Random Brain Dump

Next to weather, the next best thing about the summer for me is the summer fruits. I like strolling the local farmers market and see endless display of colorful fruits. My girls just can’t get enough of strawberries, cherries, pluots and pineapple, Suzanne likes crunchy white peaches. I dig just about anything, but my favorite is probably apricots.

Several weeks ago, Mercury News’ Food & Wine ran an article about “luscious” Alphonso mangoes. These are pricey mangoes imported from India for the first time in 2 decades. The article described these supposedly kings of mangoes:

“With its fragrance of buttery vanilla shortbread cookies and flesh as sensuously smooth as the creamiest pudding…”

That sounded enticing enough for my curiosity. The mangoes are imported via flight in small quantities and only Indian shops carry them. So I took the girls and stopped by a local Indian bakery in Sunnyvale that following weekend. The proprietor was pushing me to buy the whole case. We bought 3 to try; and at $4 for each tiny one, they were pricey alright.

That night, we tried them. First, I wasn’t happy that 2 of the 3 turned out bad. They do definitely has a distinctly pungent taste and smell but it isn’t nearly as exotic as the article made them out to be. Perhaps I am less impressed because I recognized the taste right away though. I’ve had them before but just don’t remember where or when. I’m glad I got to try them but while I’m no food critic but I concluded that they are a little over-rated and a lot over-priced.

I’ll spend my $12 on champagne mangoes from Mexico next time!

This site offers a collection of images that the author thinks changed the world. Most of pictures depicted are fairly horrifying– images that make you ponder humanity itself. There are many other collections with same claim. Collections like this share something in common: vivid depiction of human tragedy. These particular are heart-breaking for me since several of the collection are from the tragedy of the Vietnam war.

Wars really suck!

A New Zealander couple, expecting a baby, had an ultrasound. The experience must’ve had a high impact for the couple because they quickly decided on the baby’s name: “4real”.

Authorities is blocking the name citing that numerals are not allowed. 🙂

“Hey, why is my baby driving the space shuttle?” 🙂

It took me long enough, but I had decided to take the plunge and upgraded my blogging software. I wanted new functionalities and a new look to the site. Change is good…

I migrated my blog to WordPress 2 years ago. It’s the best blogging software I’ve used to date. It serves me well, but recently my blog was deluged with spam bots. While WordPress doesn’t make spam comments public, I got tired of having to delete hundreds of them daily. The newer version contains a plugin that fight spam very effectively so far (none has made it through!). In addition, some of the new extensions seem really cool.

So I upgraded the blog system and will be experimenting with various things. I’ve de-installed Gallery which I used to run my photo galleries. The photo galleries don’t render and some links are broken for the time being. In its place, I plan to install a flash-based system. I’ve taken a look at a few of the free ones out there, but haven’t seen anything I like just yet. I may just have to write one myself…

For the next few weeks, I’ll be hacking the site a bit. So put on the hard hats and please pardon me until the dust settles!

I injured myself playing basketball one September day last year– banged my knee and shoulder that afternoon. I could barely walk the rest of the weekend and for the next few months the knee just didn’t feel right. I could walk okay but many times I felt it was just about to buckle out on me, especially walking the stairs. As far as my shoulder, I had trouble just picking up Allison.

So I saw 2 different orthopedic surgeons. The first one in Los Gatos didn’t do jack! He simply felt the knee and the shoulder and tell me he didn’t find anything wrong and suggested me to rest up. After a few months and not getting any better, I went to see other surgeon. X-ray proved no structural damage of the shoulder or the knee. The doc did said my left knee plate is a bit looser than the other. He gave me a knee brace & gave me the green for light running.

So this past Saturday, I ventured back to the gym in Mountain View with my friend Allen and played some hoops with the rest of our gym buddies. It was the first time I played basketball in 8 months. I was rusty needless to say but was moving well. Of course I was huffing & puffing every minute but I still have a solid feel for the game so confidence was still there.

The sad truth is that you injure more readily and the body takes longer healing itself as you get older. Hoops are especially tough on joints. I was pretty resilient when I was younger. This is especially true considering I’m the dasher and slasher type. Except for one horrendous ankle injury in high school (I’ll save the disgusting graphic details of that evennt for another day), I’ve been fairly free of major injuries. Knock on wood…

I’m glad to be back playing again. It’s a game I love. I realized the other day that this represented the longest hiatus for me since I started playing ball in 6th grade!

I own 2 cars all my adult life: both Toyota.

My first one was a Toyota Celica, ’82 I believe. I inherited it from my sister; she left it to me after she upgraded to a red Mazda Miata. I drove it all during my college years. It was a brown compact car– damn ugly color but hey beggar can’t be chooser right? I was thrilled I had something called my own. And I had no money at the time.

I took it with me when I moved to the Bay Area in summer of 1992 to take an engineering job with NorTel. A few weeks into the job, I woke up one morning and discovered the car was gone. I couldn’t believe some idiots actually stole a freaking old car like mine. I was staying temporarily at my uncle’s in San Jose at the time. The cops eventually found it in Bakersfield a few days later!

I used the car for a year and a half. During that time, I occasionally made trips back to southern Cal. Looking back, it was rather miraculous that the darn thing didn’t crap out in the middle of the trip on me. Oblivious at the time, but I learned later that the underlying of the Celica was rusting away. But I liked the car; it was small and perfect size for me at that time. It didn’t give me a lot of troubles despite its age & condition.

I gave the Celica to my cousin in Sacramento in ’93 after my Dad gave me a ’94 Camry. This time it’s brand new. It was a family sedan, not exactly a model I’d go for but I inherited this second car, once again. I’ve been driving this Camry for almost 14 years now. The Camry proved to be ultra reliable and pretty maintenance free. I’m very impressed with Japanese auto making. During my years of driving it, it required only 1 major service and the one period of time when it had some electrical problems (due to human errors), I had no other troubles with it. Over the last few years, I actually waited for it to die on me so I have an excuse to trade in for a new set of wheels. No such luck.

But I drove the old reliable Camry one last time this past Sunday. My last ride on it was to a park by myself (wasn’t a nostalgic ride, I just had some reading to do). I gave it to my aunt since her son is starting college this year. I am actually sad to part with it.

I’ll be driving my Dad’s van until he comes back to the states later this year. I’ve several months to do some research for my next car. It should be fun… It’ll be the first time in my life that I’d walk into the show room buying a car for myself. Well, that’s assuming I’ll decide on getting a new car.

Having driving Toyota all these years, it’d be nice to get something non-Toyota. But I’m not ruling it out completely. But then again, do I really want stick to driving the same car for another 14 years? 🙂

Web-based applications like the ones Google is developing are appealing because they are cross-platform, cross-computers and requires no installation. On the flip side, being web apps, these require constant connectivity. I always thought this is what prevents a wider and more serious adoption of web-based office applications we’ve seen so far.

So when I read about Google Gears yesterday, I was floored. I see this as a great strategic move by the company. Google Gears is a browser plugin enabling web applications to work off line. This addresses the biggest downside with online apps: connectivity. I think if the company pulls it off, Google Gears can pretty much negate the notion that Google apps aren’t suitable for serious usage. I think Google also did a very smart thing, making Google Gears open source– earning them mucho brownie points with the developer community.

How does this impact Microsoft? At best for Microsoft, this will not make a large dent in their Office revenue in the short term (nobody in the right mind would expect Office get displaced readily given its dominant market share). At worst, this signals a significant encroachment of the web onto the traditional desktop. The ramifications are difficult to speculate, but I can easily see a serious challenge to Redmond’s dominance on the desktop.

This might be a milestone product for Google and I suspect platform technologies like this keep Bill up at night.