My name is Xiaolei Li and I work at Groupon. I used to work at Microsoft adCenter as an Applied Researcher. I graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was in the Database and Information Systems Laboratory under the guidance of Prof. Jiawei Han. My thesis was on the topic of spatiotemporal data mining. Other topics I have interest in include general data mining, OLAP, data indexing, and machine learning.

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recent events >>

Settling Down

Signed the lease on our more permanent place yesterday. Found a great townhouse in Sunnyvale, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, a couple of patio areas, awesome living room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Going to be pretty sweet. Moving there in roughly 2 weeks, can't wait.

I've been using the Magic Trackpad lately. Before, I thought it was kind of a lame device. Basically yet another attempt by Apple to make some cash. But after using it for a few days, I get it now. It lets me do all the multi-finger gestures I do on a laptop with a desktop. For example, I use the 2-finger scroll and 4-finger expose a lot. The 3-finger drag is also pretty useful.

2011-04-24 00:46:17 CST

Groupon

Just finished my second day of work at Groupon today. Lots of learning happening; very exciting. Feels a little weird not inside the MS world. Bash/Vim commands are slowly coming back to me. I find myself pressing key combinations with some kind of muscle memory and they actually do things that I want! Sucks that I lost my .vimrc and .bash_profile from those days. It's going to take a while to get all that configured right.

For the past week, I've been driving a rented Nissan Versa while waiting for my actual car to be transported here. I've grown attached to the thing. It's weak but cute. Feels like a toy. I like throwing it around corners at speeds that almost feel like I'm going to roll over. Parking is also way easier with a tiny car.

2011-04-15 01:45:23 CST

New Old World

After spending almost 3 years in Seattle, I'm now back in California, Bay Area to be exact. The wife and I flew down yesterday and are now living in Mountain View. I quit Microsoft and will be joining Groupon next week. The wife is transferring to the Microsoft down here.

Lots of changes but it also feels like we never left. The wife's previous job was in the Bay Area and I spent a few summers here as well. Everything around has that familiar feel to it. Reduces the stress of moving I suppose.

Along with the move back, I'm also going to re-introduce a couple of old hobbies back into my life. First is music. I haven't seriously listened to music, old or new, in at least a year. I almost exclusively listen to podcasts these days. It's good and bad I suppose. I keep up with current happenings with podcasts but a lot of them are redundant (anyone else feel like 90% of the twit network is just reverberation of the different shows?). I've been missing out on a lot of new music (Mogwai, Red Sparowes, the whole "chill-wave" scene, etc).

Second is photography, specifically film photography. I haven't touched a film camera in ages. I basically just use my Panasonic Micro 4/3 these days. Kinda sad to have all that equipment sitting around gathering dust. In the next couple of weeks, I'm definitely going to break out one of the medium formats, shoot a couple of rolls, and develop them at home. Let's just hope I still remember how to load film, how to meter, ... :-)

One last thing. I've decided to stop subscribing to cable TV. With the HD, DVR, HBO, etc. packages, it was adding up to something like $100/month just for TV, even though I just watch a handful of shows. Ridiculous. Instead, I'm going to start subscribing to Hulu Plus on the PS3. I already have Netflix on that. Add ESPN3 on the Xbox, that's basically 90% of what I watch these days.

2011-04-08 01:55:02 CST

Finally Back

I forgot the password to my stupid blogger form and couldn't remember it for the life of me. Finally got them to reset it for me and now I can finally write to this! Some random musings...

• Red Dead Redemption is a pretty awesome game
• Pansonic GF1 is a pretty decent camera but I'm having a hard time seeing it replacing the 5D mk II
• Kobe sucks. Fisher sucks. Lakers suck.
• Still using my iPad everyday, not a fad
• Tired of the iPhone though, looking to jump ship
• Listening to podcasts at 2X speed at the gym, a very good idea

2010-06-18 02:21:01 CST

TK Back on the Radio

Seriously. Best show on the radio. People still listen to the radio, right?

2009-09-09 01:03:22 CST

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Xiaolei Li
Last Modified: Wed Mar 30 10:36:58 PDT 2011