Reading Time: < 1 minute New job also means 401k investment election time. Here are my choices. Large cap: value 10%, index 30%, growth 20%, small cap: value 15%, index 15%, growth 15%. All US stocks 🙂 I took a look at my #Siemens 401k 5 year performance, stock funds did better than all other, international stock was weak compared

Reading Time: 3 minutes I changed job again recently, to be more precise, I made the change at beginning of the month. So today marks the conclusion of first 3 weeks. I felt fairly good so far, both in terms of environment and the work. It’s a bit different from what I did in last few years, as I

Reading Time: 2 minutes I did a switch from iPhone 5s to Amazon Fire Phone about a week ago. This is not the first time I switched from iPhone to Android (Nexus 4), I did a switch for a few months in Summer 2013. It was ok, but I really missed iPhone for some of the features, and its

Reading Time: < 1 minute I made this mistake again. Last time I dropped my iPhone 4 into water, I tried this “put it in rice” strategy. This time I also this trick, but the speaker was not still working. Luckily I found this youtube video on the web, basically I used a cotton knob to clean up the headphone

Reading Time: 3 minutes I have thought about this for a while, especially after hearing about republic wireless $25 month plan from my friend Luke and H2O wireless (thanks to mitbbs penny savers forum). Previously I only heard about the StraightTalk $50 plan ($45 now, it appears T-mobile also dropped its $50 plan to $40). A little background, I

Reading Time: < 1 minute This afternoon (actually more like evening), on linkedIn I was surprised to find that the company I used to work for has laid off its CIO (chief information officer). I remember we talked about I joined the company in late 2011. I left the company about 2 years ago, to pursue better opportunities. Also I

Reading Time: < 1 minute Came across a strange problem this week using a web service from 3rd party. It’s a soap based web service. When we pass the XML with the required data elements in certain order, it works. If we did not follow that order, it complains invalid parameter or something. I guess in the code they have

Reading Time: 2 minutes I am starting a series of “Sustainable software development” blog posts. Like many series I did in the past, it could be a series of one and only, or it could be a true fall classic (WS series). Back to the topic, I have been doing software development for almost 15 years, been through many

Reading Time: < 1 minute To be precise, it’s Spoede Elementary, about 5 mins drive from my condo. When I bought the condo 10 years ago, I was single and had no kids. But I knew Ladue is a good school district. That’s one reason I bought condo here. If things does not work out, I can rent out the

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update 02-10-2019) Sophia started on Hope Montessori Creve Coeur last semester (August 2018). Same teacher as Serenity’s. We just celebrated Chinese new year at Hope, as well as holidays in December. It’s truly unique. (Original 04-11-2015) We happened to stop by Serenity’s “old school” today, as we were playing at the millennium park this afternoon.