Day trip to Hong Kong

I was visiting Hong Kong for a day because of the mandatory every-four-month-need-to-go-out-for-an-overseas-Taiwanese-guy-not-wanting-to-be-enlisted-into-the-military thing. This time, rather than just staying for a few hours at the airport then fly back to Taiwan on the next available flight, I decided to be more of a tourist.

Thanks to a travel guide book I bought at the airport bookshop in Taoyuan international airport, I got a sense of the place to visit and have meals, and the transportation allowing so. Once arrived in Hong Kong, the weather was a welcoming and balmy 23 degree Celsius. And I got the 100 HKD airport express ticket to/from Hong Kong station and the airport. (This is a special one-day round trip ticket). Since it was noon when I arrived, I went to this beef noodle place famous for it's fine beef stock and meat. [九記牛腩]

As you can tell from the photo, there was quite a line!
Next stop after the lunch was St Johns Cathedral. Visiting this place in solitude was quite relaxing! And the brief walk about helps digestion and soul cleansing at the same time :)

The Hong Kong park was inviting as a little getaway from the hectic and crowded city atmosphere.

The tramcars here offer easy accessibility to major stops on Hong Kong island. It's an unique hop onto the 2nd floor of a train experience if you've never had before.

For afternoon tea, I had some famous con-gees with pork and 皮蛋.

Further still, I had some whole milk pudding that comes with a flaky thin films on the surface. The combined texture was amazing and satisfying to taste.

A little stop at the western market to see the its antique architecture was a good way to round off the day's visit.

I was home sweet home at 11 pm. Time for bed!

Engineering Mantra of the Day

As an engineer/software developer, I cannot stop but thinking about the importance of usability in the products and services that we produce. Thus I come up with my quote of the day:

"User is the king. We (engineers) bow only to the king!"

Why Work?

Been feeling like a bum for the last few days for some weird reasons. Maybe it's the beginning of the spring's warm weather that brings about this feeling. Or maybe it's just the general lethargy about work and the point of it all that make me wondering "why work"?

I thought about this question for a moment. Then what follows are the answers that came to my mind~

• Work is something there for us to do. It's like the "thing" to do. On the other hand if not work, what else is there meaningful to do that we're willing to spend 40+ hours on it? I don't think I want to do "nothing" for most of my time.
• Money power: Work pays (usually). And the derived money can be used for other things/services otherwise hard to produce by ourselves e.g. dining out to eat delicious cuisine, or putting a roof over our heads.
• Enjoyment, fun and passion. It's what we love to do. Work can give us a sense of fun and enjoyment! (For me, it's writing useful software and solving interesting user/technical problems that give me the greatest satisfaction).
• Along the line of enjoyment. Work can be team-oriented. The teamwork and social aspect of work can be why people enjoy their jobs.
• Contribution to the public society: maybe the product/service you provide helps with the growth and evolution of society in a good way!
• From a Christian perspective, work is in itself the expression of the glorification of God. Simply put, doing good work serves God well.

This topic on work and the reason behind work is a philosophical one that has been much debated and examined before. Here are some insightful articles I found to be very related and interesting. Enjoy!

Why work and what work you dream of doing?

Work and Passion

Why work? (more from a management perspective)

Why work? (more from a Christian perspective)

Know your IIS Log Folder Naming?

Ever wonder which IIS log folder belongs to which website? The answer is fairly straight forward.

The folder in which IIS logs are located is called W3SVC[Website ID]\.

For IIS 7+, you can find out the website ID by visiting the website's advanced properties as below:

For IIS 6, you can view the exact website's log folder here:

How to resize your VM image disk

When your VMware image size is not large enough, yet you don't want to create a new image with OS installation from scratch, one can perform the resizing of the VM image. One of the easiest ways to do so is with the VMware converter.

Steps:

1. Download VMware converter.

2. Shutdown the virtual machine.

3. Start the VMware converter software tool.

4. Click on "Convert machine" button.

5. In the source type field, choose the option "VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine". And click next.

6. In the Destination System panel, choose also the option "VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine" for the destination type field.

7. For the VMware product, select the version of the VMware product on which your image is based on.

8. Specify the virtual machine name and location accordingly to your environment. And click next.

9. Edit the "Data to copy" part, and choose "Select volumes to copy" for the data copy type. Then choose "" in the destination size drop-down field. Specify the size in GB, e.g. 60.

10. Click next and finish to start the conversion job. Wait for the conversion is complete. The new VM image now should have the specified disk size to go with it!

Question of the Day: Know your in-use IIS & SQL server versions?

Ever wonder what versions are in use for IIS and MS SQL server? For server-side development, this can be a common questions that get asked often.

• For IIS, visit the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp\VersionString

• For MS SQL server:

(1) Connect to the SQL server via the Management Studio tool


(2) Run the query - 


Select @@version


The result is then shown ~
==================================================
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) - 10.0.2531.0 (X64) Mar 29 2009 
10:11:52 Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Express 
Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 (Build 7600: )
==================================================


BTW, thank goodness it's Friday!

How to change the default windows log-on user

For windows server 2008, I once had a problem where the default windows log-on page still showed the deleted user. To change the log-on user, simply go to the registry:


HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurretnVersion\winlogon


and change the value of DefaultUsername to the user that you would like to show up on the windows log-on page!