Random Brain Dump

It’s been months since I add any new functionality to my site. The last thing I did was adding a rich WYSIWYG editor (only to deactivate it later since it doesn’t work across all OS’es & browsers).

Anyhow, I configured my blog to display related posts when displaying an individual entry. It’s pretty cool. If you’re using WordPress and interested in getting this piece of functionality, check out Alexander Malov’s plugin.

I came home from work last evening and I quickly grabbed dinner. Then, we prepare the kids to go to local park and while I was dressing the kids, Allison & I had this little exchange:

Allison: Daddy?
Rex: What is it, baby?
Allison: I miss you when you go to work!
Rex: Ohh… thank you sweetey, I miss you when I’m at work too!
Allison: I love you too much…
Rex: (heart fast melting…) 🙂
Rex: I love so much too.

I often tell her “I love you so much”, but for some reason she likes to say “I love you too much.” It almost sounds like a complaint! At any rate, I’ll take what I can get from her… 😉

It’s Father’s day, so I want to blog a few quick lines about my girls. As you get to my age, I find that you start to look more forward to Father’s days than your birthdays… 🙂

When it comes to music, I’m like an old dog– set in my ways and sticking to familiar tricks. Thanks to hip hop, country and artists like Mariah Carey and N’Sync, I kinda gave up on popular music scene some years ago and stuck to “old” artists. Even with widely available MP3’s, I find that I rarely sample new music. Yes, I am a hermit musically– old school, un-hip and unplugged in many ways. 🙂

However once in long while though, I do “discover” new artists. Artists like Sinead Lohan, Coldplay & Norah Jones provide the optimism that there are still good stuffs out there if you look hard enough. I guess it’s reassuring. Lately, I find some of the up & coming female artists to be very good.

Recently, I recently “discovered” another great female artist. I heard Katie Melua’s new album “Piece by Piece” for the first time this week. Great stuffs, jazzy feel similar to Norah Jones. The young British artist is beautiful, awefully talented and has a great voice. I especially like the 2 selections: “I Cried for You” and “9 Million Bicycles“. Her music videos for those 2 songs are awesome too, very innovative. And I’m usually don’t get into music videos…

I can’t help but to feel hip, all of sudden… NOT!

This video chronicles the many faces of Michael Jackson, morphing his faces from age 5 to today. All I can say is, “what a freak!”

Check out safari photos from Nick Brandt– breath-taking & very surreal…

Doesn’t the PC guy in the running Mac ads look like Bill Gates to you? 🙂

Here’s a very cool optical illusion. After a few seconds of staring at a color negative, you eyes will fool you into thinking you’re looking at a color photograph when it’s black & white. Very cool….

4 families + 2 big campsites + 7 kids + toasted marshmellows + numerous pounds of yummy BBQ + good weather = great family fun.

We kinda kick off the start of the summer with a camping trip. It was our girls’ first camping trip & first in many years for Suzanne & I. We all had a great time with the Tieus, Jarvinens & Truongs. Mt. Madonna turned out to be a great little camping destination, wooded and conveniently nestled east of Gilroy. While the kids don’t exactly make camping as care-free as I remember, I still enjoyed the relaxing time since I had a marathon work week. The highlights for the kids were a trip to feed some white fallow deers at the deer pens. The highlight for me was the BBQ. 😉

Here are some of the shots from the weekend trip.