Archive for March, 2006
Cannot resist the sweet deal that 2G Cosair XMS RAM for only $110 (usually is about $200), ordered Tue from newegg.com and got it on Friday. It does make a lot of difference on my desktop computer (DIY) - now I rarely hear my XPdriven box making any noise that I used to hear when I multi-task the poor thing.
Only minor issue for people who uses Abit AMD-based motherboard, if you refresh your bios, you might see the messing during POST: “System is running in Fail-Safe State. Please recheck - BIOS CMOS Setup”. Don’t panic, just clean up your bios (power off your PC, shortcut your CMOS using jumper, then power on for 5 sec, then restart your PC), it will go away. Sounds like the Bios bug..
March 26th, 2006
In case you want to add photo album to your personal website, there are more choices nowadays, if you prefer some simpler solution than the one (Gallery2) I am currently using, you can consider the following
Zenphoto
Plogger
PhotoStack
iPAP
MG2
There are also some flash based solution which are great choice if you prefer not to require your user click too much..
SlideShowPro
SimpleView (free)
ImageVue
March 25th, 2006
Now that I have to travel to Boston area in the recent month, I have to abandon my old plan to count on Southwest Airline rapid awards to get award ticket - American Airline (AA) has direct flight from RDU to Boston, which really saved me a lot of time that I’d otherwise have to waste on my transfer at BWI (no Southwest direct flight from RDU to BOS).
As far as the advantage, here is what I think..
- Actually since I am also AA gold member, (also Silver Elite@NWA and Silver Elite@Delta), I also get quite a good bonus milage out of each trip, within just a month, I have close to 7000 miles on my account. When one reach 10K, AA will award 4 e-upgrade, which is worth another 10K miles.
- AA milage program can be used for international travel, remember a ticket to China will cost 50K miles, with 10K mile that I’ll have, all of sudden I am 20% closer to a free ticket… not bad at all!
- It is foolish to automatically assume the travel with Southwest is the lest expensive, if you do a search, sometimes I think AA fare wasn’t bad at all, e.g. a round trip from RDU to LGA is only $200 on AA..
If you are serious about AA, you prob should read this as well: Unofficial travel guide with AA
March 22nd, 2006
only 25% of people are happy with the flight services out of RDU (Raleigh Durham International airport). I can assure you that I belong to the rest 75%.
The biggest problem was lack of direct flight to major west coast cities, such as LA, San Francisco, San Jose or Seattle. Bussiness travel cares the most on the schedule, having a stop somewhere in the middle really kills the schedule, even worse, the transferred flights can be delayed due to all kinds of reasons. That can very well mean a 8 hour flight to LA. Given that number of daily passengers transfer between LAX and RDU are 560 each way, don’t know why smart airliners still waiting..(Actually Delta will start direct flight to LAX this June, will wait to see how that goes)
That aside, the RDU building really looks ugly, especially terminal A, no different than any other warehouse in the area. Compare to all other newer generation mid-markets airport, RDU cannot match the area’s status as a regional premium technology hub. Even some smaller airport, like Columbus aiport (CMH) looks more mordern! someone please remodel the front face of the building, that is what visitors first see when they arrive.
Too bad that the area business/population growth is not strong enough to lure more airlines to offer more services. After the demise of Independence airline, RDU really needs some other low-fare airlines to fill in the hole, heard the news Virgin America (backed by Virgin Atlantic) and JetBlue are both interested to open their shop in RDU, but none is confirmed yet. Even if JetBlue starts flying, it will only fly to JFK as the beginning…
Oh well..
March 11th, 2006