My fish porno video... two of my sunset gouramis kissing

Spent three nights at Sapphire Atlanta. Didn't see or hear anything impressive, frankly, but SAP was, unsurprisingly, able to rally many partners and customers. Atlanta was better than I had expected. My first trip to a Southern city, St. Louis, didn't leave me with a whole lot of sweet memories, but that was more than 10 years ago. I had really good seafood at Atlanta every night. First at the Holiday Inn Select hotel's Grille restaurant, then the Atlanta Fish Market at Buckhead, and finally the Bluepointe at Buckhead again. The Bluepointe requires business casual so don't go there in shorts which could be tempting under the Southern weather.

The Georgia World Congress Center is huge, but a pain in the neck to navigate in. Every day we had to walk down 4 escalators from the main entrance to the conference hall, and then back. The third afternoon I went to the CNN buliding next door and took a "CNN Inside" tour. For $12, though, I didn't get to see as much as I had expected, and some of the tour equipment wasn't working. All in all, Atlanta's food really impressed me.

I spent two hours at home "deep cleaning" my aquarium. In the process the zebra botia jumped out of the bowl I temporarily put it in while cleaning the tank, and when I rescued it from the carpet this darn fella bit me. I don't know how, but I felt two sharp stings. No blood though. I don't know if it will survive a whole tank of new water, but it's been strong. It will have survived 5 full years in this tank this August. In a few days I'll start adding a few new neighbors in the tank for it.

I was an early adopter of the Treo phones. Was using a Treo 270 until I lost it in an airport shuttle to Pudong in Shanghai (in 2004?), which gave me an excuse to buy a Treo 600. Almost two years later, just when its screen was starting to act up, my then-employer gave everybody a smartphone, except it was running Windows Mobile. My current employer didn't get me a Blackberry as I had thought they would, but they did get me a data package along with the free Motorola L2.

I had thought my life would be miserable without a smartphone which over the years I've grown so accustomed to. I did lots of things with my smartphones. First and foremost I would use them as a PDA. I couldn't live without the calendar on them, and I would take notes on them. Then I would use them as a networked computer to read news, check stock quotes, do instant messaging, etc., especially when I was waiting for a plane, a train, or a bus (or sitting in a bathroom, for that matter). I would install third party programs on them, for example Realplayer for PalmOS, which turned my Treo 600 into an MP3 player.

Life so far with a Motorola L2 and a data package, however, has been OK. I've installed third party J2ME software such as Gmail and Google Maps from Google, and Phonetop from Tellme (which was recently acquired by Microsoft). I've been using Google calendar to plan out my days, and having it text me the notifications via SMS. I can still access the Web, although the sites must be WAP compliant. It even has a few instant messengers preinstalled (J2ME), but again, I'm not a big fan of inputting text using a phone without a full qwerty keyboard.

Better yet, the L2 feels like a mobile phone, while all the smartphones I had felt like, a brick. I constantly felt their existence in my pocket, and I didn't like that.

Actually I forgot another thing I'd do with my smartphones. Taking photos. Not the type I'd print out, but sometimes it helped capture the moment. The L2 doesn't have a camera which is kind of a bummer. But apparently I've grown used to it now after almost 10 months.

So I survived not having a full blown smartphone. I was tempted to get a Treo 680 but in the end I decided against the idea, partly because the new Treo, although slimmer than its predecessors, still felt like a brick, albeit a smaller brick.

Last but not least I think I should mention this: there is no difference in voice quality, except with a smartphone, especially one running Windows Mobile, calls were more likely to drop when the bloated OS acted up.

All said, though, I think I wouldn't mind going back to a smart phone if I didn't have to pay for it myself, despite its bulkiness. But I can certainly make do with an L2 and a data package.

When will the mobile phones truly become the only device we need to carry. A PDA, a phone, a networked computer, an ID, a business card, a camera, a GPS receiver, and a wallet? And what else? And all that stuffed into a device that still feels like a slim mobile phone?

I start to get the feeling that mobile is indeed the next growth driver. I should think a bit more about it. I'm not sure which vendors will truly benefit from it. The phone manufacturers like Nokia and Motorola? The carriers like Verizon, Vodafone, and China Mobile? The mobile applications providers? The mobile application developers? The mobile application development tool vendors? SIs? Will the next big thing come from some startup or the existing giants?

中国行

确切地说是上海行. 总体感觉和去年一样,人多,天冷潮湿,吸烟者多,似乎机会也不少.

除了家人外,见了些新老朋友,似乎都忙得不亦乐乎. 两个侄子都大了一岁, 小的话特别多, 部分记载如下:

你们大家坐好听我讲恐龙. 最厉害的恐龙是霸王龙, 牙齿很锋利...(此处省去X字)

嫂子: 你把裤子拉链先拉好,好吗?

(不悦)我在忙着讲恐龙呢.

奶奶: 人家大学教授讲课也是拉链拉好的.

(不耐烦地拉上拉链) 现在继续讲.

霸王龙和人类基本没有生活在一起,不过它快灭绝的时候,人类出现了.

(WHAT???)

霸王龙和人打仗的时候,一口就把人给咬断了.

嫂子: 你肯定霸王龙和人在同一个时代吗?

(深思…) 我是说, 如果霸王龙和人打仗,它一口就把人给咬断了.

(原来如此…)

奶奶: 霸王龙出现在哪个时代?

霸王龙出现在很老早, 很老早, 很老早 (此处省去X字)的时候, 在人类出现前就灭绝了. (此处省去X字)

讲完了,下次再见!

And away he jumps.