I took my 2011 Toyota Sienna to Ourisman Fairfax Toyota to get an oil change. We’re clocking in 160,000 miles. The service staff who checked me in asked if I needed anything else besides an oil change. I figure I should get a new rear wiper blade. Obviously I had to pay for the part, but he also charged me for the installation. I told him to cancel the service. I just wanted to pay for the part ($18).

The trick to replace the rear wiper was to turn it on. When the blade wiped half way through, turned of the engine. From there, I just popped off the old wiper and replaced the new one. A YouTube video shows how to that in 1 minute and 7 seconds. Ourisman Fairfax Toyota was going to charge me for this, how greedy?

Our three-year-old Vương has two cavity spots on his upper front tooth. His dentist recommended silver diamine fluoride (SDF) treatment to keep his tooth from decaying too quickly. We had an appointment for today. His dentist rubbed the SDF liquid on his tooth. The entire treatment took less than 5 minutes. They charged us $150. My jaw dropped. What a lucrative business.

In his forth Netflix special, Jo Koy steps up his game with his energy and charisma. His materials include the CPAP machine, his mama’s pussy, and his road to success as a Filipino-American comic. He faced the challenges as well as systemic racism, but he determined to march forward. He kicked the door open so all Filipino-Americans can come through. I am glad to see him making it and he deserves the recognition. Despite the sexual content, his performance was enjoyable and his delivery felt honest.

I have not contracted Covid yet. Does that make me a super-dodger? No, I have been more like super lucky. Our family members, including my mother-in-law, have been shielded from Covid. I believe my mother who died of Covid is protecting us from Covid. I was by her side when she fought and lost her battle with Covid and I didn’t get it from her.

A couple of weeks ago, we came real close to catching it. When my six-year-old son tested positive, I thought we were all doomed. I slept right next to him the night before; therefore, I was positive that I had been infected. I went to the skatepark to rollerblade before my symptoms showing up. I rollerbladed hard and sweat like I was taking a shower. I stepped up the highest ramp and pray to my mother. I asked her to protect us and she did. Later on that evening, we tested our six-year-old again and he was negative, twice.

None of our family member showed any symptoms and we all tested negative despite being exposed so closed to people with Covid. We are definitely not super-dodgers. We are super lucky because we (my kids and I) have put down our guards, but we haven’t caught it. It has to be the invisible power from my mother that protects us. Still, I am keeping my mask on and keeping social distances. I am going to get the boosters and all. Covid is here to stay and we’ll catch it eventually.

Erik Villard writes about the South Vietnamese corruption in HistoryNet:

Corruption sapped South Vietnam’s military strength when senior officials pocketed money or resources meant for the armed forces, set up rolls of “ghost soldiers” to collect the pay for nonexistent troops, took bribes in exchange for contracts or put personal connections above proven abilities when they doled out jobs.

He concludes:

Corruption continued to be a major problem even after the communists took power. In 2021, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, which rates countries for corruption on a sale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) placed Vietnam at 39— a slight improvement from its score of 31 a decade earlier. South Vietnam may have had a problem with corruption, but the communist government has proved to be no more honest.

Nilay Patel on the new Verge:

So we sat down and thought about what was really important to us and how to make our homepage valuable every time you open it. We also thought about where we came from and how we built The Verge into what it is today. And we landed on: well shit, we just need to blog more.

So we’re back to basics with something we’re calling the Storystream news feed, right on our homepage. Our plan is to bring the best of old-school blogging to a modern news feed experience and to have our editors and senior reporters constantly updating the site with the best of tech and science news from around the entire internet.

I am glad to see The Verge reinvigorates blogging and I hope to see blogging makes a comeback. I miss reading blogs.

Back in April 2020, I had the pleasure of reviewing the Vietnamese diacritical marks for GT Pressura, designed by Marc Kappeler and Dominik Huber. I am so glad to see the type family being refreshed and expanded, according to the release note:

The Extended subfamily gives GT Pressura room to breathe, embracing a more organic rhythm with a variety of character widths. In its departure from GT Pressura’s strict beginnings, the type becomes more elegant and “more Swiss Style,” according to Moiré. Extended has the approachable proportions of a modernist grotesque typeface with completely mechanical design details.

The mini-site is just lovely. Take a look!

Nhạc dân gian đương đại của Hoàng Thùy Linh không chỉ giai điệu mà luôn cả ca từ cũng hòa lẫn giữa truyền thống và hiện đại. Thí dụ như trong ca khúc “Duyên âm”, nàng đuổi khéo chàng rằng, “Điều anh hằng mong muốn, ba má em sẽ buồn / Anh ơi, anh về đi”. Nếu như nghĩ theo thời xưa thì câu này cũng không có gì ghê gớm lắm. Nhưng nghĩ theo thời nay thì thật là động trời. Điều gì chàng mong muốn mà khiến cho ba má nàng phải buồn? Tôi chỉ nghĩ ra có một điều đó thôi. Đùa chút cho vui thôi. Nếu các bạn hứng thú đọc thêm những phần chơi chữ trong ca từ của những ca khúc của Hoàng Thùy Linh, xem phần đề án nho nhỏ này cho vui.

Robin Rendle’s latest blog post resenates with me. He writes:

Blog your heart! Blog about something you’ve learned, blog about something you’re interested in… Blog about your annoying kids and your fucked up relationship…

For nearly two decades, I have been blogging like no one is reading. I blogged about my life, my issues, and my fucked ups. I got myself in trouble on a couple occasions when I spoke my mind. I don’t know if blogging has helped or hurt my career, but it definitely has changed my life for better or for worse. Regrets I have a few, but then again, too few to mention. I only slipped up a couple of times in the past 20 years. That was not so bad.

MODX still remains one of the underappreciated content management systems in the game. If I have to choose WordPress, Drupal, Joomla (is it still relevant?) or MODX for a medium- to large-scale website, I would go with MODX without hesitation. The only downside to MODX is the tiny community. MODX still struggles to grow. Comparing to WordPress, MODX’s development is much slower because it doesn’t have contributions and resources like WordPress. Nevertheless, its platform and power take no backseat to WordPress, especially MODX Cloud.

The Law School migrated to MODX Cloud for over a year ago and the experience and the service had been exceptional. One of the best features on MODX Cloud is the ability to spin up a development cloud exactly like the production cloud in a couple of minutes. When MODX released version 3.0.0 back in April, I needed to spin up a development cloud to test first before making the upgrade to the live site. I am glad I did because I could have been screwed if I went ahead and upgrade from version 2.8.3 to 3.0.0 on the production cloud.

To create new cloud in MODX, I logged into the dashboard, hit the “Add New Cloud” button, gave it a name, changed the version to match the version of the production cloud, then hit the “Complete Cloud Creation” button. Once the new cloud was created, I went to the backup archive, chose the latest backup from the production site, then selected “Restore Backup Into” the new cloud. That was it. When the new test server up and running, I upgraded MODX from version 2.8.3 to 3.0.0.

Although the upgrade passed, the site didn’t work 100 percent. Third-party extras, such as getResource and Article, hadn’t yet compatible with the new MODX. This is where MODX falling behind WordPress. One of the best features of WordPress is the upgrade compatibility. In addition to MODX, the Law School also uses WordPress Multisite, which is currently powering 46 sites, and we never ran into any upgrading issue. We even set automatic upgrades for the core and all the plugins.

The Law School main website, which is powered by MODX, is much more complicated than the sites in WordPress, but a major upgrade shouldn’t break the site. I tried to fix the issues myself on the test site, but I haven’t had any success and MODX’s small community isn’t helping much either as I reached out for support. As a result, I have been holding off on making the upgrade to version 3.0.1 until the Extras get upgraded to MODX 3.0.1. So far I haven’t seen any progress on MODX to get the Extras work with the new MODX release. Though MODX continues to support version 2 with the release of 2.8.4 and I had made that upgrade.