I just created a maintenance category to keep track of all the maintenances. I keep lose track of all my receipts and I don’t remember what I have done. So this blog will keep everything in one place.

Our Toyota Sienna 2011 is reaching 120,000 miles and here are what we have done:

• Replaced 4 Michelin Premier tires: $800
• Replaced rear break pads: $155 ($60 part & $95 labor)
• Tuned up: $400 ($85 Spark plugs, $15 air filter, $15 cabin air filter first time fit)

Total cost: $1355

Still need to replace shocks. These auto mechanics are milking everything they can. The tires were bought from Costco. The tune-up services were provided by C&G Specialty Auto Repair and Auto Body.

In the summer, my favorite breakfast is an iced cold, fresh smoothie. In the past three days I have been enjoying a new recipe called Covona smoothie. Covona is the combination of coconut, avocado, and banana. How clever? Here are the ingredients if you are interested.

1 cup of milk (I use two percent)
1 cup of coconut-flavored yogurt (I use Liberté’s whole milk yogurt with Philippine coconut)
1 whole ripe avocado
1 banana
6 strips of coconut (I use Trader Joe’s coconut strips lightly sweetened)
2 table spoons of chia seeds
2 table spoons of honey
10 cubes of ice

It is perfect for two servings. For a more tropical flavor, replace avocado with a ripe mango and two slices of pineapples.

I was at the dental office today to get my teeth maintenance. While the dentist worked on my nasty teeth, I realize that everything in life that you own needs a maintenance.

Your damn house needs a maintenance. If you are suck at housework like me, you will have to pay big bucks for all the maintenance. From the water pipes to the toilet, maintenance costs a fortune. Our HVAC is leaking water. There goes more maintenance.

I took our older mini-van to the dealer for an oil change on Monday, the technician recommended several maintenances that would cost almost two grants. Now I have to shop around to get lower price for a maintenance.

At work, I have to keep a maintenance of our CMS and server. Everything needs to be kept today to make sure that our sites won’t get hack. A huge chunk of my time is to maintain the content of our websites.

Relationships required maintenance as well. Our marriage will break if not well maintained. Our interactions with the people around us will lose if we do not keep in touch. Life is so full of maintenance. How do we get out of it?

I am contemplating on deactivating all my social media so that I don’t have to maintain those interactions anymore. In the near future, I will try to get rid of all the cars so that I don’t have to maintain them anymore. Once the kids all grown, I’ll buy a smaller townhouse so that I won’t need to maintaining the landscaping. The less dependent on all of these things will free me up from all the maintenance.

Alexandra Alter and Tiffany Hsu reports in the New York Times:

In the last decade, the chain has closed more than 150 stores and now operates 633.

I have not set my foot in Barnes & Noble for a long time, but I hope it won’t go away. Bookstores are so essential for the mind.

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times:

So what makes her “divisive”? The fact that Republicans keep attacking her? That would happen to any Democrat.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s a woman — a woman who happens to have been far better at her job than any man in recent memory.

That’s right. She has done far more than Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan. I have more respect for her than spineless Ryan.

This Saturday, we will take our last vacation of the summer before the kids go back to school. Vacation is supposed to be relaxing and resting, but I am stressing out about it. It used to be fun, but now it is more like fighting and arguing. It started with the kids, but now it is affecting the adults as well.

My primary role is to avoid confrontation. How will I do that? Well, I’ll just have to keep an eye on the kids the morning they wake up until the night they go to bed. If they can’t get along for a few hours, I can’t even begin to imagine being stuck together for a whole week.

I don’t want to sound like a selfish asshole, but I am tired of all of it. It is already tough keeping an eye on my own kids. Now I have to be aware of everyone’s kids, especially the one who breaks down when he can’t have things his way. It is like hold a hot glass all day long without dropping it.

If I want to relax, I have to let Steve Jobs watching them. They will spend time with their iPads as long as we let them. I am desperate for a digital-free vacation, but it is much harder to enforce when other kids are using it. They always say if you don’t let your kids have it than they just not going to have it. It’s like telling addicts to kick it while watching others using. Good luck with that.

The two weeks experiment of not having iPads worked well. They read more and spent time outdoor more. As soon as you let them back in, they go nuts again. You can take the iPads away from the boys, but you can’t take the boys out of the iPads. With iPads they fought with each other less. So it is a no brainer.

The arguing and yelling issues have caused a headache for me. I get stressed out every time they get together. No matter how many times I warned them and how many times I repeated the issue, they still occur. It is getting to the point that I feel uneasy and not comfortable, but no one gives a fuck what I think. I am an adult; therefore, I have to control my behavior. For the kids’s sake, I just going to do what I have to do. My only hope is to walk away from this vacation without distress.

In less than five months, I am already itching for a new design. Iteration 5 is all about sans serif. I often go with a serif face for body text, but I am switching it up a bit this time. Halyard, designed by Joshua Darden, has been on my mind for a while so here’s a chance to use it. The wordmark remains the same. As for the layout, I am going for four columns on large screen. CSS Grid makes layout design a joy. I hope you’ll like the new direction.

Đây là lần đầu tiên tôi đọc sách tiếng Việt về tự học hoàn thiện bản thân (self-help book). Những bài văn ngắn ngủi nhẹ nhàng nhắn nhủ về đời sống và đạo đức của con người. Sống sao cho nhẹ nhàng (hãy để gió cuốn đi) và có một tấm lòng. Rất bổ ích tinh thần cho những ai chưa từng trải nghiệm với cuộc sống. Riêng tôi thì đã từng lăn lộn với đời nên đọc gần 50 bài cũng hơi bị đuối vì tôi biết được những lời khuyên của tác giả ra sao. Tuy nhiên đó là những lời nhắc nhở đáng nhớ.

Alan Burdick writes in the New Yorker:

This week, a team of researchers at Harvard published the largest and most definitive study of the subject to date, and the findings are compelling. “Men who wore non-boxers”—that is, briefs and their confining kin—“have significantly lower concentrations of sperm and lower sperm counts,” Jorge Chavarro, a fertility researcher at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a member of the research team, told me. “It’s a numbers issue.”

I believe the study is accurate because I only wear boxers and I have four kids. I never liked my package to be tight. It just feels good letting it loose. The only downside is that you can get horny easily and it will show. In any rate, I have been telling my wife to get rid of all of the kids’ briefs and get them to boxers. This study provides a good reason to switch.

I want to get back to finding design inspirations, particularly websites with strong typography.

Let’s kick off with my own portfolio site. I made some realignments. I dropped the grid to make the layout simpler. I am still using Roslindale and Bild, designed by David Jonathan Ross for his Font of the Month Club. I made the text much bigger.

Also setting in Roslindale, Jason Pamental redesigned his site using Roslindale’s variable font. I dig the resource section. Thanks for including my websites.

Yesterday, I noticed Vassar has a new design. Congratulations to the talented web team. Under the new director, they appear to be unifying the look and feel rather than letting it loose like when I was still there over a decade ago.

I came across twin soul studio. Very nice use of big types, colors, illustrations, and subtle motions.

The Intercept is definitely not new, but I like the typographic treatment. The infinite scrolling, however, drives me nuts. TechCrunch isn’t new either, but I like the grid layout on the homepage.

I took a recent issue of the Magnolia Journal at my brother-in-law’s house because I was impressed with the typesetting. I am feeling the itch to redesign this blog a bit. I want to make the text bigger, but also keep it readable. Will see.