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.

Tim Brown, my former colleague at Vassar and the force behind Nice Web Type, has launched Web Font Specimen, “a handy (free) resource web designers and typographers can use to see how typefaces will look on the web.” Tim also contributed his first article, “Real Web Type in Real Web Context,” on A List Apart. Congrats on all the great works and thanks for the top-notch recommendation. You’re da type man!

I needed a simple business card that matches Visualgui.com to promote myself. Last Wednesday, I did a quick search on Google and Vistaprint came up first so I gave it a try. The site was easy to use and it provided me a template in Illustrator or Photoshop to create my own design. I picked Illustrator, put together my card and uploaded it. Everything looked good so I made the order.

The next day I realized that I didn’t want my address on the card so I called up customer service to change my order. The representative not only cancelled my order but she also walked me through the reordering process to make sure I get the credits for my new transaction.

I picked standards shipping, which listed for 14 days, yet my business cards arrived in my mailbox today. I ordered 250 cards for about $25 and the printing quality met my expectation. So if you’re looking for a simple business card without putting a hole in your pocket, Vistaprint is for you.

With two opening lines joking about politic, my review of Asia 63 turned into a political outrage. I don’t mind discussing politics, but I chose to stay out of the Vietnam-War-related argument. As I have predicted, the comments got nasty. It’s really a damn shame that we can’t agree to disagree. Just because one doesn’t share the same beefed-up, traumatizing views Asia entertainment had repeatedly put out in almost every video, he is stupid, “eating communist shit” or a communist. That’s just ridiculous and I am done with it.

Let’s move on to a different kind of politic. Just read an enlightening post from a Vietnamese-American fellow who used to hang around here during Obama’s election and had inspired me with his sharp, thoughtful and witty opinion. Here is an example:

I heard that as President Obama passed crowds of anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington DC yesterday, they chanted “Kill the Bill”, “Kill the Pelosi Bill”. I wonder how they, mostly faithful Christians who consider abortion sinful, think Jesus would have felt if he found out that his followers reacted so angrily toward a bill that was designed to take care of the underpriviledge in society? These are probably the same people who feel elated when saying “God Bless America”. What they probably meant was “God Bless America minus the Poor”. If I was Jesus, I would say “God Bless America, minus You”!

Agree or not, I sure got a kick out of that.