Had a great weekend with my family. Little Eric is so adorable. Here are some photos of him. My sister seems to be doing good. Took ma to Philly where she bought 12 boxes of Liver Purifier for $480. The seller was so happy. They stopped everything they were doing and tried to explain to me how good the medication is. Ma said it helped her. It is a lot of money but if it can make ma healthy, I am supporting the medication all the way.

Sammy is so cute now. I love to spend time with her. She is so much joy. Boy, I missed that cute little girl already. I love the way she translates English to Vietnamese and vice versa. For example, I asked her what is, “Oh! my goodnesses” in Vietnamese. She replied, “Troi oi! Troi.” She is so much fun. I don’t know how many times she said, “I love you, Cau Doanh.” She looked after me at the door with the sadness on her face when I was about to head back to Poughkeepsie. She said, “Cau Doanh, please don’t go. Stay and play with be Tu.” She made feel so loved and I was just speechless.

Thanks to my man Tim for the compliments.

I am heading out early today to go home to see my family in Lancaster. Boy, I haven’t see them for ages. Can’t wait to see my little nephew. He must be really adorable. I also miss my little Sammy so much. How am I getting home? Good question. Obviously, not with my car. Although it all fixed but I am not taking any chances with it. I don’t want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere so I rented a car with Enterprise for $9.99 a day. Can’t beat that right? Have a fantastic weekend everyone.

Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River is breathtaking and heartbreaking. The film is so good that kept me focused over two hours. The performances are fantastic. Tim Robbins is phenomenal in his role as Dave. He kept me wondering what the hell is in his head the whole time. Is he psycho or what? Sean Penn is awesome in Jimmy as a tough dad who is emotionally torn by his daughter’s death, especially the part where he breaks into tears. This is one of his best performances next to Dead Man Walking. Kevin Beacon is not bad as a detective but Laurence Fishburne is off the hook. He is the man. All the supporting actors are great too. Mystic River is a very well made film over all. Go see it if you haven’t. Highly recommended. It’s definitely a great escape from whatever stress you have.

Once again Macromedia lives up to the users expectations. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is a huge leap on incorporating CSS. The ‘Page Property’ is now replaced with CSS. Instead of defines a background color in the BODY tag, Dreamweaver defines background color in CSS. Even the links are now defined in CSS. Dreamweaver also supports shorthand properties. You have to change it in the preferences. The CSS editor is much improved from the previous version. You now can check your codes to accommodate different browsers. If you’re designing for Netscape 4.7, Dreamweaver will give you the red line error similar to Microsoft Word indicating that Netscape 4.7 doesn’t support it and Dreamweaver will give you a workaround instantly. I am so glad that the File window is now included in Mac OSX. I always missed that from moving from Window to Mac. Code hinting and automatic completion are time savers. I love those two features.

Dreamweaver is much more than a WYSIWYG. Although it allows designers to create CSS and XHTML without knowing codes, I always use its code view as a notepad on drug. I just switch back and forth to see what I have done so far without preview in the browser. It is such a time saver as the same time produces codes concisely. Furthermore, Dreamweaver displays PHP codes inside the program so you can see what you’re doing. It is extremely helpful for making includes using PHP. Dreaweaver is still leaving GoLive and FrontPage out in the cold. Love it.

Mot Chut Qua Cho Que Huong had been edited with English subtitles. This will help audiences understand the lyrics without knowing Vietnamese. Enjoy!

The purpose for this redesign is to clean up codes, organize the layout, and most importantly, maximize accessibilities. As you can see, the JavaScript rollovers had been replaced with CSS. Although the previous version was tableless layout with XHTML structured, the coded was quite messy. Designed it back in January 2003 when I first began experimenting with CSS layouts and XHTML. Now that I have a better understanding of CSS and XHTML, I just have to recode the whole site. To accommodate screen readers, I moved the side navigation to the right so JAWS can read the contents first before reaching the side links. There is also a ‘skip navigation’ to bypass the top menu. Design wise, I still want to keep the clean and fresh look and feel. So take a look around, enjoy the new design and don’t forget to write me your feedback. Your comments and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated.

After reading Maximum Accessibility, Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone by John Slatin and Sharron Rush, I immediately feel a need to redesign/recode this site to be usable by people with disabilities. John Slatin shows readers how it feels to browse the web with a screen reader (JAWS) and the experience is extremely frustrating. If you think waiting for a Flash intro to load is bad, browsing with JAWS is even worse if the sites do not designed for accessibility. Even buying a book from Amazon is a horrible experience. One of the projects John pointed out; the Hirshhorn museum (designed by Second Story) is beautifully designed with a page on accessibility, which describes all the disability accommodations at the museum but the website itself is inaccessible.

Maximum Accessibility is effective in a way that after reading it, readers will always remember to consider people with disabilities on their next web project. I highly recommend this book for the theories presented but the tips and techniques are not too strong. If you are looking for a straight technical book on accessibility, you might want Joe Clark’s Building Accessibility Websites. With the combination of both books, you will be able to learn and understand both theory and technical which is invaluable.

Just finished another theme for iLoveNgocLan. She is simply spendor and we still love her dearly.

I finally let go of my computer. She was too much to deal with. She was replaced with a brand new G4. Although I prefer a G5, I am satisfied with what I have since they also gave me my old hard drive. Now I have 2 hard drives with 80 gigs. Yeah! I am happy although it is a pain to reinstall all the softwares and transfer the files.

After installing the Security Update in Mac OS X yesterday, I’ve been experiencing Kernel panic like crazy. I requested for a G5 but that won’t happen for the next 2 more years so I am hoping Panther will solve the problem. On top of that, some of the new features such as Exposé, Font Book and Fast User Switching are exciting. Beside all the promising features, this is another reason why Panther is so powerful. Can’t wait to grab it.

Some lady just walked by and complimented on the work we do. She commented the James Ransome banner looks great and the the sites in general are wonderful. She said we are doing a fantastic job and see that I am at work quite early. Isn’t it wonderful to be appreciated? Those kind words make me happy.

By the way, check out my today’s banner. Isn’t Sonia Sanchez luminous?

Le Thi Diem Thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For is a story of a Vietnamese family who came to America to start a brand new life. Thuy takes me back to the good old days when I first stepped my foot in America. Eating alone at school lunch table hoping to blend in with the rest of the kids. Although we live in America, the images of Viet Nam will always remain in our mind. That is how the story being told. Thuy shifts back and forth from her current life to those moments in Vietnam. Actually stories are told out of order and quite hard to comprehend. All of a sudden, her mother came into their lives. The relationship between the parents is quite interesting and her father is such a character. Suddenly she skips to twenty years later being a writer. At 16 she ran away and the story of her brother drowning. Many stories are being told but none of them are delved into details. The narrator herself is not too exciting. She did not open up a whole lot. For instance, the only relationship she had was once she was a little kid. The boy touched her breast and they heard some footsteps so they ran away. I guess she doesn’t want to go into her private life. Anyway, I do give prop to Thuy for writing this novel. It’s absolutely rare to see a Vietnamese American writer.