Go to HUD’s official portal (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) http://portal.hud.gov, an Oracle Application page in Chinese jumps out.

Bug, Hack, Temporary Maintenance page, or, Oracle is just too omniscient?

Zoom in to see closer:

I finally ordered a Linux laptop: a Dell

Mini 9 running Ubuntu, so I am getting serious with Linux.

The laptop will be primary used for web browsing, email, and messaging, but will also handle lightweight file editing.

Will see how life goes with Linux :-)

4/9/09:

After a long wait, and email correspondence with Dell representatives, the laptop is finally shipped out and on its way from Nashville to San Diego. (as opposed to the original estimated delivery date of 4/29, can you image that long? Dell is a bit crazy)

I promise that I will not write those articles like “days without Windows”, which are usually written by Linux tasters and real Linux users will just laugh at them.  

From the book “Lifehacker – 88 tech tricks to turbo charge your day” that I just read. Find the book on Amazon here

Not every trick is useful, but in general it is a good book.

Here are some random notes that I have found useful:

• Symbolize Next Actions in “Take Great Notes”
• Your conscious mind, like the computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place
• Set email client to check for messages less frequently (email is NOT supposed to be a real time tool)
• Multiple desktops, 3 the best (like Bill Gates and Al Gore)
• Use auto features in Outlook (filter, flag, etc.)
• Automate repeated tasks: back up file (Second Copy), sync (Microsoft Synctoy 2.0), download with mget, and auto launch applications with command scripts and shortcuts
• Bypass free site registration with BugMeNot.com
• Empty your Inbox with the following 3 folders: Action, Archive, and On-hold
• GTD, make tasks “actionable”: I figured out some ways to better organize projects and tasks in GTD way in Outlook, will detail in a separate blog.
• Setup a morning dash: get one thing done first without opening your email.
• Create think time – “Computers are good at information storage and retrieval and performing mathematical calculations. Humans are good at thinking.”, Bill Gates’ annual think time, always have something on hand to write down thoughts.
• Memorizing facts is less important than the capability to look them up
  quickly.
• Google Search: “site:” and “cache:” operator, use “”, and + and -
• 10 must-have bookmarklets http://tinyurl.com/bmut9

I have been thinking about personal online branding lately. In today’s world, the best way to establish online branding is to have a personal blog site such as www.johndoe.com

While there are many hosted blog sites available (Live space is one of them), they can’t establish the same online identity as your own domain space. For Live Space, it is more about interacting with your friends.

Also, for the purpose of personal branding, the topic of the blog should be very specific to attract enough traffic. I can write anything I like in Live Space, but for my personal tech site it should be limited to specific topics.

Here is what I plan for my personal branding:

1. domain space: I already have one available, will publish when it is ready. Of course, those of you my friends on Live will definite get the first notice.

2. Hosting: GoDaddy.com

3. Software: Virtual Host (Linux + PHP + MySQL) with WordPress. With virtual host, I can have the freedom of in full control of my website. I go with WordPress because it is easy to use for blog and there is a large user community.

4. Topics: Web 2.0/3.0, Enterprise Software development, large scale database, and probably mobile technologies.

So, stay tune, I hope to find sometime to get this started soon.

Additional benefit: be able to try all those new cool rich UI with javascript and DHTML

I have been in search for an efficient tool to manage personal knowledge base but so far still no avail.

by Personal Knowledge Base (PKB), I mean for at least the following knowledge media dimensions:

1. traditional media: books I owned, old notebooks that include stuff like college class notes, paper magazines & newspapers
2. my file cabinet: mostly bills, letters, statements, etc.

Now next are electronic medias:

1. my emails: personal emails (in Outlook Express/WLM, or webmail such as hotmail/yahoo/Gmail), and company emails (mostly Outlook), which can be organized into multiple PST files and placed inside Outlook
2. Personal documents (authored by me): projects, proposals, spreadsheets, presentations, class works, etc. They are mostly in the format of MS Office or PDF
3. Other downloaded documents (other people authored): like #2, in similar formats.
4. Webpage Bookmarks: I have been moving away from browser-based bookmarks to social bookmark network (such as digg). I am currently using Diigo.com because I like its “sticky notes” feature, the drawback is that Diigo has a much smaller community than Digg.
5. Blogs: several personal blogs, and blog feed aggregator which I am using Google Reader at this point
6. Other miscellaneous: list manager for to-do lists, some docs in Microsoft OneNote, and some quick notes that are too light to open heavy-lifting Microsoft Office applications.

To be the ultimate PKB management tool, it should at least have the following functionality:

1. central management, so it organizes above media formats.
2. available whenever and wherever, so I don’t have to sit in front of a specific computer to access PKB, should also work for handhold devices.
3. Searchable, that’s very important.
4. efficient in storage – maybe that’s not very important, but storage balloon should be prevented.

Take a look at how Bill Gates used to manage his time back in 2006. I am sure a lot have changed since then, but still worth reading.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/30/news/newsmakers/gates_howiwork_fortune/

Learned:

1. 3-monitor for desktop (Techies always like that, especially since hardware is so cheap now)
2. Tablet PC (not that fashionable now) sync with main computer.
3. take advantage of search tool. 

每年备受投资界关注的巴菲特给股东的信出来了，全文在这里.

Jennifer Openshaw 总结了巴菲特2008年的投资策略，并给出了投资人应该吸取的四个教训：