Reading Time: < 1 minute I was listening/reading two stories on the college debt (source: NPR) and the financial well beings of millennials (source: fortune/cnn), which lead to to add some new features to the collegeFund app. The app was essentially a college savings (529 plan) and I did not thought too much of this college debt problem at the

Reading Time: < 1 minute From my limited experience BA Avios points are difficult to redeem for international flights, esp. from where I live STL to PVG Shanghai. But I also heard BA miles is very efficient for the US domestic flights, the trick is also to find them. So here is how I did recently, for one way STL

Reading Time: < 1 minute I have a need to exchange some euro into US dollars. I did some research online as I recall previously I did not have very good experience on this. Saw a few articles (such as this MSN one, and this independentTraveller one). They are relevant but not totally applicable, I think they are more geared

Reading Time: < 1 minute This is the common saying I heard a lot when I started worked for a software company on development. I can list some of the pros and cons of fix it. Pros Architecture chaos: if not fixing it, basically as the software ages, per the “broken windows” theory, people would just throw in changes to

Reading Time: < 1 minute This time it tried to make an home again, luckily because it was overnight, they did not bite cable or things bad enough to cause damage. I am annoyed by them to be honest. So as my neighbor. So who is the culprit? I heard from my neighbor, the new Toyota Sienna minivan is using

Reading Time: < 1 minute Saw quite a few articles on this topic lately. Basically parents focus their attention on their phone/tablet at dinner table, at fast food restaurant, etc., when they are supposed to talk to their kids. In some cases (fast food restaurant), it will increase the likely-hood of children misbehavior. We have all done that (I’ve done

Reading Time: < 1 minute There was not an easy way to show the number only keypad on iPad. I used to create a custom number input pad like below. I loosely followed raywenderlich.com custom input tutorial. Email me at minjie Dot xu At gmail Dot com if you need the source code. And please ask nicely.

Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s the ticket stub of Philly train, when I visited more than 3 years ago (Oct. 15, 2010) for Voice That Matters iPhone developer conference.

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update 3-29-14) They came back again last night, as I saw some hay above the battery again in Sienna van. I talked to my neighbor yesterday evening, and his Lexus SUV got squirrel after I got it last time. It seems we still need to figure out something. Maybe they are used to moth balls

Reading Time: < 1 minute I used to watch NBA game quite a bit. I noticed in many teams, there are usually a go-to-guy who attempts the last shot, in close game. This is especially true in important games, such as playoff or elimination games. We all know Kobe Bryan and Lebron James are among those. Is there such a