Maybe I have been living under a rock, but I am surprised that the oversea Vietnamese community hasn’t bottle-bleached Dam Vinh Hung yet for his performance of “Bai Ca Nho Bac.”

I was assigned to sell the office’s Panasonic Camcorder on Craiglist. I listed the item on Monday and received two interested buyers with very similar purpose:

Rebecca Law:

Thanks for your mail,i am buying the item for my son who school in oversea.i will add $60 for shipping,i will have do it local transaction but i am out of town presently…so you can get me back with your paypal email account so i can pay now.hope to hear from you soon.
best regard

I wasted my time responded to her back and forth about how I can’t use my personal PayPal account for the school and dismantled the deal. Today I received another inquiry from Mon Wall:

Thanks for your reply… I’ll like to buy your item and pay you with cash through my PayPal account.. Currently I’m out of the State and won’t be available for pick up. moreover, I’m buying this item for my company agent located oversea as a gift, i’ll add the sum of $100.00 to the amount to cover the shipping expenses to him through (USPS) Global Express mail International 8-10 days business. i want you to send to me your PayPal account id, so that immediate payment can be done, and if you are new to PayPal, you can easily log on to http://www.paypal.com/us and set up an account with them with either your Bank account Information or your Credit/Debit Card details and its simple and easier, just in few secs; you get your account activated. PayPal is very secure and reliable.. anticipate a favorable response from you.

Thanks.
Get back to me immediately.

Thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, if you’re around Metro area and interested in the Camcorder, come by and see me.

I am taking a much-needed break from now until next year. I need to rejuvenate myself and spend time with my family, especially with little Duke. I feel that I have not spent enough time with him. On Christmas day, he will be eight months. Time is flying and Duke is growing up way too fast. I want to enjoy the time while he’s still young.

We will be traveling to New Jersey tonight to be with the in-law side until Friday night then head to Pennsylvania to be with my family. Somehow the schedule has been working out so perfectly that we always Christmas dinner at my in-law on Thursday night and another one at my big family gathering on Saturday night. When my big family (aunts, uncles cousins, nieces and nephews) gets together, the party never ends before 2am. We just eat and talk and eat some more and talk a lot more.

We’ll drive back to Virginia on Sunday because my wife has to go to work. I’ll get to spend more time with Duke then. My mom will also come to stay with us for a week. It’ll be nice to be with her as well.

In any rate, I wish you all a holiday season filled with joy, love, and food. See you all next year for lots of new, exciting stuffs.

After many repeats of watching Dumbfoundead Jet Li-ed his freestyle opponent right on the head during a battle, I went and check out his YouTube channel. Came across a video called “Bullets of Truth” and impressed with his lyrical skills and breathless delivery. The flow is flawless. Also worth checking out his battle with another Asian dude Tantrum (1, 2).

Apparently our home association doesn’t include snow removal. The streets in our complex are filled with 17″ of snow. Dana and I spent about two hours last night shoving our driveway. Our neighbor, an old Chinese couple, were also cleaning their driveway. Actually, it was the first time that I saw the husband came out.

The wife does most of the things around the house including mowing the lawn, taking the trash out twice a week, and obviously shoving the snow. They only had one shovel so she was using a dusk pan plow. She was on her knees. My brother-in-law and I envied him. He sure has it made. His only task outside of the house is going to work and taking their thirteen-year-old girl to school. We hardly see her outside of the house. The wife is very friendly although she doesn’t speak much English.

As for this side of the house, we’re still stuck in, which gives us a chance to get some work done inside the house and get to spend time with Duke. On snow days like these, all that I really want to do is listening to some jazz and drink some cocktails. I just pull out a mixed drink book and start making anything that I have all the right ingredients. It sort of gives me an idea of what goes with what. Gin is favorite spirit right now. I just love the taste of her whether just mixing with tonic water or with Cointreau for some fruity flavor. I also made a Texas Tea last night and it was wonderful. I was suppose to put Duke to sleep, but I ended up snoring before him. I got up and screamed. Luckily he was with grandma in his playroom.

Yes, I am now addicted to iPod Touch just a day of owning it. It is indeed “a great pocket computer.” Checking emails and surfing the web without even have to boot up my laptop. I was not crazy about iPods until the Touch, an advanced Christmas present from Dana. Why did she give it to me now?

Over Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house, two of my nephews (a three and a four years old) have the Touch. It was mind-boggling to see children at that age with an iPod, but they were using it like a toy. My cousin’s reasoning is that instead of buying her kid toys, she just get the Touch and he can learn from it. Of course, when my cousin endorses something her siblings follow. That’s how the other kid also got an iPod. If my cousin doesn’t have to take care of my aunt who is suffering from a stroke, she would be a great marketer. She makes things sound so great whenever she likes them. Even my mom would take her advice on things.

In any rate, I was playing with the Touch a bit and impressed with the way Safari renders web pages. I told Dana and she broke the secret: “I got you one for Christmas.” Since she already told me what I am getting, I might was well get them now. I am now loving Apple iPod Touch 32GB.

Yesterday I went to the mall trying to do my Christmas shopping. Three hours later I ended up with a bunch of promotional designs I picked up from various stores. I really like the way Crate&Barrel incorporate photo into its gift cards so I took two of them. I also like Bloomingdale’s brown bag gift card concept. If you pull the bottom of the bag, the gift card pops on top. I was holding the bag in my hand and a salesman offered to ring me up. I told him I just wanted the card and he let me have it.

Being a designer, I have always picked up well design pieces I see laying around, but I never pull them together in a central location. After yesterday’s shopping, I decided to save a collection for design inspiration. Now I have a reason to go shopping even if I don’t need to buy anything.

I had my first web site back in 2000 registered under D3Firm.com. I lost the domain name because I signed up with a horrendous hosting company. I started from scratch again with D3Studio.net and made the same mistake. The company went offline, out of business and took my domain name with it. I was so frustrated that I started to do careful research on hosting companies.

In 2004, I registered Visualgui.com with GoDaddy separately just in case the hosting company screws up I can still have my domain name. Then I started hosting with Lunarpages because of all the rave reviews. It turns out that Lunarpages has been quite stable for the past five years. If you visit my blog everyday, you probably notice that my web site stays up about 98% of the time. Both iLoveNgocLan.com and Simplexpression.com are also hosting with Lunarpages. Whenever I work on a freelance project, I always recommend Lunarpages for my clients. In fact, I just referred one of my new clients.

Lunarpages is running a special promotion for the holidays. You’ll get 50% off on any 12-month plan. If you’re looking for an inexpensive, reliable hosting company, I highly recommend Lunarpages for the excellent service, reliable support and reasonable rates.

Why am I promotion it? I just hope that the company gets more clients and continues to do a great job so my web sites stay in good shape. That why I don’t have to deal with all the nightmares I’ve through five years ago.

Unlike shopping, don’t settle for cheap when you want to choose an agency to design your business web site. You really do get what you paid for. Lovely Nails & Spa is an example. Instead of hiring a web designer to create a professional looking web site, the owner, who was a high-school acquaintance of mine, chose to go with an amateur design.

Right on the homepage, the looping Flash animation is annoying. The first thing catches your eyes is the text effects that says, “Explorer the possibilities.” The justified paragraphs below the Flash piece is hard to read. The slap-on logo is disconnected with the layout. Under the hood, the codes are way outdated. Font tags for texts and tables for layout are still being used.

From time to time, potential clients who shop around for a web design agency would send me proposals from another company who offers similar services that I do, but only with a third of my price. I often explain to them the differences and let them decide.

While sorting through my mail this weekend, I received a collection notice from Afni Inc. for a Verizon bill when I moved out of New York, which was about two years ago. I can still remember clearly that I shut off my home phone service before I moved and even received some credits back. I even called several times to make sure that I didn’t owe them anything.

Today I tried to call Verizon to verify the bill, but the damn representatives kept putting on one automated answer machine to the next. They couldn’t even pointed me to one person that I could talk to about the matter. Verizon’s fucking sucks and I am stuck with them because most of my family members are on Verizon.

I couldn’t reach Verizon so I called Afni Collections to ask for the creditor information. About two minutes into the conversation, the fucker from Afni was ready to bite my ear off. He stated that I owe Verizon and now he’s handling the collection not Verizon. I told him “I am done with this shit” and hung up the phone.

I went online and found that many people had been targeted with the same scam. Some people was hit with the collection even though they never were a Verizon customer.

I did what folks have suggested: dispute the claim and validation of the debt. I sent them a letter with certified mail. Let’s wait and see how things go.