Wilson Chen’s blog

Let me introduce you to my

niece! Ha, I bet some of you were thinking “Well maybe he has not updated this blog in months since he knocked someone up?” Not quite. Julie, my oldest sister, gave birth to this little baby on Monday and I am officially an uncle! She remains nameless because of some ancient Chinese traditions. They have to pick a “lucky” name that has a certain number of strokes that matches up well with the exact time she was born. I am still coming up with an English name but it will most likely end up being 4 letters and ends with an ‘A’.

Gallery and blog update coming sooooon…

These pictures were taken on the new iMac using the Photo Booth app.

So it has been 4 months! Yeah, amazingly Apple has not fired me yet. I think this page went live a few days ago but I did not check on it until tonight. Might have to get my picture changed because it looks like I am missing my right ear. Anyways, work is awesome and I am really excited to be on Apple’s website.

All caught up with my pictures… finally!

• Defcon 2005
• Union Valley Lake and Placerville
• Second update of Summer and Fall of 2005

Going to go back in time and update blog entires for the past two months in the next few days.

Getting more and more caught up, check out

• Alcatraz with my parents
• Apple World Wide Developer Conference 2005
• Last update for 2004-2005 School Year

Don’t be so lazy… leave some comments!

Glad to say I won’t have to use that piece of **** anymore! You would think Google would have devoted more engineers into that project. I imported my entries from Blogger but I have to manually add/put back the images in the entries in the next few days.

Feel free to give me feedback on the layout of the blog as I will be constantly changing it in the next few weeks!

A post at last! Sorry for being MIA for the past few weeks. Have not had much time since the move to Cupertino to update the blog but things should become a little more regular once graduation is over, which is this weekend.

Been exploring the San Jose/San Francisco areas and taking lots of pictures since my parents and older sister are in town. As most of you guys have heard, Apple will be using Intel Microprocessor beginning in 2006 and all I have to say is that the next few years will be exciting times for both the developers and the consumers. Attending WWDC has been a wonderful experience and I will have more postings about the conference/the past 3 weeks later on.

Spent most of this week figuring out housing, relocation, and other work related stuff. Made the drive to Cupertino/San Jose Tuesday and Wednesday and after looking at 7 freaking properties, I finally decided on a place that is less than a mile from work! I had a hard time deciding between the property I chose at the end and another property that was about 90-100 square feet bigger. The big downside about the latter property was that I would be in traffic about an hour everyday. I would say the trip was a total success except I kinda messed up my car. Nothing major but I did put a nice dent by the taillights. I was backing out a parking space at one of the complexes and hit the stupid directory/code puncher. I could have sworn I did not see the sign in my mirrors… Embarrassed, I went into the leasing office to inform them about my stupidity and I could not believe what the manager said, “it is okay, you are not the first one!” WTF! Called Geico, my insurance company, and it looks like it is going to cost me about $1400 to get it fixed because of future premium increases and my $500 deductible.

Counting down to the 23rd of May, when I become an official employee of Apple. Seems like the blog is getting more traffic lately, and if you think I am going to be posting any internal information about Apple, you are just wasting your time. I don’t believe I will be talking about work at all once I start unless I am given the permission……

Most of you guys know about this already but I had an offer from RealNetworks. Just a refresher, they were the pioneer in the 90’s for streaming music and when their player was once of the few avil. on the market. They have pretty much fallen off the face of the planet until the past few years, with their subscription-based music service, Rhapsody. I debated about joining their team but was always unsure about their true potential and how well they will be able to compete with new services. Yahoo answered my question this week when they made Real’s stock drop 20% in one day by introducing Y! Music Unlimited. While I am glad I made the right decision by not joining the team, I feel horrible for those that do work for the company and have a lot riding on the value of Real’s stock. I guess that is the risk with stock-options.

Oh yeah, I am moving out of Goleta tomorrow! Well, technically, the moving company is moving my stuff tomorrow but I will still be in town until Wednesday morning. So if you want to profess your love for me, you got 3 days!

Try to figure out from the picture below where I am relocating to…

I don’t expect everyone to get it so here is your answer. Still a little confused? I will be working for one of the best tech companies around the world, Apple, at the end of this month! If you read my earlier entries, things did work out the way I wanted, and I cannot explain to you how excited I am about working at Apple and moving out of Santa Barbara. I have had a spectacular college experience at SB and I want to keep it that way. Meaning I don’t want to blur my college experience with my career. I want to associate SB with memories of partying on DP, stupid/ridiculous things I did through Beta, and all the wonderful people I have met in the past 5 years, not working 40-50 hours a week and going to bed before the eleven o’clock news. I am looking forward to working/living in Silicon Valley and just a change of pace. Santa Barbara is a small town and it is really sad when you have to drive 40 minutes for a game of miniature golf.

Anyways, cannot wait to start working and contributing towards the awesome OS X.

Another big gap in Wilson’s blogging world. I bet you think it is just because I don’t have anything to blog about but it is just the opposite. Life has been incredibly busy lately and big things are happening. But we will see if things work out the way I want them. I learned my friend’s mom passed away last Sunday, and I did not know what to say to her, besides “I am sorry.” Both her and her mom are one of the sweetest and kindest people I know and it sucks to see her struggle with her mom’s health for the past few years. If you read this, I hope you know I am always here for you…

Went back to the OC last weekend and like always, got a lot of my shopping done. South Coast is just ten thousand times better than Paso Nuevo, and god knows it is not because of the expensive stores that are at South Coast. It is simply because all the storefronts are bigger and there is just more selection. Went to the Staples Center for the first time and it is a nice facility. Beer cost about $8 but I had fun watching Arena Football especially since the tickets were free and we were 16 rows from the floor. The game is entertaining but it lacks several aspects from normal football. The field is too narrow so it is hard to have running plays and the billboards that surround the field obstruct the view so sometimes you miss out on big plays.

Found out today that I was selected for Outstanding Teaching Assistants in Computer Science for 2004-2005! This award is pretty cool because it is given at graduation so it will be in front of thousands of people. Going to be super sunburnt that weekend since each graduation ceremony is about 3 hours and I now have to attend both the Undergrad ceremony for engineers and also my ceremony on Sunday.

I just updated the 2004-2005 album so go check it out when you get a chance.

Interesting Links

• More Google Map stuff
• The waste we create
• Tricks our eyes play on us
• Pimping out a shopping cart
• Email worse than pot?
• What I am going to be doing when I retire
• Wayback Machine