Category: General

It’s been over nine years since Karen and I have been Valentines. Back then, life was a whim and packed with spontaneous events such as roller blading next to the busy traffic at Alki beach, driving down to Portland for duty-free shopping, all-you-can-eat Japanese in Vancouver, or a quick stroll around the museum.  By contrast, now that Lia’s nap times are in effect, scheduling anything longer than a couple hours results in Lia transforming into a super-cranky girl.  It’s evident that life is quite different, but the more we face life together, the more I appreciate the various aspects of Karen, such as her honesty, inner strength, and silliness. Without the latter, where’s all the fun?

Since we’re reminiscing almost a decade back, here’s our the first Valentine’s Day, from the year 2000…

… taken with my trusty Nikon Coolpix 990.  Wow, those were the days…

This is funny, but also kind of sad. Apparently when the Google Map Car (one of the cars that takes pictures for Google Map) took maps of this street, a deer fell victim of the vehicle and became roadkill, and it was all captured and made available until it was taken down.

All I can say is, oh deer…

To fight the recession, looks like some a restaurant in UK is allowing people to name their own price on the food! No, we’re not talking about rock-hard bread with Hungry Man re-plated on designer dish. Appetizers and entrees include crab tartelette, foie gras terrine, goat cheese souffle, duck breast, steamed butterfish and filet steak.  How about opening a name your own price Todai here?

A few days ago, I received what appeared to be spam labeled “5 Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do” in my mailbox. One of the paragraphs caught my eye:

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call
someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. It saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.

Now one neat trick I knew is that if the car is just out of range of the remote, putting it under your chin while pressing the button will give the remote an extra boost, as your skull will act as an antenna and give you an extra few yards of slack. 

Some web sites, such as snopes, insist that the email is a hoax, but after reading various comments from readers on the internet, such as this site, it seems that some people have done it successfully.  It sounded like rubbish, as keyless entry remotes are radio transmitters, but cell phones pick up audio signal and transmits the signal to the cell tower. Even if somehow it carries the transmitter signal, the signal should have dissipated at the radio tower, I would think.  Still, a search for “cell phone car remote unlock” in google will reveal quite a few user comments that say otherwise. Could it be that someone is really trying to expand the hoax by littering comments with success stories, or is there some truth to this matter?

So I did an experiment.  I went to my garage at work, called my wife and asked her to press her remote next to her iPhone while I put my loaner G1 phone next to the door. Nothing. I tried putting the G1 on speakerphone. Nothing. Maybe our phones are too “smart”, but instead, a ghetto phone from last century with a black and white display is needed to execute this experiment? Maybe the optimum angle on the phone was not achieved during my experiment? Or just maybe the whole story is … bowel movement?

If you have attempted it, I’d like to hear your results. It really indeed be convenient to avoid a 1 hour journey just to fetch the spare remote!

Why is it that many songs I can remember from childhood are not the sweet little music but morbid and disturbing?  For example…

London bridge is falling down, falling down falling down
London bridge is falling down, my fair lady.

or…

Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

And for Chinese songs (translated), such as…

Two tigers, two tigers, running fast, running fast
One has no eyes, one has no tail, so peculiar, so peculiar

or Taiwanese songs such as…

Grandpa wants to cook salty, grandma wants to cook bland,
The two fights and breaks the pot, wa ha ha

Shouldn’t songs for kids be all cheery and fun?  Where did all these songs come from?

When I bought my SanDisk Compact Flash card, I read online that many people had problems with their rebate even though they had submitted all documentation.  In order to cover my bases, I decided to create a video documentation of my putting every piece of documentation in the envelope and sent my submission.  After a few weeks, I got this…

I’m amazed at how informative the internet is!  Anyway, I made a call to the the number, and the operator put me on hold for 3 minutes and came back to say the rebate was approved and will be sent to me.  Still, I can’t help but think if this is a tactic to save money on their part for all the people who never bothered to call in.

The morale of the story is, always document properly all your rebate submissions and always follow up!

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…  🙂

April 2nd, my life has been changed forever. I am no longer James’ only girl. 🙁 I was kinda worried that James would put all his attention to the baby and I was right, but surprisingly I was OKAY with that. 🙂 It’s still a big adjustment for me though. As a mom, I can’t eat whatever I want.  I can’t have my sushi after the long 9 months of sushi-less diet. I can’t go to the mall whenever I want. I have to watch dairy products ‘cuz we are worried that Lia is like James – Lactose intolerant. I can’t take my 8 hrs beauty sleep at night, but instead, I have to wake up every 3 hrs to feed Lia. My back and arms are always sore. I am always tired and I have vampire eyes, but when I see Lia’s cute little face smiling at me, it makes everything alright. Yes, April 2nd, my life has been changed forever.

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!