Year in Review

My sucky, shitty, baddy 2006 is going to come has come to its inevitable demise in a few hours time. I am glad it's all over.

At least 2007 can give me some false hopes for some time. My new year resolution is to stay alive.

Happy New Year.

Now get back to work.

UPDATE:

Now the New Year has come, the party is over, the reality begins to sink in. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's just another freaking year except you are getting older, stupider and uglier.

Year in Review

Life always comes to a bad end, let's just try enjoy the journey...

If you cannot get online, get on9. Severed undersea cables can't stop you from getting on9.

If you have existential issues as to why you blog, worry no more. Sina has come to the rescue. It is going to release a compilation of posts in a dead tree publication called Why Weblog? or Why We Blog? or whatever. It may just be the answer to your question "Why the hell do I blog?" If you have real or imaginary existential issues, I suggest you to read Sartre and Camus.

Saddam Hussein was hanged while Bush was in bed asleep. See life always come to a bad end.

Dow rose more than 16% for the year and topped 12000. Finance is the industry to be in.

Movie Review, again.

OKAY, this is a movie review, albeit a poorly written and untimely one.

Yesterday, we used the magic card that's called Queens library card to check out a few movies. So far I watched two, and hence you know how boring my life can be. Both movies star some old men, namely Steve Martin and Harrison Ford, as in Shop Girl and Firewall.

Firewall is supposed to be a thriller, but I really don't find it thrilling except maybe the part Ford uses a juice blender to kill one of the guys. I think Ford killed all the bad guys. The movie simply lacks intelligence that one would expect from a movie starring Ford and more so playing a computer security expert in a bank.

Shop Girl, based on the same name novel written by Steve Martin, is about a clinically depressed young woman working at Saks in Beverly Hills. No doubt, Shop Girl is Martin's wet dream. And may I add most men's. It's a nice little story and the performance of the three characters are good. For a moment I thought I was seeing the Matrix as Mirabelle's apartment is always so green. Shop Girl is the kind of movie that I won't borrow but end up enjoying it.

I borrowed Firewall and my wife picked Shop Girl, apparently she knows me better than I know myself, sometimes.

DS Action

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Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Here is Mr. Harry, practicing his little muscles. Holding the stylus, making the minis move. He should be playing Super Mario vs. Donky Kong. The game probably isn't the greatest but I guess it's okay. Honestly, what do I know about games?

Mountaineers

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Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Alex with the rest of the mountaineers.

Waiting in Line

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Originally uploaded by rnj97.

C Lift

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Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Hunter Mountain

Here is Mr. Harry taking his first ever Explorer class at Hunter Mountain.

Hunter Mountain

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas.

Alex and Harry were pretty excited so they really got up early today. They usually get up early anyway.

Santa gave them a pearl white Nintendo DS, and for Harry, a Mario vs Dong Kong 2 march of the minis and for Alex he got the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team. Other than these carpel tunnel and seizure inducing games from Santa, we gave them more traditionally dangerous toys like ice skates and tennis racket. Also they got plenty of presents from my sister and from our friends.

They are happy and I am happy.

We got the Brain Age and my brain age is a solid 72 years old, I think that's pretty correct, mentally I am 72 years old.

Breaking: Person of the Year is Me

Just in case you missed the December edition of the Time magazine, yours truly has been selected Person of the Year 2006. I am not kidding you. I got to be this Person because I blog, google, youTube my time away every day.

I am going to put my new found fame as Person of the Year on my resume so I can increase my chance of landing a job with The Firm where for 2006 the average employee, scratch that, on average, an employee got paid $622,000. I am not sure if this statistics average means anything.

Further readings:
The Bonus Army by Henry Blodget 12/20/2006
Goldman CEO's $53.3M Bonus Breaks Record by The Associated Press 12/20/2006

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I have to resort to post from flickr to get the vertical working. I don't like it. One good thing is if you load picture directly from blogger, it actually let people to the hyperlinked original size picture. I don't think that was the case before. But somehow they messed up the flip vertical thing.

It's been 2 Years

It's been quarter of a century two years since I finished F.5 in Hong Kong. And here I am sitting in the park with my wife and 2 boys.

UPDATE 12/18/06
Added are two pictures from the reunion.

[on a totally unrelated note: I don't know if it's just me, I think now Blogger doesn't like to compile with the 90 degree counter-clockwise flip veritcal EXIF. I hope I got the technical right. What I mean is vertically shot pictures with auto rotate fail to appear vertical when loaded to Blogger.]

Week in Review

It's just like the last week or the week before except:-

Christmas is ten days away, have you got all your presents ready? I don't think Wii can be found anywhere unless you consider the ripoffs at eBay. Even the handheld DS Lite is out of stock now. So as much as I would like to poison my kids with electronic toys, I think I will fail miserably this Christmas. No, I won't buy a PS3.

The Dow is edging up as it "should be" in year end. I think it's reasonable and customary for the Dow to run up in year end.

After 3 years and some $7 millions, in a 832-page report, the British police concluded the death of Princess Diana was indeed accident. I am not sure if that's time or money well spent.

Latest job data: Yoko Ono's driver is paid a salary of $150,000 to $200,000. Ms. Ono's driver of ten years demanded $2 million or he would kill Ms. Ono and her son and himself. And he had the balls to tell that to Ono's lawyer. The 50 year old was arrested.

UPDATE:
Again, thanks to global warming, this week's weather has been balmy.

Eric and Sid: read and download whatever you want, knock yourself out...
Operation Paget (this link talks about the operation, 9 page pdf, not the findings of the operation) produced a 832-page inquisition on Diana's death (ok, her lover and her driver, a total of three). The Iraq Study Group Report, on the contrary, is only 84 pages. I think there were almost 3,000 American servicemen deaths in the war against terror in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group Report headed by James Baker can be downloaded here, free.

Rockefeller Center Christmas

We had a hard time finding free parking on the street so after circling the area for like 30 minutes, I broke down and had our van parked into a garage.

Rockefeller Center Christmas

Alex looks the happiest when he's with Mom.
I think Harry was actually hiding behind Alex and Mom in this picture. According to his pediatrician Harry weighed the same the year before. Usually the fillflash washed out the face, so this time around I dialed down the exposure 0.7 stop and it worked out better.
The 18-70 is not a pro grade lens by any stretch but I find it surprisingly capable and versatile. If I stop it down to f5.6 or f8, and shoot it in decent lighting, I think the result is pretty acceptable. That said, I don't mind getting some real nice glasses like the Nikon 17-35 f2.8 or the Nikon 17-55 f2.8 DX. But you make good use of whatever you have (and continue to long for something you don't have).

Tooth Fairy

I never knew there was a Tooth Fairy until Alex reached a certain age. Harry just helped Alex "extract" his loosening top front tooth by hitting him in the mouth. That's typical Harry behavior.

He planned to leave his tooth in his tooth purse underneath the pillow for the Tooth Fairy but on second thought, just like last time, he didn't want the Fairy to take the tooth. So he wrote a note, he wants the money as well as the tooth.

Here's what Alex wrote to the Tooth Fairy:

Dear Tooth Fairy:

Don't take my tooth. But please give me at least more than $2.00.

Talking about Tooth Fairy, Thomas Harris' Hannibal Rising is out today and got incredible bad reviews. I read Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal; the first two were better than the last one. And if there is any truth in the reviews, this latest one may be the worst. And yes, it's going to be yet another Hannibal movie starring 22-year old French man Gaspard Ulliel as the young Hannibal.

Subway Reading

Wiggles' Greg Page is calling it quit. The very likable yellow Wiggle is leaving the band for good because of a rare disease that often leaves the 35-year old light-headed. According the the New York Times, his departure saddens many moms but seems to have little or no impact to the band's target demograhics, namely the toddlers. I must say I like the Wiggles too. Before Alex and Harry got suckered into the whole Japanese animation thing, they liked the Wiggles, especially Alex. He even went to one of Wiggles' concert in Madison Square Garden.

Masi Oka or better known as Hiro Nakamura in the run away NBC hit Heroes, has an IQ of 180, graduated from Brown with major in math and computer science and minor in theater. At age 10, he made the cover of Time magazine as one of a group of Asian America whiz kids. I like the Heroes show some what, I guess if I were 17 years old, I would like it more. More from the Times.

Moon

Aim for the moon: if you miss you will fall among the stars. Or so the teacher told you.

Kissena Park, Flushing

December 2, 2006.