Azaria

We've been sampling a bunch of nearby restaurants during the holiday shutdown, courtesy of a dramatic discount at Restaurant.com (it's still going on until the end of the year -- get your 80% discount by entering the coupon code CELEBRATE when it's time to checkout).

Today, we visited the very yummy (though pricey) Astaria in San Mateo where the old Lark Creek Inn used to be (attached to the Ben Franklin Hotel on East 3rd). I think those were the best French fries I ever had. And certainly the most intruiging bread pudding. Go get a gift certificate and try it out for yourself.

Here's their very California take on fish and chips: a raw marinated tuna served with house-made yam (or some other exotic vegetable) chips. Tasty. Very friendly service and upscale ambiance as well: great for a special occassion.

Sorry about the photo quality: I didn't drag my Nikon DSLR in with me, so this is from the Canon point and shoot.

Time to go to church

 

Cameron is such the fun age now. He's also the family's class clown -- always laughing and with a mischievous gleam in his eye. We're not ready for all the children to grow up as fast as they are!  For some reason, I liked this shot of the tiny guy as he and mommy head up the hill to church.

Lawrence Hall of Science

Frank took the kids up to the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley on Saturday. It was a beautiful crisp winter day, and we enjoyed a perfectly done thin-crust pizza at Zachary's (mmmm, tasty!) to fortify ourselves right before. Cameron polished off an enormous slice the same size his siblings had.

The pizza restaurant was employee owned and operated, and the servers were remarkably friendly and attentive. Don't know if there was a causal relationship, but it was refreshing to be served by friendly folk. An employee owned enterprise: very fitting for the Berkeley backdrop.

The museum was perfect for the kids: they enjoyed all of the exhibits, especially the interactive ones that were part of the traveling Engineer It! exhibit (see it now, as it's only in town until January 4). Though Katye declared her favorite exhibit was the gift shop where we saw a motley collection of dramatically enlarged stuffed germs called the GIANTmicrobes.

 

See the photo album on Smugmug.

Christmas kids

OK, we leave the 2008 Christmas season with a triptych, courtesy of SantaSnaps, a freebie Mac application that friendly folks at MacHeist are (were?) giving away.

Next time, we'll have to to pick a time when the light is streaming into the office just so, but the kids enjoyed posing nonetheless.

Ruby reds

Wow, they weren't kidding when they named these ruby red grapefruits. Here's Cameron reaching for some delicious grapefruit (from which mommy carefully peeled the bitter outer skin).

And here is Colin's reach:

Do you like one of these images more than the other? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

The Nikon does not like my compact florescent lights. The auto white balance setting doesn't look right, and neither do any of the preset color balance settings: it's not quite tungsten, and it's definitely not fluorescent. So I'll have to figure out how to compensate properly (don't know how to use that feature of the camera yet).

Also, I shot these pics with my dad's old, old Nikon 50mm lens which doesn't autofocus or meter with my camera. Nikon calls these non-CPU lenses since they don't have embedded smarts to work with the camera's electronics. So I'm going old school playing with various metering settings until I get a half decently exposed shot.

But the lens does open wide, which creates the arty blurry backgrounds. I also learned that photographers have a fancy word for this blurry background: bokeh. Sounds like some Greek dessert, though I believe it's actually from a Japanese term.

(Yes, I'm just playing with my new toy now. This is what vacations are for!)  :-)

A fabulous brunch at La Boheme in Burlingame

We just had a fabulous brunch at La Boheme in Burlingame. It's just like being in Paris, except the waiters are friendly and speedy (sorry, couldn't resist -- but that has been my experience in France every time I've gone).

The flavors in each of our dishes just popped. The bread was yummy, the potatoes were yummy, everything was yummy. After each bite, I was just left thinking, "wow, so that's what jam (or chocolate or ham or butter or hazelnut) is supposed to taste like." As they say, it's the ordinary dishes which give chefs the opportunity to really show their stuff.

Read the Yelp review, then see the pictures, then drive over to La Boheme and enjoy!  Yum!

(Loving my Nikon DSLR, in case you are wondering. Smugmug is going to regret offering unlimited photo uploads.)

 

 

A lesson in humility

Faithful readers will remember that a few posts ago, I shared my goal to bowl a perfect game in Wii Sports bowling. I think my high game was 265, which is all strikes except for a 7 and 2 in the last frame -- not when you want to choke!

So for my lesson in humility: I was playing with the kids last night ("Wii family bowling", we call it). I was bowling all out -- no mercy bowling to let anyone win. You can see the results below. Let me provide the legend to our Miis. In order, that's:

• Cameron, age 3 (yes, age 3): winner with 192
• Daddy: age withheld: runner-up at 182
• Colin: age 8, bowling in at 180
• Katye: age 5, with a total of 153
  

Hats off to di di (Cameron), who earned more than 70 points on his way towards being a bowling pro.

Daddy is very proud that he got schooled by his three year old. (Yes, I know you want your kids to do better than you in all aspects of life, but I didn't know it was going to start quite so early.)

Sushi!

To celebrate Fedora's birthday, we ordered up the gigantic Joy Sushi Special. Would you believe this is their medium-sized sushi combination? Now I'm totally curious to see their large, which they call the Joy Sushi Cruise Ship. Maybe it features multiple decks?

Here are the hardworking sushi chefs assembling our boat. It took them about 45 minutes to finish, which seemed a little long. But we were in no hurry, so we enjoyed catching up with Tim and Sumin.



I hope this will be the first of many "shots I couldn't get with my point-and-shoot camera", as I was probably 30-40 feet away in a poorly lit environment when I snapped this shot from the 2nd floor balcony.

Yup, that means I finally broke down and got a DSLR (Christmas present to myself!). In retrospect, I think I paid roughly the same for my shiny new Nikon D90 (sans lens) as I paid for my first Olympus point-and-shoot years ago. Ah, the relentless march of progress!

I was on the fence between a Canon and a Nikon for the longest time, but finally decided I could get outstanding results with both cameras. Then I found a good deal on a twice-used 18-200mm Nikon zoom lens on Craigslist, so I concluded that God wanted me to get the Nikon. :-)

Virtual Box

If you've ever:

• Been curious about what a different operating system (say Ubuntu or Windows Vista) looks and feels like
• Need to run the odd Windows application (say Quicken) on your Mac
• Have a Vista machine but long for the simpler, nimbler days of Windows XP without blowing away your existing Windows installation
  
• Wanted to surf in a safe environment without worrying about Bad Things on the Internet (viruses, malware, etc.)
  

Then you should go get the free VirtualBox (the latest release, version 2.1, just dropped today). It helps you do all of those things, it's free, and it's pretty lightweight on system resources. (There are a few caveats, so talk to your resident geek to understand what this approach will protect you from -- and what it won't protect you from, such as phishing attacks.)

I just upgraded to the 2.1 release using my Mac as the host. I'm running Ubuntu, Vista and XP and guests. Now that VirtualBox supports the fancy technology in modern Intel chips (VT-x) to speed up virtualization, it's smoother, faster, and more responsive than ever.

It's not for resource hungry games (this is what I keep my old Dell around for), but for all the scenarios I mentioned above, it's amazing free software. I have no idea what Sun gets out of it, but don't let that bug you: just go get it.

Just as OpenOffice is not quite as powerful and full featured as Microsoft Office, VirtualBox is not quite as powerful or full featured as VMware Fusion or Parallels. For example, its implementation of "Seamless Mode" which mingles your guest OS windows with your host OS windows is a hack compared to Fusion's. But you can't beat the price. For the simple things I need out of a hypervisor (that's what nerds call this kind of software), it just works.

Aside from games, the only thing that doesn't work all that great is streaming video from Netflix. (streaming from Hulu and most of the major broadcast networks works just fine.) But now that the Netflix can do that directly to a Mac, I just watch on my Mac.

When 1 is not enough

This is when Cameron decides one popsicle is not enough and reaches out to take mom's.

Yum: popsicles

Colin and Katye enjoy popsicle time at Frank's parent's over the weekend. Well, Katye enjoys her fudgesicle while Colin is a little behind and hasn't opened his yet.

Christmas tree

We put the Christmas tree up right after Christmas. One of our light strands died, so we replaced it with a strand of almost too-bright LED lights.

That's the relentless march of technology for you: brighter lights using less power.

Here in the picture, we got this set of one-eared cats from a McDonalds in Taiwan a few years ago. I think they're from some comic series that's on TV in Asia.

In the useless skills department...

In the utterly useless skills department, I'm trying to bowl the perfect Wii bowling game by the end of the year.

I swear the Wii can sense when you are closing in on it and ratchets up the precision you must achieve to get a strike. No, really. :-)

Wow: 40 years!

We were privileged to celebrate a momentous milestone with Fedora's dad this weekend. He's celebrating -- count them -- forty years of ministry with the 29th Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco.

In our twitchy, Twitter-y culture, people have a hard time doing anything for forty weeks continuously, much less forty years. Hats off to Reverend Chin for a lifetime of steadfast and sacrificial ministry on behalf of our God.

See more pictures on Smugmug.

BFAM Christmas Party

 

This year's BFAM Christmas party had a more modest turnout that most years, but that meant more food and fun for the people who did come.  :-)

The kids enjoyed making their own fragrant smelling Christmas tree ornaments and eating Smarties along the way.  If you brought one of your child's ornaments home, make sure it's baked enough. Speaking from horrifying personal experience, if you leave too much moisture in them, they get furry -- and not in a good way.

See the whole gallery of pics on Smugug.

Another HP Friends and Family offer

If you haven't bought your holiday cards, Snapfish is offering HP friends and family (yes, this means you) 20 free photo cards if you buy more than 20.

So go forth and claim your photo cards.  Use discount code HPFRIENDS during checkout.

Tivo day

I declare today Tivo day.

Earlier this afternoon, I dropped by Tivo HQ in Alviso to participate in usability testing for a new feature they're working on (improved searching, essentially). It's fun to see new features under development, and they reward test subjects well. :-)

Also ran across this offer for a free Tivo cookie cutter for signing up to be on their mailing list (it's possibly you can even opt out of actually getting spammed, but I didn't try that). Get yours here.

Under the chairs

We were warming up to take an extended family pictures for Thanksgiving, and the kids decided that under the chair was more fun than on the chairs.  :-)

 

You can see the more rest of the shoot on my dad's Picasa Web Album.

Happy Thanksgiving

For a few years running now, we've enjoyed a vegetarian Thanksigiving dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the city called Ming's Diner. They serve surprisingly realistic (looking and tasting) renditions of mu-shu pork, walnut prawns, and even steamed fish with ginger.

Colin gave it a half thumb up, though that did not prevent him from eating at least half a dozen of a fried meat-substitute appetizer. Katye gave it two thumbs up, as did Cameron. Cameron insisted on using his mu shu wrapper as a hat and hand towel, though.

All in all, it was a good time, and we're thankful for the Tings who invited us.

 

 See more pics on Smugmug.

Cameron the clone trooper

My parents enjoyed seeing Cameron in his clone trooper costume, even without the helmet.

How bad is this stock market decline?

I saw this fabulous graph (well, the news that is graphs is terrifying, but the way the graph conveys the information is fabulous) on the Baseline Scenario , a blog about the financial crisis I started following a few weeks ago. 

It compares four bear markets in terms of both how far the markets dropped and how long the bear market lasted. This one is already the 2nd worst by percentage decline, but it's no Great Depression. Yet.

(Click the graph to see the bigger version.)

Posing like thier personalities

Their poses reflect their personalities in this picture, I think:

• Colin: earnest & eager to please
  
• Katye: slightly crazed
• Cameron: not sure what's happening but along for the ride so he doesn't get left out
  

Low gas prices

Who would have thought we'd see near-$2 gasoline in California again? I didn't snap the pic above, but it could have easily been me given that I filled up last over the keend $2.279 a gallon.

Gas prices are now lower than they've been since we got our Prius a little over a year ago. Some fun factoids from your OCD recorder of gas facts in the 28 times we've filled the car up:

• Highest price: $4.60 on June 14, 2008.
• Lowest price: $2.28 on November 15, 2008.
• Also yielded the lowest cost of operation: 5.0 cents per mile
  
• Best mpg on a tank: 56.9 mpg on March 26, 2008 (486.6 miles on 8.556 gallons)
• Worst mpg: 47.9 mpg on December 26, 2007 (411.8 miles on 8.6 gallons)
• Highest cost to operate: 9.2 cents/mile on July 24, 2008
• Lifetime: 52.0 mpg (though the computer shows 53.1 mpg)

Even though gas prices have plummeted, I doubt this will last long. Or at least, I hope it doesn't, since oil prices being below $60/barrel reflect a shrinking economy. Regardless of how gas prices move, I must say I still love my Prius. It's quiet, the Bluetooth works great, and surprisingly roomy.

Salt and Light Choir

We were blessed to have the Salt and Light Choir perform at our Thanksgiving Banquet. Things I learned about the choir:

• They are Korean.
• They can really sing!
• They practice at our church every other week. 
• They have lots of outfits. They must have changed 3 times during in the space of a half-hour show.

Most excellent.  See the entire event at Smugmug.

Pumpkin pies

...as far as the eye can see.

 

Thanksgiving Banquet

The two older kids ate an astounding amount at the annual FBC Thanksgiving Banquet. Who doesn't love ham and turkey smothered in gravy? And while they were slightly disappointed this year didn't feature mashed potatoes, they more than made up for it in holiday meat.  :-)

 

This post also marks the blog debut of our new camera, the Canon Powershot SD880 IS. The wider-angle lens (28mm equivalent) and improved sensor + processor (the so-called Digic 4) is definitely yielding better pics.

Party like it's 1999

Flash back to the dawn of the Internet retailing age in late 1999 and early 2000. Remember the free or massively discounted stuff, free shipping, and other crazy deals? (How many people got Pets.com to ship them a 50 pound bag of dog food for free?)

Well, those days are mostly over, but I did stumble across an impressive shopping deal, just in time for Christmas. Microsoft Live Search (tagline: "please use my search engine, pretty please, I'll pay you") is currently running a promotion that offers a whopping 25% off items you purchase on eBay using Buy It Now.

You have to use the Microsoft Live Search engine and follow the Cashback links. Read carefully and make sure the cashback badge follows you all the way to your final transaction.

Of course there are restrictions and it will take some time for your money to show up, but where else are you going to get this kind of discount on such a broad array of products? Looks like this is the year we finally get (and keep) a DSLR!

Wii boxing

It's more fun watching people Wii box than it is playing it. 

Harvest Carnival 2008

A great time was had by all. Candy and carnival-style games and tasty deserts. What's not to love? Thanks to all who labored mightily so that we could enjoy the harvest.

The 7 Deadly Sins of the Financial Crisis

I taught a Sunday school class about the financial crisis last weekend. My presentation was packed with charts and included a crash course on mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps (not our typical Sunday school fare, in case you were wondering.)

In retrospect, this cartoon which I found on Digg, pretty much sums it all up without the financial mumbo-jumbo:

Sustainable sushi

It's hard to imagine a world without sushi -- how crushing would that be? But a combination of the growing global appetite for sushi and unsustainable fishing practices are putting certain species of fish at big risk.

What to do, what do do? Given that swearing off sushi forever would make life not worth living (well, ok, that's an exaggeration -- but only a tiny one), the next best thing is to order sushi that is either sustainable caught or sustainably farmed (some fish farming techniques may actually hurt more than help).

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has published an online guide to sustainably harvested fish on their Seafood Watch Website (you can learn more about all kinds of seafood, not just the raw variety). If you want something to bring to your next sushi eating expediation, you can also order a handy printed pocket guide.

(Dave Hewlett of HP fame had a big hand in getting the Monterey Bay Aquarium going, so I have to give a shout out to my current employer.)

So study up before you hit the next sushi bar. Besides, you need something to take your mind off the financial crisis. :-)

Visualizing our national debt

I am a big fan of the well-designed visualization. The good folks who publish the Mint.com blog just published one I particularly like. It visualizes our national debt as a series of credit card balances drawn against the financiers of our runaway government spending -- the Bank of Japan, the Bank of China, the OPEC nations, etc.

The amounts are normalized to the median income of a typical American family ($50,233). Very illuminating.

By the way, if you haven't tried the Mint service, it's definitely worth a whirl. I think they are probably within 6-9 months away from enabling to kick my Quicken habit of over 10 years.

The way they visually show you:

• How you're spending
• How your portfolio compares to the major indexes (even though no one wants to see that these days), and
• How your spending compares with people in your own or other cities is astounding.
  

Intuit ought to buy these guys and put the (now free) Quicken.com out of its misery.

Defender of the, uh, playground slide

There is tiny playground near my mom's house that we haven't been to in ages. (Usually the kids are too tired or it's too late as we're leaving my parents' house.) But timing worked out last weekend, and God blessed us with a beautiful warm, sunny afternoon.

Here, Cameron is posing as the All Powerful Guardian of the Playground Slide. Or something like that.

HP's printer and PC bailout plan

OK, if you are feeling left out of the government's historic bailout plan, HP is here to help with $40 off printers and $50 of desktops and notebooks. You can get the product wherever you want (good), but you will have to fill out a rebate form (oh well).

This is for friends & family of employees, which by virtue of reading this blog, you are.

Enjoy.

• Save $40 on any HP Printer over $199 
• Save $50 on any HP Desktop PC or Notebook

A bouncy house with a built-in slide

For the technological breakthrough of the weekend, we proudly feature a bouncy house with a slide. Cameron and Katye must have gone down this slide 100 times. It was all we could do to tear them away and go home.

Happy birthday to Cali and Morgan. Thanks for having us! The full set of pics are on Smugmug.

Tim and Sumin's local reception

Tim and Sumin held a local reception for friends & family who couldn't make it out to Korea. With the prospect of good food to be eaten, we of course went to both.

Click here for pictures of the good eats at ABC Seafood.

Colin loves biking

We're proud of Colin, who picked up two-wheeled biking over a few days. He loves biking around now and wants to go all the time. The streets around our house aren't the best place for a beginning biker, so we usually trot him over to one of the nearby schools. He especially enjoys it when Erin and Ryan come along too.

Katye is enjoying her bike with training wheels as well, though often gets stuck when the bike's wheel finds a spot of ground which lifts the wheel off the ground relative to the two training wheels.

Cameron and I just run around pretending to be go-karts from Mario Kart Wii while his two sibs are biking. Or sometime, he just sits.

 

The mortgage meltdown via cartoons

OK, if the slide presentation stuffed with graphs was a little too much information, try this stick-figure cartoon. Here's the first panel from the very instructive set:

Warning: it's got profanity in it, though I have to say that in this case, the profanity underscores the narrative. You've been warned.

The numbers behind the mortgage meltdown

If you want to understand and see the trends behind the mortgage meltdown, check out this presentation. It's dense, but probably the single best presentation I've seen explaining the mess. Stay tuned for my next post, which takes a very different approach to teaching you about what happened.

Making Sense of the Mortgage Meltdown

From: pkedrosky, 1 day ago

Making Sense of the Mortgage Meltdown

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: kedrosky milken)

Great slide deck untangling the mortgage meltdown from a seminar today at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles.


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