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In: MBA China Trip
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Only in China can two engineers walk into a bar and be the center of attention for all of the females. Two engineers walking into a bar is usually the opening line of a joke. There are two possibilities here. One, engineers are completely irresistible. Or two, there are a very large number of “working women” in the bars in Beijing. I know that employment can be a major issue. For reasons of personal pride, I’ll assume that option one is correct and I’ll never attempt to find out which is really the case. For the record, I love and miss my wife and I’mRead More →

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In: MBA China Trip
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I slept until 11:00 this morning when Faye gave me a call. Those over-the-counter sleeping pills work pretty well! Faye graciously arranged to take me on a tour of some areas that the group will not get to see when we return to Beijing. I wish I could remember the exact names of the places we visited! We started out a Buddhist temple — the only one in Beijing. It was interesting to young people there worshiping. Next, we went to the old downtown area where we climbed the bell tower, visited an actual Chinese home, and toured the gardens of a former prime minister;Read More →

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In: MBA China Trip
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It’s about 11:00 PM local time in Beijing and it has been a long day. I awakened at about 5:30 this morning, a half hour before the alarm went off. Since I went to sleep after midnight, this was not a good thing. My wife dropped me off at the airport and we said our goodbyes. I checked-in early, got on a plane to Detroit, another to Minneapolis, a third to Tokyo, and a forth to Beijing. Because I’m a picky sleeper, I only sleep when I’m exhausted. I had a 15 minute nap at the beginning of the 12 hour flight to Tokyo andRead More →

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In: Reviews
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Speaking of network equipment, I just found out about the Linksys WRT54GS router and the open source, Linux-based firmware from Sveasoft.com. It does everything I wanted my SnapGear router to do at 1/3 the price, plus wireless. I’ll probably be getting rid of the SnapGear due to missing features and slow updates. The SnapGear was the best router from a feature standpoint when it was released, but the price was too high and no one developed any third-party firmware for it as far as I could tell.Read More →

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In: Tech
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I found out more about the Apple 30 inch Cinema HD display. It requires a special video card with a dual link DVI connector. I thought this implied that two DVI connectors were required, but it turns out that only one DVI connector with all of the pins populated is required. The standard single link DVI connectors on most video cards do not have the bandwidth to drive the display at the native resolution. See the PC Magazine forum for more details. It looks like I would have to buy a special video card to get it to work with my PC. nVidia is makingRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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I’ve spent some time over the past couple of weeks figuring out how to install components into my new house. I’m starting to pick what components I might want to upgrade and how to integrate everything. My trusty Onkyo TH-DX939 is getting long in the tooth. I’m been very pleased with it over the years and was thinking of another Onkyo but really wanted a little more flexibility and performance. I recently realized that Integra and Integra Research were Onkyo brands with more performance. The flagship brand is Integra Research and their new RDC-7.1 appears to be an amazing processor with the modular expansion cardsRead More →

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In: MBA China Trip
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I’m no where close to being ready to leave. I have 2 weeks of school but left but only one week to complete all of the work for classes as well as pack and prepare for China. The classroom activities have prepared me as well as can be expected for the hotel pricing consulting that the team will be performing. We won’t really know anything until we get to Dalian and experience the assignment first-hand. By the way, we will be consulting and staying at the 21st Century Hotel in Dalian, China. Dalian is located in the northwest of China, on a peninsula with BeijingRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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I hate moving. Actually, the worst part of it is moving into a house that isn’t accommodating to my electronics. I like to hide my networking equipment and printers in a closet but I can’t due to a lack of network cables. I’m not sure how to run satellite TV cables into the back corner of my basement where the TV is located. I don’t know how I’m going to do a home theater with it being to difficult to install all of the cables and wires. Boxes can be unpacked pretty quickly and it usually takes weeks and weeks to unpack most of them.Read More →

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In: Concerts
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It had been about a year since I last saw the band and seeing them again was an extremely enjoyable experience. This was the freshest I’ve seen the band in about 3 years. I didn’t expect Warehouse as an opener; the violin playing at the end was new and energetic and set off a great beginning. Granny and Gray Street, two of my favorite songs, followed. Next came a song I’d never heard before. There were a total of 5 new songs that I’d never heard. Other than Gravedigger, I hadn’t heard much new in quite some time. Grace is Gone was stated with aRead More →

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In: Life Reflections
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I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last post. Where did the time go? I think I know where it went, and school and work account for most of it. I’d been wanting things to change for a while, but I wasn’t exactly sure how or why. I guess I was just fed up with everything tired of everything being the same, mostly the less-important aspects such as work and school. Well, things certainly did change. It all started last Christmas. I know, last Christmas was a long time ago in blog time, but it doesn’t seem that long ago to me. ItRead More →