Blog from the Loft

I just finished reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, a book about Dr. Paul Farmer, or Doktè Paul, as his Haitians friends and patients call him. The book is grippingly intense, showing how Dr. Farmer, with his passion and energy, changed the world for Haiti, Peru, Russia and other places, helping to cure TB and [...]

[Read more →]

I am finally fully converted over to Vonage for my home phone service. Called RCN and they have successfully (two days later) removed my phone service. As a result I also downgraded my bundled service from RCN. Now I have the “power CI” package, cable plus internet. It costs $114 with tax !! Rediculous. I [...]

[Read more →]

I have been adding to my Firefox browser more and more extensions. Today, since it is Thanksgiving, a slow day, I looked around and added two more extensions:

The weatherfox/forecastfox extension places three small icons on the browser toolbar to show current, today, and tomorrow’s weather. You can customize it to show more days, and more [...]

[Read more →]

I am trying out the bookmark synchronizer extension for firefox. The idea sounds great, but there are no documentation. This is how I got it to work:

I setup a WebDAV folder on my server (more secure than clear text FTP
in the extension option, I selected “HTTP” as the protocol, and enter my host name, user [...]

[Read more →]

You know it is not easy. I just finished my LNP transfer, i.e. transfer my local voice / land telephone line from RCN to Vonage. My bill should drop fro mabout $40 to $15, plus Vonage has all sort of cool service with that line. RCN messed up (lost the paperwork) the transfer request for [...]

[Read more →]

Four months later, yes four months later — RCN released my existing local voice number to Vonage. Now I can start saving some money on my land line at home.

Dear PK Shiu,

Congratulations!

We are pleased to inform you that your transfer request is now complete.

1-(xxx)-xxx-xxxx is now your permanent Vonage DigitalVoice(tm) telephone number.

[Read more →]

I recently started getting the error
Wide character in print at $MT/lib/MT/FileMgr/Local.pm line 88 when I update my blog entries. I get the error when Movabletype try to ping Movabletype.org to tell them there is an update to my blog. I am using Movable Type 2.6.
After Googling around, the only help I can find [...]

[Read more →]

I signed up for Vonage VoIP service back in August this year. I do not use my home land line for anything except to answer the door bell. Why should I pay over $40 a month to RCN for that privilege? I wanted to keep my existing phone number (from RCN) because I do not [...]

[Read more →]

I helped my Dad installed cable modem at his house today. He picked Comcast. I use RCN myself, so I am not familiar with the Comcast setup. The documentation said it requires a sign-up process when connected for the first time. So I called their tech support.
While he is walking me through what needs to [...]

[Read more →]

This is amazing — I am listening to the Bush press conference, a reporter told him that “Arafat just died, what is your reaction”. The president does not know about the death yet. Did the reporter got it from his blackberry? CNN.com does not have this information either as of right now. The news said [...]

[Read more →]