Category: Day to day life

Updates on what’s going on with us

Forbes Best of the Web Showdown

Forbes Best of the Web logo Forbes posted its pick of Best of the Web a few days ago. I was surprised that under the technology weblog section, I already subscribe to six out of 8 blogs they recommended. Am I at the forefront of blog reading, or there’s just not that many good technology blogs out there?

Given that I already subscribe to 51 blogs, I probably should stick to what I have now. But they do have some pretty good art blogs I will probably check out and attempt to read on a daily basis.

God damn it, I am a blog whore!

Plastic Key to the Rescue

AAA Club logo As part of the perk of being a AAA Club member, each household is allowed a free duplicate “emergency” key in case of vehicle lock out. Surely, duplicate of a real key can easily cost upwards $80+. What a deal, we thought. But it turned out that it’s a plastic version of the key that only allows you to open the car door, but it’s not strong enough to be used in the ignition hole. What a disappointment. But hey, it works.

The plastic duplicate is part of cut out of a wallet sized card (AAA calls it CreditCard Key; how imaginative). So it’s very easy to keep in the wallet in case of emergency, which did happen once before. Grace got locked out by mistake when the car washing crew left the key in our car. We bought the car used, so it only came with one set of key and remote; not so coincidentally, both of them were in the car. Dumb ass car washers.

Next up: bid for a spare remote on eBay when a good deal shows up… Loans Now may sound like a solution.

Update: Got myself a keyless entry remote. I had to find the programming instruction separately though. The instruction works for both Infiniti Q45 and J30 series made before 1997 I think. Some people on eBay were selling the instruction for $5 a pop. Jerks. On the other hand, car dealers typically charge around $70 for programming a new remote. Jackasses.

To Be or Not To Be…

Because of the unique composition of our family, I was intrigued to find out what citizenship possibilities there are for my son.

U.S. Citizenship — this is a given since my son will automatically get a U.S. Citizenship when he’s born within the borders of the United States. United States does not allow dual citizenships with very few exceptions.

Taiwanese Citizenship — this is not a particularly useful citizenship in terms of travel, but it probably beats having a passport from China since Mainland Chinese have an extremely high “disappearance” rate when they travel aboard. But for the sake of comparison, I found out that Taiwanese citizenship is extremely easy to get if either one of the parents is a citizen of Taiwan, which I am. Another downside of having a citizenship from Taiwan, particularly for a male, is Taiwan’s compulsory military service for one year and six months (or extended civilian service option) for all males before the age of 40. Taiwan allows dual citizenships.

Malaysian Citizenship — Malaysia is really a funny country. On paper the government claims it does not discriminate anyone. But in practice, it’s probably one of the most discriminatory countries in Southeast Asia (it’s hard to beat Indonesia in its mistreatment toward Chinese though). In this case, unless a child is born in Malaysia to a Malaysian parent, the father must be Malaysian if the child is born outside of Malaysia. But… what about the right of the mother? Why can’t the mother enjoy the same right for her son if she’s married a non-Malaysian and the child is born outside of Malaysia? That’s one f*cked messed up rule. Messed F*cked up, yes, but consistent with most Muslim-faith based countries I guess. More information can be found here and here. So does Malaysia allow dual citizenships? My knee tells me “no”.

We haven’t had too much pleasant experience with Malaysia and its policies as of lately. Hopefully this will change as Jai, a friend of ours, swears by the government’s efficiency. But for now, Malaysia isn’t giving too many reasons for some people whose children may consider Malaysia as their home. If Malaysia wants to be able to compete more aggressively in this global climate, it has to do more to allow qualified people to be part of its society more indiscriminately.

Just my two cents.

UniPod. Uncool.

Went downtown to pick up our library card from the San Jose Public Library. As we walked toward the library, I finally saw a MP3 player that’s not an iPod, a first for the past six months since I started this observation. This guy was using an iRiver. Obviously nobody bothered to tell this kid what it takes to be hip in this town. Even though the MP3 player itself was white, it can’t fool me with its vertical scroll bar.

Anything else but iPod is just uncool.

Yet Another Ultrasound

So we got our fourth ultrasound today… doctor’s orders. Seeing that Grace’s Asian belly was smaller than the average Caucasian bellies, the doctor ordered the fourth ultrasound scan PLUS a fetus stress test. But the ultrasound result concluded that we have a developmentally healthy baby, weighing at 7 lbs with two more weeks to go. The ultrasound technician thinks the baby will probably weigh 8 to 9 lbs by the time Grace delivers. Yikes… that’s one giant baby. Since ultrasound turned out fine, we skipped the fetal stress test. Michael’s son only weighed 7 lbs at birth Maybe Kongfu Death Grip won’t be necessary for my son to beat his if they ever get into a fight.

More pictures to follow when I get my hands on a scanner sometime this week. We have a picture of his face from the ultrasound! I would post the videos too, but to your untrained eyes, the clips just look like a moving slob of unprocessed meat.

Update: Alien faces…

Squished baby face 1
Squished baby face 2
Squished baby face 3

A Long Lost Friend

Got in touch with a long lost friend today…

Maggie and I go way back… Ok, not that far back… We met during our Freshman year at SCAD. My first trip out of America was to Bahamas, the home country of Maggie. Her family is so warm and fuzzy it makes me feel maybe I should call her parents mom and dad!

Bahamas is one of those Taiwan-friendly countries where Taiwanese passport holders are treated as humans. When I first arrived at the customs, they thought I was from China (the passport cover reads “The Republic of China”, which can be easily mistaken as “The People’s Republic of China”, which is the communist China), so they wouldn’t let me pass the customs. But upon closer interrogation examination, a big smile lit up their faces and welcomed me. This was the first time when I felt being a Taiwanese didn’t suck.

I later found out from Maggie’s parents that Taiwan has been enjoying close diplomatic ties with Bahamas. It’s rare because most of the countries in the world don’t really have spines in supporting a democratic, but small, country like Taiwan even though everyone’s promoting democracy with anti-communism sentiments. God damn hypocrites.

So Maggie’s been giving me the shpills on what’s up with some of our mutual friends. It’s interesting to see where everyone is in terms of life stages years after graduation. Maggie herself is crossing over to a new stage of life — marriage! Her husband is a geek — just the kind of people I like. So everything is going to be alright…. Hah!

Blog Whore

God damn it. I am such a blog whore. I still have about two dozen+ ideas I have saved up in my “to-blog” folder on the desktop that I want to sit down and write about. But I just keep getting distracted with all the interesting tech crap I have been blogging about. I wish I can get paid to blog about all the nonsense that’s in my head full time. That’d be the day.

Note to self: Blog about the following….
– Eileen Fisher
– Meme
– Moral politics (a little help here, Brian?)
– “Harry Potter” books and young readership
– Self-storage America
– Aristotle & dreams
– Human brain
– The Graphing Calculator Story
– Republicans’ Plan to Incorporate Church into State (Evangelical America)
– CNN USA v.s. CNN Elsewhere in the World
– Illusion of Freedom v.s. Lack of Freedom
– Various NPR episodes

But I am extremely happy that I’ve been able to get some stuff out of my head (like that Bob Lazar guy) which I’ve always wanted to document somewhere.

Umbilical Cord Blood and Health

Michael told me he’d saved his baby boy’s umbilical cord blood with a company his doctor recommended. It’s insurance for the health of the baby in the future in case his own stem cell is needed, he explained. “Cord blood banking” is still an experimental science that harvests the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood from the mother’s placenta immediately after she gives birth. The stem cells are then stored for future use against stem-cell-treatable diseases (or god knows what’s possible in the future). Though some of those diseases can be treated with adult bone marrow transplants, the statistics of matching someone with the right bone marrow tissues are much less than matching stem cells harvested from umbilical cord blood since stem cells are capable of developing into almost any type of cells or tissues.
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At $1,500 a pop to get an account open, and an additional $100 a year to keep the account open, it’s a pretty hard pill to swallow. Some people argue that the potential of a disease is much greater than the cost of maintaining the umbilical cord stem cells in a bank. Well, true. But for a young family trying to scrape enough food to keep things going, it’s a big investment, especially payments are made indefinitely to keep the stem cells available.

Now that’s some business plan. Take a cutting edge science that may or may not work in the future; start marketing effectively on its “potential” benefits to your baby. And convince the parents it’s worth the investment throughout the lifetime of the baby. And receive payments forever.

I am not disputing the umbilical cord blood’s potential uses. In fact, researches have already shown its effective uses. I guess this is something we’ll have to discuss with our doctors. I suppose this is most useful for families that have a history of diseases passed down for generations.

More information can be found here.

Russian Spammer Murdered

A report from Russia confirms the killing of Russia’s biggest spammer.

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

Yeah, that’s what should be done to spammers who are caught doing the deed. The public should be able to stone them to death or inject acid into an open hole in their skulls. Oh wait, according to an episode of Law & Order, that may kill them too fast… Brutally beaten to death is good then.

iPod v.s. Radio

It seems like more “types” businesses are affected by the popularity of iPod than we thought. I have been hearing a local FM radio station to urge listeners to give their iPods a break and listen to their station.

With the popularity of Podcasting, and on top of that, softwares that allow people to record radio shows as MP3s on their computers for enjoyment later, no wonder radio stations are sweating over their listener-ship. However, more innovative stations are turning this opportunity into gold. Take a popular show on NPR, This American Life; it offers downloadable paid Podcasts through iTunes and Audible.com. Some Most NPR shows, on the other hand, remain to be free for download. If iTunes is installed, those free shows can be subscribed to and be downloaded automatically as they become available.

As Corporate America continues to forge policies that are overwhelmingly corporate-friendly, local TV and radio stations are increasingly being consolidated by large corporations like Clear Channel, which very actively censors contents of almost every one of its local affiliates to make sure their broadcasts are in line with the parent company’s political stance (in case you are wondering, it’s a Republican-friendly company; what a surprise).

Since the mainstream media (a.k.a. mass media) in the United States are becoming more and more polarized (kinda like the political party lines), the only choice people had were underground radio shows, or more recently, web sites or blogs. Now that Podcasting is catching on, the biggest companies are only as big as the size of listener’s hard drive. A number of home-made Podcasts have already caught the attention of listeners. Technology continues to mature and is now more accessible to everyone than ever; we should expect far more varieties of ideas and imaginations mushroom over the next few years. –> (That is, before Clear Channel and other Republican, anti-innovation companies spend billions of dollars on lobbying lawmakers to make Podcasting illegal.)

Bye Bye Kitty

Kitten in cage We said good bye to the kittentoday. After our last unsuccessful attempt to get her to the humane society, I finally gave her enough reason food to get her inside the pet carrier this afternoon. For the past few days we’ve been getting anxious about her health as the weather officially marches into grilling summer heat. We saw her lying lifelessly in the yard a couple of times, gathered only enough strength to dash out of our sight to her hiding place when we approach. How does a kitten to survive like this without food? We rarely see her mother anymore. Even when we do, they act like two strangers meeting for the very first time.

Surprised I was able to catch her in the pet carrier, Grace immediately readied her self for a short trip to the humane society. The kitten begged for her release in the backseat as we took a short drive to humane society’s closest office. We believe in our heart that she’d eventually be adopted by a loving family.

When we arrived at the humane society, the strangest thing happened — the kitten was rejected because of where we found her. Apparently there’s been some politicking going on. The city of San Jose decided to setup its own animal shelter, and in doing so, it severed its contract with the Humane Society Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization that serves the Santa Clara County. Even though we live only less than two miles down the block from the Humane Society, the politics of the situation got in the way of doing what’s good for the society. I couldn’t help but think how this is such a microcosm of our society today.

Kitten in cage We turned around and drove 10 miles to San Jose Animal Care Center. As we filled out paperwork for dropping the poor thing off, the social worker was trying to get the kitten out of our pet carrier and into their own cage. For the first time, the kitten hissed and fought with a vengence. I guess I would have too if I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

So we have accomplished our goal. Now the kitten is in the hands of professionals. But we felt naked, almost an indescribable emptiness inside, feeling we had betrayed the little thing by handing her fate over to a stranger at an unfamiliar place, and we did so without her permission. Already, we have started to miss her, mourning the loss of a tiny orange tabby in our yard, greeting us everytime we went out or came home. Though we consciously knew we weren’t going to adopt her, our acquaintance for the past three weeks made us feel as if she’s been part of our life surrealistically longer.

Grace wants to go back and check on her in a couple of days just to make sure that she’s adapting to the new environment well. After the kitten’s initial exhibit of anger, the social worker commented that she’d have to see if the kitten passes her temperament test in a few days to make sure that she’s fit for adoption. We hope she passes. Other wise, we’d just subjected her to a dose of leathal injection. And THAT is going to sit well with our conscience for the rest of ourlives.

Blog Find — dooce

dooce was in the blog-sphere a while ago when the blog got its owner fired from her job. And again, I didn’t really pay attention to it because I thought that was a stupid news.

Tonight after completing my take-home exam at 1AM, as I was going through my daily news-reading ritual, an article on BBC News (god, I love BBC; way better than CNN) ignited my interest in my latest blog find.

Heather’s witty and funny writing has won me over and earned dooce a permenant spot on my daily reading list (50 RSS feeds and growing). The article (“Original Sin”) on getting her first iBook was what did me in. Now I am hooked on her fabulous writing style and penmenship penwomanship — refreshing and resonating. Though her blog has evolved into that of a parent writing about her life raising a daughter, the stories are still facinating reads.

An excerpt:

But do I really need a high-end iBook complete with OS X? What does OS X stand for anyway? Am I ready to give up my right-click privileges? Why is everything, including the air I breathe, now strangely aqua and beveled? Is the church true and does God live?

I bear my testimony to you today that yes, God does live, and his name is Steve Jobs. I am a convert. Praise Jesus and partake of the fruit.

Highly recommended.