Scratch and Win

Well I just got aware of a new service aiming to help website owners attract traffic and have advertisers sponsor prizes. If you're intrested, here's the full article at TechCrunch.

So I have decided to give it a try, and please scratch the card below. You can win prizes, (and if you win something I get the same prize too). Right now the site is only giving away like $90 per day, it hopes to raise the prize value as it gets more awareness and sponsor (or "uncle VC" funding?).

I Finally Found Wii, But...

Target won't sell it to me!

OK so you know that I have been looking for my Wii for more than 5 months now. A few days ago I stumbled this website that taught me how to check Target's inventory through their price scanner (the code is 207-25-0001).

OK so today I dropped by my local target to restock my cleaning supply, fridge and food cabinet. While there, I dropped by the electronic section and found no Wii in the shelves. Then I stopped by a price scanner and checked for a Wii. And alas, the thing said that the store's stockroom has Wiis so I approached the redshirt lady behind the electronic counter and ask if the store has Wii in stock. She quickly said "NO" and then I told her what I saw in the scanner. She finally relented and grabbed her handy talkie and called the stockroom. She said the store has Wii in the back but they couldn't sell it to me until Sunday. I asked "why?" She said it was simply store policy. She told me to go back on Sunday and line up in the morning and get a ticket or something. I reasoned to her that it was in both my and Target's best interest to sell me a Wii at the time. First of all it would improve the store's financial by reducing their working capital /inventory. She would also free up some precious shelf/storage space (maybe to keep excess PS3 inventories). Target's ratios will surely look better to those Wall Street analyst. Also I tried to teach her about time value of money that $1 at the time is better than $1 on Sunday. Well apparently my geeky arguments didn't work and I left the store without a Wii.

In my mind I said to myself that this is BS. Why would Target make their inventory public if they won't sell it to me. maybe they should simply close their inventory system closed to the public and internet sites like itrackr.

Oh on the topic of BS, yesterday I stumbled upon this interesting article about paid stock basher on Yahoo! finance message boards somewhere. Thanks to Jon at ValueWiki, I learned out that it's a hoax that's been around since 2000. Wow, I probably should stop paying attention to those boards now, it's pretty scary how much convincing hoax is out there.

No Twitter for Me....

Dear friends, families, and anyone else who cares,

Some of you has suggested that I provide regular updates on my life through Twitter. After a thorough examination of my conscience, I have decided that Twitter is just not for me. Well, for those who doesn't know, Twitter is "a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!" So if you are asking what I am doing, for people who know me, my likely answer to you would be "Not your business, but thanks for asking."

Well, while I am on this topic, yes you guess it... I have no plans to set up kris.tv. But for those of you that needs to nose around someone else's life, may I suggest you check out justin.tv?

Why I Don't Want to Fly Airbus 380

The Airbus 380 is on its US marketing tour these days. I was actually highly impressed with the plane. The geek side of me thinks that A-380 is quite a magnificent engineering feat. Despite the problems Airbus is facing, such as production delays, I think the plane will transform the future of air travel. It's good for the environment and make travel cheaper (assuming airlines can fill all the seats), as the plane has the best fuel economy per seat/mile.

Well, a couple days ago I read an article in WSJ, that partly described problems with Los Angeles Int'l airport. The airport, especially the Tom Bradley International terminal is operating beyond its capacity. I used to fly internationally a lot to and from LAX, and for some reason my flight often arrived early (maybe because I don't fly United, American and the likes). So my typical LAX International terminal experience was something like the following:

We landed 1-2 hours earlier than scheduled. Then the captain said "Thank you for flying Singapore Airlines... Uhh thanks to favorable wind we're early, which is good news, however we don't have our gate yet. So we have to sit in the tarmac until that Korean Airlines 747 leaves the gate. Please remain on your seat and refrain from leaving your seat due to security regulation." OK 3 hours later (1 hour behind scheduled arival time) the captain is back on the PA system: "Sorry, the plane hogging our gate is delayed because a passenger didn't show up and it took them some time to find and unload his baggage." I guess finding parking for an airplane in LA is as difficult as finding parking spot for my car. OK back to the story, it takes me on average 2 hours to clear immigration and pick up my bag. I usually fly 777 or Airbus 340, so you can imagine the time from aircraft gate to the curb rises exponentially when I fly a 747 or there were multiple planes arriving at the same time.

So I can imagine once those Airbus 380's start flying, I will have to race with a horde of 500-800 other people to clear immigration, not to mention that there's more bags for the ground handler to process. Oh did I mention that LAX will only have 2 gates that can handle A 380? Thank God i am not in LA anymore and I have to admit that SFO's international terminal is marginally better. But still, I don't think US airports are prepared to process the volume of passenger that Airbus 380 will bring. Especially with the ever changing security process and regulations. I can imagine that I will need to show up in airport 4 hours before departure and probably 5-6 hours to clear customs and immigration upon arrival.

Hopefully there's a stealth phase startup out there developing teleportation transporter a-la Star Trek's Enterprise.

PC vs. Mac

OK I was just recently in the market for new computer. I have a three year old ThinkPad that's in the tail end of its three year warranty, and it has gone trough 2 trips to IBM/Lenovo depot to replace its planar/motherboard. So I know that the next time this baby needs repair, I would spend some serious $$$. Not to mention that I am running out of Hard drive space and in need of new battery as currently the battery only last 15 minutes.

So I was sooo tempted to switch to a mac after seeing all those mac vs. PC ads. And I have to admit that the mac looks cooler, and more productive and easier to use out of the box. I was worried that I would have problem with non-compatibilities with the rest of the world (read Windows world). Well, as a geek, I am currently using Firefox as my primary browser. However, more often than not, I am forced to admit defeat and fire up my MS Internet Explorer to view some of those "designed to work only in IE" website.

Well, Macs now can run windows too with its boot camp. However, after hours of research, I don't know how well it works with Vista, the future of Windows world. And switching back and forth between Mac OS to Windows in a "bootcamped" mac is not as easy as pressing alt-tab as I need to reboot.

In the end I gave up the idea and few minutes ago just finished placing an order for a brand new ThinkPad T60. Maybe if I have some more pocket money I would buy one of those cute mac minis.