Logic Flaw

The following comic is from XKCD.COM licensed under Creative Commons.

 

My High School Physics teacher used the same kind of logic for work around the house. He calculated how long it would take to do a project and multiplied it by his current teaching wage. If he could pay someone to do it cheaper, he would do that rather than take on the project himself. He reasoned he was somehow saving money, or not wasting his time, by doing so.

I had a problem with this logic then, as I do with the comic above today.

What will you be doing with that time if you are not building a deck or driving to the other gas station? Or more directly, are you earning any money during that time that you're not doing those tasks?

Most often, the answer is 'No'. You won't be earning an money and you will either be sitting on your butt and watching TV or out spending money on stuff you don't need.

So here's my reality: I'd rather 'work for minimum wage' driving to a nearby gas station to save a couple dollars than do nothing different and loose that couple of dollars out of laziness.

And when it comes to building a deck, I'd do that during my time off from work when I wouldn't be earning any money anyway. By doing it myself, I 'earn' that wage I would otherwise be paying someone else and learning a skill in the process. In the end, I always feel better about something I'd completed myself over paying someone to do it for me.

So think about it next time you think saving a few bucks is not worth your time. Your probably not getting paid a dime for just standing there anyway, whereas doing a little work pays you back the money you'd otherwise be throwing away.

Guangzhou

On our latest trip to China, we visited my wife's Aunt and her family in Guangzhou.


View Larger Map

Guangzhou is a sleepy little town of around 12 million people and is located just 120 km north of Hong Kong. From Shanghai, its a 18 hour train ride (or at least that's how long its supposed to take). In reality, it took 21 hours - both ways. Normally, I wouldn't mind, as I really enjoy the relaxing, comfortable ride. But my wife's cousin and his girl-friend ended up waiting 3 hours for us at the McDonalds across from the train station - and that's gotta be one of those lower levels of hell.

One of the reason's the trip was so long, was it practically stopped every hour at a some town or city along the way to drop off or pick up passengers. A little slow getting there, and a little late leaving here all add up to 3 hours late at the end of the trip - and this was not one of those new high-speed rails you hear about on the news.

Still, if I'm not in a hurry (and on vacation, you shouldn't be), I almost always prefer a train to a plane for long trips. We were in the less-expensive sleeping cars. These consisted of six bunks per compartment without doors. Other cars were standing only (hopefully for not the whole trip), sitting, and the more expensive private 4-bunk sleeping compartments with doors. While the private 4-bunk cars are really nice, my wife and I have never felt insecure or uncomfortable in the six-bunk cars, so we save a bit of money and still enjoy ourselves.

So, it was July, which means it was hot, and it was far South, so it was pretty darn hot. And it was close to the ocean, so it was really humid. So you sweat - a lot (or at least I did because I was not used to it), and it just sits there on your skin like a wax coating that you just can't get off. So eventually, you just ignore it, live with it, and enjoy yourself anyway. And I really did enjoy myself.

Guangzhou from an Apartment rooftop

Guangzhou reminded me a lot of Seattle. Because of the frequent rains and high humidity, plants grew everywhere and anywhere they could. So the city was lush with greenery squeezed between the paved streets, sidewalks and highrises.

A mini park hidden behind a local restaurant

I also learned a new practice I'd not witnessed in any other city I'd visited thus far. In most restaurants in Guangzhou, they automatically serve a pitcher of hot tea along with a large empty bowl. You don't drink this tea, instead it is to be used to clean and sterilize your chopsticks, rice bowl, plate and drinking glass. The empty bowl is to discard the now unclean tea into. The pitcher of tea is then refilled with hot water to brew the tea which you can then drink.

My wife's Aunt was an Army nurse and then a professional doctor before she retired, so we both thought she was just being fastidiously clean. Then we started noticing other people in other restaurants doing the same thing. It's much like the first part of a traditional tea drinking ceremony where the first brew of a pot of tea is used to clean the cups and then discarded. The second brew, which is milder and less bitter, is then imbibed.

Xinghai Concert Hall

The second day were were in Guangzhou, we took a bus tour of the city. Being this close to Hong Kong it became suddenly clear to me, as the different buses pulled up to take on passengers, which ones were headed to Hong Kong and which were staying in the city. Being a former British colony, everyone in Hong Kong drives on the wrong (ahem, left) side of the road. So tour buses destined for there had the driver on the right. Don't know how they do that without constantly wrecking.

Traffic Police woman

The only reason I took this photo was because there I was standing, doing nothing a sweating bullets. While she was constantly moving, directing traffic, waving her arms and walking back and fourth while not a single stain appeared on that perfectly pressed uniform. I felt like an alien, or more appropriately, like Steve Ballmer...

Aside from The Jade Shop, and other destinations, our tour bus took us to White Cloud Mountain, a popular place both for tourists and locals alike.

Many of the locals used this steep paved roadway to get in their daily exercise walking up and down its twisty windy paths. We were just lazy fat tourists, so we took an electric car up instead.

Sign on knoll: "Welcome to White Cloud Mountain"

It was a bit foggy and humid that day (did I already mention it was really humid?) so long range pictures from the mountain lookout points where not all that good.

Interestingly, at the end of the tour, we were not returned to our starting point. Instead we were left at Yuexiu Park, home of the Five Rams Sculpture - a famous landmark of Guangzhou. Apparently, you've not been to Guangzhou, and you can't prove you've been to Guangzhou, unless you visit and have your picture taken beneath the Five Rams Sculpture of Yuexiu Park.

I can prove at least one of us was there!

The sculpture was built in 1959 as the symbol of Guangzhou. Legend says that long ago five spirits wearing robes of five colors came to Guangzhou riding through the air on rams. Each one carried a stem of rice which they gave to the people as a sign from heaven that this area would be free from famine forever. So Guangzhou is also known as the City of Five Rams, or just Ram City.

My wife's Aunt and her family were wonderful hosts and overly generous with there time and their gifts while we were there. We really enjoyed ourselves and where thoroughly, and delightfully exhausted for the train ride back home to Shanghai. And while it too was late by three hours, we didn't have to worry about someone waiting to pick us up. We just hopped on the subway back to our apartment.

We look forward to visiting that beautiful city again - hopefully not at the height of the summertime heat...

The Archministry of Ultraviolet

Huh?
If you've never watched the movie Ultraviolet , you're missing out on one of the all-time greatest surreal, ass-kicking, blood-fest B-movies of all times (right up there with Kill Bill). And staring one of my favorite action heroines, Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Resident Evil [all], The Messenger, etc).

At any rate, here is the Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus' Archministry from that movie (And We Were THERE):

Actually, this is the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

My wife and I went there for a day this last trip to China and as I was taking pictures, I felt a familiar, Déjà Vu-ish sensation. It wasn't until we returned to the states and I caught Ultraviolet on TV again that I recognized where we had been. In fact, much of that movie was shot in Shanghai around some of its ultra-modern structures to help give it that futuristic look and feel.

The sphere, upper-right, is their 4D movie theater

As expected, the museum is highly kid-oriented, and so by the time we left late that afternoon, it was packed with the little rug-rats (even though it was a Sunday), all decked out in their school uniforms.
 
Different floors had different themes: Nature, Technology, Science, Space, etc., with a lot of interactive kiosks and displays.

One of many full size Diorama displays

 

Play Go against a Robot

 

Watch a Choreographed Dance

They had a 4D movie theater (3D plus moving seats) but it was always full with long waiting lines. Food courts were in the lower level and gift/novelty shops scattered about. So you could spend your whole day there, if you wanted. I think we spent about 3-4 hours walking around the place. Most all of the displays and featurettes were in Chinese and English, so I didn't have to continuously bug my wife for translations. That was nice (no, I still can't read Chinese...)

Like I said, it was very kid oriented, but we still had a great time. It was one of those places I'd wanted to see on our previous trips, but never got a round to.

Wonderful 4-Dragon Globe Sculpture outside the Museum

On our way out, we spied a few shops on the opposite side of the courtyard and decided to take a peek. Boy were we supprised!

An entire Chinese style shopping mall underground! A maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Wander around long and far enough and it meets up with a subway line to take you back home - with all your procured consumables.

A Lesson in Jade (and deception)

We recently returned from our vacation to China. This is one of our stories.

While in GuangZhou, we took a tour of the city via chartered tour bus. Part of these tours, as I have come to understand, is a little kickback the company gets for dropping their passengers off a certain shops and restaurants. For the most part, this is ok - you just need to keep a healthy amount of scepticism about you during these side trips.

To Note: The food has always been good. It'd be bad for business if your customers got sick on your tour...

So near the end of our tour, we were dropped off at a nice looking Jade shop to get a lesson in Jade (and hopefully, spend some money).

We were ushered into a room where an attractive looking lady starting explaining how to spot fake jade. We learned that vibrant green, plastic looking Jade was fake (duh) and that all red Jade was fake (duh, again). But before she could go further, the owner of the shop burst in and had an announcement for us all...

Seems he was from Burma, and his third wife just gave birth to twin boys a few days ago. But there was a problem. One of the boys was very sick and may not survive. So the owner went to the temple and prayed long and hard to the Buddha. What what the Buddha told him was that he could not sell anything for three days - to ingratiate himself back with the spirits of heath and long life. So he closed up shop for three days. This, the fourth day, his ill newborn son had recovered. And so in celebration, he had gifts for us all!

Carpe Carp. It gets better...

One of his employees entered the room carrying a basket of little red bags. In each bag was a little Jade disk (toroid, for the geeks out there). And it was marked at 650 Yuan (about $100). Seemed a bit high to me, but if its top-quality Jadeite, it would be worth it. So we were each given one for free.  And he explains that he's already given away over 250,000 Yuan in Jade just today!

The fish is smelling a few days old now...

From there he ushered us into another room of his exclusive collection of Jade and Gemstones and proceeded to further explain the qualities of Jade and how to tell fakes from the real-deal - taking up where the lady had left off before (she was easier on the eyes, btw).

I'm not going to go into the full account of the qualities of Jade and spotting fakes. But if you are interested, here's a Wiki article on it: Jade

So, while the owner is explaining Jade, with us all from the tour bus crowded around him eagerly listening to his every word, he asks for one of the bags back so that he can demonstrate the qualities of authentic Jadeite. One guy in front, just happens to have his bag handy and gives it to the owner. Note: neither I nor my wife have seen this guy before on our tour, and its a small bus. So we are even more suspect and believe this guy is a plant.

The owner wraps the Jade in a single sheet of newspaper and tries to light it on fire. It won't burn. He explains that Jade is such a great conductor of heat that it pulls it away so fast that it can't get hot enough to burn. (Not sure about this one. Looked like a nice parlor trick to me).

He then takes the Jade disk and forcefully scrapes it right on the display cabinet's glass top. It easily scratches the glass. (This is true. High quality Jade will easily scratch glass).

All this is to prove that our gift from him is high-quality, authentic Jadeite (Although, the workmanship, IMHO, of our disk is not very good).

The fish is way past its expiration date now, but wait! There's more...

To further celebrate his newborn's recovery, he is slashing the prices of the Jade and Jemstone collections in the case behind him. From 6,000 to 10,000 Yuan, he is selling them to us for just 600 to 1,000 Yuan!

Well, another guy (that we've not seen before either) quite literately starts throwing his money out onto the counter demanding to by these hot items - shouting with excitement. Our Aunt, caught up in the moment (as anticipated) was about to do the same. We reigned her back in and explained the deception to her.  Later that evening at dinner, we tried scratching glass with our little toroids of Jade - and of course, we could not.

That's not to say that what we got was not Jade. I believe it is. But it is a softer, lower quality, common grade of Jade and not the high-quality Jadeite that the owner purported it to be.

Back on the bus, most were laughing and joking about the show we had just witnessed. Others, well, they'd spent more that they should have...

Billy Mays would have been proud.

Keeping Cool in the Hottest Summer on Record

So, I just read today that the U.S. broke almost 9,000 heat records in the month of July! Yeah, it was (is) frackin hot! If you live in a two story home, cooling the upstairs, where your bedroom is, can be a real challenge.

Close all the basement vents, restrict the first floor vents, close off unused rooms and you might have a comfortable sleep if you crank the A/C down to the lower seventies. And in doing all that, your wearing out your blower fan faster because of all the back-pressure it's having to deal with from all those closed/restricted vents.

So I got an idea, and it works really well. We're able to sleep nicely while its 90's at night outside, the thermostat set at 77 inside and the A/C not working overtime.

It's a custom Vent Fan I designed/built to fit over a floor vent in the room. You remove the floor vent cover, replace it with this, plug it in and let it run 24/7. When the A/C is going, it pulls more air into the room than normal. When the A/C is not going, it still pulls air from cooler rooms in the house, into your room.

Before we used this, with our thermostat in the living room on the first floor set at 77, it was 83-84 upstairs in our bedroom at night. Now our bedroom is at the same temperature as the living room because cooler air is being pulled into it from 'downstairs' all day long - even with the A/C is not running.

It uses about 12W of power, so at $0.12/kilowatt/hour, I figure it costs about $1 a month to run full time. That's a lot cheaper than setting you A/C down to 70 so upstairs get cool enough to sleep.

I won't go into details on how to build it because its pretty straightforward/simple. But if those who know me ask, I'll write a post with step-by-step instructions.

Here's the parts list:

• 2 12cm Whisper Quiet Computer Fans ~ $10/ea (I used Thermotake)
• 2 12cm fan grills ~ $1.50/ea (to keep fingers, toes, and dropped stuff out of the fan blades)
• AC to DC Transformer ~ $15 (make sure the DC voltage matches the fans and that it is double the milli-amps required by a fan)
• 8 bolts and nuts ~ $4
• 16 steel washers ~$1
• 32 3/4" rubber washers ~ $4
• 8 1/2" rubber washers - $1
• 2 Computer Fan connectors ~ $3 (optional)
• 4 sq ft of cheap fiberboard ~ $5 (probably don't even need that much)

The box measures 14"w x 7"d x 3"h and I just glued it all together with Elmer's Wood Glue.

I'm guess at these prices because most of this stuff I already had on hand from various computer projects, outdoor build projects and used electronic equipment. But I figure it may cost around $55 to build one if you have to go out an buy all the parts new.

I went as far as drilling 1/2" holes for the fan and grill mounts and inserting rubber washing in them to further isolate the vibrations of the fan from reverberating in the fiberboard box.

I used fan connectors instead of hard wiring them to the transformer so that if the fans burned out, I could easily replace them.

The whole thing is pretty quiet, moves a lot of air and really makes a difference in keeping our upstairs bedrooms cool. We have one in our bedroom and on in our son's.

Enjoy!

Old Navy - Bad Business Practices

Here's the scenario: Old Navy offers free shipping, 7-10 business days, on orders over $50.

So you place your order and it sits, unreserved, until a week later when its 'processed'.

In the mean time, other orders come in after yours with extra charge express shipping, processed and shipped, and all your items are sold out.

So when its time to ship your order, there is nothing left. Instead your given a '10% discount' on future orders (up to six months) and a 'we're sorry' email:

"We're sorry, but while processing your order, we found that the item(s) below are no longer available."

This is BS. This is bait-n-switch. This is deceptive business practices. This is dishonest.

I do not recommend anyone buy from Old Navy. I'm not giving them my business ever again.

P.S. It gets worse. I just went to their web site, and the pants I ordered ARE still available, but the price has increased. So its not that they don't have any, its that they won't honor the price at the time of the sale!

Bastards.

On Microwave Ovens and US Currency

<rant>

Why are Microwave Ovens and US Currency not ADA compliant?

Close your eyes. Put some food in the Microwave. Now, set the timer or select a preset option to reheat, cook, or warm the food. Keep your eyes closed.

Can't do it, can you?

All the buttons feel the same - just flat indistinct plastic surface that you have no idea what your touching without looking.

And yet, Drive Up ATM Machines have Braille on them!! WTF?!? Walk up, I can understand. But Drive-Up ATMs? Sigh.

Now, close your eyes again and open your wallet. Count out exactly how much money you have in bills without looking.

Impossible, isn't it? They are all the same size. There is nothing tactile on them that allows you to feel what denomination they are - unlike almost every other currency in the world!!

So the U.S. Government and Microwave Oven Manufacturers are non-ADA compliant?

I just don't get it.

Seems to me, if they can put braille on ATM machines, they can put it on Microwave buttons - I have yet to see any.

Also seems to me, that if every U.S. bill was a different size, it would make the most popular method of counterfeiting (bleaching lower denomination bills and re-printing them as higher denomination) impossible.

I dunno. I guess this just makes too much sense.

</rant>

Chinese Culture - #15: For whom the bell tolls

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Superstition: Never give a clock as a gift

The Chinese like clocks. Heck, they invented them. But they should never be given as a gift - least of all on a person's birthday. That would be very bad.

To receive a clock as a gift is to be told your time on earth is numbered. Its like an omen of impending death. Shutter. Ugh. Creepy.

Just don't do it.

Watches seem to be OK. But just to be safe, avoid the whole timepiece thing altogether.

Chinese Culture - #14: An offer you cannot refuse

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Practice: When offered a seat by a younger person, you must accept

Here's the scenario: You've just stepped on a crowed bus or subway car in China. There is nowhere to sit. Suddenly a younger man or woman jumps up and offers their seat to you. You must accept.

Respect for your elders is a longstanding practice in China and one I am very happy to see being kept alive by the new generation.

Each new generation continues to be taught to respect their elders, whomever they are. Along with this is the common courtesy of offering your seat to an elderly person if none are available.

Conversely, if you are offered the seat, you must accept. It would be rude to decline.

Chinese Culture - #13: Your cup runith over

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Custom: A guest's tea cup must always be full

As a house guest, you will always be offered tea, and you should always accept - even if you don't drink tea.

Tea and China are culturally intertwined and go back thousands of years. Tea has many mythical health benefits, legends and events around it. So, as such, its the most common beverage and the most offered item to a guest. Its like saying "Welcome to China, drink to your health."

But don't expect to be able to finish your tea.

A good host will ensure that you tea cup is always full. When you have had enough, just stop drinking. Don't feel as you must finish your cup. You won't be able to. Just let it still full and be comfortable in leaving it that way. Your host will then know you have had enough.

Samsung - Never Again

You know that feeling you get when you bite into something that's just not edible? Its slightly rotted or perhaps not yet ripe? Yeah, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth that makes you never want to try it again - even if the next time it will be ripe, fully cooked, in its prime.

That's what I got from Samsung and their Galaxy S Vibrant phone (aka Samsung Vibrant T959) - a bad taste in my mouth. Never want to try them again, for any product.

And here's why:

GPS - Guesstimate Positioning System 
Right out of the Box, the GPS rarely worked. It would often never lock on your position, and when it did it would very often show you driving through someone's backyard or over water. It would lose its lock a lot and leave you with no idea how to get to your destination.

I had and HTC G1 previously and NEVER had any GPS problems. It was rock solid. I expected no less from Samsung.

GPS got only slightly better. About a month after I bought the phone, Samsung issued a patch (2.1update-1). Now the GPS always locked, or so it said, but it would take up to 5 minutes to get a lock. While it would not lose its lock, your position would go from an accuracy of a few feet to hundreds of feet. Google maps would often constantly recalculate your route because the GPS put you in a field somewhere.

Now after the Froyo 2.2 Update (more on that later), the GPS is slightly worse than post 2.1update-1. Now when you are stopped at a light, it will show your car turning around and going a few feet in the opposite direction. Google Navagation tries to reroute and suggests that your make a U-turn to get pointed the right direction again.

Update: The T-Mobile Support Form suggests downloading, installing and running the 'Samsung GPS Restore' app from the Android Market. Note that you need to have GPS on and be Outside when you run it.

It seems to have worked. It locked on to my position a lot faster than before and put me within 10' of where I was standing. We'll see if it works better with Google Navigate. Begs the question: Since this apps been out since November, why was it not incorporated in the 2.2 update?

Internal Level - Which Way is Up?
Again, Samsung's internal sensors are less than acceptable. Most all Android phones have an internal level, its used mostly to switch from portrait to landscape mode when you tilt the phone. The one in the Vibrant thinks its landscape most of the time. Lay the phone down, it goes into landscape; tilt it back in portrait mode and it goes to landscape; laying down flat in portrait mode and click on an app, it'll probably switch to landscape mode - again. It get it into portrait mode, you have to have the phone past 45 degrees in portrait mode, otherwise its landscape. Again, never had this problem with the G1

Compass - Oh you mean THAT North?
Back to my old G1 again: After I calibrated the compass, it always knew which way was north - unless of course there was electromagnetic interference nearby. The Vibrant? Not so much. Calibrate the Compass and it finds North. The next day, North is West, or East, or sometimes even South. Forget about it completely if its even near a metal object. Recalibrate and try again.

Froyo 2.2 - You're gonna have to Work to get it!
For a baseline, I bought the G1 with Android 1.0, it was updated to 1.5 and then 1.6 all Over-the-Air (OTA) and all with no issues (even when I was in China on a different carrier - which kinda sucked because it cost me $35 USD for the update because China Mobile charges .01 RMB/KB (you do the math). But I digress)

I bought my Vibrant in Nov. 2010 with Android 2.1 installed (Eclair). Froyo had already been out for about 6 months, promised and missed repeatedly until January 21, 2011. You would think they'd have all the bugs out by now. You'd be wrong.

1. You don't get the update free OTA, you have to download it. How?
1. Download Samsung Keis to your PC. There is NO Mac version
1. On Windows 7 64bit it has to run under 32bit compatibility mode
2. You MUST disable all Anti-Virus Software
2. So you download Keis and install it
3. Now connect your Vibrant to your PC and let it install all the drivers
1. Now is a good time to back-up your phone - highly, Highly, HIGHLY Recommended!
4. Now disconnect your phone.
5. Now start Keis
6. Now reconnect your phone via USB
1. If you don't connect your Vibrant via USB right after you start Keis, it won't see your phone.
7. If you are lucky, Keis will see your phone and download the software update.
1. Do NOT turn off your phone - you will brick it
2. Do NOT disconnect your phone - you will brick it.
3. Do NOT turn off your PC - you will brick your phone
8. Wait and Pray
1. Software downloads
2. Software installs
3. Phone Reboots
   BTW this reboot takes a loooooooong time. Don't despair, as long as the 'S' keeps shimmering, its not bricked. Just be patient and wait. 
9. Now its safe to disconnect your phone

And NOW the FUN begins:

1. AccuWeather App and Widget from Eclair - GONE
1. Don't bother trying to load it back, the Market version sucks. Get WeatherBug instead.
2. All your custom Icons on the Desktop - GONE
1. Yup, no easy way to recover from this. You just gotta go find them and put them back on your Desktop.
3. Avatar Movie now will not play. The DRM license is now not valid. Damn DRM.
1. Tech support says to reboot your phone. That's doesn't work.
2. Tech support also suggest doing a Hard-Reset. This wipes out everything on your phone back to Factory-New. Don't do that!
3. Instead, you need to clear the DRM data and make it re-sync it from 'the cloud'. You need to have a 3GS or WiFi data connection to do this.
1. Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications -> All -> DRM Protected Content Storage -> Clear Data
2. Reboot phone (power off, power on)
3. Files App -> external_sd -> Movie -> avatar.dcf. It will complain that the file is locked. Click Unlock.
4. Wait about 5 mins
5. Reboot phone
6. Files App -> external_sd -> Movie -> avatar.dcf. Now it will say, file cannot be played.
7. Wait about 5 mins
8. Reboot phone - again
9. Click on Avatar Icon in 'Applications'. It should play now, if not
1. Wait 5 mins
2. Reboot phone
3. Try playing it from the Avatar icon again.
4. Yup, it sucks
4. Android Market App is now an older version. Some people say 'Just Wait' it will update itself. So far, no dice
5. All records of the apps you've download - GONE!
   Luckily this is easy to fix and not as bad as it sounds
1.  Reboot phone

That's all the FUN I've found so far. A far cry from the ease at which the G1 was updated, twice, OTA.
You would think, or at least I would, that after waiting 9 months for the Froyo update these pretty obvious bugs would have been worked out. Very dissapointing.

Unlocked - Oh! You want to USE that other Carrier?
There are two WONDERFUL things about T-Mobile that I really like:

1. Customer Service Center: They are always helpful, always pleasant, and easy to work with.
2. They will unlock your phone, free, after you've been their customer for more than 45 days. AT&T takes an escalation to a supervisor, written request, arguing and an act of Congress. So we switched to T-Mobile.

So we unlocked my G1 and took it to China, put in a China Mobile SIM and it worked - no problems at all.
We unlocked the Vibrant, took it to China, put in a China Mobile SIM. Nothing. No Service. Bars, but no carrier. Dead. (note that I had previously put in an AT&T SIM here in the states and it worked - thus verifying that the Vibrant was indeed unlocked, but no joy in China)
Finally after taking to the China Mobile store and having them fumble with it for a while (they didn't have nice things to say about the Vibrant), I tried this:

Setting -> Wireless and Network - > Mobile Networks -> Network Operators -> Search Now -> (select the correct network, in my case 'China Mobile')

Now, why the Vibrant couldn't do this automatically, as the G1 did, with the China Mobile SIM install, I have no idea. Must be just a dumb phone.

Physical Design Issues - You want answer the phone or turn it off?
Yeah, I got issues with how the phone is designed too.  Who puts the usb port on the top of the phone anyway? If you want to dock your phone in portrait mode (all phones do that), you need to snake a usb cable off the back of the dock over top of the phone. That just looks stupid. You want to charge the phone, so you have to lay it on the table upside down to drape the cable off the table.

Same with the headphone jack - also on the top. There are reasons every other phone has its ports on the bottom: It docks better/cleaner; when your carrying the phone and listening to music you don't risk jamming the jack into a door/wall/person and breaking the phone/them; you don't pick up the phone upside down when it rings. Argh.

Then there's the power button. That should be on the top. The phone rings, you grab it and of course you squeeze the power button, so you hang up the call. You're in a call and want to adjust the volume, you squeeze the phone and hang up the call. Damn it, put the power button away from where every one grabs the phone! Really Stupid Design.

Conclusion
So, I hear you asking: Why did you buy the Samsung in the first place? Why didn't you just stick with HTC and get the G2? Or get the Nexus S?
The G2 is like carrying around a small brick, its just too heavy and the screen's too small.
The Nexus S is also a Samsung phone. It's basically V2 of the Vibrant. While its not got any 'Custom' Samsung GUI on it, its still got that 'off' taste.

Next time will not be a Samsung moment. HTC or nothing.

Chinese Culture - #12: And thou shall count to three

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Practice: Offer three times before giving up

When offering a gift to a Chinese person, you must offer it at least three times - insisting more each time that the recipient accept the gift. Only after being rejected all three times are you free to stop. With some, you may continue the offer a few times more. But three is basically the minimum times to make the offer.

It is also best, if it is a gift, to offer it with both hands. It shows that you value the gift and the recipient,

Chinese are very independent and self-sufficient, and do not want to appear to be in need of anything. So they will always first refuse any gift. Keep offering it, at least three times, so show respect and how important they are to you - no matter what the gift.

Chinese Culture - #11: Careful where you point that!

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Chinese Custom: Aim your fish to show respect

Fish is a delicacy in China. When having guests for dinner, you almost always need to serve fish when at all possible. And in China, the fish is cooked and server whole: head, fins, tail. A whole fish, to the Chinese, is like a Prime Rib or Porterhouse steak to Westerners. So when you are serving dinner to an honored guest, you want to use that fish to honor that guest.

How do you do that? You point the fish so that he is looking right at that person!

I've done, personally, many times. Make a point of being obvious that you are pointing the fish at your honored guest. Not only will they know what you are doing, and what you mean, but they'll truly will be honored by the gesture, and delighted that you know this custom.

Chinese Culture - #10: Its a curse

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Chinese Curse: "May you live in interesting times"

Sounds kind of odd for a curse, huh? "May you live in interesting times". To Western Culture, most of see that as a pleasant wish to bestow on someone. Exciting things happening, new adventures, new opportunities. What could be more 'interesting'. To the Chinese, its a curse.

I think it comes from this: Chinese like calm, predictable life. They like that because their history is riff with turmoil. Warning clans and Emperors, battles with the Mongolians, Civil Wars. China has been occupied buy the Japanese, French, British, Spanish, just to name a few.

So, interesting times means change. Change means upheaval and turmoil. Turmoil means conflict. And with conflict comes suffering. And nobody likes to suffer.

So think about that next time someone gushing about how great it is to live in "interesting times" - there is something to be said for calm predictability.

A New Year in Shanghai

Chinese Culture - #9

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Tradition: Eating Noodles on your Birthday

To me, a lessor origin for this is: You are what you eat. (No, not a noodle)

Let me explain.

Probably the most honored wish to bestow on a fellow Chinese person is the wish for them to have a Long Life. You see this on greeting cards, posters, gifts, wrappings. If you don't know what a symbol on a Chinese trinket says, you can guess its 'Long Life' and you'd be right most of the time.

So with noodles, the thought is that noodles are long. So to eat something long on your birthday, or better yet - be given something long to eat on your birthday, means that you are being wished to have a long life. Long noodles equals long life.

So, eat noodles on your birthday. The long spaghetti  kind, not the macaroni style, and wish yourself a long life!