Today (May 22, 2010, 2:20 PM), as I was driving in Union City, my son asked me: “Is that a rainbow?” I looked up and saw what looked like a rainbow “belt”. I had never seen anything like it!

At home, I did some research, and found out that this phenomenon is quite rare, and is actually called a “Circumhorizontal Arc“, also known as a “Fire Rainbow”. I was glad that I had my iPhone with me to capture this occurrence.

Has anyone else seen this before?

Just send in your defective item to:

Thermos L.L.C. – Warranty Service
355 Thermos Road
Batesville, MS 38606

Thermos will send you a replacement for free, and even refund your shipping charges. Just include a cover letter describing the problem, your mailing address, and shipping charges.

I have done this for two of my Thermos’ Funtainer products, and received two new ones for free. The check for shipping charges arrived several weeks later.

Think again! Instead of a simple wizard to do this automatically, there is no easy way to migrate your iTunes Library from Windows to Mac. After searching on the web, and some trial and error, I finally found this 6-step procedure to do this migration. It worked fine, though I would recommend computer novices to get a little familiar with some simple UNIX shell commands and file / folder manipulation.

After I followed these steps, my iTunes library on my Mac was identical to what it was before on Windows.

Earlier this year, my company started to provide iPhones as an option in addition to the Blackberry phones that it normally provides. I, of course chose an iPhone (3G S) because of all the Apps! After Yuli saw what cool things my iPhone could do, she wanted one too. Also, my home-built Windows XP PC was starting to crash very often, so I was eyeing for my new computer to be an 8-core Mac Pro. So on Black Friday, 11/27/2009, I bought Yuli an iPhone and myself a 3.0 GHz 8-core Mac Pro.

The Apple Migration has come full circle.

Most of these items are high valued items, such as Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo shoes, as well as watches, and even an iPhone.

A team of co-workers have posted the following items to benefit various charities of our choice. We expect that the total amount of these 20 items will bring well over $4000 to these charities!

Check out these items and hurry to bid on them. Most of these listings will end in the next few days so that they may be shipped in time for Christmas!

ESFJ (Extraversion, Sensing, Feeling, Judgment)

You are warmhearted, conscientious, and cooperative. You want harmony in your environment, and work with determination to establish it. You like to work with others to complete tasks accurately and on time. You are loyal and follow through even in small matters. You notice what others need in their day-by-day lives and try to provide it. You want to be appreciated for who you are and for what you contribute. Famous people with your ESFJ personality include: Bill Clinton, Sally Field, Danny Glover, Terry Bradshaw, Mary Tyler Moore and Nancy Kerrigan.

Back in 1999, I also took this test as part of my Bible Study home group at Christian Layman Church, and my result was more like an ISFJ. As a kid, I was pretty shy, and I only had a few close friends.  Since then, many things had changed: I experienced a turnaround in my Christian Faith, started to be more outgoing, building relationships with people easily. It felt like the Holy Spirit was awakening me from introversion into extroversion, which was quite amazing. And I believe this change has a purpose!

Over time,  most people will probably stabilize and score consistently in the Myers Briggs test. I’ve been fairly consistent with my ESFJ, but who knows?  God may have something else in mind, and change me again…

At this moment, my world sank. All plans fell into the water, and I tried to plead for mercy. But the agent sympathetically said that she couldn’t do anything about this.

This was a humbling experience, since I was in charge of checking the passports. I only checked mine and my wife’s passport which were valid for 10 years, so I thought that our young kids’ passports should be fine and neglected to check their passports. Little did I know that kids’ passports are only valid for 5 years! Thankfully, my good wife did not make a big deal about it; she thought it was pretty funny.

I, however was quite anxious and was figuring out what to do. After some phone calls, I figured out that we could get a new passport for my son using same-day service at the Department of State in San Francisco.  This is what we did to get that passport, plus some tips in case you face this same predicament:

1. Book the next international flight.
2. Print out the itinerary, so that you can show proof of travel requiring a passport.
3. Get 2 passport pictures. I got my son’s at Costco for a very affordable price.
4. Get other required paperwork, such as proof of ID, birth certificate, etc. See this full list of required items.
5. It will be helpful to fill in your passport application form beforehand, but it is not required.
6. Go to the Department of State and line up before it opens (8:30AM). We went to the Department of State office in San Francisco at 95 Hawthorne Street. (Do not bother with making an appointment by phone. The line is always busy.)
7. Get your queue number.
8. Submit the passport application form (available there) when your number comes up.
9. Come back at the indicated time to pick up your passport (3PM in our case).

The overall cost of getting a new same-day passport was not that bad. It only cost $60 more to get this same-day expedited service. However, changing the tickets for our family cost us a total of $1800, which was very painful. On top of that, our vacation was cut short by 2 days, foregoing some of the activities that we had planned.

I think it would make great sense for the Department of State to have a passport issuing facility on the premises of the Airport itself. I wouldn’t mind paying a bit extra for this service if it meant I could still board a plane at the original planned time.

What do you think about having such a passport issuing facility available at the airport? How feasible is that?

What do you think is the most popular color for the Toyota Prius Hybrid? I have reason to believe that the most popular color is white. I have a white Toyota Prius myself and I love it. However, at my office’s parking lot, there are at least three of them, which sometimes caused me to try to enter the wrong car!

Recently, I also had a birthday party at my home, and I could count 3 white Toyota Priuses on my driveway! Everyone that I know who owns a Prius absolutely loves the car. I would agree with them: Excellent gas mileage & driving on the carpool lane!

What’s interesting is that almost everyone I know who owns a Prius, owns a White Prius.

Three white Toyota Priuses at my Birthday Party at home

I used this technique on Eric and Cynthia’s wedding video, which originally had an incorrect 4:3 aspect ratio, and now the video plays back correctly at 16:9.

The following video demonstrates how long it takes to load a disc and navigate to the main menu, using a regular DVD and a Blu-Ray disc. I used a Panasonic DMP-BD605 with firmware version 1.5 and Quickstart enabled

Here are the summarized results :

As you can see, the Blu-Ray takes more than twice to initially load a disc versus a DVD. What’s worse, navigating to the Top menu takes over 10 times longer on a Blu-Ray disc versus a DVD. I cannot believe that people tolerate this kind of latency when they are used to the shorter times on a DVD. It gets to a point that it is way too slow for my taste and I am seriously considering to return this Blu-Ray player.

The picture quality of Blu-Ray is unmatched for sure, but I’ll be happy to wait a few more years until load times become more acceptable.