I’m up at 5am on Saturday - need to get ready for a Toasmasters China annual conference. Unfortunately, it happens to be way the heck outside of Beijing. Bus leaves at 6:30 Back around 11:pm tonight - this will be a great way to finish up what jet lag I have left. ?

O.k, before you get smart with me and say something stupid like “Hey, Chris - just don’t use the web” or “Hey, Chris - why don’t you leave China - then you won’t have this problem…”, I have this to say to you: “Um, lameass, why don’t you just shoot yourself.” I wrote a post about 3 weeks ago about the blocking of (access adjustments made to) Feedburner URLs in China.

Check this bad boy out: See Techcrunch’s story, as well as this Chinese Developer’s twitter page who allegidly first found out about it, or discovered it. Techcrunch interestingly points out that both China NetCom and Baidu are listed on the NY Stock Exchange. Interesting… Standards? If you guys want to play with the big boys, you’ve got to act like them and follow the rules. M’kay?

This post will probably be outdated any minute, but… Today, October 18, the new Ubuntu Linux should be out. Here’s a screen shot of the header image of the main page. So, where is it?! 0 days left, come on guys! Perhaps they forgot Asia sees the 18th before the rest of the world?

My holiday has begun. I left Beijing on Monday at 9am or so (well, actually our flight was delayed due to impenitence in the control tower) . I was pleasantly surprised to experience a super quick checking/immigration/security process - from taxi to lounge in under 15 minutes. Luckily, the delay didn’t cause a problem in Tokyo for the connection. I just arrived at Minneapolis airport and am waiting for my connecting flight to Chicago.

What? Sorry? You said what?? We’re working yesterday and today - Saturday and Sunday - as next week is one of the three “Golden Weeks” in China. This one, always in October, is in celebration of the nation’s founding - October 1, sometime in the 1940’s, I forget. Any way… “Why on earth are you working during the weekend??” you may be asking me. That’s a damn good question. And here’s the answer… What I have been told, the government mandates these holidays in order to guarantee migrant laborers time off (as these unsung heroes put in ridiculous hours building buildings, roads, cars, electronics, etc.