Reading Time: < 1 minute I received a letter from Missouri Department of Revenue yesterday. And it says my tax return for the year 2004 was invalid. That made me nervous. I scambled to look at my 2004 return which is done by Turbo Tax software, and other supporting documents. I found out an obvious problem eventually. I should have

Reading Time: 2 minutes I ordered Motorola E815 and Verizon Wireless new service plan from Amazon yesterday, after doing some research on the web. My contract with T-mobile expired recently, and I was not impressed by their service: the biggest problem is their limited coverage area. Many times when I am off the highways, I no longer have the

Reading Time: < 1 minute The highlights of the Torino Olympics, Ladies figure skating will start tonight. American Sasha Cohen and Russian Irina Sluskaya will be the favorites. While I like both of them, I hope Irina could win because she went through a lot (illness) in recent years and I like her personality better. Compared to Sasha, Irina is

Reading Time: < 1 minute American Airline (AA) is starting this direct flight from Chicago (ORD) to Shanghai (PVG), using Boeing 777, on April 2. This is in addition to current United Airline’s (UA) direct flight for the same route. UA is also using 777. I checked it on the AA web site. AA is offering special prices for the

Reading Time: < 1 minute The following is a faked email I received today. I found it out by “show full headers” in my Yahoo email. I believe you can do it in other mail clients. The lesson here is don’t click on the link from your email unless you are absolutely sure it’s from a trusted source. ========================= To:

Reading Time: < 1 minute To the river city after 20 hours travel. I fell into sleep before the small airplane (RJ-85) landed in St. Louis, at 3:15 PM local time. There was some delay in Shanghai airport but things worked out OK because the flight NW20 from Tokyo to Minneapolis was waiting for us. It’s 16 degree F (about

Reading Time: 2 minutes St. Louis, flurries, high 18 F, low 7 F, that’s -7 C to -13 C. Shanghai, snow, high 41°F (5°C), low 38°F (3°C). Shanghai also had its first round of snow today. When I was talking to the taxi driver this morning, he told me his daughter was really excited about the snow because she

Reading Time: < 1 minute This afternoon I exchanged my last USD 80 at Bank of China in Kerry center. After that I only have $ 8 left at my pocket. I am not extremely disciplined at budgeting. But I think another reason is whenever I saw something in the RMB price, I tended to divide it by 8. This

Reading Time: < 1 minute I was a bit tired of big meals these days. I think I should blame myself for lack of self control. But there are just so many good food in Shanghai I can not resist. The buffet in “Home Inn (Ru Jia)” was good, especially the Ru Jia near Xu Jia Hui. So I ate

Reading Time: < 1 minute After I upgraded from version 5.0 to 7.5, I had some problems using MSN messenger. Basically when I start the Windows, it will start up the 5.0 first, and then launch the 7.5 version. In doing so it will sign out from 5.0 and then sign in the 7.5. So I will see two or