life stages.
After my volunteer, I shopped some clothes on my way home. Foley's, a department store was on a clearence sale this weekend. I got one Tee, one shirt, and one short, all from Tommy Hilfiger, for 9 bucks. The original total price is listed as $144. A pretty good deal.

Xin has received my OPT receipt today. The Vermont center is fast on OPT applications. On Feb 23rd, they were processing the applications of Feb 2nd. Today, they are processing the applications of Feb 14th. According to this speed, my OPT will be process by the end of next week.

It is Friday again. I went to UT after dinner. I played squash with Gary for 1 hour first. Then we played badminton. I played three double games. Surprisingly, I won the third game due to my stamina. :) This time, I find myself much more comfortable with the shuttle. I will practise more next week, and become a badminton expert by the end of this semester. Yeah.

签名网址 www.historicaljustice.org
I signed it this moring. I find myself changing a lot. Five years ago, I would never ever take a look at this.

Endless meetings wear me out. I had one meeting yesterday afternoon, another meeting this morning and a third this afternoon. This morning, a startup company presented their power-smart routing tools. The Russian CTO has strong research background. The other meeting today started from 3:30 till 5pm. It was a group meeting. Because I am in an internship, I have no idea about the routine stuffs.
I could hardly concentrate on my work due to the meetings. My time is cut into small pieces and my brain is like glue. Sigh~~~ Anyway, weekend is coming.