Random Brain Dump

Even Fox Trot is getting on Sony for their DRM debacle:

I had 3 people inquire about my Lasik experience this week, so I figure I’d blog about it. Hopefully, my experience help these people in their decision making process. Warning: some may be grossed out…

I first heard about it when I attended a talk on Lasik on campus when I was a UCLA undergrad. Then about 6 years ago, I had Lasik done. Back then, I was playing a lot of basketball and started to scuba dive. Contacts were giving me a daily case of dry eyes after staring at computers all day long. Plus, my wedding was coming. I was debating it for a year or two, after all this was an elective surgery. Heck, how was I going to build software being blind?

My friend Jake got his done and recommended his surgeon Dr. Ghana in Long Beach. I called the office and was satisfied with the information they gave me on Dr. Ghana. She checked out but I was still wary that she wasn’t local. At the time, Lasik was all the rage and was expensive. Then, I heard on radio about a "sale" this Canadian company was offering. That’s right, special of the day–eye surgery on sale on aisle 9. 🙂 A lot of people think I make this up when I tell them about this "sale." By chance, I found that Dr. Ghana was affiliated with the company. I wasn’t shopping for cheap deals, but everything kinda came together. Perfect! I decided to do it and go under the knife (in this case, the laser).

Suzanne & I flew down for the weekend. We stayed at this one dark and sleazy motel in Long Beach, the worst I’ve ever been to. I was nervous the night before the surgery. To help us relax, we took a nice drive down to Huntington Beach and had a great dinner at a Thai restaurant. We then visit my sister in Orange County before turning in for the big day ahead.

So the big day came, I got on the operating room. The assistants put on a weird clamp contraption to open my eye lids. It wasn’t painful but was the most uncomfortable part of the entire operation. All the while, I kept myself amused by thinking of the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange where Alex got these contraptions strapped on his eyes as well. I am sure it didn’t look that bad as the movie…

Once my eye lids were "peeled" wide open, an operating knife came down and partially sliced open my cornea. The doctor then opened the cornea flap to expose the inner tissue. At this time the laser started to burn away a layer of the tissue. No anesthetics was used so I am totally awake and saw everything. My vision was blurred after the incision, but I could make out a red laser that came down on my eye. The next thing I remember is the smell of burnt tissue– I was BBQ’ed… 🙂 The laser only operated for a few seconds, the doctor then put the cornea flap back. It still amazes me to this day that no stitches were required (they were necessary in the early years). That was it, one eye done, all within a few minutes. They repeated the process for the second eye.

After a few minutes, I was told to get up. The doctor asked me tell her the time. My jaw probably dropped when I saw the clock on the wall with perfect vision. The doctor tested out my vision later and declared that I have 20/20 vision. Well, that hadn’t happen since I was in 7th grade. I spent the rest of the day recovering. I remember it was really uncomfortable. Actually, it was painful. My eyes felt dry despite repeated eye drops, felt as if there were sands in my eyes. I was especially sensitive to bright light for a few days. 

The next few days, I began to feel like a new man. The best thing is to wake up in the morning and not reaching for my glasses. It was great playing ball without contacts and it was better still when I went scuba diving without them! I did suffer a minor side effect. My 20/20 vision developed the common halo & glare effect at night. These effects are described on this page. The problem was pronounced the first few months after the surgery, but got progressively better over the years. To this day, I still see slight halos but they are now a lot more subtle. But I’ve grown used to it and it doesn’t bother me at all. I am not even conscious of it anymore. Heck, it makes things look prettier at night. I’d have to pay good $$ to get a halo filter like this for my camera. 🙂

The surgery really paid for itself– no more contacts, glasses and cleaning solutions. I think it’s great. Like any surgeries there are exception cases with with horror stories like this one. Jake’s wife had a severe case of dry eyes for a good few months! But these are exceptional cases.

If you live an active lifestyle, I’d recommend it. I’m glad I had mine. But obviously, do your research if you decide to go through it. Two main things you should look for: an experienced surgeon and up-to-date equipment. The equipment keeps improving and gets more precise. The operation is so automated, I almost say the equipment is more important than the doctor. I’ve heard that the machine can cut the cornea with a laser instead of a knife. But do look for a doctor with tens of thousands of operations, referals are best. Ask about the potential side effects like halos and glare. I’d expect the newer machines to minimize some of these side effects. Finally, ask about follow-up care.

And of course, doesn’t hurt to ask if they have a sale either. 🙂

I am starting the process of back posting of previous galleries including the monthly galleries and travels/trips.

One of the trips posted is the rafting trip with the Tieu’s and a small group of friends at the South Fork of the American River this past summer. We took the trip the day after I left Vitria. It’s sort of a celebration of a job switch for me. We went with All-Outdoors and were generally happy with their service. I went with them years ago. Our guide was a bit inexperienced and the rapids were class 3 so I find them a bit tame. But all in all, it was a lot of fun. I finally got around to post the pics here: trips/rafting_2005

I used some bad tags in one blog entry that causes the site to prompt for user id & password. It didn’t mean that the site requires login, just bad coding on my part. I started to see it last week but I had dismissed as a bug on Firefox 1.5 beta. Whew, glad that was fixed 🙂

Thanks Truc for dropping me an email about it…

I had yet another case of insomnia last nite so I stayed up channel surfing and caught a few HBO documentaries. One of them, Unknown Soldier, is particularly powerful. It’s a story of a son’s quest to re-assemble the life and death of the soldier father he has never known.

In 1969, Lieutenant Jack Hulme was blown to pieces in Vietnam, just days short of ending of a tour that’d bring him home to his wife and his newborn son. 30 years later, John Hulme pieced together the life of a father he’s never known through personal accounts. Particular touching was the interviews of Jack’s father, a normally stoic 80+ year old man. It was clear Jack was the apple in his eyes and his death was a huge loss for the old man. Through the process, the son came to terms with the life and death of his soldier father. Very powerful stuff…

Watching that reminds me of my parents’ generation and the trying times they had to endure through the war. My dad and my uncles were soldiers in the Vietnam conflict. My uncle Ty went MIA in the early 70’s. I was too young to retain any meaningful memories of him. Like John Hulmes, I only remember him through pictures. One thing I do remember however was a blue/gray sweater with a large print of a racing car in the front. It was, according to my mom, my uncle’s gift to me after a trip abroad. That was probably the only thing that represents any real connections between him & I.

I imagine that it’d be very interesting for me to find out more about my uncle through the personal accounts of my mom & my other uncles. And one of these days, I might just do it!

My server has been a target of a DOS attack as of this morning. My hosting provider is working on fighting it at the moment. Access to the site will be unreliable until the attack is averted.

UPDATE (11/4/05):
Looks like the attacks subsided somewhat, while everything isn’t yet back to normal now, web access seems okay. There’s still some weird behavior with the databases…

In a demo of Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft claims that it is more expensive to use Eclipse (an open-source & free development tool) than buy Microsoft tools.

What a bunch of crap! Mike Milinkovich of the Eclipse Foundation recognizes that claims like this from Microsoft represent the highest compliment for Eclipse. I couldn’t agree more…

…
Repeating the Microsoft mantra that “free is not really free,” the programmer showed that while the basic development environment for Eclipse is free versus a basic Visual Studio 2005 license, which costs $8,200, the cost of using Eclipse increases as users tap into load testing and other advanced features.

When he added it up, the cost of using VS 2005 was over $30,000 versus more than $100,000 for Eclipse-based applications.

ZDNet reports that Firefox topped 10% of the browser market, though I’ve read reports that growth is slowing. It gives you an idea how hard it is to topple IE dominance.

On a related note, Firefox 1.5 release candidate is out… Navigation seems a bit quicker in the new version.

This is a fascinating finding by Mark Russinovich. His painstaking investigation reveals that a Sony Audio CD install some malware on his PC. It’s a really interesting read. He details the whole process step-by-step. Check it out as Mark’s investigative techniques are very impressive.

The anti-copy protection software is based on Rootkit which is used by hackers of viruses. It goes deep into the operating system and make itself “invisible.” It basically prevents uninstallation or deletion of itself and is therefore extraordinarily difficult to uninstall. In this particular case, removing it manually could shut off access to the computer’s CD player itself. It installed without the user permission nor notice. So it’s basically a virus, it is an intrusive compromise and it is nasty!

The length the record company goes through really infuriates me. While they have the right to protect their content, I have a problem when their tactic crosses the line of fairplay and infringe on consumers’ rights.

UPDATE #1 (11/2/05):
Looks like Sony is bowing to consumer pressure and will be working with anti-virus software makers to provide a patch to remove the software.

UPDATE #2 (11/11/05):
The first malicious trojan horses that piggy-backed on Sony CD walware were spotted yesterday. They enable the attacker to have complete control over the infected host. So the reality is the software from Sony CDs isn’t just about content protection anymore, it’s also enable PCs to be taken over by hackers!

California has already filed a class action lawsuit.

Halloween is always one fun event the kids look forward to. This year both of the girls dressed up as Minnie Mouse. We took them to Great America (an amusement park) for the Nickelodeon Halloween parade. We also visited a pumpkin patch. Suzanne & Betty then took the girls for a quick round of trick-or-treating, after which they, of course, gorged on the candies they worked so hard for!

Allison with Mommy @ a pumpkin patch in Mountain View