ERI building air conditioning is fully operational

As always, there are many projects and activities going on in our organization currently, making for a busy schedule. One thing that's been a welcome change since returning from the May 1 holiday here in Beijing is that our building's central air conditioning is finally operational.

For the last two weeks or so at the end of April, the outside temperature in Beijing was pretty warm. Those of us in offices with doors, rather than cubicles, had no way to keep cool other than opening the window. This provided some air movement, but typically didn't make things better, since it let it lots of dust and humid air. Turning on the air conditioner vent in our offices would simply blow warm, stagnant air out of the vent, as our multi-use office building's central air conditioner was not yet activated. This made for some uncomfortable visitors to our site recently. Unfortunately, we're not the only tenants in the building, so the decision of when to finally activate the central air is not completely up to us.

This week, I happily discovered that the vent in my office now blows nice, cold air. To make up for lost time and the excessive sweating of the past couple weeks, I had the cold air turned up as much as it would go when I first found out. What a great relief it is to have air conditioning finally. It lets you more fully appreciate the small things.

Posted at 11:29AM May 07, 2008 by erick in China  |  Comments[1]

Qingming Festival

This year in China one of our official holidays is the Qingming Festival, so we get Friday this week off. This page and this page give a good explanation of how this holiday came into existence.

From the Wikipedia entry:

For the Chinese, it is a day to remember and honour one's ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, (joss) paper accessories, and/or libation to the ancestors. The rites are very important to most Chinese and especially farmers. Some people carry willow branches with them on Qingming, or put willow branches on their gates and/or front doors. They think that willow branches help ward off the evil ghosts that wander on Qingming. Also on Qingming, people go on family outings, start the spring plowing, sing, dance, and Qingming is a time where young couples start courting. Another popular thing to do is fly kites (in shapes of animals, or characters from Chinese opera).

Posted at 08:49AM Apr 01, 2008 by erick in China  | 

酒香不怕巷子深

最近咱们开会的时候有一位北京同事突然说出来“酒香不怕巷子深”。

这个网页的翻译是 "Good wine needs no bush"。有没有人能想起来更好的翻译说明这名俗语？这里和这里有更多的解释。

Posted at 10:46AM Mar 11, 2008 by erick in China  |  Comments[1]

NPort ID Virtualization (NPIV)

Our Solaris QE team has been developing the test strategy for NPort ID Virtualization (NPIV). The i-team has already released the NPIV beta release in January.

My colleague at Sun Beijing ERI, Aaron Dailey, has written a couple good descriptions of the project status here and here.

Here's a brief Wikipedia entry on NPIV.

Posted at 04:04PM Feb 19, 2008 by erick in China  |