William Reardon’s Blog

Imagine for a moment someone who’s contributed exclusively to the Republicans (and some $5,250 at that). Someone who contributed to George W. Bush in 2004, Republican Senator campaigns in & out of state, and numerous other Republicans, such as congressional leaders and so on.

Now imagine this person is somewhat notable, and a major media outlet comes along to write a story about his political involvement. He’s presented at someone not really involved in politics, but somehow draw to the McCain campaign. In fact, he’s really not even a Republican. He’s a moderate. There’s just some things that McCain gets right that he likes. And Barak… well, he looks off as he attempts to gather his thoughts, just… doesn’t.

Immediately you’re thinking it’s bullshit. It clearly a republican shill, coupled with the deception of Fox News and so on.

Only it’s not.

It’s not Fox News.

And it’s not even a Republican.

It’s the Washington Post & Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

In a technology article, Kim Hart writes:

Newmark, the founder of craigslist, isn’t even a Democrat. He describes himself as a “Libertarian moderate.”

Which is fairly ridiculous. According to public data, Craig has made $5,250 in political donations to the Democrats. Donations to Barak Obama, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Al Franken, Dick Durbin, and Barbara Boxer.

And not a single penny elsewhere. Not a single penny to a single libertarian candidate. Not a nickel to Ron Paul. Nor a dime to Bob Barr.

Not a single donation to anyone but Democrats.

But he’s not a democrat. No, he’s moderate. You know, middle of the road. Just a middle of the road, undecided kinda guy, who just thought this Democratic nominee was unique. So special, that though he has “nothing to gain”, it was worth his open minded support.

Would you believe this for a second from someone who said they weren’t a Republican? Someone who said they weren’t a Republican, but had contribute over $5,000 to Republicans? To John McCain, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, and Pat Buchanan?

I don’t mind someone being a Democrats or a Republicans. I don’t mind people supporting either party or even choosing to donate if they have the means & the desire. Heck, that’s all part of the process.

But what I find deceptive is to the present yourself as something else. If you donate exclusively and in large amounts to the Democrats, just say “Yes, I’ve been a Democrat since XXXX. I’m really excited about Obama and here’s why…” If you donate exclusively and in large amounts to Republicans, jusy say “Yes, I’ve been a Republican since XXXX. I’m really excited about McCain and here’s why…”

There’s no need to lie, mislead & distort. I think we can all agree there’s enough of that in politics and it’s disappointing to see it come from Craig Newmark.

On Thursday, a small group of us headed down to Anaheim to see Gogol Bordello. They were playing at The Grove, meaning we would have to slug it out through rush hour traffic.

If you’ve never heard of Gogol, think “Gypsy Punk” and whatever image comes to your head is pretty much on the money. They are nuts. But nuts often makes for a great live show. And a great show it was.

I snagged a snippet of “Start Wearing Purple.”

(You see a slightly more coherent version here.)

Rick, being the man, was able to snag us backstage passes to boot.

That’s the lead singer in the middle, Eugene Hütz. To the far left is Yuri Lemeshev, the accordion player and a hardcore World of Warcraft player. So in a nutshell, a touring rockstar and a nerd.

I haven’t played WoW in a bit, but I asked him the standard questions about level/race/class and so on. He had a level 70 human warrior and mainly solos. They have WiFi on the tour bus, so he can play & party at the same time. Right now his main focus is grinding to get enough gold for an epic mount.

I think my ears were ringing for the next two days (perhaps proof I’m getting old?), but it was worth it.

An occasional peruser of the comics, I’ve long known that Lalo Alcaraz isn’t funny. What I didn’t know he was also an idiot:

Tip to Alcaraz, at least give a little effort to your slop. (Hint: it’s called Wikipedia.)

iPhones went on sale in Hong Kong the other day, which reminded me of my own iPhone experiences there a few months back.

Walk through pretty much any market & you’ll find loads of knockoffs. Knockoff watches, knockoff video games, and knockoff everything. Passing a stand with a bunch of phones, I was particularly surprised to find a knockoff iPhone! While obviously fake, I was sorta curious how well it worked.

Playing naive, I walked over and asked if that was the iphone. The scent of blood in water exited the salesman, exclaiming “yes!” and, as expected, pulling it out for me to see.

Me: “Oh, it’s in Chinese. I thought the real iPhone was in English?”

Him: “Sir! This is real iPhone! I change language for you.”

A few taps and it’s in English. Poking around, I confirmed what the bottom-right icon suggested. It was a fake written in Java, though not a bad one.

Me: “So this is a real iPhone?”

Him (annoyed): “Sir! I tell you already! This is very real iPhone.”

Me: “It is? But it doesn’t have an Apple logo back on the back”, I say as I turn it over.

Him (more annoyed): “Sir! Real iPhone not have Apple logo on the back!”

Me: “I thought they did?”

Him (annoyed/exasperated): “Sir! Ones with logos are fake! This one is real iPhone!”

Me: “Really?”, I ask, pulling my own iPhone out of my other pocket, “Because mine has the logo.”

Him (eyes wide, excited, and without losing a beat): “I pay YOU six hundred American!”

At this point 3G phones were $300 in the states, so I was stumped as to why anyone would pay me double that for the older phone. It turns out, those were easier to unlock, and, as our coworker-guide explained, they’d be able to turn around and sell it for at least $900, easy.

I couldn’t believe it, but later I saw this sign.

(For reference, one US dollar equals about 7.7 hong kong dollars, so about US$1,182 for the 16gig 3G.)

Adobe’s FlashPaper2 end-of-life FAQ

After careful consideration and analysis of both the marketplace and customer feedback, Adobe plans to discontinue new feature development for FlashPaper. The demand has continually declined to where it is no longer economically viable for Adobe to continue development support for FlashPaper.

Techcrunch: Document startups in chaos as Adobe’s Flashpaper discontinues

Previously. Previously.

Bill: 1, Internet: 0.

After the trip to Beijing, I headed south to spend a few days in Macau & Hong Kong. Macau is a ~45 minute ferry ride from Hong Kong, and currently the gambling capital of the world (surpassing even Vegas).

Flying into Hong Kong International, I was surprised how easy it was to get to Macau. Just like a stop-over on an international flight, you can transfer to your ferry without going through Hong Kong customs or security. You just hand over your baggage claim tickets from your airline & they even pick them up for you. Pretty sweet.

Macau was a confusing series of streets that twist & turn. Luckily casino’s are all over the place, and as I map showing each casino’s location, they ended up being really good landmarks. The other problem was realizing how small Macau really is. I’d walk for a bit, looking for a street. Unable to find it, I’d get to an intersection & try to find that on that map. I couldn’t find it until I realized I’d crossed half map & walked right off the page I was looking at. Macau is small.

I visited a few of the sites, including Largo do Senado, the Ruins of St. Paul’s and Fortaleza do Monte.

Like in Beijing, the Friendlies where everywhere. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one in the head. Although if you do do that Panda here is gonna bust a cap in yo’ ass.

Of course, like Las Vegas, the city completely changes at night & come alive with neon. I gambled a bit while I was there, come out roughly even. Right now, it’s a bit early for Macau to become a travel destination by itself. Give it about 10 years though, and I expect it will truly be the Las Vegas of the East.

Next stop, Hong Kong.

As promised, some pictures of what a line of 10,000 people looks like:

The crazy thing was people were still streaming in from all directions. By the time tickets actually went onsale, it was estimated some 50,000 people had lined up.

It was a crazy 36 hours or so. We were busy through the night and somewhere around 2am we noticed the security forces that had assembled to protect our box office.

One part of the process involved counting batches of 250+ tickets. Around four in the morning, I realized people count sheep to fall asleep. Here I was trying to stay awake, having to count tickets!

With such high demand, things sold at a fairly brisk pace. So when things calmed down, Hui & I decided to head to the Olympic Green, and check out a few of the venues. Unfortunately, the entire area was blocked off by security fences, so we could only take pics from afar.

The last thing I’ll mention involves the elevator of our hotel. In the West, it’s not uncommon to skip the 13th floor. But I still can’t figure out why this particular hotel skipped not just 13, but 2 & 14 as well. I hope it wasn’t a cheap knock off of an elevantor — sorta how a “Rolex” in China might be missing a 5 or 9.

UPDATE: By coincidence, youtube just featured this AFP video about the final onsale.

Well, if your plans were to buy Olympic tickets, more than likely you’re out of luck at this point. There’s quite a few remaining for outlying cities, but inside Beijing things were gone pretty quick.

It was quite an experience. I had to wake up early to travel from Shenzhen to Beijing on the 24th. I was to land at noon, plenty of time to get to the office before things started rolling at 6, but checking my blackberry the morning of the flight, I found out at plans shifted to start at 2. I still made it there okay, getting to the office at 1:30.

What followed was madness from there. At the office, we started receiving reports of line lengths at the various venues. The onsale didn’t start until 9am the next morning, and here at 2pm some were estimated to be around 1,000.

Around 7pm, the Bird’s Nest box office request we come over to help if possible.

I don’t how to explain what it was like encountering The Line. The cab passed by & it was immediately obvious there were hundreds, with a constant stream of people flowing in from every direction. I later found what I had seen as a tiny bit, the line wrapping around the corner. Once I rounded that corner, I was shocked. There was easy a 1,000 people.

I tried following the line to find the box office, only to find I was, again, near a small (comparatively) piece of the line, watching it double-back on itself again & again. Only to discover after everything that was in front me, in continued into a giant parking lot. I’ve never seen anything like it.

At that point it was estimated 10,000 people were in line, growing to 50,000 when I left at 5am the next morning. Each box office seemed to have 1,000 people in line, and several now with 10,000. What used to be extremely large had now become the low-end of things.

Security was tight, but well managed. Around 2am I looked up and noticed a wall of police & military were standing shoulder-to-shoulder out front, covering a 200′ length, to block off our box office. The surrounding roads long having but cut off, police cars & military vehicles filled the scene, their the strobing light filling the otherwise dark sky.

There were a few incidents — with crowds of that size it would hard to imagine otherwise, but all in all, it went really smooth. Reports of stampedes in the media were a bit overblow.

All in all, it was success.

Things with the great firewall have changed a bit. Youtube & the english version of Wikipedia are unblocked, but pages such as Tibet & the like are still blocked. It looks like the filter is based on the URL as I could access Chicago, but not Chicago?q=Tibet.

A day after things had calmed down, a coworker arranged for us to visit a tea ceremony and see a bit of a Chinese variety act — magic, singing, kung fu, opera, all in one night. For the magic act, I was called on stage. Another coworker, JD, wrote about it on his blog.

I’ll post some pics of my trip when I can. (I.e., when I can find a micro-usb cable.)

In all likelihood this is my last trip to China for a long while. It’s been interesting. The overwhelming majority of time was work related, but we did squeeze in some fun here & there. I’ll post a follow-up of Beijing must-do’s in a later post.

I awoke this morning on time at 5:45am, for my 8:30am flight from Hong Kong to Beijing. I was staying at the airport hotel, one connected to the main terminal over a pedestrian bridge, so I assumed I had plenty of time.

I followed my footsteps back from the night before, and seeing a flight board, walked over to find my gate. Hmmmm… No Asiana 6118. Hmmm… and no 8:30 flight to Beijing at 8:30. WTF?

It’s then that I realize I’m in arrivals. Shit. Okay, how do I get to departures? I journey farther in, find the escalators, and head up to departures. Time check: 6:45am. Okay, not too bad. Good thing I skipped the breakfast, but damn, I’m starving. Maybe I’ll be able to get something in the lounge.

I ascend to about 8 different banks of check-in columns. Which one is Asiana? Ah, luck is with me, just one to my right. I walk over, find my checkin line, and look at the flight board. Wait. No flight 6118? No 8:30am departure? WTF.

I pull my flight info out my bag. Damnit, I flew LA to Hong Kong on Asiana, but my trip to Beijing is on Cathay Pacific.

I see a nearby airport information desk and ask them where Cathay Pacific is. Just two to my right. I head over, but again no flight 6118. Now this is starting to get annoying. I just double-checked my printout and headed to the CP customer service desk. Ah, code-share. They send me to Dragon Air… the first bank on my left. *sigh*

I check the time as I wait for the 2 people in front of me. Just after 7. Not too bad, but it is an international flight. And the airport is pretty big. Hopefully enough time.

“Welcome to Dragon Air, sir. Your passport, please.”

The frown on her face doesn’t bode well.

“What flight were you on, sir?”

“I’m not sure, but it was Cathay Pacific 6118.”

Type, type, type, type. “Ah, sir, that is a code-share flight. That flight is operated by Air China.”

And where is Air China? The last terminal on the right.

Air China ended up being the correct one, but my lucked continued when I asked if gate 64 was far. “Yes, a bit, sir.” And the lounge? The other direction in gate 16. No soup for me.

I ended up making it, but finding out I had to take a train for gates 33-80 and then the shift change at immigration right after the person in front me didn’t do much to calm my nerves and sorta re-inforced my half-suspicion that Beijing is out to get me.

Hopefully all my bad luck is out of my system. Tomorrow morning will be one of your last chances to buy tickets for the 2008 Olympics. One of my co-workers emailed me to say people are already lining up. Here’s to a smooth onsale.