Frank and Fedora's Blog

Test post to Posterous

2010-08-08T14:47:00.001-07:00

This is a text post.

I'm basically comparing Posterous and Tumblr auto-posting capabilities. Surprising that syndicating content is that hard to do. All I'm trying to do is:

Use one of the micro-blogging platforms to show photos and videos.
Have the content (not just a link to the content) show up on Wordpress.com and in the Facebook news feed.
Seems like Posterous puts in on my Wall but not the News Feed.
Seems like Tumblr puts it on both the Wall and the News Feed.
Both seem to break Wordpress.com's 2-column layout.

One step at a time.

Everything's big at Costco, including the bears

2010-08-07T19:51:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from Frank's posterous

Formosa Bento

2010-07-04T21:22:00.001-07:00

In the foreground, a traditional Taiwanese beef noodle soup every bit as delicious as it looks. In the rear: miso noodle soup and the pork chop bento (both winners as well).

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La Costa

2010-06-27T18:19:00.001-07:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Sent from my iPhone

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Untitled

2010-06-13T18:34:00.001-07:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Sent from my iPhone

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Crazy Hair Day at Gloria Dei

2010-05-25T07:48:00.001-07:00

Cameron wanted a mohawk but didn't get up early enough for mom to gel him up. Most of his boy classmates showed up with the real mohawk (or as much as their short hair would permit). Must be a boy thing.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Cam pets the banana slug

2010-05-19T08:10:00.001-07:00

He was very excited to find one this morning.

Sent from my iPhone

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Nothing says spring like a gargantuan shaved ice at Paris Baguette!

2010-05-16T15:30:00.001-07:00

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Cameron's one armed cartwheels

2010-05-09T14:04:00.001-07:00

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0435.MOV (3334 KB)

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The kids encounter starfruit for the first time -- and award thumbs up

2010-05-01T16:43:00.001-07:00

DSC_6864

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Blizzards at DQ

2010-04-20T20:06:00.001-07:00

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At Koriander Indian Restaurant

2010-04-18T18:05:00.001-07:00

Colin enjoyed looking at his reflection in this beautiful metal plate on which was served equally beautiful garlic naan. Sorry, too hungry to take pictures of the naan before we ate it. Maybe next time.

(Also, trying to sort through the various permutations of posting pictures using Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, and Blogger to figure out what the easiest way of sharing photos and videos is. Leave a comment fi you've figured this out. Here's what I'd like have happen: easy posting by email, photos and videos show up on Facebook as actual photos and videos (not just links) and the same post is archived on the blog, preferably Wordpress. Though would be ok that that were Blogger now that they have non-amateur looking templates.)

IMG_0426

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Is this how you're supposed to play on the tire swing?

2010-04-18T14:29:00.001-07:00

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IMG_0423.MOV (14628 KB)

I don't know since I never played on a tire swing growing up, but this doesn't seem right to me.

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The blog is moving

2010-03-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

In the age of Facebook, I'm not sure anyone visits this old blog anymore.

But for the few die-hards out there, we're likely moving to Wordpress. The features seem to be iterating faster there, and I do like the look and feel of the Wordpress themes.

It's also easier to customize the page layout (including the widgets on the right side of the page), and you can also easily add complete standalone pages (like this About Us page).

The whole Blogger archive is now over on Wordpress. Barring any show-stopper bugs or feature deficiencies (e.g., haven't tried uploading photos or anything fancy like that yet), we'll see you over there.

Family

2010-02-19T13:38:00.001-08:00

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Windows Phone 7 Series: Everything Is Different Now - Windows phone 7 - Gizmodo

2010-02-15T07:12:00.001-08:00

http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now

What happens when you post a link to Posterous and Tumblr?

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Hanging around

2010-02-14T17:52:00.001-08:00

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Humor FAIL

2010-01-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

It's hilarious listening to kids as they explore humor. Here are a few decidedly not funny jokes the kids told tonight.

Knock knock
Cameron: Knock knock.
Colin: Who's there?
Cameron: Come on in, I'm going to put a diaper on you.

A joke about a duck
Cameron: Why did the duck take the train?
Katye: Because he left his car in a parking lot.
Colin: Because he couldn't reach the gas pedals.
Cameron: No, because he was cranky!

Merry Christmas 2009!

2009-12-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings of peace & joy to all. And a special warm welcome to visitors who received our Christmas photo card and felt duty bound to visit our blog. Welcome, and thanks for dropping by.

(To see more pics from Christmas Sunday service, including some in-focus ones where I am not wondering, "gee, I wonder what will happen if I twist this thingy on my camera", click here.)

We started blogging in October 2004 (see an amusing picture of how teeny the two kids looked back then). At the time, I thought of the blog a time as a replacement for the Christmas letter with the added benefit of more authentic and frequent updates. While there is joy -- and value -- in looking back at an entire year of work and school and life, it's also tempting if you're only doing it once a year to adopt the self-congratulatory tone of an alumni magazine. With a blog, you can be self-congratulatory every day of the week. :-)

So here we are, 795 posts later. We must confess, though, that our rate of blog posts slowed dramatically, as 2009 became for us (like for the rest of the world), the year of micro-updates delivered via Facebook status updates (see Frank's and Fedora's) and Twitter tweets (see Frank's stream @withfries2 and Fedora's stream @flchen1).

Still, this is the appropriate outlet for paragraph- and Christmas-letter sized thoughts (as opposed to the sentence- and 140-character sized updates), so here we go with the year-in-review for the Chen clan:

Frank started a new job with Andreessen Horowitz, a startup venture capital company based in Menlo Park.

The cozy intimacy of a 10-person firm -- especially since this is Frank's third time out with co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (#1: Netscape, #2: Loudcloud/Opsware) -- is a welcome contrast from the lumbering anonymity of tech behemoth HP.
He is learning a ton (which he loves) and feeds on the energy that naturally bubbles out of tech entrepreneurs.
A few days each week (weather permitting), he's doing the 26-mile round trip commute to work on his mighty steed, the Giant Twist Freedom DX electric assist bike. To date, he's logged over 1,000 miles, 1,160 pounds of offset CO2, 110,000 calories, and 1 near accident. Since this is a Christmas letter, he will avoid a salty dress down of drivers who don't share the road and simply say, "blessed are the bike riders, for they shall inherit the road." :-)
This is also Frank's first full year on the Fellowship Bible Church board, where he is introducing useful bits of the business world (e.g., setting objectives, aligning our spending behind those goals, and adopting best practices) to the church. (You may quietly hum "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" to yourself as you read.)
In typical Silicon Valley geek fashion, he wonders idly whether this is the year to learn how to play Settlers of Catan (rather than golf).

Fedora is shaking her head at her own foolishness in thinking that with all the kids in school (for at least part of each day), she'd have more free time this year. She volunteers at their schools and contrary to any rumors, does actually leave school grounds during the day. And no, she's not secretly running a business using school resources. The days zip by in a blur of kid herding and avoiding household chores.
Colin ("serious young man") is halfway through 4th grade, and in an abrupt shift of metaphors, is rounding 3rd base and windmilling hard for home on his elementary school education. How is that even possible?

His teachers tell us he's doing well, though remains somewhat reserved in class (a carbon copy of both his parents).
Outside of school, he enjoys video games, drawing, origami, watching TV, and collecting Pokemon cards. (His parents are thinking "professional video game player" or "professional video game designer" might be good career trajectories.)

Katye ("look out, here I come") is a 1st grader, and her teacher is a Huge Fan. It helps that she'll likely pass the 5th grade reading level by year-end, good news for the school's median test scores.

Her teacher one day declared, "if I could pay her to come to my class, I would" on account of her energy level, eagerness to participate, and willingess to play with anyone.
Her self-proclaimed hobbies: watching Pokemon on TV, playing with her animal friends (but still no dolls), playing Webkinz, drawing, writing stories, and above all reading.

Cameron ("think twice if you think I'm getting left behind") just started a half-day pre-kindergarten at Gloria Dei (as his sister did before him).

This makes mornings a little challenging, as two caravans must leave the house and arrive at their destinations by 8 and 8:15 am. Luckily, Frank can usually trot him over before going to work.
He just started getting into video games this year, and his favorites are Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, and Wii Sports Resort. As I am writing this post, he has just completed the Forest (level 5) Showdown on Wii Sports Resort. So now he has gotten as far his daddy (Colin is, of course, way past this level.)
Mom and dad are proud that at the annual children's Christmas service program at the school, he managed to remember his lines, hand gestures, and music -- or at least, close enough for pre-K purposes.

We wish you and your family a peaceful, joyful, and love-filled holiday season. Come by and visit, either electronically or physically. We'd love to see you either way.

Christmas Letter Goes Here

2009-12-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Hi, everyone! Here is where our little Christmas update is going to go once we write it. Rest assured, it won't be filled with news of our incredibly brilliantly accomplished children or photos of our immaculately clean home or cute stories of our world travels. But perhaps you'll feel caught up and mildly entertained anyway! Here's hoping ;)

Oh, and if you have a few minutes while you're waiting for the good stuff, consider backing up your computer. See recent posts below for some how-tos and whys...

(Just FYI, this is Fedora, who rarely contributes content--if you're not feeling sufficiently amused, apologies, and please check back, when our real update is posted by our actual blogger.)

iMac Repair Post #2 -- the Backup Regimen

2009-10-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

We're taking a brief break from the chronicle of how our iMac got its new hard drive to describe our backup regimen. Here's what I want my backup strategy to accomplish:

Survive the failure of any single hard drive.
Be able to restore all our documents, especially media files (music, photos, videos).
I'm not interested in restoring my system files, as I prefer to re-install the operating system over restoring a whole system backup. This recovery takes more time but results in (even on a Mac, and especially true on a Windows machine) leaner, speedier, and more stable machine.

The Main Ingredients
The two main ingredients to our backup strategy are Mac OS X's built-in Time Machine feature and a HP MediaSmart EX 485. But alas, as simple as Time Machine is, backup is a little more complicated than just hooking the two up and turning Time Machine on -- mostly because we also have to take into consideration how our media applications (primarily iTunes, iPhoto, but include a host of other less commonly used applications for accessing our music, photos and video) need to use the files.

For all our documents except for our media files -- music, photos, and videos -- it is actually just plug and play. The HP MediaSmart comes with software that makes it look like a Time Machine disk. To set this up:

Plug the iMac and the MediaSmart into the same switch (in our case, a Linksys WRT54G)
Install the HP MediaSmart software on the Mac
Login to the HP MediaSmart Server Control Panel using the MediaSmart's admin username/password (same credentials you use to manage the server itself)
Decide how much space you want to set aside for Time Machine backup (we're using 500GB).

Once you've down this, fire up Time Machine and select the 500GB disk named "Backup to HP MediaSmart Server" as your Time Machine backup disk.

Note: I've heard plenty of horror stories from folks trying to use generic SMB volumes for Time Machine backups. Do so at your own peril, and read up on best practices before you go down that treacherous path.

In the Time Machine Options... window, I've chosen a few directories not to backup:

The Backup to HP MediaSmart Server disk itself
The external hard drive containing my virtual machines and photos -- more on this later
System Files and Applications

Time Machine then goes to work, automatically and continuously backing up all our documents, applications, application settings, and local mail directories.

For our media files, here's what we do:

Music files live on the HP MediaSmart server, managed by iTunes.

I let iTunes manage the contents of the directory, so there's a folder called iTunes inside the Music directory, and iTunes is mostly ok with pointing to that directory -- provided you make that volume available automatically when you login. Use System Preferences | Accounts to make that happen.
I let the HP MediaSmart automatically backup the contents of the Music folder to multiple hard drives automatically.
Finally, I sync the entire contents of my Music library to my 80GB hard-drive based iPod once in a while.
This means our music library lives on at least 3 hard drives: two inside the HP MediaSmart server, and one in the iPod.
Since the audio files live on the HP MediaSmart server, most any client can access the music -- our Tivo, other PCs and Macs (via iTunes or Windows Media Player), my iPhone (via HP's iPhone app), and authorized folks on the Web (via HP's Flash-based streaming app).

Photos and videos live on an external hard drive, managed mostly by iPhoto, and which I manually sync to the HP MediaSmart

I have a Photos directory on an external Firewire 800 hard drive.
The iPhoto library lives on this external drive.
We currently have >250GB of photos and videos.
We use an external drive for performance reasons. iTunes is ok with files living on a slow-to-access network drive, but I doubt iPhoto and iMovie would be ok.
After loading new photos with iPhoto, I sync the files to my HP MediaSmart from the Terminal:

rsync -avnr --progress /Volumes/MyExternalDisk/Photos/iPhoto\ Library/ /Volumes/Photos/iPhoto\ Library/

In the above -- MyExternalDisk is the name of my external drive; Photos is the name of the folder the HP MediaSmart exports to the iMac.
As with Music files, I let the HP MediaSmart duplicate all photos in this directory to multiple internal hard drives.
So our photos are also on 3 hard drives: the external drive connected to the iMac and 2 drives inside the HP MediaSmart server.
In addition to this backup, I usually upload photos to Smugmug, where we have an unlimited account which lets us upload anything we want. But we didn't start using Smugmug until about 2.5 years ago, so the archive there is incomplete.

I'm told the new HP MediaSmart servers will do a better job of automatically scooping up media files, even when they live on a Mac. Hopefully folks like me who own the EX485 will get that improved media syncing next year.

Next up: because we don't backup our system files, restoring the OS and applications requires a bit of manual work which I'll describe in the next post. Is it worth the manual tweaking? I think so.

Even on a Mac, systems accumulate crud over time, and a fresh install gets your system back to its factory-fresh -- read: speedy -- state. A factory fresh install of Snow Leopard feels snappier than one that started as 10.4.x and eventually made its way to 10.6.x. This is of course even more true for Windows machines, which I'll routinely rebuild every 6-12 months as a matter of system maintenance completely independent of backup needs. We'll see if Windows 7 makes this unnecessary, but, as one of the new Mac ads point out, this seems unlikely:

iMac repair post #1

2009-10-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is my first in a series of posts about our experience getting our beloved iMac fixed. We got our iMac in April 2008 off Craigslist from someone who was planning to get a Macbook instead. She originally bought it in the fall of 2007 and had bought an AppleCare extended warranty on it. Boy, am I glad she did -- and that the warranty was transferrable. (The seller was a paralegal and had carefully highlighted the clause authorizing transfers in the warranty agreement -- nice!)

After transferring the warranty online, I promptly forgot all about it. Until, of course, when the hard drive started acting funny last Friday. Since the original warranty had expired, I was sure glad we had gotten AppleCare. We don't usually buy extended warranties on our consumer electronics or computer parts, but this purchase turned out to be a good gamble. (At the store while picking up my machine a few days later, I asked how much it would have cost to just pay out of pocket for the repair. The reply: $85 to troubleshoot, plus around $300 for the 320GB drive. Ouch!)

Sometimes we would see that question mark at boot time. Once or twice, I got the machine to boot, but it will take 10 minutes. "What is this," I thought, "a Windows machine?" :-)

Next stop: Google.

I tried rebooting while holding down various keys down to reset the Mac's PRAM and NVRAM. No dice.
I tried booting from the Mac OS X installation disc which came with the machine to run Disk Utility, which "saw" the drive. I tried tried running Disk First Aid, which took about 15 minutes and failed halfway through its session. Uh-oh.
The next time I booted from the OS X installation disc, Disk Utility didn't even "see" the drive. Double uh-oh.

Next station: AppleCare tech support. I called in Saturday morning.

The technician had me basically repeat the above. When that didn't work, he tried to have me boot from a utility CD-ROM which came with the AppleCare Protection Plan. It had TechTool Deluxe on it, a diagnostic utility, but it wouldn't boot for some reason. During one of our reboot-while-holding-down-the-option-key sessions, the Startup Manager launched and "saw" the drive. So we selected it and the iMac got through about 1/3 of its boot sequence in 5 minutes.

At that point, we gave up, and the tech support rep made an appointment for me to take it down to my local Apple Store later that afternoon. It's nice that he was able to do this so I didn't have to.

Overall, the session lasted a little under an hour and would have been way better if (1) the phone connection had less delay (call center in India?) and (2) the technician had listened more instead of just walking through his troubleshooting checklist without listening to what I had already done. Overall, I'd give them a B for the overall phone tech support experience.

Next post: the Apple Store repair experience.

Our iMac is back, as good as new

2009-10-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

You do not want to see this icon when you boot your Mac. It means your Mac can't boot off its internal hard drive.

The best case is that the disk's volume data (essentially, your hard drive's table of contents) has somehow gotten corrupted or the Mac has forgotten which disk to boot, both of which can be fixed with special reboots or Disk Utility from your Mac startup CD or DVD.

The worst case (as it was for us) means that your hard drive is dead and needs to be replaced.

In my role as "tech support for my friends and family", I've gotten a bunch of questions about what happened and what my backup regimen is. So over the next few posts, I'll describe what happened, what I did to restore our data, my experiences with Apple tech support, and what we do to backup data.

Here's the Reader's Digest version:

After a call with Apple tech support where we tried various reboots and software-based repairs, I took the iMac down to the local Apple Store and they replaced the drive with a brand new one.
We had a Time Machine backup on the HP MediaSmart server, so we didn't lose any data.
After restoring from Time Machine (my first successful computer restore experience ever, I think) and a few application re-installs (most Mac apps don't need this, but I'll name names for the few which do), we're back in action. Hurrah!

Details coming soon, but if you have not backed up, please please please do so. This is 100x true for the drive with your completely irreplaceable videos and pictures. These days, even Quicken data doesn't seem that sacred to me -- but our pictures and videos absolutely are. (Thankfully, our photos were on an external drive which is itself backed up to two separate drives in the MediaSmart server, so they weren't on the drive that failed.)

Our family does not have a physical disaster emergency prepardness plan (yes, I know -- it's on the list with getting our trust notarized), but we do have a data disaster plan. You should too, if any of your data is important to you.

Snow Leopard

2009-09-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

So I've upgraded to Snow Leopard on two machine (my latest generation work Macbook Pro and my home, slightly older iMac). The upgrade process itself was very smooth: the installer does all the work, reboots the machine a few times, and freed about 20 gigs of space on my boot disk. Can't remember ever seeing that any software upgrade.

Only a few things changed, none of them dramatic but all of them useful in their own way. It boots, sleeps, and resumes even faster than before. Day-to-day use feels marginally speedier -- mostly because it the Finder and Safari are both faster. I have not encountered any apps that won't launch or devices that don't work. I was a little worried about the scanner in my Canon Pixma MP500 because the Apple site reported it did not ship with Canon scanner drivers baked into Leopard, but the Canon software worked just fine.

On the flip side:

iPhoto 08 won't play videos anymore. This one makes me mad, because Apple should have caught this trivial-to-fix bug in their own product family.

Symptom: If you find the files in the iPhoto library from the Finder, they'll fire up just fine. But if you double click on videos in iPhoto, nothing happens.
I'm surprised they didn't fix this in 10.6.1. I hope they fix this in the next week or two. Handling photos and videos is one of the reasons I switched to a Mac in the first place.

My Logitech mouse's special buttons don't work. The Logitech forums speculate that an updated version of Logitech Control Center is coming soon.

Suggested workarounds seemed to work for me the first few days but have since quit working (the Control Center stopped recognizing my MX700 mouse).

Other than that, I'm pleased overall. It does seem a little lame that Apple is charging as if this was an upgrade rather than a dot release. But I guess by comparison, it seems like way smaller a rip off than what Microsoft is charging for Vista Service Pack 2, er, Windows 7.

Also, not looking to the complete re-install Microsoft is going to force me to do to upgrade from my Windows 7 Release Candidate.

Update on 9/15/09: For some reason, the Logitech workarounds worked the 2nd or 3rd time around. I ran the installer from inside the Logitech Control Center 3.0 package, rebooted, and it recognized my MX700 mouse. Then copying Expose from the /Applications/Utilities folder to /Applications got the Expose mouse button shortcut working. OK, Apple, it's all you now: get your own products to work with your own operating system, please.

1 week, 3 round trip rides, 72 miles by bike

2009-08-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

So I survived my 2nd full week of commuting. This week was somewhat warmer (low to mid 80s) but nothing really to complain about (aside from the bother of slathering on sunscreen sometimes before both the inbound and the outbound trip).

My legs are complaining but not as much as last week. I'm generally taking the Canada route to work and the Alameda route home. Alameda is shorter (11.5 miles versus 12.8 miles), not as hilly, but has much more street traffic -- making certain streets a little scary to ride on.

Here is a typical ride, complete with route map and elevation change. Gotta love the free iPhone app (available from MapMyRide.com) which tracks the rides (though I'm told there are better paid versions, which I'll investigate later).

Interesting things I've seen on my commute, partly because I'm now on a bike and partly because I'm just seeing more since it's a much longer ride:

A zebra crossing painted on Canada that has horseshoe symbols in it
Quite a lot of, um, evidence of horses along Canada, but no actual horses on the road -- though I have seen a half dozen horses in corrals along the side of the road
Two Tesla Roadsters, my electric motor-powered brethren (alas, still have not convinced any of my wealthy coworkers to buy one)
Two small vineyards (one on Canada and one on Alameda)
A sign offering tractor-related services

On the way home, I find myself wishing I lived 2-3 miles closer to work. But the workout is good, and I must say it's a complete different "feel" arriving at my destination on either end. I'm much more alert and I feel like I've achieved something just by getting where I'm going.

One last thought in reflecting on Week 2: there is a sense (read the biking boards, for instance) that the electric motor is "cheating". While I understand why True Bikers believe that. If the bicycle is meant to augment human power, then adding electric power certainly spoils the purity of muscle + mechanical advantage = motion.

But I'm not in it for the Purity of Biking or glory or training so I can race. I'm in it primarily for the exercise (and the long-term health benefits thereof) and the sense of accomplishment. So I feel like my electronic steed helps me decide to bike more often than not. So the bike doesn't feel like cheating to me: it feels like the enzyme which lowers the activation energy so that the reaction can actually complete.

Besides, my flavor of electric bike doesn't have a throttle that just hauls me along: it's still quite a bit of work, as I'm guessing somewhere between a quarter and half of the power the system generates is consumed hauling itself around. After all, a good road bike weighs 15 pounds, and my bike weighs over 60 so something's got to move the 45 extra pounds.

As Insik suggests, I'll have to try the hills on a road bike a few weeks down the line. Stay tuned for the experiment, maybe in October.

My new ride

2009-08-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are a few facts & thoughts about my new ride, the Giant Twist Freedom DX.

First, the facts:

Giant calls it a hybrid bike, presumably to liken it to the hybrid cars like the Prius. Though for the rest of the industry, a hybrid bike is a cross between a road bike (think Tour de France racing style) and a mountain bike, so this is a little confusing.
Like the Prius, the bike turns battery power into torque to help propel the bike and rider forward. In theory, the harder you pedal, the more assistance you get.

Unlike the Prius, the batteries do not regenerate while coasting downhill.
The bike has an electric motor integrated into the front wheel.

There are four settings: Off, Eco, Normal, and Sport.

Sport mode assists the most and Eco the least.
When the assist system is Off, you get to feel what it's like to pedal a 62-pound monster of a bike. I assure you this is no fun, and I only have the system off when I'm rolling downhill.
Unlike some motor systems like the BioX (my brother just got a bike with one of those), there is no electric throttle -- so you can ride it like a moped. No peddling = no go.

You switch manually between the two batteries.
Giant estimates the range thusly; these numbers seem a touch optimistic to me. Either that, or I'm a lot fatter than their test rider. In practical terms, a single battery lasts me about 30 miles, or call it a commute and a half on a route like this one with a few hills.

Now some thoughts after a couple training rides and 3 round-trip commutes:

Overall, I quite like my trusty new steed. It will help me get in shape, and having the electric assist available will get me onto the bike more often than not.

Without it, I probably would not have started commuting by bike.
I'm proud of the distance I've biked and look forward to some pounds coming off.
Never before has arriving at work or at home seemed like such an achievement! :-)

The bike is a beast. Something about the size of the frame makes it seem very large. The good thing about this is it feels more stable on the road. But it is a 60+ pound monster, no two ways about it.
How's it feel? The best way to describe how the bike feels is to say that it "flattens out" the terrain. Mild uphills feel like flat terrain; steep uphills feel like moderate uphills.

I still have to work hard to get up 5% grades like Ralston Avenue -- but the electric assist makes it do-able for me without having to hop off and walk, or take a break.

Riding position. The bike's geometry puts you in a very upright riding position, which takes pressure off your wrists and back since you're not hunched over.

OTOH, sitting up straight with a loose T-shirt on basically turns your body and T-shirt into a sail. When the wind is blowing against you, this is not good. :-)
This posture also makes it harder to get the right kind of leverage when peddling up big hills -- it's hard to come off the saddle and put your whole body into the effort.
In general, I like this riding posture because it's relaxed and doesn't make my arms numb after a long ride. This is why I didn't get the very cool folding Swiss Bike with the BioX conversion kit like my brother -- the Swiss Bike's geometry has you bent over more, and I wanted a mostly comfortable posture for the commute.
Sidebar: if you do want a Swiss Bike + BioX combo, visit the great folks at Velolectric Bikes in San Carlos. Very friendly and knowledgeable.

I'm glad I got the 2-battery version. Giant makes a cheaper and lighter 1-battery version, but I've had a battery run out of juice on half of my rides, and being able to flip to the fully charged backup battery is a huge relief. The thought of biking up the 92 pedestrian path on my 60+ pound monster with no electric assistance brings tears to my eyes. :-)
The saddle bags are useful but you need to pack carefully. The built-in saddle bags are really designed to protect the battery packs. But you can get a change of clothes and your lunch into them if you pack carefully. I've been wearing a backpack to carry stuff that won't fit (like my laptop), but am investigating ways to mount something on top of the racks to get the weight off my back and prevent the sweaty back phenomenon.

OK, more later. Leave questions in the comments if you have them.

New job -- and a new ride

2009-08-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

So I started a brand new job today (very exciting) -- and even managed bike to and from the office (very sore but personally gratifying).

Some factoids about my new job and my new ride:

Brand new job: Andreessen Horowitz Fund
Brand new office: 2875 Sand Hill Road

As psi points out, it may be outright illegal for a venture capitalist not to occupy a Sand Hill address. :-)

Total commute length: between 12-13 miles (Google Maps guesstimate until I get a bike computer)
Furthest I've ever gone on a bike in 1 day: true
Total commute time: about an hour each way
Commute route: Home > Canada Road > Whiskey Hill > Sand Hill Road
Commute vehicle: Giant Twist Freedom DX electric bike (more on this in a later post)
Weather: just about perfect: cloudy and low 70s on the way in, sunny and mid-70s on the way back
Number of bikers I passed: 2
Number of bikers who passed me on their non-electric road bikes: 5

To the bikers who politely passed me: keep riding -- you are inspirational!
Must get my RPMs up :-)

Number of joggers who passed me: 0, thankfully
Muscles that are most sore: thighs, calves, butt, and my right arm (from dragging my beast of a bike up the stairs at work)
Calories burned: 1,354 says this calculator
Primary motivation: get in shape
Other motivations: see cool sights, reduce carbon footprint (though given my trusty Prius gets nearly 55 mpg on the trip to/from work, this is pretty marginal)

Speaking of cool sights, here are some I saw today:

A black limo following an older Indian gentleman on his bike (a foreign dignitary? a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a backup crew?)
A house right on the banks of the Crystal Spring reservoir -- wonder who lives there?
The Pulgas Water Temple
Various entrances to Filoli
A horse park

Strangely, they're closing Canada Road this Thurs, Fri and Monday, so I'm going to try and bike in Tuesday and Wednesday. Stay tuned for more on the bike commute saga. And on the new job.

Ciao for now, must go nurse my legs. :-)

Bowling

2009-07-03T20:07:00.001-07:00

We've had the kids in our church summer camp. They gave the kids a day off today, so this feels like our first real day of summer vacation. We enjoyed it by... (wait for it)... taking the kids bowling.

We thought by going first thing in the morning would help us avoid the crowds. So wrong. We barely got a lane even though we got there maybe 20 minutes after the alleys opened up. About half the lanes were occupied by what looked like a senior citizen's competitive bowling league.

Everyone in the family bowled. Let me just say that our two games took over two hours since it takes a while when the ball is about a third of certain bowlers' body weight. When you are rolling the ball at 1.5 mph, it takesa a long time to get to the pins... :-)

But everyone had a good time -- and Colin even broke 100.

All in all, not a bad way to start off a 4th of July weekend. Bowling does feel somehow quintessentially American.

Political science discussion on the way home

2009-06-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Actual conversation we had in the car on the way home about why there are only 4 days of day camp this week (instead of the typical 5).

Mom: We're celebrating July 4th this week, so we get Friday off. Who did America win independence from?

Katye (enthusiastically): France! No, Boston!

Image via Wikipedia

Colin (hedging his bets): Great Britain. Or maybe slavery.

Mom: Right. America was a British colony.

Katye: What's a colony?

Cameron (must participate even if I have no idea what's happening): Is Colin a colony?

Case study in how not to do marketing

2009-06-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

So I've been toying with the idea of getting an electric bike. These are all the rage in China, which makes perfect sense. But it'd be great for me on the short trips to the grocery where the thought of getting up and down the hill with groceries puts me right into the car (yes, I'm pathetic that way).

But that's not the point of this article; instead, this is a case study in what happens when you haven't thought your marketing all the way through to the point of sale.

I say all this, by the way, as a Best Buy shareholder. Sigh. Anyway, here's the good, bad, and the ugly.

The good: Articles about Best Buy carrying electric bikes surface in the blogosphere (see example article below). Good way to leverage social media to build awareness.
Still good: My local store puts up a banner visible from US-101 proclaiming, "Electric bikes are here, come in for a test ride!". Again, good: a direct, clear call to action in a place where lots of people will see it, including thousands of people stuck in commute-time traffic. Perfect target market.
Here's where it goes from bad to comically worse:

Attempt 1 to test ride a bike: Two weeks after the banner went up, I walk into the store for a test ride. Some of the bikes they are supposed to carry are not even on the floor; two models are in boxes. No one in the store knows when they are coming out of the boxes or when the rest of the models are arriving. Test ride? Nope, not sure when you can do that either. FAIL.
Attempt 2 to test ride a bike: Two weeks later, I call the store. They say, "nope, still not on out of the boxes -- should be good to go this weekend". Remember, at this point, the store has a freeway-visible banner up for at least a month with that precise call-to-action emblazoned on it. FAIL.
Attempt 3 to test ride a bike: Two weeks after Attempt 2, I drop by the store. Sure enough, the bikes (and the Segway) are on the floor out of the boxes. After asking a half dozen blue shirts for a test ride, I'm finally directed to the Appliances team. The Appliance guy makes a call, and says, "yup, it's what I suspected. We only have one guy who can help with test rides, and he's in once a week on Fridays. Please come back then." FAIL.

Why generate the awareness and then the leads when you can't deliver on the call-to-action? Looks like the bike-enthusiast bloggers who were dismissive about Best Buy being in this business at all were right.

p.s. Digging this Zemanta add-on, which I blogged about earlier. Definitely saves a lot of back-and-forth with other browser windows.

Recommended Firefox extensions

2009-06-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

I have the following confession: it's hard to write down paragraph-sized blog thoughts when it's so much easier to post word and sentence-sized thoughts via Twitter and Facebook. Pathetic but true.

Image via Wikipedia

Anyway, to buck the trend, I'm here to recommend a few extensions: three for folks who run Firefox on a few different machines (e.g., work, home, in a virtual machine) and one for the dwindling numbers who still blog (though also good for the increasing number of Gmail users).

First an aside about Firefox. I've definitely flirted with a few other browsers in the past 3 months (Safari, Chrome, and Opera) -- primarily for speed. The new Javascript engines in Chrome and Safari are super fast, and you can definitely tell in everyday browsing. But Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is pretty fast too and also offers the killer feature of supporting a wide variety of extensions. So until Chrome or Safari create a rich ecosystem of must-have extensions, I'll always have Firefox on my machine.

OK, onto the extension recommendations. First, for the nomadic Firefox users:

Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) synchronizes bookmarks (and saved passwords, though I don't use that feature -- see below for why) across IE and Firefox. It mostly just works, though does insist on alphabetizing the contents of your Bookmark Bar which I found somewhat annoying. I use separate work and a home profiles to keep a separate set of bookmarks. For those into the teams behind the features, Xmarks was cofounded by Mitch Kapor, the guy who built Lotus 1-2-3 and was the founding Chair of Mozilla (the fine folks who build Firefox, Thunderbird and more).
LastPass stores your username, passwords, and profiles (for filling out those pesky forms) "in the cloud" and features browser plug-ins for both Firefox and IE which will leap into action and offer to fill out your password when you hit a site that needs one. When I was on Windows, I used something called Roboform which did the same thing -- but Roboform didn't have a Mac version when I converted. So I gave LastPass a whirl, and it's generally the first plug-in I donwload after I install a fresh version of Firefox. (Try 1Password if you are addicted to Safari and don't need something that works across platforms and browsers.)
FEBE does for Firefox extensions, themes and preferences what Lastpass does for passwords. It allows you to back them up and import them. Super handy if you find yourself installing Firefox on lots of different machines and dread the task of downloading all those extensions into your brand-new Firefox installations. It supports saving your stash-o-goodies on Box.net for storage in the cloud.

Image via Wikipedia

Finally, here's a recommendation for bloggers or Gmail'ers who want to create fancy email messages. Zemanta is a plugin that will automatically recommend tags, links, pictures, and other resources for your blog posts or email messages as you are typing them. Some might find this a little big brother-ish, but I find it super useful. It might even get me to blog more.

As I've been typing this entry, for example, it's offered to insert links for Mozilla, Mitch Kapor, Foxmarks, Opera, Xmarks, and more. In other words, I didn't have to insert the links manually.

It's also offered to insert a list of relevant tags on ths blog post (not as relevant to me, since this mostly just a personal blog).

And it's recommended a set of images to insert such as pictures of Mitch Kapor and Jon Stephenson von Tezchner, the cofounder of Opera, the Firefox and Opera and Foxmarks and Facebook logos), and so on. When you drag-and-drop them into your post, it automatically inserts the images as well as the reference links below the images. Genius!

Beatboxing flute player on NPR

2009-05-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've been watching this guy's eye-popping YouTube videos for a while. Greg Pattillo, the "beatboxing flute player" was interviewed on NPR recently.

I'm sure most of you have seen this given that his Inspector Gadget video has been watched nearly 18 million (!) times. But if you haven't, and especially for all my flute-playing friends out there, you have got to see this.

Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more beat boxing, flute playing goodness. Especially if you're also a Mario Brothers fan, because then you'll see his Mario Brothers theme performance too.

Yes I've been blogging less

2009-05-08T17:20:00.001-07:00

Yes, I've been blogging less.
Yes, I blame it on Facebook and Twitter.
Yes, I really shouldn't be constraining myself just to the sentence-sized micro-thoughts I can share there.
No, I don't see it getting much better: it's too easy doing it the other way.
Yes, the Web browser needs to make it easier to upload pictures.
Yes, even finding pictures to upload on a Mac using the built in pictures browser is too much of a pain.
No, Picasa for the Mac doesn't solve this problem because it has difficulty keeping itself synced up to the iPhoto photo database.
No, Windows 7 doesn't solve this problem either.
Yes, what we need is a way to right-click upload files to whatever social network/blogging platform you want. Kind of like Pixelpost but built into the file system. And not just for pictures.
No, I can't think of a way to turn that into sustainable revenue. Otherwise, I'd start it.
No, I don't know if someone is already doing it. But tell me if they are.

2009-05-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

Comcast brought fiber to my neighborhood. Woot!

I wonder if the explains the connectivity hiccup we had last week? Anyway, no problems since then -- though the hiccup forced me to do a big conference call from my cellphone, which really doesn't work well. Oh well, onwards and upwards hopefully.

Happy surprise while breakfasting @ Hobee's

2009-04-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Pixelpipe

2009-04-12T19:21:00.001-07:00

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Posted via Pixelpipe.

Colin and Cameron on Easter Sunday

2009-04-12T18:59:00.001-07:00

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This is one of my favorite shots from Easter Sunday (the rest of the album is at Smugmug). Colin and Cameron are delighted because it's their second Easter egg hunt of the year, they got to leave the Sunday service early, it's the start of Spring Break -- and I've got the week off as well, thanks to HP "recommending" that we all take this week off. What's not to like? :-)

Separate topic, this time on how this photo got published to this blog. I've been searching for an easy way to post pictures from iPhoto to Blogspot (which hosts this blog). I installed Picasa for the Mac, which I like in general. But it was taking a long time to refresh its database with the iPhoto pictures. Plus, I'm not sure I want my entire photo collection re-thumbnail'ed and re-indexed just so it's easier to post to Blogger.

In Googling for a solution, I happened across Pixelpipe, which is a much more general purpose publishing service. I'm giving it a whirl. You'll see this picture here and in Twitter and in Facebook all at once, something I did just by exporting the picture from iPhoto once. Still have work to do on making the posts more friendly (by default it labels your post with the filename), but seems very useful.

On the road to geekdom...

2009-04-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

Yup, it started early in our family. Here are the boys visiting their virtual animal pets at Webkinz.com.

Lest you think only the boys are geeks, Katye is in the office playing from our Mac. :-)

Cameron is surprisingly adept at navigating the fairly complicated Webkinz.com world given that he barely has the fine motor skills needed to control a mouse -- oh, plus he can't read.

Waaah: Beard Papa in Redwood City closed!

2009-03-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Chrysler, Schmysler: the real impact of the global economic meltdown has visited Redwood City in the form of our beloved Beard Papa shutting down.

Waaaah! Now we have to go all the way to the city or Berkeley or Cupertino to get some of these delectable cream puffs.

Beard Papa lovers of the Bay Area: it's time for the Beard Papa bailout plan. Go to one of the remaining stores and buy your cream puffs. Eat some in the stores, then buy some for home. Get some for deserving friends (like me). Then buy some for your undeserving friends (okay, maybe like me).

We can't allow Beard Papa to go under. They are too delicious to fail.

Easter Retreat 2009

2009-03-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

Although attendance was down this year, the folks who made it out to our church's annual Easter Retreat enjoyed a relaxing weekend, fabulous weather, and a great time of fellowship (that's church codeword for "hanging out").

Since I lugged the Nikon along, I took a ton of pics. You can see as many (or as few) of the 488 on Smugmug.

If you want just a few, here they are:

And a few pictures since I finally worked out that "take lots of shots when I leave the trigger down" feature on my camera:

Mind-blowing visulization of population data

2009-03-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've been watching TED Talks and Hulu while treadmilling (wireless video inside the house seems more reliable now that we're on Comcast's super-fast Internet service) and randomly chose this talk from the Top 10 list by doctor and researcher Hans Rosling. Bottom line? It's must see TV.

If you are a fan of data visualizations, population trends, government policy, comparisons between countries, or just even mildly curious about changes to our world in the last 30-40 years, prepare to be blown away by this video.

The TEDTalks site blurb has it right:

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."

After you've watched the video and are hungry for more, visit Gapminder.org, Dr. Rosling's nonprofit venture to help people create visualizations like the ones you saw in the video.

First week with Comcast Digital Voice: it just works

2009-03-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

We've been on Comcast Digital Voice for about a week after nearly 5 years with Vonage. Verdict? I'm pleasantly surprised: just like Google, the service (so far) has the "it works" feature.

I must say it is a relief that I don't think about my phone service anymore: people can hear me and I can hear them (I actually had to turn down the volume on my handsets because the VOIP box must be pumping out a stronger signal to my phone). Things with Vonage had gotten so bad, I'd have to do phone calls with two phones -- listening to my regular phone (Vonage) with speaking into my cellphone (AT&T). Not a pretty picture.

Anyway, a few other feature advantages to Comcast Digital Voice vs. Vonage for people thinking about taking the plunge:

Again, it just works. I've read calls get routed over a private Comcast-managed network as opposed to the public Internet. Apparently this is how they are delivering the "it just works" feature. To me, it feels like the phone and Internet service are totally separate. Not sure if this is technically accurate, but I've had (shhh, don't tell anyone) moment where I'm on the phone, watching YouTube, doing a Webex, and doing a broadband speed test all at once. Phone call quality didn't glitch once.
Local dialing is local dialing again. Just like the old phone company but unlike Vonage, I can dial 7 digits for local calls. Kinda refreshing actually. (OTOH, long distance calls actually need to prefaced by 1, unlike Vonage).
Better voicemail on the Web GUI. Comcast's voicemail-on-the-Web feature lets you forward the voicemails to other people, a nice feature. Also the UI for listening to messages is friendlier since it doesn't pop up a separate external media player for every message you listen to.
Easier voicemail from the phone. There's an option to skip the password check if you're fetching voicemail from your home phone. Nice.
Automatic E911 service. You don't have to explicitly register for E911 service. For some reason, even though Vonage knew exactly where I lived by virtue of having sent me their VOIP box, I still had to manually sign up for E911. Go figure.
Phone calls without power. The integrated cable modem and VOIP box has a battery backup. In theory I can talk for 8 hours even without power from the mighty PG&E.

On the flip side:

Different Web interfaces. Switching between the many different Web front ends for managing your phone service, billing, and email is needlessly confusing. Because Comcast outsources billing (Convergys), email (Zimbra), voicemail, and basic account management to different companies, there are at least 4 completely different Web interfaces for reading email, managing your phone features, looking at your bill, and managing your Web features. They didn't even try to make them look like they are offered by the same company.
Confusing Website navigation. The Comcast family of websites is disjointed. The product teams (e.g., phone, TV, billing, video-on-demand, Web) obviously don't talk with one another, and navigation is confusing. And don't even get me started on their completely retarded cable TV Web site. I dare you to go find out what the channel lineup is in your area. Even after you've logged in and they know enough to route your E911 call.
No SimulRing. Comcast does not have Simultaneous Ring, only Call Forwarding. So if you had gotten addicted to that Vonage feature, Comcast flat out just doesn't have it. Call Forwarding places a "courtesy" ring on your main number and forwards it on to the number you pick. It's a courtesy ring because no matter how fast you pick up the phone, there's no way to answer it.
Typically inaccurate and impossible to read bill. Naturally, the first bill from Comcast after the switchover was completely incomprehensible and nearly twice what I agreed to pay. At some point, I'll have to call and figure out what that's all about.
Long time to port my number. It took them about 3 weeks to schedule the appointment for the technician to come out and swap my cable modem. Apparently negotiating the number port with Vonage is tricky, so not sure this is Comcast's fault.
Took the better part of a day to get me running. It took a village to get me hooked up and to the point where I wasn't dropping phone calls and my Internet connection every 3 minutes: two technicians (one of which I had to call 4 times and summon back to my house twice), 4-5 phone reps, 2 cable modem/VOIP boxes, and 3 replaced physical network doohickeys. Total elapsed time: 6.5 hours. Percent of time I was on work conference calls during that stretch: 100%.

All in all, I'm glad we switched and I can stop thinking about whether people will be able to hear me when I call them. I completed the phone torture test last night: Webcast and phone call with Asia-Pacific for 1.5 hours -- and it just worked.

Microsoft Office launches in 1/2 second

2009-03-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

So I've been running the Windows 7 Beta for a little over a month (on a 2-year old Dell laptop and an even older Dell desktop), and while I still think this is what Vista ought to have been, it's suffering from the dreaded Windows cruftification:

Everything -- boot, standby, resume, hibernate, application launch -- is slowing down,
My desktop refuses to shut down half the time, and
I had to turn the new sharing feature called Homegroup off because it was breaking my Linksys wireless router (symptom: it would refuse to form wireless network connections with the Dell laptop without power cycling).

So it looks like Windows 7 has yet to solve one of the biggest problems with Windows: the distressing tendency for applications to dramatically slow down in all the everyday things that really matter to me.

So with that backdrop, enjoy this video about how some extreme hardware can come to the rescue of sloppy Microsoft coding. Skip the first few minutes about how they set up the extreme array of solid-state drives, and skip to about the 2:04 marker to see some jaw dropping performance. I definitely want one of those. Watch to the very end: the last speed race is genius. :-)

Disclosure: this is marketing from Samsung. But I happen to think it's awesome, out of the box thinking from a company you don't usually think of as a savvy social marketer.

So close...yet so far

2009-03-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

So I have to talk to a person to cancel my Vonage service. I called the service number, and I was pleasantly surprised that:

The up front computerized prompts were clear and easy to navigate by speaking
The voice recognition was outstanding -- it correctly understood me when I said my phone number as well as the answer to my security question which I had typed in at registration time
The automated responses were clear and struck the right tone ("I'm sorry to hear you want to cancel your account. I can help you with that.")

I was just about to record this (FTW, as they say on the Web) as a surprisingly pleasant customer service experience -- until it dropped me off to a recording that said their offices were only open on weekdays. Aaaarrgghh!

From FTW to FAIL in one easy step. They knew that I needed to talk to a real agent early in the interaction -- and rather than take me through more prompts, they should have just told me that immediately.

Comcast and VOIP

2009-03-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

So we've been on Vonage for just about 5 years. Aside from some hiccups in the early months -- way back in spring of 2004 -- we've had no major complaints. (Though the simultaneous ringing feature takes some time for both you and your callers to get used to.)

Then just this year we started having serious voice quality problem. People would say I was breaking up on nearly every call. Calls would drop right in the middle of phone calls. People would say they called us but rolled right over to voicemail. Multiply all these small aggravations by my working from home more and routinely doing 6-9 hours a day on conference calls, and I knew we had to do something.

Vonage said it was Comcast's fault; Comcast said it was "congestion in my neighborhood" or my Linksys router's fault. Reading the press about Comcast's bandwidth caps and bandwidth shaping, I suspected Comcast was merrily dropping Vonage's VOIP packets.

So we made the switch to Comcast Digital Voice today. As much as I dislike potentially rewarding the guilty party, I need a reliable phone service -- and a single throat to choke when I can't get that. The finger pointing was driving me crazy, and my phone just wasn't working. (In case you are wondering, the AT&T coverage near my house is not that great, and other VOIP services including both Skype and MagicJack weren't much better, quality-wise.)

So we'll see how the grand experiment goes. As is typical, I lost a bunch of hours today managing the 6 Comcast people (two on-site techs, 3 phone support folks, and 1 voice-chat person)
that it took to switch me over from Vonage. But after two new modems, two physical network doodad replacements, 8 cable modem and router resets, I think I'm back to normal now.

Call me if you want to hear that Comcast VOIP sounds like. :-)

The upside: this new package features super-fast Internet access. Check these two bandwidth speed test results from earlier today. Yup, that's 17 Mbps downstream and 8-9 Mbps upstream. Woot!

Bad Bank

2009-03-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

If you haven't listened to This American Life's coverage of the banking meltdown appropriately called Bad Bank, run, don't walk to your nearest iTunes or Web browser and give it a listen. In less than an hour, you'll understand how we got into this situation and what the main possible treatments are -- and why the government has yet to decisively chose one over the over.

Like that? I thought you would.

If you liked that show, listen to This American Life's two other great episodes about the financial crisis:

If you liked all three of those, subscribe to NPR's Planet Money audio podcast. And if you just can't get enough of this stuff and want more advanced reading, try the Baseline Scenario blog.

I firmly believe that financial literacy -- or illiteracy, as the case may be -- has a role to play in this all-too-frightening debacle.

A teaser: here is a graph mentioned in Bad Bank. In this century, there have been only two years when US personal household debt has exceed the GDP. Yup, you guessed it: 1929 and 2007.

Stem cell research

2009-03-07T09:35:00.000-08:00

President Obama is moving to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Regardless of whether you consider the embryos we use to get these so-called pluripotent stem cells are human yet, I wanted to highlight a few things which the mainstream press is not covering much -- presumably because it's easier to tell this story as a "liberal Obama vs. conservative Bush" story. (I was reading the Wall Street Journal's coverage this morning, and it seems typical.)

New technologies are turning adult stem cells into pluripotent stem cells. Scientists have had recent successes turning adult stem cells (the ones you and I have in abundance) into pluripotent stem cells -- that is, cells which can turn into other types of cells. Pluripotency is one of the main things which got scientists excited about embryonic stem cells in the first place. (If you the Wikipedia link is a bit too dry, try this article in Nature.)
Stem-cell therapies working today. Stem cell-based therapies are working today to treat blood problems such as leukemia. Most the media attention is focused on embryonic stem cell research which will take years to develop into effective treatments (if ever), and I thought it worthwhile to remind people that therapies based on adult and umbilical cord stem cells -- neither of which require destroying embryos -- are working today.

US News and World Report has an article by Dr. Bernadine Headey which provides some more context than the typical mass media story.

Also, update on 3/9 -- here is a CBS news story on regrowing body parts, which I learned about, of all places on Twitter via @tonyrobbins. Yes, that Tony Robbins.

Close up of the cake

2009-03-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

The older I get, the more I appreciate the more subtle nature of cakes made by Chinese bakeries. This was a mango cake, and everything: the cake, the mousse, the fruit, and even the chocolat shavings and petals (around the edge of the cake) are 1-2 steps tamer (less sweet, less buttery, less dense) than the similar cake turned out by your typical neighborhood bakery. Yum!

Katye turns 6

2009-03-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

Our princess turned 6 this past week. The whole gang is into giving each other -- and cakes and so forth -- bunny ears in their photos, so this is how they wanted to remember the occassion.

Interestingly, only Colin (and mommy and me, of course) really enjoyed the cake, which I got at the Sheng Kee Bakery near work. Cameron would have have been just as happy with the fruit, and Katye liked the idea of a cake better than the cake itself. I wonder if that will change as they grow older.

Wonderful short film on YouTube

2009-03-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to a video podcast called The Best of YouTube, and it faithfully deposits YouTube videos onto my iPod so I can watch them when I'm traveling.

Most of the videos are what you'd expect: clips of cats pretending to be Slinkys, people sandboarding in the Sahara Desert, the world's shortest escalator, and so forth.

But on my last trip to Texas, I saw a wonderfully made short film that I just had to share. I defy you not to smile at the irrepressible hero.

Camdyn's birthday party

2009-02-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

We were delighted to join Camdyn for her first birthday party at the Moonstar Restaurant in Daly City. It's an Asian buffet right by the Koi Palace where Fedora and I had our wedding banquet. Here's a rare pic of me and the boy by Christine Szeto. Yes, that one.

Thanks to Brad and Christine for the kind invitation.

Favorite things:

Colin: the sushi. Colin is of the "any sushi is good sushi, even the sushi at the buffet restaurants" school.
Katye: the face painting. As you can see, she didn't stop with just her face. Stay tuned for the photo of the panda-on-her-hand you can't see in the picture below.
Cameron

The playing (had to explain that there was not much playing at the restaurant)
The chips (had to explain those came from church the nigh before)
The french fries and chicken nuggets (ah ha: he did actually have these at the restaurant, but I have to point out this was an Asian buffet)

It was great to see some folks we haven't seen in a while, including Brian and Christine, Roland and his family, and Anson and Lil.

Here is the promised panda painting on Katye's hand. Oh, and a shout out to Wilson for gifting me his old 50mm lens from his film camera days. Since he's switched to the Canon DSLR, I was the lucky recipient of an awesome lens. Thanks, Wilson. I've never had this fast a lens before (geeky photo word for "wide aperture" so you can do these arty blurry background shots):

Finally, we had never been to the Moonstar Restaurant in Daly City before. It's definitely a step up from the Todai's, and sports a few things you don't see at your typical Asian buffet:

The melted chocolate fountain (though you can see this at the U-Buffet in Belmont, formerly Indulge Buffet -- alas, this place has gone downhill since the name change)
The cotton candy machine (though this wasn't actually churning out cotton candy at lunchtime)
A real ice cream bar, including strawberry, mango, and a gray-colored-but-very-tasty sesame along with your choice of toppings such as cookie bits and sprinkles
Fried American fast food, including waffle fries and chicken nuggets

Gotta love the multicultural vibe of the Bay Area.

Oh, almost forgot: the rest of the pics are on Smugmug.

Lake Tahoe

2009-02-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

Our friends Brad and Christine kindly hosted us at their parents' place in Tahoe. The kids had such a good time in the snow that Colin declared this morning that he was moving to Tahoe -- or Alaska -- when he grew up. And Cameron had his first experience trying to taste the falling snow.

We got to see a lot of snow. Mostly we spent the days having snowball fights, sledding, and trying to build snowmen. We had planned to take skiing lessons with the kids, but it was snowing too hard for that.

Given that the drives up and back were challenging, the relaxed pace of cabin life was the perfect counterbalance.

So: thanks to Brad and Christine and all the other families who made this the first ski week vacation where we actually saw snow.

Next year, we'll have to try and get everyone in the group picture. Though I have to say, it was enough of a challenge getting the partial picture above. :-)

More pics at Picasa Web Albums.

First weeks with Windows 7

2009-02-10T21:16:00.000-08:00

I've been running the Windows 7 Beta at home now on an old Dell desktop and Dell laptop. I must say I am impressed with how stable and snappy the software is. Put that side-by-side with my mostly positive experience with my HP MediaSmart server running Microsoft Home Server (which I just installed for my parents), and that's two kudos for Microsoft. Is the world coming to an end? (Well, yes, but that's another topic for another time.)

I don't have much to add that the blogosphere hasn't already said about Windows 7. But here's my personal experience after using it for about 2 weeks:

Windows 7 is really Vista Service Pack 2, and it will be a travesty if Microsoft is going to make people fork out for an upgrade.
Windows 7 is Vista as it should have been: compatible with a wide range of devices, snappy, and stable. Particularly impressive are boot time, appliation launch time, standby and resume times -- all the things you want to be speedy since you do them so often.
The Control Panel has gotten incrementally better. Vista was a big step forward, and Windows 7 advances the ease of use.
There are some nice UI touches which show that the design team in Redmond hasn't fallen asleep at the wheel: the ribbon makes it into Wordpad and Paint, the taskbar has been nicely refreshed (mostly ripped off from the Mac OS X dock with some nice preview effects), there are some nice animated effects throughout which improve the fit-and-finish of the system, and the activation area in the bottom right corner of the taskbar masks most of the incessant "approve me", "no, approve me", "no pay attention to me" dialogs in Vista.
But the usability biggest improvement, IMO, is around windowing behavior. Favorite example: drag a window to the left or right edge, and the window sizes itself to take up half the screen. Great for side by side comparisons on wide screen monitors, now the default for most configurations. Also great for throwing two Windows Explorer windows up to move stuff between folders. (Though why neither Apple nor Microsoft has solved the "make it easier to copy stuff between folders without two Finder or Explorer windows up" problem is beyond me.)

My heretical bottom line: if Windows 7 were available at the time I bought my Mac, I might not have switched. I'm not saying I regret my switch; it's just that in a lot of ways, Windows 7 is "good enough" compared to the gold standard Mac OS X where Vista wasn't even close.

I also agree with the bloggers who are saying this is going to raise the bar on what's needed from Linux distributions to entice more people over to the Linux camp. Ubuntu 8.10 feels stale by comparison. (Yeah, I said it, and I'm sure to get flamed for it.)

BTW, before you make the switch to run the beta on your main machines, be aware that it has interoperability problems with the Mac that Vista didn't. And some software won't work (I've had trouble with some freeware which makes ISO files look like CDs or DVDs). So proceed with caution.

Recession chocolate

2009-01-27T21:29:00.000-08:00

We've been doing our part to help bailout ailing companies. In particular, we've been buying gifts for ourselves from all the frou-frou mail order places we'd heard of but never actually bought from. I imagine these poor retailers had a desperate holiday season -- at least, if their 70-80% off promotions were any indication.

So far this recession, we've enjoyed recession popcorn from the Popcorn Factory, a recession gift basket with fancy pears and chocolate-covered cherries and such from Harry & David, recession sausage & cheese from Hickory Farms. Up this week, Fedora's favorite: recession Godiva chocolate. We also got recession pants at Target, but that's another story.

Our conclusion: at 70-80% off, these gift food places are tolerably priced. We don't know how they sell things at full price or even mild discounts.

We're still working our way through the bounty, so come on by if you want to sample some. :-)

All hail the chief!

2009-01-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to President Barack Obama on this historic day.

The blogosphere is buzzing with both positive and negative reviews of the President's inauguration speech. I myself found the speech inspiring and a necessary reminder that government can only do so much to solve the many serious issues we're facing as a country.

As the son of immigrants, I identify deeply with the ideas of personal responsibility, working hard, and not expecting the (union, company, government, party) to take care of all our problems.
As a Christian, I believe that while God can work through governments to help carry out his purposes, God also expects us to assume personal responsibility in helping the less fortunate.

Two other quick items about the inauguration speech.

First, courtesy of a high school friend (thanks Cecilia!) who shared this link on Facebook, here is an interesting word cloud visualization of the President's address. Check out this link to see similar visualizations of some former presidents' speeches.

Second, some of you may be curious about the Bible reference in the President's inaugural speech. President Obama said, "We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things."

This reference comes from 1 Corinthians 13, a letter Paul wrote to the church at Corinth which includes the so-called "love chapter" which is commonly used in weddings. Many people are familiar with its proclamations about the nature of love from this letter: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."

Less well known is Paul's description of what we'll know when we meet God in person. The text reads:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (Emphasis mine.)

Most Christians understand this verse to mean that we will know things when we meet God in heaven that we don't know -- or only partly understand -- today.

Just as we look back with some chagrin at the things we thought we knew as kids ("when I'm a parent, I'm never going to yell at my kids"), we'll also get a good chuckle about the things we thought we knew here on earth once we're seeing things from the vantage point of heaven.

As I read it, President Obama used this verse in his speech as an exhortation to get beyond partisan bickering -- what he calls "the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

To which I say, amen. Let's get to work.

And thank you President Obama, for the reminder that each one of us needs to part of the solution.

Family in blue

2009-01-11T22:36:00.000-08:00

Miracle of miracles; everyone is looking at the camera.

Never mind Katye's slightly crazed smile: that's about typical for her. The astounding thing is that Cameron is actually looking at the camera -- probably because he's staring at the warning lights that go off right before the timed shot is snapped.

Cool shots you can get with a DSLR

2009-01-11T00:29:00.000-08:00

Still very excited about my Nikon. Even with the 28-200mm lens, which is not the best lens to take closeups with, you can get pretty cool bokeh effects. I was slightly off-balance when I snapped the picture too, which means the vibration reduction is working too.

Geeking out with energy data

2009-01-11T00:07:00.000-08:00

Our local utility (PGE) has been steadily adding interesting analysis tools to their Website. You can look at things like:

Whether you're using more or less power (gas & electricity) compared to the typical customer
Why your bill went up or down this month (e.g., was it weather-related, was it rate-related, was it you just using more or less)?
How your bills compare to any other period (I like comparing the same months across years)

The latest widget I found graphs your gas and power usage against "degree days" -- an interesting concept that basically describes cold or hot a given month was relative to a comfy 65 degrees. Here's our gas consumption (blue bars) mapped against the weather (gray shaded area). You can see our gas usage tracks the weather pretty well, though you'll see we were particularly masochist this past November and December by not turning on the heat much in the house.

Mini coaster

2009-01-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

Our kids -- like us -- are not big roller coaster fans. They thought the mini coastr in Toon Town at Disneyland was a little too much -- and the Matterhorn was definitely too much. The slight drop at the beginning of Pirates of the Carribean is more their speed.

So we were pretty surprised when they declared the mini coaster at Discovery Kingdom a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure all the screaming you hear is from Katye and cousin Leann.

As usual, higher quality version on YouTube. (I shot the video on my Canon point-and-shoot as the Nikon D90 did not accompany us to the amusement park, in case you're wondering.)

This is the first video we've uploaded through the Mac port of Picasa, which is now available in beta. We were big fans of Picasa on Windows, and though iPhoto is very similar, there are definitely things we miss about Picasa -- mostly to do with the tight integration with Google's Picasa Web Albums and YouTube. Uploading videos via Picasa sure beats doing it over their Web based uploader.

(You need 3.0.1.321 or later -- the first beta they published a few days ago never successfully uploaded to YouTube.)

Dennis the Menace park

2009-01-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

If you are ever in Monterey with school-age children, definitely spend an afternoon at the Dennis the Menace Park. It's an impressive playground with a maze, an actual steam locomotive, a long suspension bridge, a tall climbing wall, and other cool equipment designed by Hank Ketcham, the creator of Dennis the Menace.

Colin and Katye have been reading mommy's Calvin and Hobbes collection and haven't read any Dennis the Menace. We tried to explain how Dennis was kind of like Calvin in that they were both mischievous -- but somehow Calvin is much funnier, probably because he's much more subversive. Anyway, it's time to check out some Dennis the Menace anthologies from the library.

OK, enough Monterey pics on the blog. See the complete album on Smugug.

BTW, I'm loving the Nikon D90 and the 18-200mm lens. It's not a perfect lens by any means, but you can't beat the convenience of this focal range (i.e., it's a "super-zoom") with fast auto-focusing, and good-enough optics to take some eye-popping pictures.

Jellyfish at the Aquarium

2009-01-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

The British biologist J.B.S. Haldane is famously quoted as saying, ""My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." Most of the time, that quote is used by sub-atomic physicists talking about the completely non-intuitive behavior of quarks and bozons and whatnot.

But some sea creatures are improbable at the biological level as well: the impossibly ornate sea-horses and the glowing fish, and the chameleon-like fish which change color and markings to better blend in with the sand behind them, and this too-cool jellyfish (visit the video on YouTube for a higher-resolution version).

(The original video was shot on a Nikon D90 DSLR, in case you are curious.)

Day trips

2009-01-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

We took a few day trips during the holiday shutdown, including an overnight run to Monterey. Of course, we stopped by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to marvel at the sea creatures living in our oceans. Thanks to David and Lucille Packard for making the aquarium a reality!

We walked a bunch that day (probably 5 miles altogether), and the kids were champs. To reward them, we stopped by a nearby candy shop. And here he is, the proverbial kid in a candy store:

Azaria

2008-12-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-23T14:33:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-20T19:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-14T14:08:00.001-08:00

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

Yum: popsicles

2008-12-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-12-13T21:58:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-12-13T21:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-03T19:09:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

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

How bad is this stock market decline?

2008-11-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-20T19:56:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T17:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

...as far as the eye can see.

Thanksgiving Banquet

2008-11-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

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

Harvest Carnival 2008

2008-11-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

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.

A bouncy house with a built-in slide

2008-10-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.