Happy birthday my dearest Đán—the son who gives me happiness and headaches. You are still my blading champ. As much as I wanted to keep up with you, I could never drop into those tall ramps like you had pulled off. Even though I spent more time at the skatepark than you, I could never catch up to you. If you put your heart and mind into blading, I guarantee that you can do a whole lot more.

If you practice playing the piano and reading the notes, you will excel in your music journey. As I reminded you many times, private piano lessons are expensive. I don’t mind paying if you put your efforts into playing. I don’t want to waste money, time, and your instructor’s dedication.

I admire your snowboarding skills as well, but your head and soul are devoted to your digital activities. You spend way too much time on your computer and your phone. You can’t control yourself. You refuse to do anything else willingly. You isolate yourself. You don’t focus on your schoolwork. You get frustrated and depressed when you can’t spend time on your digital devices. I don’t want to restrict your access, but I need to. I worry everyday about your digital addiction. You are not alone though. Your brothers, your cousins, your peers are living and breathing in the digital generation.

Now that you are twelve years old, I hope that you will make better decisions and choices. I love you and I am here for you until the day I die.

Love,
Dad

While Mr. Điệp fixing our HVAC unit, I sought out his advice on setting the thermostat before leaving for vacation. He recommended setting the temperature to about 67 degrees. Then he also gave me some tips on preventing a water disaster.

Steps to Shut Off the Water

1. Turn off the the water heater power
2. Shut off the main water valve
3. Turn on the furthest sink faucets (both hot and cold until all the water drained out then turn them off

Steps to Turn the Water Back On

1. Turn on the furthest faucets (both hot and cold pipes)
2. Flush all the toilets
3. Turn on the main valve half way slowly
4. Turn the water heater valve and power back on

If the HVAC unit broke down while we were away, we wouldn’t come back to a swimming pool. When return, we can prevent the disaster even if the pipes busted by shutting off the main valve again. I’ll definitely take his advice whenever we go out of town.

Since we came back from New York City on Sunday, the temperatures had plummeted. Then we noticed that our heating system struggled to reach 67°F even with the auxiliary heat kicked in. The thermostat could only get up to 64°F. With my mother-in-law and the kids in the house, I worried and couldn’t sleep for the past two nights.

Today we reached out to a friend who is in the construction business and asked for a recommendation on an HVAC service. He referred us to T&J Service. Mr. Điệp Trần and his protégé Việt arrived around 6 pm to diagnose the system. It turned out that the outside unit stopped working. They worked in the cold to replace the fuse, tested the compressor, and made sure the system worked properly.

Knowing that we have proper heating again, I can go to sleep peacefully. Now I know who to call if we run into HVAC issue again. I am thinking of contracting them to replace the whole system in the summer since it is almost 15 years old.

Paid: $100

If you feel compelled to give today, please consider supporting this blog.

To hang your quotes in CSS, this is all you need:

html {
  hanging-punctuation: first allow-end last;
}

At the time of this writing, only Safari implemented this property. To make it work in other browsers, negative text-indent is needed. Nevertheless, I went ahead and added hanging-punctuation and removed text-indent for the title of JAY-Z’s song from the Beacon of HOV project. That way, the hanging punctuation would just work in all browsers in the future.

Mới đặt hành tập thơ mới của anh Cao Nguyên với tựa đề “Ba dòng thơ”. Đã đọc và theo dõi vài bài thơ ba dòng anh chia sẻ trên Facebook, tôi tin chắc rằng đây là một tuyển tập đầy thú vị. Nhân dịp lễ Giáng Sinh sắp đến, đây là một món quà đầy ý nghĩa cho những tâm hồn mê thơ và yêu tiếng Việt. Hãy đặt hành ở Amazon ngay. Trong lúc chờ đợi, mời các bạn cùng đọc “Thơ mưa” của Anh Cao Nguyên ở thomua.com.

The following quotes from JAY-Z had been edited for brevity.

My whole thing is to have confidence in yourself. If you’re going to take a chance on anything, you’ve gotta take a chance on yourself. Have that confidence to take a chance, and not be afraid to fail. I personally don’t believe anybody could have stopped me. That’s just how I believe. I was coming; I was destined to be here. A lot of people will put their fears on you. Always believe you’re great, even before anybody else believes it. No matter where you are; there you are. The genius thing that we did was we didn’t give up. You’re doing all of this for a reason. If you want different, you’ve gotta act different.

Don’t ever go with the flow, be the flow. Whatever you do in life, people are going to judge you. Everything is inspiration. Everybody is inspired by someone. I’m a person that believes that everything that happened to you in life happens to shape you as a person. It may not work today and it may not work tomorrow, but this is the right thing and this is what I’m doing. I’m not going to let anybody speed up my process. I don’t care what’s happening out there. That’s the great thing about having ultimate confidence. I don’t have anything to prove; I know who I am. I am a self-aware person. What’s the sense in being successful if you still can’t be yourself? Most important thing I got is everything is connected. Every emotion is connected and it comes from somewhere. Being aware of it in everyday life puts you at such an advantage.

You have to develop. Don’t listen to anyone; everyone is scared. A lot of people will try and put their fears on you. Have such a strong belief in yourself that you can quiet out all the outside noise. Every human being has genius-level talent. You have to find what it is that you’re great at and then tap into it. No one cares whether you live or die and that’s where that mentality grows from. I’m going to get it or die trying. If I don’t try, what kind of life am I saving? I’ve learned more from failure than success. It can be paralyzing to have fear of failure. When you’re self-aware, even when you’re dealing with someone’s ego, you allow their ego to live in its own space. The problem is when you engage that energy. If you engage the ego with your ego. Then it can escalate to a level that is irreversible.

My music is based on life and the things I’ve experienced. Everything is inspiration. This is who I am, this is what I do, and then they jump on this next hot thing and it’s not for you. For me, just having discipline, and having the confidence in who I am and if I go into a studio and if I find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world that can relate to what I am saying and is gonna buy into what I’m doing. Not because it’s the new thing of the moment but because it’s my genuine emotions. Only two things will get you through this, man. That’s patience and persistence.

My first album came out when I was 26. I had seen so many things on the streets. My attitude was that I seen so much, that I have nothing to prove. I became self-aware. I wanted full control over my music. I own everything. Try to own as much of yourself as possible, because it’s gonna pay off in the long run.

I’m really connected to the people. I really feed off the energy of people. I love what I do, and if you love what you do, you want to be the best at it. You don’t make music to be second best. You make music to be the best / It felt like I had a bigger responsibility for the culture and to show it in a different light. The truth is, it’s my passion; It’s what I love to do. Make music and perform, and travel. So it’s who I am. It’s not even a choice for me. It’s just who I am. It’s always good to compare yourself to people you look up to, because you give yourself a high goal.

I used to write when I was young. I would write for hours and hours on end. That stream of conscious comes with you all the time. Whether you’re at the table or not. So as I start moving into the streets, I start coming further and further away from my notebook. So I would memorize these words. Then I would have to run to the house and write them down. When you do that you work up your memory.

Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, that’s the foundation of everything great. You gotta be able to compete, still sharp and still, you gotta get out there and you gotta earn your spot. It’s not given. I learned that if I was going to be successful then I had to be successful at myself. I couldn’t be successful doing what other people were doing; I had to do what I believed in and what felt real to me and felt true to me.

I love that thing of collaborating and you’re taking the best of what you do and someone taking the best of what you do and you not robbing from what they do and they not robbing from what you do and y’all bring the best of what you are to the table and you put it in this mix and you see what happens. You know I love that part of creating. I can’t explain it to y’all, man it just comes out bare for me. I just start mumbling, they say you put the right artist with the right track in the studio, leave the door cracked and let God in.

Yesterday I took our 2018 Toyota Sienna to Firestone to get a lifetime wheel alignment as well. Firestone seemed to do a good job with our 2011 Sienna. As the winter approaching, I need to make sure our 2018 Sienna in good condition so we can travel to Stowe in peace. I hope it will be a good season. I am ready to ski and snowboard.

The MODX Support Team had proved once again to be indisputable in customer service. Their team members assisted us every step of the way to migrate the Scalia Law School’s CDN and WAF from StackPath over to CloudFlare Enterprise. We ran into a few obstacles during the process, but they were patience, responsive, and diligence in making sure that we succeeded in the migration.

If you need a CMS that offers flexibility, durability, and security, MODX is the solution. If you need a rock-solid hosting with top-notch support, MODX Cloud is the way to go. The Scalia Law School Website has been powered by MODX for more than 15 years and hosted by MODX Cloud for more than 3 years.

In the CMS space, MODX beats WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Cascade to the pulp. Hats off to Jay, Liz, Garry, Ryan, and Jimmy. You all rock!

JAY-Z is a lyrical living legend. Underneath his flamboyant flows, he packed his rhymes with articulated alliterations, meticulous metaphors, and witty wordplays. When listening to his music, I always found something new and intriguing. For over a decade, I wanted to pore through his entire catalog to select rhymes that fascinated me. I kept it on the back-burner because I couldn’t find the time. Furthermore, I would have to sift through his misogynist materials as well as his extravagant lifestyles. I had no interest in either subject.

The more I listened to his music, the more his words got into my head. Once I could get past his misogyny and wealth, I found his hustling mentality to change his life and his relentless audacity to change the world inspiring and motivating. In the last few weeks, I was determined to read through song by song, line by line, and word by word starting with Reasonable Doubt to 4:44 and his guest verses for other rappers.

Beacon of HOV is my passion project in which I would like to shed a light on his rhymes that spoke to me. Furthermore, I would like to translate them into Vietnamese. I am not a translator; therefore, I use Google Translate to help me get started. Then I edited Google’s translations with my own understanding of his words. I enjoyed learning the art of translation.

With my favorite JAY-Z rhymes and my Vietnamese translations, I needed a space to host them and the sample section for “Vietnamese Typography” fit the bill. I wanted the web page to be as simple as possible; therefore, I came up with a random system that would feature a different quote, set in a different font, and display a different background photo each time someone visited the page. For typography, I chose typefaces with condensed width so I could make the quotes bigger.

I had a blast putting the page together. I invite you to refresh the page, read the quotes, and be inspired.