Saturday, October 29, 2022

Relocation tips (from China to the US)

想到接下来团队有几位同学要来美国加州旧金山湾区,就想整理个东西给新同学们,想到哪写到哪,主要还是衣食住行相关的,逐步完善吧。祝大家美国的工作生活一切顺利。



SSN 社会安全号

周五听说新来的同学去办SSN了,是的,这个是一来就要办理的事情,因为工资缴税等都要这个SSN. 这里的Social security number有点像身份证号码,但很少公开,平时用也大多是用最后4位,这个号码贷款等跟信用有关的都要用到。(非常多的scam电话短信,千万不要提供这个号码) 请妥善管理。申请office可以在 https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp 上查询,我当年去的是Mountain View的office, 后来发现 Campbell那边排队的人还好,估计是实在不显眼的原因,也离公司不远。

Social Security Administration

770 W Hamilton Ave, Campbell · (800) 772-1213


信用分

美国信用体系是根据SSN来查的。个人推荐装一个Credit Karma的APP, 可以很好的monitoring自己的银行账户活动和自己的信用分,免费的。新来的同学推荐办2张信用卡先,已开始不要太多,2张足够积累信用分。你的第一张卡一直保留着,这样可以积累credit history.


DMV 车管所

这个是刚来也必去的政府部门,以前的DMV以慢出名,现在也逐渐电子化,很多都可以网上办理,但考驾照还是不得不去DMV office的,具体情况看 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/

对我来说,很久远的事情了,但应该还是有笔试和路考,笔试有中文的题目,只要提前熟悉记忆这边的交规,应该很容易考过。路考就因人而异了,我当时为了驾照可是去了N趟DMV的,每次都要2-3个小时,正常不过的,所以要有耐心,特别是在国内天天开车的同学。听说也有些教练,会很有帮助,可以考虑去比较偏僻的DMV, 一来排队时间短,二来路考的时候路上的车流量也少,不太容易遇到一些特别的,比如警车,校车,垃圾车等等。

加州现在推行的Real ID, 这个就是经常用的身份标识了,比如买酒的时候,就经常要Photo ID, 我们就用驾照。平时把自己的护照和SSN妥善的保管好,不需要随身携带。


保险

医疗保险公司都有,也有额外的意外险可以购买,都很便宜,不用担心。美国的保险可以一人购买cover全家的。

汽车保险,等买了车后,就需要办理,很多agent代理车险,这个是必须购买的,一般半年半年的购买。


非处方药物

有些非处方药可以很方便的从连锁药店买到

CVS Pharmacy

Walgreens

Rite Aid

Walmart Pharmacy
Costco


手机

美国有5大运营商,不管你是用iOS还是Android, 都有很多选择。公司有手机BYOD的报销,所以办理了后尽快去enroll BYOD, 这样就可以每个月收到报销的费用。湾区主要还是AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, 听说Verizon的覆盖率最好,如果你喜欢经常hiking, camping, 推荐这个。我是用的T-mobile, 还行吧,之前公司没有报销,所以办了个最便宜的。


租房

https://www.zillow.com
https://www.apartments.com

https://www.apartmentfinder.com

https://www.rent.com

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/



买房

https://www.zillow.com

https://www.redfin.com

https://www.realtor.com



购物打折信息网站

Dealsea.com (English)

Dealmoon.com (Chinese + English, 华人社区打折信息,信息量很大)


购物返点网站

https://www.rakuten.com/r/LUCOZH?eeid=28187 (referral & earn $30 using the link to register) 这个是我用下来最好的最方便的, 支持Chrome extension,可以在信用卡返点的基础上额外有返点。美国很多网购都有支持coupon code, 可以用这个插件来帮忙。


买菜

https://www.99ranch.com

Costco (会员制,但在我看来,是性价比非常高的一家wholesale, 忠实粉丝,每月必去。一来后就办理了会员,不过最近Costco也有新会员奖励活动,建议关注dealsea, dealmoon信息)

Safeway (门店很多,很方便)

Wholefoods

Lion market

Marina Foods

Weee!华人生鲜第一站,首单减$20 https://www.sayweee.com/invite_friends/landing?referral_id=2219&t=1&lang=zh


吃饭

DoorDash is a great way to support local restaurants with safe, no-contact delivery. Get $30 off ($10 off each of your first 3 orders) when you sign up with this link: https://drd.sh/AnGW7NreSDX22RUQ


Hungry? Get $20 off your first UberEats order of $25 or more. Terms apply. Use my code at checkout: eats-jimz272ue   http://ubr.to/EatsGiveGet


华人餐厅: Cupertino, Milpitas, Santa Clara, Fremont 等有很多, google上随便search就会发现天南地北的口味都有。


买车

建议新车,省掉很多旧车的烦恼,弄个loan, 还帮助积累信用分。

https://www.carmax.com

https://www.edmunds.com/

https://www.kbb.com/



打车

Uber (应该有支持注册奖励)

Lyft (有推荐奖励)

For $15 in ride credit, download the Lyft app using my referral link. It's the most affordable ride in town. Terms apply. https://www.lyft.com/i/JIM365509?utm_medium=p2pi_iacc


道路救援

AAA https://membership.aaa.com



购物中心

Westfield Valley Fair 

Westgate Center

Santana Row

Eastridge Center

Macy’s

Nordstroms

Great mall

Stanford shopping center

Gilroy Premium Outlets

Simon Premium Outlets (Livemore)

美国网购也是比较发达,几乎零售商都有ecommerce,我个人常用的是amazon, costco, safeway, target, walmart, macy’s, nordstrom, ebay (我很少用)



银行

美国这边的银行一般都有开卡奖励。我当时来的时候都不知道这些,后来才了解到的。跟国内不同的是,这里有checking and saving 两种账户,checking简单说就是支票账户,没有存取限制,平时写支票付房租或者什么的,都是从这个账户走,saving更多是是存款账户,每个月有取款6次的限制。另外很少用的就是CD,类似国内的存单,利率如此低,没有必要定期存款。


  1. Bank of America (网点多,以前新开账户有奖励,不知道现在什么情况)

  2. Chase (新开账户奖励活动经常有,google上找或官网上看)

  3. Citibank (新开账户推荐有奖励,citibank官网显示现在的幅度很大, 根据存入的金额大小,有$300~$2000区间的金额。我个人觉得花旗不错,因为国内也有支行)


上面的三家银行很多网点都有讲中文的银行员工了,另外基本上所有的银行都有网上银行和手机银行。比较方便。

电子支付,这里普及度不高,所以平时出门还是要带着钱包(包括少量现金,因为有些地方是cash only),我偶尔用的主要是以下的几个工具:

Paypal (支持推荐邀请,有注册奖励)

Venmo (也是Paypal旗下的)
Apple Pay
Zelle (转账/付款等,主流银行都已经支持电话号码或email绑定了)

信用卡,建议开始只办2张,找人推荐,双方都可以拿奖励,也添加申请的成功率。在Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover这些常见的信用卡网络中,Visa, Mastercard 应该是大多地方都收的。


我有个运通的卡,平时买菜返点3%, 但也有少数店不收运通的卡 Apply for an American Express Card with this link. We can both get rewarded if you're approved!

http://refer.amex.us/HONGJZbGCh?XL=MIMCP


另一个强烈推荐的是Chase Freedom行用卡,门槛低,Chase Freedom Flex季度有5%的轮换返点(麻烦的是每个季度要从email里点一下,而不是自动enroll的),我一直用,支持Friend Referral program, 双方都有奖励,办卡者是$200,推荐者是$50.
Earn $200 cash back with Chase Freedom Flex or Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card. https://www.referyourchasecard.com/18a/NUSYFKSF8G or
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/18a/DAL4LX30DB
另外一种是Chase Freedom Unlimited, 无限制最低返点1.5%。2个卡的具体对比参考https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/freedom/CFD2022g?CELL=6RRW


证券账户

公司用的Etrade就很好,有stock plan, 也有个人证券账号

我平时用Robinhood, 因为以前这家不收交易手续费,现在应该都不收了。推荐link如下

Join Robinhood with my link and we'll both get a free stock 🤝 https://join.robinhood.com/hongjiz4




Saturday, October 15, 2022

DevOps Automation

I frequently remind the DevOps team about automation to enable standardization, speed and consistency. Manual operations will never scale, so we have to do more and more automations in DevOps work. 

First, automated monitoring and reporting for early warnings. Rapid changes means it is nearly impossible to keep track components and changes. Automation helps by enabling the DevOps team to create automated monitoring rules and generate alerts to keep track of Infrastructure availability, performance, security issues etc. Automation will help with TTD, TTM and TTR.

  • Time to detect (TTD): When performance or other issues arise, rich diagnostic data about the issues are fed back to development teams via automated monitoring.
  • Time to mitigate (TTM): DevOps teams act on the information to mitigate issues as quickly as possible so that users are no longer affected.
  • Time to remediate (TTR): Resolution times are measured, and teams work to improve over time. After mitigation, teams work on how to remediate problems at root cause so that they don't recur.

When we talk about service availability, MTTR (mean time to repair) is also critical during an outage, with automation and observability, DevOps engineers can quickly act on mitigation to bring back the service. Monitoring tools collect and analyze system data and translate it into actionable insights. Observability uses the data and insights that monitoring produces to provide a holistic understanding of your system, including its health and performance. 

Log management can also be automated. Logs are paramount in identifying issues in an application. An application might generate a large number of logs. Through automation and the aggregation and analysis of these logs using log management tools, you’ll be able to easily pinpoint issues in software.

Apart from monitoring and log management, there are other areas need automation:

  • Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)
  • Infrastructure management
  • Software testing

Automation, automation, automation. The more we invest in automation, the better Standardization, Flexibility, Consistency, Speed, and Scalability.