Tokesan -- Wandering Jonser

As a Business Analyst in software implementations, I had the privilege of working at a freight shipping company -- you can insert name of one of the top 3 operators and you'd be right because they all follow the same government regulations pertaining to moving of goods into and out of the country. As far as the government is concerned the freight operators can use whatever software system to process shipments but they must report shipment details to government agencies. In this example, the US Customs under the umbrella of the department of Homeland Security and Border Control. Shipping operators report all the information regarding the shipments to the US Custom and for certain shipments that meet certain criteria the freight operators do even more. The NSA collection of phone records and other electronic communication between parties -- code named PRISM data-collection program -- under the  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) probably has similar data requirem

This is a very funny commercial. I couldn't stop laughing as the interview progressed. That said. The new Google policy concerns me - mining all my data that they have at their disposal - I was an early adopter of Gmail. I Use Google Docs a lot even for storing other documents like PDFs that I want access to on the road, these includes receipts, resumes, travel docs you name it. I started doing this at the beginning of last year after realizing that I have too much docs on many harddrives. Microsoft now has comparable product that I have used sporadically for 3 years or so. Word Excel and PowerPoint are now online and they can be shard - I have tried it. MS SkyDrive offers 25 GB drive (for Cloud storage) and you don't have to get hotmail - you can use your Gmail email address to sign up. I will probably start using MS more now that I realize that Google might be deep-mining my info for ad dollars. Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

What has Bristol Palin done to deserve her own reality show? Nothing, absolutely nothing! It seems that the only thing the Palin women know how to do is to sell themselves and they are doing a damn good job of it, and bravo to us, America for buying their bullshit. As of 8:45 PM on Monday May 09, 2011, Google News showed there were 353 news stories regarding Bristol Palin getting her own reality show. I hope and really, really hope that those articles are as critical as this one. Else the writers would be rounded up with the idiotic group of TV studio executives that think her life and her dirty laundry is worth airing on television. And I would not stop at blasting the TV executives; I would extend my criticism to the corporate brand name marketers that would place their 30, 60 seconds commercials on that reality show. When and where have we lost our standards? Oh, by the way, a few weeks ago it was reported that she made over 250K on her teenage pregnancy work last year. For what?

I think this is a fantastic idea and China may just pull it off. If you ever been to China or followed some news other than the jives we hear in our media, you will no doubt be impressed by developments in China. Yes, they don't have "freedom" and US still refer to them as Commies. Every political setup has its negative side. That aside: - They are planning on sending humans to the moon - The Chinese pulled of the 2008 Olympic flawlessly - The constructed train to the edge of the Himalayas, elevation closes to 12,000 foot above sea level - They are building high-speed rail to connect remote parts of the country (We cannot even connect LA to San Francisco) - They build the largest dam in the world. Ok, I am inviting snide comments from the environmentalist on this one. Even when I saw PBS special on the villages, livestock and vegetation that would be submerged by the Three Gorges Dam, I squirmed. - This one is sad; China would have constructed structures that are 10 tim

A few days ago, weeks really, I wrote on how hard it is to write and become known these days. This article from LA Times couldn't have elaborated my point much better. Still some of us who caught the writing bug cannot easily let go. One can only wonder what the "paper" publishing industry would look like in the next decade. A writing career becomes harder to scale - latimes.com Posted using ShareThis

It seems that to write a bestseller these days one has to be one of the staple writers already earned their stripes on the New York Times. LA Times or USA bestseller's list. Else one has to be a politician of some reputation or spouse of such a politician to make a dent in the publishing industry. The news that Amazon eBooks outsold paper books during Christmas 2009 isn't encouraging! Getting one's name in hardbound will keep getting tougher and tougher. People like us that values holding a good book to lull us to sleep, at end of tough days, with eyes glued to the typeset pages would, in soon enough time, look nostalgically at these days. That brings the question: are there any hopes for up and coming writers, aspirants and dreamers? I am though, especially partial to the latter group, of which I am one. If you have procrastinated penning your story (rather, typing your story), the story that will make you heard, time may be running out for you. Fact is that there are so m