Recently in journal Category

I arrived home at my apartment late from work, entered into my front door and i found the letter underneath the door mat inside. I opened the letter and it says: Your package is in the office. I was puzzled, knew that I didn't order anything special from online or else. I decide to rush to office before the office closes in a half hour. During walking down to office from my apartment, I kept thinking - who it comes from? What is it? And why?

I stopped my office, picking up the package, looks flat, cardboard cover - can tell myself from inside - it is hardcover book, and weight around less 5 pounds, and I popped up in my mind why this package shipped directly to me:

Dated on 9/12/2007 in Gmail, Walter emailed me through Flickr:

Hello.

I'm a photo editor working on a book about Pittsburgh. We would like to
use an image I found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveynin/7440644/

It would be used 3/4 page size and our format is landscape, 12" wide. Is
the largest size what you have on Flickr? Please let me know.

This is it! I immediately came home and read the gift book titled, "PITTSBURGH Smart City" (ISBN 978-1-82933-83-9), this book is YET to publish. My copyright photo is on page xxvii, and my name / web address is on page 264, first column, bottom very last line.

The photo I chose as my 25 favorite photos of year 2004, and we are in same boat - the publisher chose the same photo! The photo is taken by my old 2 megapixel Canon PowerShot S330 (properties about this photo), and it looking good in the book!

Is it too much to say in my blog? It is not my first time my name published in the book or magazine, take a look what it happened back in 2003.

They found my photo.

Asked for permission.

Published in nation.

This is the reason I love Flickr.

On Sunday morning of 15th July, when I got up from my bed and walked straight to my personal computer (PC) desktop, and I woke the PC up from its sleep. For 4 years old of my computer as I bought in 2003, I never seen anything like this one before: the warning message appears, "You are running very low on virtual memory..." and there are dozens and dozens of pop-up windows appear all over the desktop screen. Once I knew in my mind, my computer is infected with adware, spyware or virus. So, I decide to use those tools to clean out, reboot, and I am still get the same problem few hours later. Repeat, Clean and Rinse. It keep looping and it never stops. I puzzled and I went ahead to investigate to find how malicious code got through my Anti-virus program (AV). My computer is getting worse and worse slow down, and I have to wait for 5 minutes to get window open by clicking the icon.

In few minutes, I quickly found the problem: The AV auto-updates connection is broken. That is why I can't get new info of new virus to prevent, and it got into my computer to mess around. The most important - I declare not going any login system (user/password to access email, etc) on web browser or my PC computer, the main concern is my computer infected with malicious code might read as I type the password to steal the information.

Now, here are my two options to take action: To wipe out the malicious by googling how to do so, OR format my computer. The easy and lazy answer is to format my computer because my computer is 4 years old, and never had those PC formatted before. It's going to be very long and unpleasant week to start all over again.

Monday, July 16, 2007:
- Clean out the My Documents folder to back-up: documents, images, and important files (such as projects) into secondary hard drive. Even, I saved my favorite XP themes (such as desktop background, fonts, etc.)
- Export the bookmarks from Firefox and Internet Explorer

Tuesday, July 17, 2007:
- Formatted C: drive.
- Installed Windows XP operating system.
- Reboot.
- Installed Windows Service Pack 2 (thank god it's comes from CD, not download from Windows Update)
- Reboot.
- Downloaded & Installed few critical Windows Update patches.
- Reboot.
- Downloaded & Installed huge Windows Updates, patched 81 items for 65.1 MB.
- Reboot.
- Checked remaining Windows Updates, patched another two items.
- Reboot.
- Installed AV and updated AV auto-updates.
- Downloaded & Installed Windows Defender.
- Downloaded & Installed Firefox 2.0 and AIM 5.9 with AIM middle_man plug-in.
- Installed Microsoft Office Professorial Edition 2003 and its critical updates.
- Installed Microsoft IntelliPoint to recognize my IntelliExplorer 2.0 mouse.
- Installed HP All-in-One Printer and its software to recognize to connect my printer.
- Reboot.
- Installed HP All-in-One software updates.
- Reboot.
- Installed security updates for HP All-in-One software.
- Reboot.
- Installed Canon software to recognize to connect my digital camera.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
- Downloaded and installed Google Talk.
- Downloaded and installed Google Earth. (my favorite, can't live without it)
- Installed Firefox Extensions: Colorzilla, del.icio.us Bookmarks, Firebug, Tab Mix Plus and Web Developer
- Downloaded and installed WinZip.
- Downloaded and installed WinRAR.
- Downloaded and installed Flickr Uploadr.
- Downloaded PuTTY (one of best application for telnet and SSH client)

Thursday July 19, 2007
- Installed Adobe Photoshop 7.
- Installed Macromedia MX Studio.
- Installed Sony B Recorder Gold. (for burn CD/DVD)
- Reboot.
- Installed Paintshop Pro 9.
- Installed Microsoft Publisher 2002.

Now, you get the idea the length of my spare time to start all over again.. Now, XP is running as fresh as fast as new, can you imagine that XP had forced me to boot 9 times during 3-day rebuilding my PC after I come home from my work during weekday.

Yup, I am web developer. I write programming languages, debugging, testing and checking my code vulnerabilities on the web browser, so these can understand. I am full-time job responsible to have intranet web running in my department inside big corporation. I enjoyed doing that, this is my career. The web times have evolved rapidly if not weeks or months; I had so much stuff to learn Web 2.0 infinity.

Beside web developer at my work, I spend my own quality time of my pastime for my pleasure. Hanging out with my folks during special events. I suck over my time to play Wii at home, and DS on the road. I am swinging golf course to ease my stress, gathering the Deaf folks to play Texas Hold’em poker at clubhouse or host in their house on weekends. I am kickin’ my habits to eat healthy foods and do some exercising. This is 2007.

I felt that I am turning down to spend my time to do freelance web work at home. I felt so sick and tired that I had to sit my flat ass on the chair, stare in front of monitor to do coding at my home. From now on, I declared myself that I am no longer developing my projects, such as Deaf Faceroll.

Also I forgot to mention, I do blog here. What? I find myself posting far less frequently these days on this very blog here for my 4 years. I felt that I have fallen into blogging trap where you start to feel as if I have to write a very long and involved essay in order to post my blog. Go read through my blog archives, I was twittering long ago, but somewhere along the way, I decided that if I need to say something, I should think first. Bad, bad idea – that kind of thinking could kill my time to write a blog!

Now, what is my problem? My biggest enemy is timing. I want to have my time management being as my life to be happy, happy.

End of story. What’s next for me? I still do enjoy blogging right here in very daveynin's thing...

Every Thursdays, when I am in moody and free time then I could come down to play NPPL (National Pub Poker League) at bar/restaurant for free (not including food/drinks), which are few minutes drive away from my home. The pub is having the pizza buffet table in same room where the poker league is played. I ordered this for my dinner - a pizza buffet and soda to waitress.

There were approximately least 50 people (six tables with 8 players each). During playing in the league, I am eating pizza and drinking at same time. Also, about very few deaf people (2 or 3) participated in the game, out of 50 hearing folks. I was enjoying small company with deaf folks.

I made into final table w/ eight players for two hours straight (out of appx 50 players), and I ranked 7th. I was somewhat exhausted from playing long hours of the game. I left the pub around 9pm because I had to go home, take shower, getting ready to go bed for another day to work.

When I am on bed before I fall asleep, I was thinking for a while what I do for rest of the day, and suddenly, I wide-awake myself that I forgot something - I forgot to pay the bill for pizza buffet and soda at pub - that what I am supposed to pay before I leave the pub.

Should I pay them back as I visit pub poker next time or I flunk? The best way to be honest and moral, I had go pub the next time for poker day on Thursday, explain to them my situation. I had to pay because I visit the same pub every Thursday and the manager and their pub workers easily recognize me as deaf customer. I am sure they will remember me being good local deaf customer.

If I ignore, then I might have several choices getting struggle lives being flunking the honestly.

I read my old college friend's blog about the story of ripping off not getting any rebates for Sidekick II from e-commerce site, Fusewireless.

Thanks to her, I learned the lesson about this, the rest is history - this company looks bad, and I might tell Deaf folks not suggest to go Fusewireless website for the special offer for Sidekick II.

Other than Fusewireless.com, should I trust the other deaf owned website for selling gadgets? Hardly.

Two years ago, I developed DeBee Communications for re-design their web site. I also worked closely with Boundless Communications as disturbitor for setting up the e-commerce forms on DeBee website.

One time, the man who owns Boundless Communications told me to he is going to put DeBee products on their e commerce website to support. He didn't give much more details about this.

Few months later, I curiously surf Boundless Communications website, and looked the video section, and I was shocked - this content layout are very same to my DeBee Communications content layout design! It was obliviously for him taking images and HTML codes without knowledge.

Boundless never asked me for my content design for this. It really turned me off that I looked other Boundless pages - these poorly quality of interface design, broken links, and unfinished pages.

Should I trust deaf-owned e commerce websites? I will not buy these.

Yesterday, I went first annual ASL picnic hosted by our local community college and GPCCD to fundraiser for women's softball team, to share the fun with general culture for Deaf and hearing. We ate unlimited foods, played games (bocce and Texas Hold'em), and no alcohol (very few of them did BYOB).

The weather was wet, dumpy and very muddy. I posted few pictures of my personal favorites in my Flickr, and the rest of them in Flickr PAD gallery. Beware of yourself, you might not find any pictures of me.

Yesterday me and seven players worked hard through 20 games in six months at Pittsburgh Deaf Club and made into Championship Top 8 Purse to earn extra bonus money. I ranked 5th place out of eight. I took 129 dollars and walked away. A guy never won previous 20 games and won the championship game for first time - earned 734 dollars.

I built the dynamic website and its application for Pittsburgh Deaf Poker League, the poker host is very pleased with this - a time saver for his time to insert the individual player's stat records into database online. I programmed and generated the database into real-time web site (I call it dynamic) such as scores, stats and profile.

There will be always another season for Poker Deaf League, and I am continuing developing the web options/settings on poker league such as learn how to change the point system, add new league/game/players in different times, call the function to generate the current and the list goes on and on.

A hard-of-hearing girl, Lisa from Rhode Island, found my email address through deafdirectory.com with only shown my name, location and email address. I have no idea how she is interest into me.

During last few weeks, she sent email to contact me, and I was asked her for the instant messenger (IM), and she only have her limited ability to use Yahoo IM (she does not know how to sign free account to join AOL IM). I told her for the best time to meet in IM conservation, and it seems turned out that it is difficult to reach her through Yahoo IM in least one week. Oddly for one time, she sent YIM through me in 5:45 AM early morning when I got up for my work during weekday.

Until yesterday, she finally reached me the right time, and we chatted. We shared our information such as my job, college, and family life and her pictures. She was saying that she is 33 years old, widowed, no kids, and currently working as nurse. She was told that she traveled a lot, including Africa, Europe and help the Katrina victims. She also schooled in London, and she never given details more about this college. I suspected that she rarely asks my personal question more than I ask her personal question until...

Lisa said, "I want to ask u a personal question."

Dave replied, "What is it?"

"I understand u work in a bank." Lisa said. "Why I asked because I have a problem... I had a mission for my work before in New Orleans I left for Africa."

"What is your reason for the problem?" Dave puzzled.

"I am meant to be paid after each mission. So I was able to get the funds here in Africa in form of money orders. But I could have the money orders cashed here, due to the bank policies and there is no American bank here." Lisa explained.

"Oh, I see." Dave nodded and little confused.

"I just like to ask for your favor." Lisa asked.

"What is it?" said David.

Lisa answered, "I need your help cashing the money orders... as I need the cash to pay for my hotel bills and for my flight ticket."

David double checked this question, "Are you asking me to cash the money orders?"

Lisa said yes, and I quickly respond, "No because I just know you very little in a day."

It really turned me off, she is asking me for the money to support. I barely knew her little for just one day in IM conservation, and I do not trust her, since she lives far away from me and it goes too fast for her to introduce each other and asked me for the money in single day.

I set stealth settings as permanently offline (block) for her contact to view my YIM contacts. I just cannot believe what she done that to me. It could be a crime if she steal my money and my identify.

I got up 5:45am in the morning, went shower, dressed up and made food bag to bring for lunch. I ate apple for breakfast, checked emails, and surf short time on headline news site before I leave here. Then, I drove to park 'n ride few minutes away from my home to take the bus to downtown Pittsburgh.

I played Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for Nintendo DS inside my bus commuting in mornings rush and evening rush.

Then I headed to my work building, which I had each holiday and vacation day (Monday and Tuesday), I had to catch up my recurring activities everything and got it done before lunchtime. During my lunch break hour, I went out to Barnes and Noble bookstore, I was unexpected to see my brother, Bill, chatted a little while and treated me nicely.

Then I went back to work, doing projects, and reading today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper from my co-worker.

Then I headed back home from work at 5:10pm, and I stopped my home to check mail, and head to my father's house. We went to new restaurant in Monroeville, Golden Corral. dinner buffet the where the place was used to be Chi-Chi's. We celebrated there.

Then I headed back home, checked emails, blogging and having IM conservation on my computer. Then I watched the TV show, Lost. Also, finally, I am curiously to check Wikipedia the day of October 12th for history events, famous births and deaths.

As if you didn't know today is my birthday.

Today I sent the email message to my Deaf Professonial Happy Hour (DPHH) committee:

That's all folks.. Now, let's see if the committees keep DPHH alive....