It’s rare, but every once in a while I see something that makes me say “Whoa!”

In this case, my hosting provider is now offering 200GB of hosted disk space for $7.95 a month. Whoa!

That’s $7.95 with a 2 year agreement, or $9.95 with a 1 year agreement.

It wasn’t that long ago that 20 megs was a big deal. Heck, now I have almost as much storage online, as I do on my Dell that I bought last month.

Now, not everyone’s a fan of Dreamhost – but the one thing I do appreciate is that their support blog tends to air all their dirty laundry. This was probably the best entry ever: Anatomy of a Disaster. Especially with my network engineering background, I find it to be an interesting read.

Still, I enjoy their service (better than the other hosting providers I’ve used) and would recommend them.

So here’s the deal, click on this link, and enter “decheung10″ as the promo code. You’ll get $10 off almost any plan you choose – and I’ll get some rewards out of it too.

Now, to backup my photo collection online… and my music collection… gosh what else??

Here are two photos from the Career Fair and Information Session at Hopkins:

Take at a slow moment. Hm… that guy doesn’t look like a student. I’m not a big fan of the booth background picture – a few people walked by and didn’t realize it was Microsoft. If I could redesign it, it’d include a list of the products Microsoft works on.

We had some famous orange Microsoft cups shipped to the Information Session – those free pizzas went really fast!

One day I wondered how many Americans have passports – it looks like the answer is 27%.

New Passport Rules May Mean Delays – New York Times
The State Department estimates that 73 percent of Americans now lack passports.

MercuryNews.com | 09/30/2006 | Asian population surging in Bay Area
After a decade of strong growth during the 1990s in Silicon Valley, Indians and mainland Chinese each grew by about 30,000 in Santa Clara County from 2000 to 2005, a growth rate of about 40 percent for Indians and 30 percent for mainland Chinese. For those groups, Alameda County recorded similar percentage gains.

According to the new data:

• The combined Indian and mainland Chinese population grew by about 100,000 people in Santa Clara and Alameda counties since 2000, totaling about 400,000, and making them the two fastest-growing populations in the area.

• Growth among Vietnamese and Taiwanese in Santa Clara County has leveled off.

• Indians have nearly replaced Vietnamese as the valley’s second-largest Asian group, behind mainland Chinese.

• More people of Indian descent live in Santa Clara County than in Los Angeles or Manhattan. In the United States, the county’s Indian population now trails only that of Queens, N.Y.

• Nearly as many mainland Chinese are now in Santa Clara County as in San Francisco.

The numbers do not include people living in group quarters, such as college dormitories and prisons.

[snip]

Nor is the growth new: Milpitas, Cupertino and Fremont ranked among the 15 most demographically transformed cities in California from 1980 to 2000 with communities changing from mostly white to places where Asians equal or outnumber whites, said demographer Hans Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California.

This shouldn’t be surprising if you just drive around a little. It’s definitely something that’s different compared to living in NY and Baltimore.