It's been a while

After almost 4 years I think I became resistant to American extremity, so I didn't find anything really to write a post about.

A couple of months ago we became Costco members. It's something like Metro in Europe but a little bit more extreme package size-wise. You're supposed to be saving money there. I'm not sure we actually do that... But it's fun!

Anyhoo this is what I've found today there. After I thought I was not gonna be surprised in this country anymore, here I go with my mind blown:

It's one  bucket of cake icing. 14lbs, almost 7kg!

Did I really see everything already?!

The difference: 100% juice, cranberry vs. 100% juice: cranberry

I was shopping today, and made this big discovery:

Look at this picture on the left. What does it tell you at first glance? That the container holds 100% cranberry juice. Right? Well you assume it's from concentrate anyway.

I was shopping to my almost toddler, so I looked at the back of the label searching for the ingredients. And then I made the discovery, that the label says it's "100% juice, cranberry", and not what I assumed: "100% juice: cranberry"!

This thing contains besides cranberry grape and apple juice. And the ratio is not specified... It's juice, it's juice, so you can't argue with the statement, but how it's presented on the packaging is sneaky.

Sneaky!

Fuse blown

After 3 years you got used to things and you just aren't surprised every week by something strange (to you). But recently I've seen two things worth sharing.

First thing

What's this?

For almost 2 years, I haven't noticed this small red bin in each restroom next to the washbasins having a bio-hazard label on it. This little container is for people suffering with diabetes. If they need to administer insulin during the day, they can safely dispose the used needles and syringes. And in each restroom I've been to on this campus, this thing was never empty. Now, there's either no policy in Europe regulating such medical waste at workplaces, or there's really a lot of people here dealing with diabetes! I vote for the second one. It's frightening. Maybe it's time to lift quotas on cane sugar and ban high fructose corn syrup?

Second thing 

 

This is just something I couldn't go by. Why would you want to take such a picture wearing a pink women's scarf around your waist on the beach in front of dozens of people?! Americans are really extrovert.

End of a journey

My 2 year long journey in quality engineering is about to be over. Finally I will do development work again. But this outlook made me learn some valuable lessons and made me a more seasoned engineer.

I have mixed feelings.

I think every software engineer should take a journey on the QE/QA side. It makes you learn to look at things from a different perspective. It makes you appreciate QE folks better, too. I certainly felt like being treated as a second class engineer multiple times. I saw how QE is not appreciated. But when it comes dohúztálwn to deliver a working enterprise class application suite, it's essential. It's just not appreciated, and treated as a pain in the butt.

I've seen better setups for dev-qa cooperation than what I've experience just now. I think when a developer has a direct QE counterpart, and the two departments are not separated hierarchically, the cooperation and efficiency is way better. I also observed what problems can it cause if someone forgets that agile over waterfall model shouldn't mean lack of design and not thinking through things..

I think

• developers should respect QA folks. Their job is not that interesting, they spend most of their times gathering logs and creating bugs, filling out excel sheets and chasing developers to get some information on the thing they are supposed to be testing. And theirs no break really, it's the same story every day, week or month.
• hiring managers for QE should not lie to candidates saying that this is like a development position. Sure you'll develop testcases and design tests, but that is far not the majority of your time spent on the job.
• usability of a product should play a much higher priority. Maybe you're the market leader today, but there's no guarantee that someone will not develop a better solution based on your products. Then you can go and acquire that start-up, and mess up your product line, to make the investment return somehow.
• once managers apply tools for reporting, they should spend their managing time acquiring the metrics from the tools instead of making engineers do the same and put it in the Excel sheet. Nobody went to engineering school and got an engineering degree to run reports on a tool and put the numbers in the Excel sheet.
• just because a QA person didn't fill out the 100 entry form for filing your bug, you shouldn't close it with won't fix or user error. Not just QA should have the sense of ownership in the team. Have you heard about needinfo?
• once you invest millions in certain tools don't save hundreds of thousands of dollars not integrating it completely into your environment. Let's say you're using HP Quality Center, then integrate the test runner as well, so QA doesn't have to spend days or weeks every month on running the tests in a separate environment, convert the results XML into CSV, fill out the opened bug number in the CSV and upload it into the tool, from which manager can't/won't run reports but ask QA to export back into the Excel sheet. The same can be achieved with just Excel and SharePoint or a simple wiki. Way cheaper, but much more expensive in the long run.
• documentation should not be treated as an unwanted child or a nagging distant relative. It's an overhead, but saves dollars, pain and time!
• if you join a big company with big and/or complex product line, in QA you will learn much more about the products and will undertsand them better than any developer. Most of the time developers know only about the module/feature they're working on it, and not even able to see its connections and interactions to other parts in the system correctly.
• H1B system is somewhat like modern slavery, but I'm not complaining; I'm the one who wants to work in this country anyway, so I just suck it up.

Once my LinkedIn inbox started to receive exclusively QA/QE/automation (all synonyms) offers, I knew that I must make my move. Thanks to my (e-)smoking habits, I finally found my way out.

Why I took a QE position in the first place? My trust towards my previous employer and the way my immigration was handled suffered a major hit, in despair I took the first position offered to me. It paid off though. QE is less stressful then development, so I could enjoy a strictly 8hr workday environment for years.

Employers: if you employ people on H1B, then live up to your commitments. Handle their immigration status with extra care. Their life depends on it. Nobody would like to move back to the other side of the planet within days. People like to plan, leaving your people in uncertainty is disrespectful and just plain wrong. If you're not willing to, or unable to achieve something, don't promise it. If you're facing difficulties communicate it clearly without any bullsh*tting.

My antique hamburger press

eBay is an awesome place! You'll find whatever you're looking for.

And I was looking for a hamburger press.

Our local farmer's market has a burger patty named Cowboy Burger. It's made of ground beef (of course), jalapeño and cheese. I feel the size of the patty a little too big and the price a little too high. So I thought with a burger press, I could make my own patties, and I could even vary the ingredients the way I want (sometimes it's a little bit too much on the spicy side).

So I was looking on Google if somewhere around me I could buy one from the store. According to Google I couldn't so I started with the online options. Once I've found some at Home Depot, Target and Walmart, I looked if I could get something similar but cheaper on eBay. I don't mind if it comes from Hong Kong, I can wait.

And I run into this one:

This is a burger press from probably the 50's or 60's still in its unopened package! Cost less than a new plastic one from Shanghai. So I decided to buy this all American vintage kitchen equipment over the new plastic ones. I feel kinda guilty for even thinking of opening the package! It might be even older than my parents...

Now I can start looking up hamburger patty recipes. The weather is definitely ready for grilling!

Hypocracy approved

It's been a while since I saw a TV commercial for an online dating site that is only open for black people.


Well I have no problem with this, but I was just wondering what would be the reaction if there was a whitepeoplemeet.com website... Just saying.

I love double standards.

My DNA digitalized

So last year November I was finally able to get rid of my Droid 2 Global nightmare they call a phone. And since the new Nexus could not work on Verizon being HSPA+ only, I had to choose something else. Luckily HTC just came out with its DNA phone (Buttefly J in Japan). 4 cores at 1.5GHz HUGE amazing display. Sounded like a deal. $199 with upgrade (plus another 60$ hidden fee and taxes) from Verizon directly, but at Wirefly only $159 (same phone, w/ upgrade) no additional costs!

Pre-order placed. Read news about how this phone has a high demand and out of stock everywhere for 2 weeks, and than be happy when it arrived. Wirefly was really generous, overnight shipping is extra, but because I had to wait, they threw it in for free.

The phone? Awesome!!!

The summary

Things about the Droid 2 I hated:

• If it was updating an app, it was hard to even write a test message
• Even scrolling the screens left and right was not smooth
• You needed to buy the extended battery to go through the day
• If an application was bogus it could (and would) bring the whole system down resulting in a restart. It's fun when you're using it as a navigation system and it happens on the freeway.
• Copying files over wifi to my PC didn't really worked. Communication was open disrupted and the uploaded file was invalid. Same applies to download
• You can only hook it up via USB a couple of times. After that it just didn't work anymore except as USB mass storage. The only way to put music on it was with winamp, that could sync even in USB mass storage mode.
• Because of a bogus application it froze up after/during talk

Problems with the DNA:

• None!!

The only small thing is that the notifications from the roll down menu cannot be deleted individually. You delete all or none. Streaming video or any other content over wifi from my file server is seamless. It's responding all the time. The sound is awesome! And the screen is even more awesome.

I became an HTC fan!!

If you're with Verizon, and you're looking for the best phone they have, go with the DNA!

Giving birth in the US

I'm a 2.5 months old father. Our daughter was born last year in October. And we are very happy! I thought I share some information about such affairs.

Our health insurance is with Kaiser Permanente, which is an HMO provider. I wrote briefly about HMO and PPO plans in my earlier post. Our hospital is the one in Santa Clara:


View Larger Map
It started with the checkups. Everything was organized. There is a well established protocol what to do in each phase, when the checkups should be and so on. Well there's no ultrasound exam every time you go see a doctor like in the movies. They do ultrasound only 2-3 times during the pregnancy. And strictly for medical reasons.

If you want a 4D ultrasound you have to go to a private company. There are tons of those! They have multiple packages available, like recoding the baby's heartbeat into a plush teddy bear and I'm sure they can fulfill your wildest expectations. It's a business :)

The hospital offered various classes and you were advised to take them. Most of them were free. By the time Baby is about to come to this world you feel prepared. Well they don't emphasize how painful and exhausting it is for both of the parents, but I guess they just don't want to discourage you...

We stayed in the hospital for 3 days. During that time we felt everything was revolving around us. We felt safe. The staff was excellent, always kind, friendly and very helpful. The coffee in the break room is extra strong. You'll need it! Everybody is professional! You don't feel the urge like at home to bribe the doctor and the nurses to get the right attention and care...

At the end you get the bill, which is called 'Financial responsibility'. Nice name for a bill isn't it :) Luckily our insurance is great so it only cost $250 but it can go up to a 5 digit number if you're uninsured or have a crappy plan.

Dad can stay with mom. There's a fold out bed. Extremely uncomfortable... But you'll sleep, trust me!

You hear the critics how awful it is that health care is a business. Well it is, and I think it better be. The competition is high, and if you're not satisfied you go somewhere else, so everybody is seriously trying to satisfy you and they go beyond your expectations. Doctors and nurses take the time to explain everything. You'll get all the help you need, medical or not.

Once you're about to leave you name your baby and the hospital applies for SSN for your newborn. That comes in the mail in about 4 to 6 weeks. You also have to obtain a birth certificate. It's possible 4 weeks after birth. You have the possibility to go to your local office, but if you don't feel like standing in line you can obtain it by mail, but it takes an additional 6 weeks to get. If you're not in a hurry get your sworn statement notarized in any UPS store for $10, write a check and mail the signed form.

Another administrative obligation is to get your newborn health insurance. In the first 30 days it is covered under mom's health insurance automatically, but make sure to notify your employer on time so she'll be covered. If you are not insured by your employer you need to shop for insurance for her.

Another thing you might want to do is start saving for college. It's expensive, and every dollar counts. The sooner you start the better is your position. I decided to go with a 529 plan by the State of California. Many a little makes a mickle...

What's left for me to do is a US passport for her and get Hungarian dual citizenship...

Recruiters are liars

They send you a message about a really interesting job and they flatter you that how they read through your profile and what an amazing background you have and how much they're impressed and what a great fit you were.

Than you read the job description. It says:

• Location in Philadelphia, Colorado whatever, but not Northern California for sure
• No sponsorship available. Ergo you need to have a green card already or you must be a citizen.

Now, my profile clearly says I'm on H1B in the US and I'm not willing to relocate.

Who read my profile through then?!

How software is made

I observed a big difference how small and big companies are making software. Until recently I've only seen how small companies are doing it.

If you're delivering a customized software solution, you prepare it for one customer. That customer - in a lucky situation - has a concrete vision why the need the software and how it should work, based on their existing business processes. The software creation process starts with business analysis. The software company tries to understand what the desired business processes should be and where their software would play any role. The outcome of the analysis than formalized in a document. Based on that document software architect(s) come up with the solution architecture and detailed functional and non functional specifications. The client signs off these documents in an agreement that the software they are going to receive will behave exactly as these documents state. And in most of the cases they want to know the details because their life literally is depending on it. As a result these documents are fine graded and serve a good basis to the development team to start the work. With agile methodology becoming widespread the document development is sliced up to match up the sprints (or however you call them), but the big vision of things is laid down upfront.

As a matter of fact an Agile project require you to define it's scope just like any project...

And this is - I personally think - the main purpose behind while customized software solutions tend to deliver higher quality.

On the other hand big software companies are creating software solutions used by many people and they serve to solve common problems. Big software companies have more resources, and they don't have a client that can hold them responsible really. As a result people honestly think things like agile methodologies mean that there's no process in your development, and there should be no documentation created. And such nonsense. As a result to achieve the same or at least similar quality more cycles are needed and the software creation is more expensive and you can only hope that the quality matches the quality of a custom solution.

And when you point out things like the definition of software means the software code _and_ the documentation, and creating specifications does not necessary mean that you want to do traditional waterfall model based software development, people call you process oriented.

And you end up with the strong belief that you could do anybody's job way better.

Well, it's just the brand new quality engineer growing in me speaking maybe, but there must be a reason while all the quality management standards like ISO, CMM etc. are defining, focusing and auditing processes creating products and not products themselves.

But call me whatever you want to...

The wickedest allergy nasal spray ever

I was struggling with my allergy symptoms. It's ragweed and mold season... I spent every evening after work in my gym's steam room just to open up my sinuses enough so I don't have to live on Advil because of the headache they caused. I've seen a doctor, got new pills and they helped me a lot.

But from time to time my nose got congested, and I finished up my nasal decongestant spray so I went to shop for a new one. For a reason these are on the bottom shelf in the pharmacy and there're plenty of them. So I squat down and was browsing through the selection when I found one that had all the answers:

• Helps with runny nose (I'm using allergy nasal sprays so this is not a problem)
• Sneezing (Same, no symptomps)
• Nasal congestion (That's my problem right there!)
• Headache and sinus pressure (Yepp)
• All natural (Whatever, even cocaine is natural and it definitely fixes your clogged nostrils! Along with the headaches! But I can't afford them o_O Hm, that gives me an idea. Maybe I can get it prescribed. I wonder if my HMO would cover it! $10 for a monthly dose sounds like a deal!)
• No addiction formula (Wow! That's cool! It's always a problem for me to get off these after my allergies calmed down. It takes weeks juggling between nostrils to finally be able to stop using these and still be able to sleep through the night!)

Great, I've found the perfect fit. Ups, it's double the price as all the others! Well, whatever, maybe it's so good, and that's the reason.

Things I didn't see (small print on the box) however were deadly. Let's see if you can spot them!

The box I found had the picture of chili in smaller size. And the word 'homeopathic' even smaller!

No addiction formula my a**! Who's so stupid to develop a habit of spraying chili in the nostrils?! I'm certainly not, and probably if I asked 100 random people they would agree! And homeopathic to me means two things: it ain't gonna work but it's expensive.

$15 thrown out the window. And it doesn't even unclog my nose either. My headache however is certainly gone in a second as the burning nostrils from chili provide a much stronger sensation for sure...

DIY car window tint is impossible

Tinting car windows for a living? All my respect!

* this is not my car

I have a Dodge Charger. That car cries for pimping :) Many people pimp it up nicely. So far I only replaced the exhaust pipes, but always wanted to have my windows tinted, too. I was too cheap to spend $300-350 on window tint. So I ordered a pre-cut kit from Amazon for $35 and thought I'm going to do it myself. I watched I think enough tutorial videos on YouTube and I was positive I'm able to do it myself. It seemed so easy.

It ain't!

Side windows are not too complicated. Note: There's a huge difference between a heat gun and a blow dryer... Rear window, impossible. First you are supposed to heat-shrink the tint from the outside so it takes the curves of the window, than you should put it up from the inside. The Charge has a huge and relatively  horizontal rear window. I just couldn't do it.

I think if I had a minivan or SUV with relatively vertical windows I could have succeed if I started with the heat gun from the beginning. But this car is gonna be tinted in a shop by a guy who does this for a living!

Even darker than the Internet

The Internet is a dark place. It's full with underground stuff. Whatever cyber-punk sci-fi movies can imagine is there. But there's something more evil, darker and deeper than that... The scariest thing one's mind can ever imagine. And I found it on my journey on cable entertainment. A show on TLC that is the deepest pit of television.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for Honey Boo Boo Child!

Beauty pageant reality shows themselves are scary but this tops of all of them. I saw my first episode yesterday. It's about a family. A real Southern-Georgia redneck family. Nobody will be able to make me move there....

Mam the mother is 32, will be a grandmother in a month, over 300lbs. She likes burping, farting and grunt on TV. She had her first child when she was 15. She's 17 now and 8 months pregnant.

Her husband has no teeth, and looks retarded. The kids are hyperactive, constantly drinking sugary soda and eating junk food. All of them are overweight... The smallest daughter, Alana (see above) is a frequent beauty pageant contestant.

They live in South-Georgia. The train literally goes behind their house through the backyard. Dad drives a pickup truck. A Dodge Ram, to be precise. And they own a four wheeler they like to take out for a spin every now and then.

In yesterday's episode I saw how they enjoy themselves playing in the mud (literally) and at the redneck festival. Like pigs. And we get it on basic cable. Yeyy!

I suggest everyone who can to watch a couple of episodes. It's purely entertaining even though it hurts badly to watch.

11/18

That's the day I'm eligible for a device upgrade at Verizon. On that day, I'm going to buy my new phone. I hope I chose right, and if I have any problems in the first couple of days/weeks I'm sending it back.

Just a couple of problems I have with my Droid 2 Global, the worst phone I ever had:

• Connect to PC only works in USB Mass Storage mode. Otherwise windows can't install the drivers even though I have the Motorola applications installed on my PC. Other connections only worked once. I'm not gonna reinstall my PC just for this.
• Because of this I can only sync music to it via Winamp. The other software only work in media sync mode, which doesn't work on the phone.
• And because I want to reset it, but want to back it up, I need to copy the SD card over WiFi. My corporate mail requires me to encrypt the SD card, and guess what, in USB Mass Storage mode if you copy things over they will be copied in decrypted state... Just as you were putting the card in a card reader... Finally found a program that doesn't close the connection while copying files to a NAS over WiFi as the built in file manager does during transfer. I think it gets tired around 40MB for a reason. A software that can get tired that could be a Nobel Prize worthy invention!
• UI freezes up on a regular basis.
• The screen switch button about 50% of the time doesn't work. The phone is too busy being idle to respond to your request that you want to do something with it. Imagine if you need to call 911 for a really good reason!
• Reaction to user interaction is pathetic. A couple of days ago I waited about 30secs between clicking the dial button next a contact and the phone actually start dialing.
• During navigation it usually reboots every now and then, and we know how safe and legal it is to juggle with your phone while driving.
• In general freakishly slow reactions.
• Poor battery life even with the extended batteries. I was moved to another cube to get away from the ping pong noise, and there I only have 2 bars. By 2pm I have to hook it up to give it some juice.
• Screen keyboard is almost impossible to use without auto-correct. The buttons are too close or/and the logic is terrible that tries to figure out which key you wanted to press.
• My slide to unlock screen disappeared this week. When I press the button on the top it shows up for a one second or less, and than the screen is unlocked automatically without me doing anything. Me sliding to unlock can only happen if my security timeout has passed and have to key in my PIN code. After googling it solution seems to be a factory reset.
• The phone I have is a replacement phone already. After 5 months the original one I had to send back as it was rebooting on its own 2-3 times a day! Just lying on my desk doing nothing, probably bored, so it restarted itself... On a regular basis.

Sometimes I would really just like to throw this phone and stomp on it. Maybe I'll do it after I got my new phone and it proved itself. Like the guys in Office Space with the HP Printer :) Or maybe I'll go to a shooting range, rent a colt and buy ammo enough for 4-5 rounds and I hang it on the target clip and shoot at it until there's nothing left. If I need to I'll buy another round of ammo. And another.

I don't think I can be so mean to sell this phone to anybody on eBay. Humanity must be saved from this disaster!

And the one to blame for all this is myself! After my v50 and v600 I swore never to buy a Motorola phone again, and yet I did it. I'll go with the Samsung Nexus. Please if someone has it and hates it let me know immediately! If that's shitty, too, than it must be a general Android problem, and I might choose a Windows phone in the end.

iPhone? No way. My solid conviction is that Apple is the meanest company in the world.

After 8 years it's finally here

8 years ago, in 2004 this was one of the radio commercials you could hear on your radio while you were playing GTA San Andreas:


The script:

Man: What happens when five eligible bachelors welcome a little girl into their lives? 
Gina: Hey!  It’s my turn into the bathroom! 
(canned laughter)
Man: Non-stop hilarity!  "My Five Uncles."  The sitcom with a lot of heart.
Uncle 1: Hey Gina. Welcome to your new home.  You sleep in here, and we all sleep in there.
Gina: Uck.  Whatever.  Does anyone have something to smoke?
(canned laughter)
Man: it’s the show that shows family values exist even in unconventional families.
(knocking)
Gina: Uh, what are you guys doing in there?
Uncles (together): We’re just flossing, dear!
(canned laughter)
Man: It’s a brand new show taking hilarious comedy in a whole new funny direction!
Gina: I don’t get it.  Why don’t any of you guys have a steady girlfriend? 
(canned laughter)
Man: And they learn some lessons about life and love along the way.
Uncle 2: Come on guys, group hug.
Gina: I’m an emotionally abused orphan.  Can’t I get in on any of these group hugs? 
Uncle 3: No, you stupid bitch!
(canned laughter)
Man: My Five Uncles. Thursday nights on LSBC

Now is it just me, or this new series on NBC was really created based on this fictional radio spot?

New to the US 101

After almost 2 years I think I'm qualified to put together a list that could be help to anybody else who just have arrived to the United States and is about to start a new life here. The first 6-12 months will need some adjustments and you will face some limitations for sure.

I hope this helps all of you!

Basics

1. SSN - Social Security Number: This you need for everything: getting paid, opening a bank account, get credit cards, cable TV, internet, mobile phone. Fill out and bring this form with you to your local Social Security Office. You cannot get an appointment for this. Go in the middle of the day. Everybody else will go early in the morning.
2. Open a bank account. You can try one of the credit unions, too. You most likely will be allowed to open an account, but you'll have to update them with your SSN once you have it.
3. Once this you have your SSN get a secured credit card from an issuer. I suggest to deposit $2000 and never have a balance bigger than $600. Pay it off every month. After 6 months you should be eligible to get a real credit card. This will start building your credit history. You need to have a good one! Google what that is, it's too complicated to sum it up in this post. But you have to have credit to get credit. Strange system. To monitor your credit you can either pay $10-$15 every month, or you can sign up with Credit Karma. Less service but it's free and gives you a basic idea where you are at.
4. You need a car. Without car you won't be able to get around unless you live in a big city with good public transportation system. If you have at least $10000, you could aim for a new car. Used cars are not cheap. Only the ones that are very used... If you don't have that kind of cash, you'll have to settle for a 12 years old Toyota Camry. If you put down 40-50% of the price of your new car, you'll get credit. No credit is better than bad credit! Your APR will not be the best though. You probably won't get financed for a used car, even if it is certified pre-owned. Never accept sticker price on a car, and you can negotiate on the maintenance plan for your new vehicle, too. Instead of the standar $2500 you can get it for something between $1000-1500 depending how good you are negotiating.
5. Car insurance: with the 12 year old Camry go for liability only, it will be something around $50-$70 a month. For a new car you need the full coverage. A 6 months premium can vary between $700-$1200. Try AAA, Allstate and StateFarm. Others charge way too much as I saw. Once you have 18 months of US driver history (i.e. 18 months after your driver's license is issued) rates will go down on your premium.
6. Driver's license: get it as soon as you can. In California, you need to take a test. Easy as pie compared to the European ones :) You can get the handbook from DMV, read it and go take the test. Once you pass you'll be scheduled for a behind the wheel test. Watch this video and follow the guidelines and you'll pass. Once you get your DL you're no more required to carry your passport with you all the time.
7. Mobile phone: No credit history? You'll probably have to give a $400 deposit or so per line. You'll have to live with pre-paid for 5-6 months, sorry, if you don't want to leave the deposit. Difference between the providers:

• AT&T and T-Mobile are GSM providers. If you have your SIM free phone, all you need is a SIM card
• Sprint and Verizon are CDMA based, so you'll need a phone as well.
• Verizon and AT&T does not give unlimited data
• T-Mobile slows your data down after you reach a limit
• Sprint claims to have real unlimited data
• Verizon has the largest network, you'll get signal probably everywhere
• Unlimited nationwide calling means: you can call as much you want, but you'll have to pay the per minute fees once you reached your included minutes. The possibility is unlimited, not the service :)

8. Cable TV and internet. Again, needs SSN, and probably you'll have to give a deposit, but I didn't have to... It varies.

Company perks

1. Health insurance: most important thing. If your employer provides only HDLP you are screwed and they're cheap. Health will be expensive for you. If they don't offer FSA open an Health Savings Account to save at last the tax on your health expenses. For foreigners your only option is Chase HSA as I found. If you don't travel much, you're good with an HMO plan, otherwise go with the PPO. The difference is: HMO - you have a health care provider, you can only go to their facilities and pharmacies, you'll have a primary physician that you need to visit anytime you have a problem, he'll transfer you to a specialist; PPO - you can go to anybody in the network and you're free to visit a specialist right away. PPO is more expensive, might require higher co-pay from your side. I'm with Kaiser and I'm satisfied so far. Kaiser is an HMO.
2. 401k: that'll be your retirement money. Try to contribute to the max, and use whatever contribution your employer offers. Besides this you'll only get social security once you are retired. I don't believe the government will be able to give me any money in 40 years... Your call :)
3. Vision and dental: this covers your eye-care and dental care. Eye checkups, contact lenses, frames and glasses, fillings, crowns, root canals, professional teeth cleanings. Usually you get $1500-2000 coverage per year. Co-pay varies per service.

A place to live

Now that's expensive in California. If you are OK with it, live with room mates, otherwise you'll pay around $1200-2000 for rent per month, plus $200-250 for utilities (water, garbage, heating, electricity). When you rent, they'll check your credit. If you don't have children, choose freely your place. Avoid very cheap areas: you'll get rubbed, mugged, and you'll wake up for gunshot noise. If you have children you need to choose an area with a good school district. More expensive. Locate these areas using Trulia or Realtor, and than look for listings on Craigslist. That'll be your cheapest source! You can save some money if your children are about at the same age. So you can settle for a good middle school and when they go to high school you'll move to another place.

Mobile home is an over-sized RV, cheap but it's like camping all the time! If you choose to live in an apartment, aim for the highest floor, otherwise you'll be bothered by people walking.

Until you find a place to live, you can find extended stay rentals. Either an apartment or you try Extended Stay America or Marriott Residence Inn. Bit cheaper than a hotel, bit more expensive as an apartment, but you get WiFi, cable, furnished apartment with kitchen. A place of your own.


Let me know if I missed something! :) Good luck!

Olympic coverage from the USA

The Olympic coverage from the USA is ridiculous. NBC does the worst job ever. Almost nothing's live on TV, the evening coverages are only about Americans. After almost 2 years I know now why Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world, and the media is the one to blame: 8 runners, one is on Team USA, they don't even show the faces, names of the other 7... And that applies to all the sports.

At least they have their website where they broadcasting live on YouTube all the video streams by the Olympic Broadcast Services. American races and games with American commentator, of course... So I can watch all the water polo games and other Hungarian events live, and that's a good thing!

Now the Internet stream is filled with ads. Like every minute. Sometimes the actual happenings are not even taken into account, and they broadcast a 10 second ad block in the middle of a game. I figured, that at my workplace there's no ads. They applied recently a filtering system that blocks certain sites (like memebase for which I'm furious) and all the ads. All of them, everywhere!

So it is possible to block YouTube video stream ads! First I was trying it using the URL filter of my router. I was recording the HTTP requests with Tamper Data, and found the domains where these streaming ads came from. But that didn't seem to be sophisticated enough: there were no ads, but the live stream was not served as well. So I went with the crowd and installed AdBlock Plus in my Firefox.

By default it doesn't work on YouTube streams but there's a guy who seems to know what he's doing, and he explained in a forum entry what to do! So I've added the custom filters to my settings:

In case you don't want to type those rules in, here they are for copy-paste:

• ||http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/ad-
• ||c.youtube.com$~object_subrequest
• doubleclick$domain=youtube.com
• google$third-party,domain=youtube.com

Well I just started a stream in my Firefox while we were watching the Pommel Horse Finals (congrats to Krisztián, winning our 3rd gold medal!) on IE. I had to watch it on IE, because the ads crash Flash Player on Firefox and chrome full screen YouTube exits if I move the focus to another window...So in that stream for 5-10 mins I didn't see ads.

We'll see how it performs later on the men's Hammer Throw Finals!

UPDATE: It works! Hammer throw finals, not a single millisecond of ads!

Evil fat

So my weight loss program stuck around 220-225lbs. I refuse to starve. I don't think I eat too much, and I'm going to the gym every workday morning and I come home every time completely exhausted and smelly. I ride the elliptic for 30 mins and I do my weight lifting routine. All together 60-90 minutes in the gym, and that's all hard workout! I do feel my training is legit and not just a waste of time!

So the solution I came up with was to start a creatine monohydrate cycle. It is supposed to help increasing the size of your muscles and your strength. The bigger my muscles are the bigger is my body surface, and if the amount of fat doesn't grow it will spread on a larger body resulting in a leaner look. :) Let's see how it goes.

I'm at the end of my 4th week, and I started 5 days of loading. I can increase the amount of weights in all my exercises week by week, so my strength does increase and my biceps grew about 2 centimeters (almost an inch), so it seems to work :D Let's see how it goes.

In the past I drank whey protein and other stuff, but they all seemed to be just wasted money. A container that should be enough for a standard 3 months cycle was only $20 at Vitaminshoppe so it will not max out my credit card for sure, and so far it seems to work.

I bet somebody else doing the same thing would look like Arnold in his glory days!

Yeehaaa

Ever since we moved to the US i wanted to see a rodeo. It's the all American thing I thought, and I was right. Luckily a couple of weeks ago there was a rodeo nearby. California doesn't seem to be the homeland of rodeos. I bet Texas is different :-)

I had the luck to go to Bill Picket Rodeo. It's an all-black invitational rodeo. I bet I could count on my two hands the number of non-black members of the audience! At first it was a bit intimidating, but I had a great time. the MC was great, was talking during the whole show. There was no boredom either. Something always was going on. I like how they involved the people watching as well: kids from 6 to 11 could chase calves and the ones getting the ribbon off their tail win a price.

If you have the chance, don't miss a nearby rodeo, that's my advice.

Some pictures to illustrate:

B*tch, I'll kill you dead!

If you have [adult swim] on your TV you need to give a try to this show: Black Dynamite. It's on air every Sunday night, and I'm sure the channel is full with repeats, in case you missed the first couple of episodes. it has its own kind of humor, and I think it's brilliant. One word: whorephanage ;-)