John McGraw stands at the busy intersection of 5th, Steward, and Westlake. He always faces the trolley station, officially Seattle Street Car. No doubt riders and tourist would walk up and study the inscription on the pedestal on which he stands. They would learns that this is the statue of the second governor of Washington State in late 1890s. In addition to side with Chinese against vigilantes who tried to deport them, he also advocated for the construction of Ballard Locks that connects Lake Washington to the Pacific Ocean.

Officially Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, this complex engineering project started operating in 1917. For 94 years, it allows ships to go out to the ocean for business and come back for clam protection. It has a fish ladder on the side to allow salmon to swim up back to spawn. The time to watch salmon will be from July to October, September at the peak. The lock engineers designed the attraction water &dmash; swift flow mixed with seawater against the fish — so that salmon will find the ladder. The fish gradually turn red when they are in the freshwater. Once up the streams, they lay thousands of eggs and died soon after. Seals and other predators learned to feast here; there are so many fish that it seems you can walk across the water.

Watching the boats going in and out the locks are fun too. Once in the locks, water rises or falls so quickly. Then the gates open and everything is fine. It is the elevators for boats.

Lockspot Cafe is an old fish and chips place right outside the entrance. Not bad if you are in the mood for Locks memories. Otherwise, venture into Ballard for more refined restaurants.

The battle between thick- and thin-client started in the mid-80s. At one corner was the Unix camp who led the technological innovation and was pushing a new thing called X Windows: a desktop standard for all Unix workstations. Over the other corner were Apple and Microsoft doing PCs with (then) rudimentary desktops. The Unix people came up with a great idea: a very cheap display-only device with practically no computational power connected to a big hunky server in the machine room. They call that X Terminal. That industry, short lived, made many millionaires in silicon valley. And everyone thought the battle was over. Thick clients won. X Terminal disappeared.

Several years ago, Sun Microsystems introduced SunRay display client, the same X Terminal with some new twists. It accepts a smart-card as the authentication device, and has global session migration. Insert your badge into any SunRay and, viola, whatever you were working on — email, presentation, documents, whatever — magically show up on the screen. Remove your badge and the screen just goes blank. Your badge became your computer. We were imagining every hotel rooms or coffee shops to have such device. Of course you knew what happened to Sun Micro. The SunRay project was not dead, but is probably in zombie zone in the deep of Oracle. That was yet another death for the thin-client.

I watched the news of Chrome Book with great interest. Isn’t this yet another resurrection of the dead thin-client?

Is it a fatal flaw for a computer to require a tether to the cloud? When all connections are off, my Kindle, iPad, laptop, etc. are still quite usable. I can read, write, or be entertained with them in offline mode. Except for my email messages, all my files fit into a $30 thumb drive that practically every computer would accept (not iPad, alas).

Finally, Chromebooks cost around $350 or more. You can easily buy a netbook with that. Laptops these days are really not expensive. Why would anyone pay more (or not less) for less?

Truth is, I never left. Three years ago.

Several of us arrived around the same time. Us transient people of this great city from else countries, drank the city in by the fire hoses. We, like all transient people, experienced the trickling out. I left them behind in 2008.

At a great catch-up get together, Friend mentioned the “Beijing fatigue.” Like a lover, this city drives you so crazy that you must leave, once in a while for a while. But you knew you cannot really leave. You will be back.

It is a gorgeous day from the hotel window. Sigh..

On one of my recent flight to SFO, soon after landing, as the very moment the seat-belt light turned off, a passenger sprang up and ran to the cockpit area. He talked to the attendant and got what he needed, a slim garment bag on hanger. He then attempted to return to where he was sitting, about 10 rows behind.

By that time, passengers and their carry-on bags have filled the narrow aisle. Ten rows has become very far. I was standing around mid-way and wondering how he would maneuver. In normal situation, passengers fetch their garments while the plane was descending and just hold on to them on the laps. This person knew enough to have his garments in hanger, deposit them when he boarded, but did not fetch them early. He looks mid-fifties with a face of determination. I wonder what would I do in this situation?

Most likely, when I realized that I have missed the window to fetch the garments, I would simply sit in my seat and wait for those in front of me to de-plane.

This guy became combative. He pushed and cussed and was just rude to those who did not yield fast enough. Either he left a precious thing unguarded on his seat or he was in a big hurry. Harsh words exchanged, cusses flew back and forth, but he won at the end and successfully de-planed with a tote and his precious garment bag.

When I got to the gate area, the garment guy was casually standing there doing not particularly anything. Now I was miffed. “What was your big hurry, man?” I thought to myself and kept on walking. That’s when a small hell broke out.

A tall and buff guy was now in high animated motion and loud shouting at the garment bag guy. I kept walking and honestly was amused and pleased. I did not regret not doing it myself, it is not my thing. I was sure glad that someone was giving the garment guy a piece of our collective minds.
The garment bag guy was obviously stunned.

SFO soon resumed her nonchalant flow, as if nothing happened.

I have been meditating since I was about 10 years old. I found an Yoga book and simply followed the instructions. It was cool as if I was practicing some advanced Kong Fu. I don’t know whether meditation changed my life or not, since it has been always part of me. I knew that it was not easy and I lost my ways frequently. But I also never knew it is a big deal or a mystery. Of course everyone can do it, even I did.

Diamond Sutra said once one can control one’s mind, he becomes a Buddha. With total mind-control, the Buddha can change everything with his thoughts. Everything! The universe, lives, deaths, atoms, energy, time travel! Most importantly, mind-control is nirvana: eternal happiness.

For millenenia, Buddhists searched ways to gain mind-control. In fact, that defines the denominations of Buddhism. Common to all of those denominations is the practice of meditation. Since one cannot come back from the Buddha-land or Nirvana country, there can be no proof if any of those methods actually work. But the general conclusion is absolutely clear.

No meditation, no Nirvana.

This is how I do it:

• Find a posture that you can remain stationary for about 30 minutes. There are really only few ways: sitting cross-legged is probably the easiest for beginners. It really does not matter. The point is once you start, you become very aware of your body. You need to minimize that.
• Keep your eyes slightly open and look down at a point several inches in front of your naval. You should see your nose in the path. Once you are used to this “looking at a point in the space” thing, you can close your eyes and do the same. There is really nothing in front of your naval so there is no need to your eyes slightly open. The point to look, but at nothing.
• Breath slowly and count. It does not matter how you count. I count one for both inhale and exhale and repeat at ten. So: inhale, exhale, one; inhale, exhale, two; …; ten; one; two; etc.
• I always breathe with my stomach when I meditate. When I inhale, I lower the diaphragm and extend my belly outward. At the same time, I imagine a flow of energy from my nostril down to the belly and reaching all the way to the tip of my spine. When I exhale, I imagine that flow coming up through my spine, reaching to my skull, and then exiting from my nostril. As I imagine this, I can feel that energy flowing in my body. I am not sure this is part of the meditation, but it keeps me focused.
• Except for counting, do not think of anything. Do not think of not thinking of anything. Keep your mind blank. Focus on that point in the space, keep the count going. Keep the mind blank. You will find this extremely difficult and you will work to drive those thoughts out of your mind. But you will get better. Gradually, you will enter a state that you are not sleeping, but not awake either. The more advanced you are, the longer you can stay in that state.

And this is it. Try it.