General

Parking War, War on!

If you don’t know Parking Wars, it’s a Facebook game where one can have their own street with five parking spots, three labeled “No Parking”, and two labeled with colors for which it is legal to park.  Each person starts with two cars of different colors, and you have to park on your friends’ or your neighbor’s streets in order to accumulate money, which then can be used to purchase more cars and accumulate more money.  If you park illegally and they catch, they can give you a ticket and tow your car.  The more money you have, the more cars you’ll automatically receive, up to six cars.  After the six car, you would have made a million dollars and can save up to buy cars with special powers.  One of such cars is the Ice Cream Truck, where you can accumulate money faster at 1.5 rate for cars on the same street, and another is the Tow Truck, where you can tow cars next to your car and cannot move for 6 hours.

Now one of my neighbors, John, seem to have quit the game, so I’ve been using his lot for my personal use to accumulate money.  Recently, however, his friend or neighbor started invading my space by parking on John’s street and leeching my hard-earned ice cream!  How dare they!  To deter this behavior, I saved up and bought a tow truck, anxiously awaiting the day I get to bestow revenge on him.  I was so overcome with joy the night I got the tow truck that I even dreamed about waking up in the morning to give him tickets!

The next morning, the anxious moment arrived to deliver the tickets he deserved, so I parked my tow truck next to his car ready to hit the “Ticket” button, only to find that the button was… missing!  Oops!  I made a mistake of catastrophic proportions by parking next to his legally parked car instead, and worse of all, I’ve shown my ace in the hole as I revealed my tow truck in plain sight and cannot move it for 6 hours.  Argghh… my masterplan was foiled!

While I was writhing in agony, a most delightful development unfolded–the return of the Neighbor!  This time, I devised a painstaking plan to tow two of his cars at the maxed out amount at the same time, so I purposedly parked in a way so that he would be parked in two No Parking spots with one space in between where I would later strategically place my Tow Truck.  After a day, the fish was on the hook…

Unfortunately when I checked the next morning, he had already moved his cars away and back, so once again my devious act was dereailed again!  So I patiently waited another 12 hours, and this time, I promptly delivered him with two woeful tickets in less than 10 seconds for a whopping $16580 total.  Mission accomplished, finally!  Bye bye neighbor.  Thanks for the money and I don’t expect to ever see him again.

Except, defying all logic, he’s back, occupying the same exact spots at which he was mercilessly ticketed.  Here’s watching the clock…  🙂

Events

Carolyn’s One Month Celebration

It seemed like yesterday when Carolyn was born.  She’s now one month old!  Jun and Christine threw a party for this occasion, and it started with great food…

And refreshing drinks…

But the first part of the party, Carolyn needed her beauty sleep…

Even picture time doesn’t wake her!

Eventually she was disturbed, and she wasn’t a happy camper!

I must say, last time we saw Carolyn she was quite small.  Looks like she’s starting to catch up!

Lia also had her first hand-shake with Jujube…

All in all, it was a fun celebration.  Congratulations to Jun and Christine for making it to this 1 month milestone…

 

… from James, Karen and Odelia!

 

For more pictures, see Carolyn One Month gallery!

Tech

Goodbye Home Phone

We’ve tried many times to cut out the monthly recurring home phone charge, now that almost everyone has a cell phone. At one point, we went as far as to schedule cancellation of our Comcast Phone Service, but after calling Karen from my cell phone the next day only to hear ceaseless ringing and voicemail, I abandoned the thought. Karen was pregnant at that time, so it was too important for me to be able to reach her at home at all times.

Now that Odelia is born, once again I investigate home phone alternatives. At first, I thought about getting the VTech Cordless phone with bluetooth convergence:

Essentially it is a cordless phone that acts as a bluetooth headset piped through thephone. It looked stylish, but after research, I found that people have had problems connecting to it. Also, I didn’t want to limit myself to only a few models and be locked into the brand. I wanted a solution that will work with my existing phone. So I found…

XLink Gateway. This little gadget connects up to three cell phones using bluetooth, and this version also connects a landline as well. The nice thing is that our cell phones automatically connect with the XLink gateway, even if it’s still sitting in the pocket of my American Eagle jeans or if the phone is in another room or on a different floor!

Over time, the money we saved from not having a home phone will pay for this device and more, so we’re glad we finally have a way to cut out the home phone once and for all!

General

Miniseed Migrated To WordPress

For a long time, I’ve tried to create my own web site from scratch and code every line of HTML.  With the addition of a daughter, however, I realized that pursuing activities that take up excessive time, such as programming or playing video games, results in devastating consequences from my other half.  Therefore, I have decided to leverage others’ wonderful web site and build Miniseed on WordPress.  Let me know if there are any problems.  Enjoy!