this is a real story, residents in a villege in china find themselves millions overnight when they found out the stocks they were forced to buy a few years ago soured 600 times!

they are confused, besides felt happy this is like a fairy tale that they never imagined before. many never saw so much money before.

something like this happens, but rarely. do u bet all your money on those things? never. do you ignore those things, debatable. i feel it is the best to distribute your investment and if there is a risky but rewardable point of interest, may not be a bad idea to look into it. life is a venture itself so once you know what you are doing, it is not a bad idea to take some risk. but that risk should be what you can afford.

life is like a game, good players maximize their opportunity, taking calculated risk, they are the ones that go further. like is like a game, play it, enjoy it.

life will always go on, and it will be better for ones having the positive attitude.

these are the three factors that affects a project:

a product with fast delivery and minimum cost but no contents = a cheap toy

a product with fast delivery and rich content but spent too much money = where is my next meal?

a product with minimum cost and rich content but take a long time to deliver = nobody needs it anymore when it is done

this also applies to daily work. a good decision is based on many trade offs, there is se ldon a case that is as simple as 123. when we are making decision, the time, cost and contents are the three key considerations. you may have to less the desire on one to favor the other two, as far as you can control that to an extent that it does not have a huge impact. nothing is perfect and we all live in a world that is filled with lots of variables, make the best decision you can and move on…

microsoft’s earning report is not at all good for this quarter. down 6% revenu, net income of $2.98 billion was down 32%… but msft is up >10% today, a rare jump for a long time. i feel sometimes it is hard to interpret what’s going on on wallstreet. but i am long at msft, the windows 7, the cost reduction. borrow a saying from the famous bizzar food host “if it looks good, eat it”, i say, if it looks good, keep it:)

It sounds like a disney sensation but it happens in real life. Susan boyle, the 47 years old lady rocked the judges and audiences at British got talent show and it was an “overnight sensation”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

this video clip has been viewed 41,335,790 times as of today, it is simply amazing.

some take away from this:
– if you got talent, it will shine one way or another
– it may not seem like this, but you are eventually judged by your talent not by your look
– make your weapon sharp and wait for the right opportunity
– everyone are equal in front of opportunity
– remain humble
– keep a positive view on things
– relax, life is beautiful if you think it is

microsoft has been very successful playing the catch up game previously, from office suite, visual studio development IDE, to winning the browser war with netscape, and up coming xbox game sectors, but this has not yet happened in the search portal. although microsoft spent tons of dollars on search, the performance is by far disappointing.

although money still talks, but you really win by providing the best service or experience to your end users. this was true for office and visual studio, they catch the competitors and eventually beat them by quality. this can not be said on search experiences though. I admit using google whenever i need find something online, chances i usually find what i want in no time. i would love to use live search if it provides better results (or even comparable results). i see lots of investment in the search group and i would hope the same catch-and-pass game would come true to search.

had a chance to try out the latest microsoft search brand kumo, feel it has many details that the search portal put together. the map search has definately improved, so are the user experiences, etc. Another cool thing about kumo is the mouse over feature, it retrieves the content from the result page so you can view it without leaving the search page, as well as other topics on that page.

man, i have not watched full david letterman show for sometime and i watched his show in full today and what an entertaining show today. for the entire show he was joking around john mccain’s sudden cancellation of the appearance on david letterman show. i saw the news right before the show and saying mccain is cancelling his appearance on the show and letterman has some “comments” on this. man, it was more than comments, he was going wild and keep puring out words on mccain. several highlights:

• if this is going on, god knows when he becomes president, will he suspend his presidency?
• you all know that john mccain is governor palin’s running mate
• all road to white house run through me
• do you think mccain is going back to the show? (paul) not after your comments today
• (to a guest, when the interview ends) i know you are going to the white house to save our nation’s crisis
• hey john, i got a question, you need a ride to the airport?

letterman is not pleased but in turn made a good show out of it. here is a clip from the show:

no one is perfect, everyone made mistakes or have their past, but one needs to be honest on his/her past/mistakes and have the courage to admit it and move on. lying on something bad is more serious issue than something bad itself.

Many people are asking the same question: where were you and what were you doing on that day? i still have a fresh memory on 9/11/01. I have an earlier morning 8:00am Dr. Appointment in downtown seattle, i did not have radio on while driving (usually i like to listen one of the news channel), when i get to the office, things do not seem to be much different except the receptionist had turn on the radio which had never happen before. they said there was hijacking. I was in a hurry so i thought it is another of those hijacking thing. When i get to the office, my colleagues were running around the hallway in a mode i’ve never seen before. pauley ran into me and said the “twin tower is gone” - i say no way, he is the one usually like to talk joke and not to be so serious. when i know this is what’s happening, i was shocked. i remembered that day, no one in the office was in any mode doing anything, it was like the world comes to an end and no one believed what had just happened.

one highlight is when president Bush toured the ground zero and talk to the rescurers, someone shout out “I cant hear you”, then there is one of hte most emotional and touching speech come out from the president “I can hear you, I can hear you, and soon the people who knocked down these buildings will hear from all of us”.

2001 sept 11 - 7 years passed and it still feel like fresh memory. a lot has changed since that day.

i visited the twin tower twice before, the last time i went there was exactly 2 months before the 9/11, we were there 7/11/01 morning. I was on top of the observation deck in a windy morning two months before the building was knocked down.