Welcome to my virtual space

Intuit disabled QuickBooks' function of retrieving bank transactions in May 2023 in order to push people to subscribe to their expensive online edition ($60/month). QuickBooks can import qbo files. If a bank allows only ofx files, one usually just need to modify these files slightly…

Microsoft touts the average Windows Phone app certification time is 1.8 days. I am not sure how accurate this is, and wondering if this average includes private beta submissions. The beta submissions enjoy automatic certification, and they take about 10 hours to complete. If beta…

It is a fascinating and enlightening trip. Departure AA94 (delayed due to plane mechanical problem)

2023-05-07 Boston: 18:50🛫 2023-05-08 Paris: 8:00 🛬 19:50🛫 2023-05-08 Tallinn: 23:25 🛬 2023-05-10 Tallinn: 14:00 bus to Riga 2023-05-10 Riga: 18:25 arrival 2023-05-12 Riga: 12:00 bus to Vilnius 2023-05-12 Vilnius: 16:10 arrival 2023-05-14 Vilnius: 14:15 bus to Warsaw. 2023-05-14 Warsaw: 21:55 (20:55 local time) arrival…

An MJPEG video stream is a sequence of JPEG images. Each JPEG image is supposed to start with SOI and ends with EOI, but some MJPEG streams have data beyond EOI. Some JPEG decoders do not need these extra data. MS Windows' codec is one of…

DKIM requires the email server to support it. MailEnable Standard does not support it. Since DMARC is based on DkIM, so you cannot have it if your email server does not support MailEnable.

The recent excellent article Scholars with Spine published by National Review provides a good picture of the current status of American Sinologists – a large number of scholars kowtowing to the Chinese totalitarian regime. This reminds me of what happened at 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Award…

A small portion of email systems use PTR record as an anti-spam mechanism. It does reverse DNS lookup to find the canonical name of the sending IP address to see if it matches the sender's email address. For example, if an email is sent from…

My emails with slightly politically sensitive materials to QQ addresses have failed to reach their destinations many times. I am reasonably sure that QQ censors its member’s communications. It is not surprising at all for Chinese online service providers to voluntarily or involuntarily censor their…

Breton, the CEO of the large French firm Atos with 74,000 employees is implementing a "zero email" policy. He believes that emails waste time. The former French finance minister has not sent any emails for 3 years since he became the CEO of Atos. Probably…

Migrating eMail from one computer to another computer is extremely easy for Thunderbird, but much more involving for Outlook. For Thunderbird, one only needs to modify parameter Path in profiles.ini under folder C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird to point to the profile file copied from the old PC. Transfer…

Except for some doped or abused athletes, a marathon requires at least months of preparation for anyone who intends to run it seriously. The training usually goes through ramp-up and tapering. For many, the training program is usually well structured and regimented. Marathon is so…

Boston Marathon 2003 Injury recovery Reckless training, racing and the steep down hills in the first few miles of Clarence DeMar Marathon resulted in my right hip and/or upper hamstring injury at about mile 10 of the marathon on 9/30/2001. Continued recklessness reinjured the spot…

It is not difficult to find a spot to park your car and walk to the Boston Marathon route in a few minutes. For example: Military March starts at 6:00 and Men's Wheelchair starts at 9:02. They are the first participants one sees at the…

Fanatic Chinese "patriots" have beefed up their effort to regain the control of the disputed the Diayu Islands (aka Senkaku Islands) recently. Ironically, they completely ignore Outer Manchuria that is more than 100,000 times larger than the Diayu Islands, and was taken by Russia with…

Events that are worth recording during driving happen once in a while. For example, a hiking trip to mountains often include scenic routes. Encountering deer is not uncommon in New England suburbs. One can get a decent car DVR for well under $100 now, so…

Some people think the Olympic gold medalist Ye Shiwen has been unfairly treated by the Western media with suspicions of her doping. Comparison with other athletes of exceptional performance may shed some light on whether she is treated unfairly. The previous female swimmer suffering from…

Liu Xiang Manteo Mitchell The most popular Chinese national sport hero failed to clear the first hurdle at an opening heat of the 110-meter hurdles. He immediately headed to the closest exit, but was instructed to turn back by an Olympic staff member. He went…

The recent doping suspicion raised by Ye Shiwen’s stunning swimming performance has brought doping into the spotlight again. Many people use words doping, stimulant and performance enhancing drug interchangeably. For example, in China, stimulant (兴奋剂) is almost the only word used to refer to doping…

Follow this artilce instead of Microsoft instructions for localization.