Posts filed under ‘personal’
Got a new HDTV
June 11th, 2008
The 27″ in my bedroom broke so we decided to get a new HDTV. Since Andy’s working for BestBuy right now, he does very decent discount. We got a 42″ Insignia 1080p LCD HDTV with 4 year warranty and a TV stand for $952. It would be $1350 without employee discount.
Old TV in bedroom
New TV in bedroom
TV in living room
Sony 50″ rear projection. We had this one for about 3 years.
Iron Man
May 5th, 2008
If you haven’t seem the new Marvel movie Iron Man, you really should! We watched with some friends yesterday. It was highly entertaining and impressive. All these super hero movies are similar but this one definitely has its uniqueness. I love his humorous conversation with his robots. You cannot obviously question all the science to details in movies like this but I still wonder how he stayed alive in a burning iron suit LOL.
Tulip Time
May 2nd, 2008
I took a day off to go to the annual tulip festival in a local dutch village Pella. Although it was raining, we still had a fun time.
花非花
March 26th, 2008
花非花，雾非雾。夜半来天明去。
来如春梦几多时？去似朝云无觅处。
小时候上语文课要背许多古诗。大多数是唐诗。前几年回国我特地买了一本《唐诗三百首》以为会学一些新诗。其实脑子里有印象的诗还是小时候讨厌背的东西。记忆最深的是这首白居易的《花非花》。这首诗对我来说很特别。它不是语文老师而是音乐老师教的。教它的目的是为了让我们学为这首诗写的歌。教之前老师让我们闭上眼睛，在我们脑海里打造了这首诗的弥朦境界。那时的我可能只有小学三年级。但我被催幻了被打动了。我仿佛真的进入了诗人的世外桃源。我想那是我对诗词的情窦初开吧。
twitter and pownce
March 26th, 2008
Thanks to daynah. I now belong to two more these online social networking sites: pownce & twitter.
Hey, you can watch a video on twitter even.
pownce is prettier and better written and gives you more control but less popular than twitter.
Talking about great tools for online stalking.
It’s scary but it makes me want to recheck my cell phone plan to see if it charges extra for texting.
Oh yea 8 featured firefox plugins for twitter. I installed twitter box/twitter notifier. It works well.
Falling Leaves
March 25th, 2008
This book hit something deep inside of me. I can draw so many parallels between Niang and my own mother. Even Lydia’s behaviors remind me of my mother. It reminds me how my mother used to fall asleep and snore in 20 minutes while I was heart broken and sobbing unceasingly next to her hurt by her words or actions. It’s funny that I cannot put my thoughts in a collective manner as the author did in the book but last night I could not put the book down while I was near the end even though I was tired out of my mind. As I grow older and spend absolutely no time with my mother, I cannot forget what she’s done to me. I can forget the details of an event but I will never forget the heart wrenching feelings, the aching sleepless nights and the despair and disbelief in the fact my own mother doesn’t love me. Although I always thought I’m not alone, this book did a job beyond my belief of proving it. While I admire the author’s tenacious courage to seek for love in her family, I know from my own experience that love sometimes just doesn’t exist from your closest kin. It’s forever a void in your heart. I loved my mother consciously and unconsciously for many many years and I probably still do. What hurts the most is the feeling of love unreturned and unappreciated. For me, at least I am trying my best to stop “wasting” love on a person unworthy of it. But how can a child truly get away from his/her parent emotionally? We sometimes laugh as why some women won’t leave their abusive husbands. Deep down I understand their sadness. I thought for many years that I would no longer suffer once I live independent of my parents. But until today I still weep uncontrollably when reminded of my emotion attachment of my past and my mother.
My new doggie
March 24th, 2008
Here’s my new doggie wubo:
Just kidding. This is not a new dog. It’s just bubo with his ears pulled down 
Isn’t he cute?
I got a flickr pro account
March 2nd, 2008
I purchased a flickr pro account for two years today. I never used flickr much but recently I revisited the falbum plugin for wordpress and was quite impressed not only with the plugin but the flickr API. I then revisited flickr to upload some of the baby photos for bubo and misty and found their interface had yet improved again. Their UI is very web 2.0 and works pretty much like a desktop app. Since I received some donation and advertising money online in my paypal recently, I wanted to use it up. After I uploaded some photos and found that a basic account is only allowed to have 3 sets, I’ve decided to go pro. It’s $47.99 for two years. For their service, I think it’s worth it. I need to spend some time to truly config and style falbum before I can integrate it with wordpress. I look forward to it.
Now let’s visit the sets that may bring a mom to tears. Bubo growing up and misty growing up.
more snow
February 17th, 2008
This winter is quite crazy. I don’t remember getting SO MUCH snow for many years.
But we got MORE snow yet again today. I took some photos of the snow on our DECK.
a snow ball made with the snow on our deck
And Misty just sinks into the snow
amazon patriots 19-0 book cache
February 8th, 2008
i got sick last week and it got worse this tuesday. for a few days i’d fall asleep around 9 just to wake up later because my throat hurts so bad. and i have to blow my nose and sneeze. it hurts to talk and to clear my throat. maybe i’m not just having a cold, it’s flu or something. i really don’t know. but aside from not having a fever, i’ve been pretty miserable. 
;_;
so i woke up a few minutes ago and checked out new posts on the colts forum. someone posted a cached link of the amazon patriots 19-0 book (screenshot).
the most amusing part is the review by D. Sterling (Dallas, TX). s/he apparently knows something we don’t.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Prescient, February 1, 2008
By D. Sterling (Dallas, TX)
What a wonderful and insightful book! The whole story of this incredible season is laid out with amazing detail, wonderful anecdotes, and personal vignettes that really touch the heart of every football fan.
The final chapter, detailing the Super Bowl, is especially worthwhile. After Brady’s now famous debilitating hang-nail on his left hand in the first quarter, the world waited with baited breath as the two backup QB “Matt’s” flipped a coin to see who would play. We all watched as the quarter hung on its side, eventually falling the way of Matt Gutierrez. While he did not complete a pass the rest of the way, the 6 “statue-of-liberty” plays, for a combined 275 yards, set a Super Bowl record for both the number of statue-of-liberty plays, and the total yardage from that special bon-mot of a play.
I digress…..get the book….it will change your life.
LMAO this person seriously has some hallucination issues. maybe s/he had a fever when s/he wrote that.
