mogri : network

I have been enjoying sub-$30 monthly bill with unlimited data plan for months in the name of “work” but I am on the edge of making a choice on my smartphone because the company decided not to subsidize cellular phone plan any more – let’s blame the bad economy for now. Over the weekend I dropped the phone by accident and not sure if this is a message from “whoever the freak looking down on us from above” but its screen was broken severely. At least it is usable so maybe I should be thankful about it as everything else given to me.

I came to the conclusion that I will not get data plan with the new plan that I am supposed to make by EOM but rather get a prepaid phone or use $0.32/min phone that I have been having ever since I joined Microsoft. During this process, I asked a hard question to myself – why do you need a smartphone and is there any alternative? My excuse to get a smartphone last year was because of the job requirement – I need to be on the email literally 24/7 to discuss and make a decision of any live site issue. After shipping the project, I realized one thing. Damn! I don’t have that many live site issues from my services and that is freakin’ AWESOME!! So why do I have to pay $50+/month to get onto the Internet from my phone? I cannot find an answer.

However, I use my smartphone for fun – mostly checking/updating my Facebook and Twitter or reading RSS feed. I also use it for GPS – it is helpful sometimes. Can I get the fun back (even partially) at the same cost?

Answer is yes. Get a small netbook and Clearwire for $29.99/month. I think that is a way cheaper than any data plan while you can enjoy simple stuffs on the net anywhere. Yes, netbook is a bit bulkier than smartphone, but I can live with it. In fact, I would rather get Microsoft Courier when it is available instead of netbook – it simply looks awesome.

It is past 1am already and I should get some sleep, but this entry has been hanging in my Windows Live Writer for several days without any content so I’ve decided to finish writing about the wine before I go to sleep today.

Whenever we stop by Trader Joe’s, we always stop by wine section to pick up one or two bottles of wine. As I started writing blog about wine we try, my wife wanted to try something new this time and it happened to be Pinot Noir. It is new because we only tried two bottles of Pinot Noir for last 5 years so it is a rare choice.

Like everything else, we selected one of inexpensive ones to try out although one side of me tempted me to buy a bottle from Oregon, where Pinot Noir is famous for. However, its price tag stopped me from there. Next day, we picked up bunch of small pieces of cheese from Whole Food (they sell sort of left-over small pieces in wrapper for affordable price, so you should check it out if you are a cheese fan) and tried them out with this wine.

Pinot Noir is surprising silky smooth and it smells like Korean grape. One interesting aspect was that there was no spicy feeling at the end. I really liked my second glass– well, I wasted my first glass by accident. With cheese we picked up earlier (I should also write about cheese one day), it was very easy to drink up the half bottle right away.

Ok. Here is a lesson – write a blog right away. I can’t come up with much to write about it after 2-3 weeks drinking it because I kind of forgot how I enjoyed the wine. Looks like I will have to buy this one again later to re-enjoy it and write more about it.

• Architect test automation framework for rapid and efficient test automation development
• Scale test model
• Automated E2E and Scale Test

Objective

Create a Windows 7 application that allows write and view Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress together.

Technical Practice

• Design Pattern
• Memory Management
• Data Structure