Reading Time: 7 minutes (Update 05-29-2024) Some packing and shipping tips: make sure we get a good, also decent sized packaging, otherwise the item may get lost during USPS shipping. I noticed two recent items (one is a buy from China, via eBay), another is a small item shipped from Springfield, MO (education sector, probably want to save on

Reading Time: 6 minutes (Picture above Hilary Hahn, who plays the violin for Suzuki book 1; the piano was played by Natalie Chen) (Update 12-14-2023) I realized my daughter’s violin teacher also knows how best to keep the kids engaged and interested. Couple things: 1) The practice sheet, he has a worksheet which looks like a printed out Excel

Reading Time: 2 minutes Background Years ago when I think of AI, I only think about the autonomous driving (driverless car or self driving car). The tech behind it is so called “deep learning“, and it’s a part of Artificial Intelligence. Now it’s all the Chatgpt and Generative AI, or in Chinese tech community, AIGC (AIG generated content) is

Reading Time: < 1 minute I found this one Costco potato corn dog (Eat With Emily post; The Daily Meal post) at my my local Costco (U city), after seeing it from a friend. I made a small mistake when cooking it at 1st try, I put it along side with the Hamburger on the outdoor gas stove (for BBQ),

Reading Time: 4 minutes On this past Sunday evening, I learned a harsh lesson on the fast food and order food via mobile apps. It’s not the 1st time I waited a loooooooong time for the food. During pandemic I recalled once I waited probably one hour at the Panda Express not far from where I live, when I

Reading Time: < 1 minute This is probably my only successful merge arbitrage speculation so far. By “success” I meant I am out after the recent US FTC failed attempt to stop the merge. Note the UK authority could still pose challenges or stop this thing completely. Although the market does expect the deal to close eventually. I didn’t speculate

Reading Time: 5 minutes (Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example

Reading Time: 4 minutes This is probably my 3rd or 4th visit to the Jeff City (I recall one of my American friends used to call it Jeff City). I had to admit I forgot most of it as my last visit was probably more than 20 years ago. I recall in the Thanksgivings of 1997 and 1998, I

Reading Time: 2 minutes This is something I felt we were doing sometimes in the agile software development. It goes like this, we analyze a problem, and we come up with some sort of solution / architecture / design. But during implementation we realized we missed something, especially on the consideration of things like performance. We know we cannot

Reading Time: 2 minutes Both my daughters’ passports expired. They are kids and it looks like they will have to get new ones. My wife was thinking we just go to to the USPS office on Saturday (which is how we do in the good old days), and I promptly stopped her. Because from my own experience, a lot