Last weekend was Logitech Family Day, a trip/event organized by Logitech where employees can bring their friends and families.

The activities were not too exciting (especially the paint ball for which some people had signed up and then got to play for around 10 minutes), but I got to make one of my favorite Taiwanese desserts, 愛玉. Here are two pictures of me and another one where they were making mochi (麻糬):

By the way, Loïc was a little faster than I was, he's mentioning the event in his blog as well, including some funny pictures.

As part of the event we even got a gift voucher and today was the day where we could pick it up at the warehouse (that already made me suspicious). It turned out we had the choice between a really old webcam, a really old wired mouse, and a really old wired PS/2 keyboard. It wasn't so much a gift as a "please help us empty our warehouse, it's cheaper than ordering the trash company" object.

Anyway, free stuff is free stuff (haha, I'm cheap ;-), so I went for the keyboard. If nothing else I can use it to practice Bopomofo (the Taiwanese alphabet).

For the time being, though, I put it up in my office:

(I hate to explain jokes, but in case you can't read the Chinese, it says: "Antique keyboard exhibition. Please don't touch.")

Today was the first day of Taiwanese WinHEC, so the Logitech driver team took a little field trip to Taipei--except for the lucky people who got to go to WinHEC in Los Angeles. :-)

So far, it's pretty interesting and I'm learning plenty of new stuff, although not necessarily in great detail. Some of the demos are really impressive but after seeing Vista fail miserably in my personal test I'm very suspicious of some of the things I see "work great".

Anyway, here are two photos I took in the conference center:

Who would have guessed Microsoft would display the products of their hardware division's biggest competitor ...

After all the nice birthday wishes and e-mails I got today I guess it's time to give something back. How about relief from sarcasm? That's right, unless you happen to be unfortunate enough to live in Taiwan, in which case you'll have a hard time escaping my sarcasm, you should be pretty safe from my sarcastic comments for the next couple of years. (I can hear the first smart asses out there ask "What about your blog?"--well, that's really your own fault now, isn't it? ;-)

So, what are the reasons I'm staying in Taiwan instead of going back to California like it was planned? As always my reasons are manifold.

Let's start with the intelligent U.S. immigration politics. As you may have heard the run for this year's H-1B visas was generally a little underestimated, which prompted the USCIS to resort to a (more or less) random draw procedure that favored holders of U.S. MSc diplomas. I'm not going to dive into this topic cause others have done that plentiful, but I would be very interested in the opinion of a qualified economist. To me it looks like the U.S. government is passing on a lot of income taxes and pissing off their own companies, forcing them to move their workforce elsewhere. There may be more to it but I don't see it.

Then, the more I thought about the U.S. and my future in general, the less I saw myself living in the California. The poor health care and social system, the unhealthy and repetitive cuisine, the amount of driving and traffic, or paying for unjustifiable wars with my taxes are just a few things that bugged me more than I allowed myself to believe.

The longer I stayed in Taiwan, the more I felt that I would be happier here than in the U.S., especially since I can do the same great job here. It's pretty cool to work for a company that proves flexible enough to adapt so easily to the changing minds of their employees. :-)

I think I've said the same thing when I went to California last year: Feel free to come visit me at any time! At the time it didn't work very well; few people actually took the opportunity to do so, but I'm very happy about the ones that did! If you like a beautiful country with nice people and delicious, albeit slightly "unusual", food, this is your chance! (Today someone at Logitech offered to take me to a nightmarket to eat snake one of these days. I'll try to gather a few photos of dishes I've tried and come to like around here. I'll make sure the snake is on one of them! :-)

Last Friday we went on what's officially called a "team building event". Less officially it was a kick-ass karting event organized by the Logitech video driver and firmware team at the LeMans Karting Center here in Fremont.

I finally (some claim I do it on a regular basis on windy roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains or between Chur and Peist) got a chance to practice and proof the skills earned while driving in the Swiss mountains. Either that or pure luck made me come in second out of fourteen leaving behind everyone but Patrick. Everybody had so much fun that I feel the chance of a rematch in 2008 coming up. ;-)

There are some pictures in my gallery. Sorry for the bad quality, indoor lighting and cell phone cameras are to blame. Nevertheless thanks to Richard and Loïc for taking them!

If you're wondering why my blog is a little empty these days, there is a very simple reason: No time. I currently work more than 50 hours a week (and Loïc more than 60, it seems, but he claims that he takes more breaks ;-), so by the time I get home I feel exhausted and overwhelmed by a lack of creativity.

The actual news would probably be that I'm in the middle of (or should I say: at the very beginning of) learning Mandarin and preparing my three months' trip to Taiwan. I'll hope to post something about that very soon. It'll probably be in English, though. For some reason my blog doesn't support Chinese characters ... And that will remain the only official reason. :-)

Either way, I thought the following picture taken last Friday at Logitech was pretty symbolic of the current situation:

What does a good Logitech employee do during the first few weeks of his new job? Right. Take advantage of the employee discount. ;-)

The first item didn't actually cost me anything as it was a clear case for warranty. The Logitech Wireless Headphones for iPod that I had liked so much slowly started multiplying. (It's what I assume marketing people would call it when the headband snaps.) So, I got a pair of these instead:

Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones:

The first impression was not exactly good. The headband sat way too low in my neck, I felt like something was constantly strangling me and every time I moved my head it hurt my ears. So, after two days of not finding a way to adjust them and wanting to trade the new headphones in for the old broken ones and a tube of superglue, I finally came across a this review and continued trying until I found the solution: The rubber ear bands cannot be turned in place but they can be taken off and put back on very easily. New verdict: best wireless headphones I ever had. :-)

Of course, wireless headphones have their drawbacks. You can run out of battery and, due to their light design, they're not exactly great in a noisy environment. (If you've ever tried to listen to music in the BART you know what I'm talking about.) Again, Logitech to the rescue ...

Logitech Noise Cancelling Headphones:

To get a first impression of what noise cancelling technology can do I borrowed a pair of Sony ones and was heavily disappointed: the "negative noise" in a silent environment was about as loud as the noise that it tried to cancel. After reading a number of rather positive reviews of the Logitech ones I decided to go ahead and buy a pair. The ingenious part about them: once you put them on, most of the noise is already gone. The circumaural ear pads absorb already so well that the audio processing can easily remove the remaining (stationary) noise. Admitted, there is some ground noise introduced by the circuit but given the target environment--e.g. a plane or a train--that should be okay.

Having good music is all nice and great, but at the end of the day (and probably during the day, too) you still have to work. As some of you know, I've never been a big fan of mice. Nothing beats a keyboard shortcut or an editor like Vim where you can reduce any mouse user to a gasping spectator with the stroke of a few well chosen keys. So, for the few things where it's hard to avoid the mouse I'd like to be as efficient and precise as possible.

A great opportunity to test whether the new series of Revolution mice is revolutionary as promised. I decided to go for the VX notebook model and, indeed, it is very nice to handle. The movements are really precise and scrolling has never been that easy. I actually managed to scroll a 65,000 line Excel sheet from the bottom to the top with one swift motion of my index finger. Almost makes the Ctrl+Home shortcut obsolete. ;-)

Logitech VX Revolution:

In the past, the Logitech mouse drivers and applications have been infamous for their pathetic quality to the point where friends advised me not to tell people that I'm working on Logitech drivers--to avoid a spontaneous beating.

That must have been the reason why they came up with SetPoint, the successor to GrausWare (sorry, you need to know German for this one). Is it any better? Weeeelll ... At least it hasn't bluescreened my machine, which is already something. MouseWare took about one stand-by/resume cycle for that. But the software itself is still an exhibition of bugs (meaning they're so obvious, they can hardly be considered bugs) and it provides less functionality than some of the previous. Why, the hell, won't they let me assign the double click to the thumb button? I know it's lazy but I like it anyway! And browsing in the forums doesn't exactly do a lot to improve that impression.

It seems, though, that I'm not alone in my discontent. Somebody came up with an excellent hack called uberOptions that tweaks a bunch of configuration files and--voilà--more settings than you ever imagined. (Including the double click for the thumb button.) Integrate that piece of software into SetPoint, plan about a month of serious bug squishing and you have one of the greatest pointing devices available.

PS: We'll have the quality discussion again when the first product that I've worked on is shipping. ;-)

In case you were wondering what Logitech's mice do at night: they eat your snacks. No, I'm not talking about the fancy electronic ones that come in different colors and flavors, I'm talking about the ones that came to like the madeleines I'm keeping at the office for hungry moments.

Maybe I should put up a webcam or a mouse trap, just to be sure that they're not actually of the same species ...

Things are finally calming down a little bit here in Lausanne. I've moved into my apartment last Saturday. (Aren't those supposed to get bigger once you get out of school and start a job?) Because it's about 11 km away from Romanel-sur-Morges where I work and I refuse to give in to public transportation one of my favorite pastimes is eating.

When I'm not eating I'm enjoying work at Logitech. Mainly reading up on driver development (Windows this time) and trying to get organized.

Two things positively surprised me about Logitech Switzerland, one of them has to do with Logitech and the other with Switzerland.

1. The cafeteria actually serves good food. You know, real menus with healthy vegetables instead of rare-cooked hamburgers that make you sick for the rest of the day. (Hello, Fremont cafeteria ...)

2. I know nobody's last name. Cause I don't have to. Just like in Fremont, people call each other by their first names. No "Monsieur" or "Madame". I was really expecting the typical uptight Swiss attitude there. I hope this spreads out to other European companies!

Not really surprising but nontheless positive is the fact that I have fancy keyboards and mice, e.g. one of these. (Yes, the diNovo Edge works fine even on Linux, it's recognized as two HID devices.) Working on consumer devices is just so much more fun to than sitting in the basement of a bank. ;-)

There were a few other things I wanted to mention but I seem to have forgotten. A clear sign to make three steps to the right and go to bed.

Remember the time I said good-bye to Lausanne? Well, apparently all roads don't lead to Rome but back to Lausanne.

I will start out my new position as Video Software Engineer at Logitech in Romanel-sur-Morges until the end of December. Therefore, I will once again be living in Lausanne, albeit only for four weeks. At least that should give me time to get over the weather shock I suffered in sunny California. ;-)

For most Americans Halloween is something very special. The same holds true for some "Swiss" companies. At Logitech Fremont all hell breaks loose in the week of Halloween, something that nobody should miss.

Unfortunately, I missed by only a few days but a friend of mine took a few pictures and put them in his gallery. Have fun!