kaiyen: pepper

kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

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An Allan by another spelling…

Not quite an effective variant on Shakespeare, but I try.

So my name is Allan Chen.  It is the least common of the three frequent ways to spell my given name – Allen and Alan are far more common.  I honestly have never cared when people have spelled my name wrong.  I don’t bother correcting people or anything.  However, it has been a problem lately, as at work e-mail addresses and names are auto-filled and there is an Allen Chan here, which of course shows up right away if you spell my first name wrong and it sure looks about right as a full name, too.  Recently, someone sent a meeting invitation to this other person, and earlier this year someone sent a whole series of e-mails to him before it was determined that it was the wrong person.

Now I’m confronted with a bit of a dilemma.  I have never made a deal about the spelling of my name, but it has proven to be an actual problem.  So do I start going around telling everyone how to spell it?  Do I come off sounding like I’ve been offended by it?  Ugh.

One thing that has always surprised me is that people don’t notice the mistake.  Especially in e-mail exchanges.  If you think about how e-mail responses are formatted, with the original text quoted below the next text, you have something like this:

blah blah

thanks,
allan

>hello allen

blah blah previous e-mail

So there’s the correct spelling right above the wrong spelling.  Yet I’ve gotten maybe 5 e-mails my entire electronic life where people have noticed the diference and commented/apologized for it.

November 7, 2008 Can't be Contained 2 Read more >

With great power comes great responsibility. And some people have weird interpretations of how to be responsible

Prop 8: The Ad That Upset the Mormon Church | Crooks and Liars

Hey, if you have massive influence, and can pay almost entirely on one’s own to sway an entire campaign…why not use it, eh?

Post to follow, but between T. Boone Pickens putting Prop 10 up on his own (I support that), the Mormons pushing Prop 8 all on their own (no on that) and then you think about how much money Obama has spent on this campaign, to the point where he himself might cause reform…how does one make an educated decision anymore? 

November 3, 2008 Articles from the Web, Getting Political, 0 Read more >

McCain on SNL

Just a quick comment as I am catching up on last night’s SNL episode.

It’s a pretty bad sign that McCain is willing to “poke fun” at his own campaign with Tina Fey, playing running mate Sarah Palin, joking about how Palin has been a rogue, possibly setting herself up for her own campaign in 2012, and the controversy over how much she spent on clothing for the campaign trail.

I think that goes beyond “poking fun” when it hits as close to home on such embarassing topics as that.  I think the writers at SNL had way more leeway with McCain than usual, and he would not have let that happen if he weren’t desperate.

Oh, by the way, Prop 8 is gaining ground here in CA.  I am not happy to hear that…

November 2, 2008 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts 0 Read more >

Review: International Plaza Resort and Spa, Orlando

This will be cross-posted to tripadvisor in order to share my thoughts, and stroke my ego. 🙂

The standard phrase is to not judge a book by its cover.  This is usually about not being negative based on appearances.  Sometimes, however, it goes the other way.

I stayed at the Inernational Plaza Resort and Space in Orlando for the Eduause Conference, which is coming to a close today.  When I first arrived, i read about the 2 pools, the hot tubs, the jacuzzi, the min golf course, and even the putting green so that one could get ready for a round on a neaby course and called my wife to tell her how cool the place was.  It really had a tropical feel.

However, after just 1 night the cracks started to show through, an indicated of a hotel that hasn’t been kept up as well as it should.  For instance:

  • my toilet had this magic capability to auto-flush every 10 minutes or so.  Maintenance could not fix it.
  • my a/c was either on completely or off entirely.  Even turning it down to “low” for the fan didn’t help – when I’m gone for 7 hours at a conference it’s might cold.  And when it was off the air was incredible stagnant.
  • The soft pillows were offset by the painfully firm bed
  • The LCD tv was nice, but it really demonstrated the problem of a crappy tv signal looking horrible on a high resolution screen
  • The coffee maker wasn’t just not plugged in, but there wasn’t even a plug nearby.  So I made coffee with it sitting on the ground.  You know, a standard spot for that.

The good news is that the pillows are soft.  And that the carpet wasn’t any dirtier than usual.  So I guess that’s a plus.  I would not recommend it.

October 31, 2008 General reviews 0 Read more >

On the way to work (kinda): The news this morning

On the bus to Educause this morning, what I presume to be the local easy-listening station was broadcast.  The following stories were covered

  • McCain was on the trail in Ohio, touring by bus, to get their key 11 electoral votes
  • Obama was in Iowa, then going to stop home to see his kids for Halloween before ending the day in Indiana
  • A squirrel brought down the power lines at a polling station (somewhere)

And now we’re up to date on the news.  So apparently, along with information on who will be our next president, this squirrel must have been really important.

October 31, 2008 On the Way to and from Work 0 Read more >

Quick review: Flip Video Ultra

I went to costco today to pick up some snacks for the office.  While there, I saw that they had a much wider variety of items than usual.  A LowePro camera bag for a great price, some new cameras, etc.  And…a Flip Video Ultra unit.  I’ve been wanting one of these for a year at least, and it’s something we legitimately want to try out at work so I got it.  Sure, I’ll use it a bit for my own stuff to “test it” but it is for work, and I have good reasons to try it out.  So I grabbed it.

Now…a few months later, while at Educause, I am seeing how I could have used it had I thought for about it for a second and brought it along.  A small but not-too-small form factor, very good video quality, and the easiest darn controls out there.  It’s a really impressive unit.

The only thing I wish I could do is hack is for 2 hours of recording.  Go back to the lower quality compression used in the original Flip that gave 1 hour in half the capacity.  Then, we could roll these out as set-it-up-yourself video recording for classes.  Think about that – short of a major infrastructure installation for recording, we just hand one of these to a professor and voila.  Our classes are all more than 60 minutes so we’d need that hack.

Great product.  Wish it had that one feature, though..

October 30, 2008 General reviews, 1 Read more >

McCain: listening to a campaign speech today. What the…?

This isn’t a “political” post.  I’m not bashing or supporting either side (I did vote for Obama, and I don’t like McCain, but that’s not the point here).  What I’m not getting is how McCain can say something over and over and over, not changing what he is saying, when I truly feel like he’s just digging his hole deeper and deeper.

I’m listening on CNN right now about stuff he said today.  He says a number of things which I just don’t get.  Specifically:

  • Obama wants to raise your taxes
  • I will fight for pork barrel taxes and inclusions, bridges that lead nowhere…

So…I really feel like Obama has made his case on the whole “if you make less than $250,000 your taxes will not go up” thing.  It’s something that people grasp – it’s got a dollar figure on it.  I think it’s fine that McCain wants to argue that Obama wants to raise some taxes, but this blanket statement just doesn’t really make sense anymore.  Maybe he could say “he’s rolling back some tax cuts – what if he keeps going?” or something like that.  But I think he’s beating this horse pretty badly.

And the bridge to nowhere is…in Alaska.  And while I think I read something about how under her governorship she just let it happen, as compared to making it happen (hey, that happens – she hasn’t been governor that long), the point is that…the pork barrel thing, the bridge to nowhere, THE EXAMPLE HE GIVES, is something that happened in Alaska.  Weird.

Don’t get me wrong – I think he makes some good points in his stump speech.  I don’t agree with his tactics, but I think some of them make sense.  I just don’t see why he’s making these particular points while stumping.

October 30, 2008 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, , , 0 Read more >

Possibly best description of what an instructional technologist is

What is an instructional technologist? at bavatuesdays

Jim Groom does a tremendous job describing what an “instructional technologist” means to him, and I think it’s a pretty damn good description in general. 

And I think it’s completely logical that he has no interest in going into administration.  Some are administrators.  Some are instructional technologists.  Some are integrators, some are connectors, some are innovators.  Some are a multitude of these personalities (a la Thomas Kelley’s The Ten Faces of Innovation). 

Me?  I think I’m someone who could have been an instructional technologist but is equally passionate about administration and doing administration the right way.  So maybe that’s the way I go.  And hopefully I’ll have a “Jim Groom” working with me while I’m handling the administrivia.  Someone that passionate about doing that kind of work. 

Good stuff.

October 30, 2008 Articles from the Web, , , 0 Read more >