Camdyn's birthday party

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

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

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

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!

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

 

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

 

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

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.