Hills of Hayward

Little Anders is now one month old, and I’m finally out of the traditional Chinese one-month-long recovery period and can do anything without restrictions. No one except Chinese moms who have been through that would understand how it feels - to eat the same thing without salt for a full month; no TV; no computer; no books. All you do is to lie in the bed, feed the baby and rest.

I wasn’t such a well-behaved mom to follow everything. I surfed on the internet, worked on SnapTint and watched TV from the side when my Mom paid all her attention to the show. I would not go through everything so smoothly without my Mom’s help and company, though she nagged at me everyday. Thanks, Mom.

The first thing I did after this special month was to go to have a pearl milk tea. Yummy! We had hot-pot dinner for the 1-month celebration on the night my Mom was going back to Taiwan. It was sad that this special journey with Mom has come to an ed since Dad has been waiting for Mom’s returning long enough.

Now Anders is one-month old and weighted 9 lb 11 oz at his one-month well check. He poops and burps a lot that we call him poop-poop head. This little poop head is changing everyday and getting cuter and cuter. He has a strong neck and started raising and turning his head left and right when he was only 2-week old.

Click on the image below to play the slideshow I made with my MacBook.

Tivo is a new thing for me, and I am really happy I jumped on the wagon. We now have a Series 2 Tivo now for my living room TV as well as our bedroom TV. Some of the really cool features include:

• transfer recordings between tivo’s
• transfer recordings to your computer
• show all your photos on from any tivo
• play all your music from any tivo
• discovering new shows with Tivo Recommendations
• record shows based on keywords, anything with “ballroom dance” will be recorded for christine
• No such thing as “Nothing to watch on TV”
• No more commercials

The only real hassle so far is that my $80 Series 2 Tivo with only 80 hours of recording time. This may sound like a lot, but the 80 hours is calculated using the lowest video quality setting. DAMN MARKETING PEOPLE! So if you want your shows to look nice, you have only 30 hours of recording time to play with.

The good news is that anyone can hack their Tivo and upgrade the storage drive. I swapped out the tiny 80 gb hard drives for a 500 gb drive and a 300 gb drive, and now I have more than 5 times my original recording capacity I had before.

Couple things to note:

• Hacking your Tivo voids the warranty… but what the heck… I got the Tivo for cheap… it isn’t like I’m opening up an iPhone!
• Choose a “silent” hard drive - no such thing as silent hard drive, but try to find one that makes minimal noise - Samsung Spinpoint Drives recommended
• Follow these step by step instructions on upgrading your Tivo
• Upgrade only takes a couple hours, and there is a whole tivo community to help you if you have issues

Merely days after Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, the attack dogs of the far right are already nipping. Fox News gives airtime to somebody who claims that General Petraeus should have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sometimes I feel like the US has become Bizzaro World.

From Wikipedia:

In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” (”Earth” spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”. In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you”. Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro #1 to investigate a crime, “Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together”. This is intended and taken as a great compliment.

Better writeup and video here about Fox News and Al Gore at thinkprogress.org.

UPDATE 10/15 - Paul Krugman of NY Times writes about “Gore Derangement Syndrome” along these lines of my Bizarro World comment.

My Mom and Dad left for Taiwan Monday night. I threw together a farewell dinner for them since Christine is taking her traditional Chinese month-long pregnancy vacation, and Christine’s mom has been cooking for us since she has arrived, I thought I should pull my weight a little.

The cuisine was easy, I always cook Italian. Everybody loves garlic bread, especially when it is made with fresh bread and real garlic. The main dish I chose something summer-related, eventually settling on seared jumbo prawns, plum tomatoes, and mushroom linquine.

Top cap it off, we had plenty of fruit in the fridge and some red wine, so I threw together some sangria the previous night.

Expected cooking time: 1 hour

Actual cooking time: 2 hours with plenty of help from Christine’s mom

The one thing I do not have these days being a new father is time. I am pulling out all stops to scrape together some time to for my daily walks down the internet and tv worlds.

One of my recent acquisitions has been the Tivo. Cutting out the commercials and fast-forwarding through uninteresting stories, I am spending half the time I used to spend watching news and commentary shows. At only $75 for a Series 2 DT Tivo box (I don’t need the latest and greatest), I am paying $2 more for the monthly Tivo service than the cable box I am renting from Comcast. Seems like such a deal, buying an extra hour every day or two for $2 more a month.

I also found some time for a guilty pleasure - engrossing sci-fi stories. I stumbled upon this excellent web-only sci-fi series named “Afterworld.” If you like movies like 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys, or Dawn of the Dead, you will enjoy this series as well.

The best part is that each episode is only 3 minutes in length, so the story hits hard and fast. Here is the first episode on YouTube. The Official website is very impressive at: http://www.afterworld.tv