The Langham Hotel Boston

Bid this 4+ star hotel from Hotwire for $130 plus taxes and fees (~$20).
Google Maps

Pro: Location
Con: small room, expensive food and services

The hotel is at the center of everything:
5 minute walking to
South Station (Take Federal and Franklin) for T (e.g. SL1 Bus to Logan ~20min)
State St Station (Take Pearl St.) for Blue/orange Line Metro
China Town (good restaurant: Ocean Wealth at 8 Tyler St, $11 lobster special )
Boston Common (Freedom Trail starting point)

The post office square park next door is very nice.

The room is small, no ventilation fan in the bathroom,
Nice central air condition with electronics control.
Very small elevators (4ft by 4ft?)
Nice health club (they have non-guest members working in nearby financial district buildings)

Bath tub shows its age and I'm considering it "shower-only".

Their charge structure is real four star (or five star), for example,
$75 breakfast for two
$10/25 minutes internet in business center
$32 valet parking ($25 self)
no shuttles to/from airport (3 miles away), the concierge suggested a cab for $25 or $100 limo.

The service is nice all around. Courteous staff. No problem for early check-in at 9am and leave luggage there after check-out.

Probably will stay there again if under $150 with priceline or hotwire.

Farewell to Andrew Agassi

After a lost at the US Open, Andrew Agassi finally left professional tennis. To some, "... some part of you want a better ending..." To me, I want to see him playing at least a few more matches. And he sure can do that, competitively.

Professional sports is everything about testing limits. Why can't the limit be how long someone can keep competing at a professional level? Why someone has to retire at their peak? For some, may be it's time for something else. But for some others, there is just no other choices. Professional means money and it turns to give most of money to just a few top players. The rest, like the waiters and waitresses in Hollywood, dream one day they will be on top. For these "Andrew Agassi"s, since it's down hill from there, so why bother?

Some may argue, this is how professional sport gets where it is today. But I will say, this is because it's not real sports anymore. Remember something called higher, faster, further?

Windows time server update frequency change

The changes to Windows described below requires modification of the registry. Please back up the registry before proceed. If you read the following and acted, you agree that I will not be responsible for any damages resulted from your action.

You probably already know that the clock in windows is very inaccurate if not been adjusted regularly. I still don't understand why Windows can't use a system clock on the motherboard or the CPU to do time synchronization. The digital watch I bought for $6 has much better accuracy than a $2000 computer.

Before XP, I used to download some utilities to do windows time synchronization. Windows XP and the server (Standard server 2003) now have a integrated time synchronization service that will periodically connect to an Internet time server. You can see this by double click the clock on the right bottom (in most systems). This will bring the Date and Time properties window and the third tab is Internet Time. The time synchronization can be done either manually (by click Update Now) or automatically.

The default update frequency is 1 week. For many systems, such as our server, it is not going to be enough. After some reading, I found this Microsoft article regarding Windows time service.

Two values in registry need to be modified:
1. Choose Run from Start Manu and type "regedit";
2. Back up Registry with a date in the file name and remember where the back up file is saved;
3. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time
4. Double click MinPollInterval and change the value to 4 (choose decimal if needed)
5. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters
6. Change SpecialPollInterval to 512, which will ask the system update time every 512 seconds.
7. Close registry editor.
8. Run Service.msc
9. Find Windows Time and stop it. They start it back on.

Now the time server should update at every 512 seconds instead of 1 week. You may check it through Windows Date and Time properties. If it doesn't work, make sure the specialPollInterval value you changed is the server you're using for the time update.