Beautiful Helsinki, Finland

It's been a long while since I've posted anything in the way of pictures.  I've pretty much been traveling to the same places all the time until this week.  This week I got to go to Helsinki, Finland.  Finland is beautiful and the people very kind and friendly.  I'm definitely looking forward to visiting again soon.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring my damn camera.  STUPID.  I did bring my iPhone though and have a kind of bad picture.  My Customer also sent us a photo of his backyard the morning after we left.  

While in Helsinki we tried to get "Finnish" food without success.  The comments from our Customer where "What's Finnish food?".  They have a lot of Indian, Chinese, Greek, Middle Eastern, Russian, and American places.  A very suprising number of Amaerican places.  It seems to be very popular.  Strange.  We had Indian a couple times and the last night, Russian.  Outstanding!  Caviar, Reindeer, Blini, Russion beer, the works.  Excellent food.

Next up, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Well, here are the pictures.  Enjoy.

My New Phone

It's been a while since I've posted.  Sorry.  I've been extremely busy with travel.  Mostly China and the Philippines.  I've had an opportunity to travel to a place called Xinyu in the JiangXi province.  It's pretty remote but very green and beautiful.

On to my new phone.  I guess the picture says it all.  So far, it's the best phone I've had.  It replaced an ATT Tilt (HTC TyTynII).  I've owned several different Windows Mobile OS phones.  This blows them all away.  It's fast, responsive, and actually useful as a web browser.  The apps are fun, watching movies and listening to music are great.  Everything just works.  Best of all, no stupid mini USB adapter to list to a standard headset.

A word on Linux

In a nutshell, Linux isn't ready.
Here's why:
1) It shouldn't take hours to install a simple wireless networking card driver.
2) When installing new software, you shouldn't have to go to a console and create an installer.
3) It doesn't seem any faster than Windows XP, actually I'm less productive using Linux than Windows.
4) No fully integrated client for Microsoft Exchange Server.

Keep in mind that this is my opinion and until these issues are resolved, I will not use Linux.
One other thing to note is that I have not suggested Windows Vista should be used. Vista is even worse then Linux but for other reasons.

The bottom line here is that Windows XP does what I need it to do; Web Browsing, EMail, Office Applications, Instant Messaging, and it run VMWare Workstation very well.

Why Change?

International Labor Day Shanghai 2008

It's been a while since I've updated my blog. So I finally have a photo of Shanghai. I've been meaning to do it for months since if pretty much been living here. So here's the Bund and Pudong cityscape. It's a perfect night here. There's a breeze to keep the smog away and the temperature is great. I'll take more photos as time goes on since I'll be moving here a while.