Hills of Hayward

Yup! It’s a B-day GIRL requesting having a birthday party at the Hooters. Nancy is unique. She did not want to bore the boys by a girly event and also she fulfilled the girls’ curiosity. Our special Nancy made a special decision – to have her b-day party at the newly opened Fremont Hooters!

We were sitting at a long table by the window on the side of the restaurant. Of course the choice of the seats became “critical.” All the “good” seats were gone in a blink and poor late birds can only enjoy the scenes outside of the widows.

Harrison always said, “Come on, we go there for the wings!” Well, thats true too. Their chicken wings are pretty good. After a few rounds of orders of food and drinks, it was time to get Nancy out to the stage. Surrounded by many “Bo-Ba’s”, Nancy looked happy!

Okay, now the winner for the best photo of the night is…….

Haha!! Enjoy!

Christine laughs at me regarding my obsessiveness about mail. Whether it is digital email or the analog postal mail, I check my mail often, sometimes too often. Christine is the opposite of me. At any given time, you will often find a stack of unprocessed mail for her somewhere in the house.

Ever since I started working from home a couple years ago, my routine has been to check my postal mailbox and read and process the mail during lunch. I separate the mail into many piles: a pile for junk mail, a pile for Christine, a pile for me, a pile for our international friends that are using my address as their mailing address, and a pile of mail for my businesses.

Invariably, the junk mail pile would comprise of 75% or more of the mail each day. This junk mail pile would be filled with credit card offers, mortgage refinance offers, retail catalogs, mail order catalogs, coupons, donation requests, etc…

Being an optimizer at heart, I felt sick of the waste that goes into junk mail:

• the time spent sorting the mail every day
• time spent shredding mortgage and credit applications
• wasted printed paper that I will never read
• massive money spent in postage and printing

At the beginning of the year, I finally decided to act and made requests to companies to stop sending me junk mail. In most of the cases, the process involved jumping through many hoops, only to result in being told that my request has been processed, and it may take a couple of weeks for the mail to cease coming.

Fast forward two months later, I was still receiving the very same junk mail.

Then I came across a site that helps you stop junk mail. Their tagline is:

Save time, save trees, save the planet!

The average adult receives 41 lbs of junk mail each year. Our service eliminates 80-95% of unsolicited mailings for you. We’ll contact dozens of direct marketers on your behalf to stop your junk mail

At $41 for 5 years of junk mail blocking service, the price was right, but I was skeptical that it can make a real impact on my junk mail.

Now three months later, my junk mail has been reduced by 80-95%. My reaction opening the mailbox these days is sometimes pleasurable shock that there are only a couple of letters in my mailbox.

I would highly recommend 41pounds.org to anybody who does not enjoy junk mail.

Yes! Harrison bought me a new MacBook!

Last week we went to our friend Tony Lorimar’s house to discuss some video shoot for Harrison’s business. He was showing us his baby’s pictures and some of his video clips on his iMac. It was so cool… Though I liked it so much, I would never think about having one since I’m not very handy about my own IBM laptop. I’ll need Harrison, Andy or Cisco IT to help me maintain my laptop. Switching to Mac? Who can help me then!?

Unfortunately my IBM laptop was acting up again after the re-image. I have to try all different tricks like pressing down trackpad or tilting the laptop for almost 4 inches for it to work. It’s getting ridiculous. Finally Harrison cannot stand for it anymore. He said, “Since you’ll be at home for more than 8 months, maybe it’s about time for you to buy a personal laptop.” “MacBook seems to be a good choice but you need to figure out if you can use all your usual task critical applications.”

I was very excited to go to Apple Store on Monday. It was the best customer service experience I had. The sales spent one hour and 40 minutes with me for all my stupid questions and credit card issues during the purchase. Finally I was satisfied and happily brought home my first personal laptop, a MacBook!

Within 10 minutes after it’s powered up, everything is good to go. I can access our storage server at home without mapping a network drive; I can access wireless network anywhere without adding a new wireless network…. Everything just seems to be automatic! This is just fabulous for a computer idiot like me. :p

I woke up this morning to this headline in the NYTimes. We see the failure of trickle down economics in this globalized marketplace.

The $100 billion in Big Pharma profits that were not taxed at a normal corporate 35% could have been $35 billion spent on:

• improving US school systems
• setting minimum wage for school teachers
• upgrading our aging utility infrastructure
• funding alternative energy research
• improving FDA food testing standards

Somehow all of these seem somewhat more important than letting big pharma keep all of their $100 billion in profits.

In the last couple of weeks, I realized that a couple of concepts are in the process of dying.

Supply-side Economics (Trickle Down Economics)

Any company who has not already outsourced labor is in the process of outsourcing labor. Very few companies can resist the intense capitalistic sway to improve its bottom line at all costs, including outsourcing its loyal work-force from manufacturing, IT, and even technical design.

Keeping taxes low for all businesses is counter-productive for the government to improve the quality if living for its citizens. I am definitely not advocating that businesses be crushed with high taxes, but the argument that low corporate taxes will help businesses grow which will in turn help American labor is now a myth.

What can we do?

• Become a investor of businesses to align business interests with your own
• Stop support for special tax breaks and subsidies for businesses

High Journalistic Standards on Broadcast and Cable TV

The recent takeover in progress of Wall Street Journal by News Corp is symbolic of the times. Upstanding media with high journalistic standards and integrity being swallowed up by a large media conglomerate.

News Corp also owns Fox News which has long been lambasted not because it has right-leaning viewpoints, but that it violates the very concept of fair and honest reporting. Despite its obvious lack of integrity towards honest journalism and debate, it has grown to be the most popular news channel because of its often sensationalistic and combative way of reporting.

Unfortunately, news is ultimately also a business. Advertisement revenues follow where the eyeballs are. To keep their viewerships from leaving, the other major news channels have dumbed down their programming to accent the entertainment aspects of news rather than the “boring” real issues.

What can we do?

• Never trust the TV, look for more information online to get the complete picture
• Get your news from diverse sources online: websites, blogs, videos, etc…
• Stop watching the morally dishonest: O’Reilly, Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck
• Start watching: Chris Matthews (conservative), Keith Olbermann (liberal), Anderson Cooper
• Stop watching useless reports on celebrities, yet another missing baby, floods in Texas, or high speed car chases