Last Saturday my sister-in-law had a welcome home party for her newborn. One of her friends who has two daughters came by. Fifteen minutes later, the eleven-year-old girl wanted to go home because she was bored. Her mother told her they they just got here. The girl got mad and punched her mother in her back. The mother who is one of the sweetest ladies I know didn’t respond. Later on when we were sitting around chatting, the younger daughter (seven or eight years old) came up to her and asked for something. She didn’t allow and once again she was punched by the younger daughter.

Seeing kids disrespecting their parent in the public breaks my heart and I feel her pain. We’re in a similar situation with Dao. I get infuriated when he hit his little brother, mom and grandma. I do not tolerate that kind of behavior. The problem is that words have not registered into his head. When he hit me, I told him, “Do not hit me. That’s not nice.” He hit me again and I told him, “You hit me one more time and you’re going to get slapped.” He hit me the third time, I slapped his hand a bit hard so he could remember what would happen when he hit people. I reminded him, “This is the punishment you get when you hit people.” The situation reminded me of how I used to deal with bullies in middle school. Of course, he screamed at the top of his lung as if I just beat the crap out of him. He learned his lesson then, but then nothing registered.

As a parent, the guilt of hitting your kid hurts you more than it hurts him, but what can I do when talking to him is like talking to a wall. My wife has a different approach. Whenever he hit her or other people, she distracted him by directing his attention to something else. The problem with this approach, as I see it, is that she’s not addressing the real issue. Avoiding it is not a solution. I don’t like using that method. I want a more direct communication. I want him to understand that hitting people is not appropriate. If he does it to us and we don’t respond, he’ll do it to other kids his age. I am sure other kids will beat him up if he does that to them. That’s the kind of things I would like to avoid.

Last Friday, my wife and I had a heated argument about it. She gets tired of hearing him cry almost everyday. I feel the same way, but it is better to discipline him now before it gets too late. As always, I lost the argument; therefore, I am backing down and let her do her things with him. I just hope that as time goes by I won’t witness what I had seen last Saturday.

George Mason Law is now featured on Mediaqueri.es. The screenshots were captured a few months ago; therefore, the small-screen version is outdated. The latest version has the entire menu links moved to the bottom. Still, we’re very pleased to see that Mediaqueri.es is showing us some love.

Wind, rain and cold air make a dreadful Monday morning commute, but I don’t let that ruined the spirit of my thirty-fucking-four birthday. Although I have never care much about my own birthday, it gives me a reason to celebrate. I used to think that birthday is just a countdown to the day you die, which is not a bad reason to celebrate, but now
I think it helps me keep track of the days I am still alive. I should be thankful for that. Life is fucking short and unpredictable. You can see that every time you hear someone you know passed away all of a sudden.

When you’re hitting mid 30s, celebrating your birthday is much different. Gone are the days of birthday party and party sex. You just have to enjoy the moment. So I kicked off with a venti vanilla latte courtesy of Starbucks. (Yes, I am a gold member.) Then I’ll go to Viet Royal for salt-and-pepper lobster. It’s going to be my last lobster week. I am going to get back to the grill chicken salad again. It’s been too damn hard to get back to my green diet when I work too damn closed to Eden Center, but it has to happen. I have to watch my diet.

As I was writing this, Dao called and sang a birthday song and suddenly the sun is out. It’s a lovely day again. Thank you my son. I got mad love for you.

Time flies when you enjoy what you do. Six months already passed since I joined George Mason School of Law. I must confess it was an intimidating move. Most of the people around me had faith in me. My wife said I could do it. One of my former colleagues said it would be a challenge for me, but I would learn so much. My new supervisor has more confidence in me than I do in myself.

The week prior joining the new employment, my wife booked a five-day vacation to Playa del Carmen. I remember driving to the airport at three in the morning feeling like I just myself into something that I could not handle. If the site and the server were to go down under my watch, I would be in real trouble. When we arrived at Catalonia Hotel, however, the thoughts were temporarily gone and it was one of the most memorial vacations I ever had. I had my adorable son, lovely wife and wonderful mother by my side.

The first two weeks at work were incredibly nerve-racking. I faced with so many new ways to do things. I spent almost a week trying to figure out how to log into the server through Terminal using SSH. By the second week I almost gave up, but I couldn’t do that. I can’t let down the people who believed in me.

I decided to stick to the gun and move forward. I used Google to learn every command line that I needed. I picked every every book on Linux, Apache and MODX to catch up. Yet the most invaluable resource I have is my predecessor. I owe the guy a great deal. He answered most of the questions that I had without being annoyed or at least I couldn’t tell in his email response.

Over the weekend I made a security update to the CMS system and if he didn’t point me to the things that I should had been aware of I would have failed. Because he did, I was successfully made the update. I have never seen anyone who moved on to a new job and yet still providing support to his old job the way he has done for me. Because of that, I will do the same if I ever to leave this job. That’s going to be far down the road.

Right now I really enjoy this job. I have an understanding and supporting supervisor. Your relationship with your supervisor makes a huge impact in not only your job, but also your life. Work and life should be separated, but the line is never clear. When your child is sick and you needed a day off, it is whether the supervisor makes it easy on you to do so. I had had time when I was even afraid to take my vacation and that what made my life a living hell.

Now I am quite thankful for this position. The hours are flexible and I could work from home every Friday. Somehow a change of space from office to home makes quite a pleasant experience. I am grateful for this wonderful job.

Lacking of sleep finally took a toll on me yesterday. I could only make it through half day at work. I felt sick and needed some sleep. I went to Eden for lunch, but barely finished chao goi vit (porridge and cabbage duck salad). Headed straight home and knocked myself out. The headache and the dizziness didn’t go away until I took an Aleve-D, my drug for everything.

The incident indicates that I can no longer stay up late. With two boys, fulltime job and occasional freelance gigs, I need to balance my time and priorities. Blogging is hard to give up, but I have to. I know I said this a million times in the past, but I haven’t done it. I definitely can’t give up entirely, but it will be sporadic.

Thanks for reading!

Halie Loren has a damn fine of a voice (smoky and sultry), but the real deal, which is proven on her new release Heart First, is her simplified reinterpretation of standards. Her rendition of “My One and Only Love” is a perfect example. The bass-keyboard accompaniment gives her the space to build her emotion into the tune. The most interesting part about this cover is how she gradually departs away from the original melody. By the time she comes back after the brief piano solo to close out the tune, she has completely rewritten the melody with her own. Now that’s fucking jazz.

Her version of “Feeling Good” starts out naked (unaccompanied) and instead of swinging it up she keeps it slow and adds a country twang to the classic tune. Love the way she scats with the harmonica near the end. Even when she swings on “Taking a Chance on Love,” she does so gently to make sure her soul is felt. The band, which does an excellent job of backing and displaying her vocals throughout the album, also understands the important of playing “heart first.”

The album showcases quite a bit of variety ranging from the blues on the title track to the Latin groove on “Sway (Quien Sera)” to the Sade’s smoothness on “Waiting in Vain,” and yet the album comes together as a whole without interruption. The laid-back simplicity makes Heart First a pure late-night pleasure.

Last Tuesday I attended my first WordPress DC Meetup, which was also my first Meetup ever. Responsive Web Design attracted quite a crowd that day. The speakers did a decent job of presenting RWD, but there was not anything exciting. It was more of an introduction to RWD.

The best part of the Meetup was the job announcement at the end. If you’re looking for a design job or WordPress developer job, Meetup is the place to go. Companies and agencies were there to scout talents. It was a good vibe over all.

I got a cold call from a company trying to sell me a CMS. Here’s how our conversation went:

Salesman: “Are you looking into a web content management solution?”
Me: “Not really. We already have something in place.”
Salesman: “What are you using.”
Me: “MODX.”
Salesman: “Ah ha, open source platform.”
Me: “Yes” (I was impressed that he knows about MODX.)
Salesman: “Is it PHP or .Net?”
Me: “PHP” (So he doesn’t know about MODX. It was just a wild guess.)
Salesman: “How do you like MODX?”
Me: “It’s very flexible. I was able to do HTML5 and responsive web design out of the gate… What language is your CMS written in?”
Salesman: “Java.”
Me: “Oh ok.” (Red flag. Red flag.)
Salesman: “Unlike MODX, which developed by some sixteen-year-old kid in the U.K., our system is developed by professional developers…”
Me: “Wow, wow… Hold on. MODX is developed by a team with a great community backing it up.”

That was a deal-breaker for me right there. How can you trash something that you know absolutely nothing about it? He made it too easy for me to end the conversation.

Nicki Minaj’s Roman Reloaded jumps off so hard I almost “Come On a Cone” when she puts her dick in my face. With her wicked flow, sexy swag and cocksure braggadocio, Minaj holds no backseat to her male counterparts including Weezy, The Boss and Killa Cam. In fact, she can be no less ruthless when addressing her rivals: “If I had a label I would never sign you hoes / Take you bitches to school than I Columbine these hoes.”

As a rap artist, what makes Minaj stands out is that she has her way with the beats. She just doesn’t rap over them. She exorcises them. With Roman Reloaded, however, Ménage à Trois attempts to move beyond hip-hop and the result is quite unfortunate. Auto-tuning with Chris Brown on “Right By My Side” is hinting at the departure point, but the real plunge is on “Sex in the Lounge,” where Lil Wayne makes it clear: “I lay her down and kiss her neck / Talk dirty to her / Like I get that pussy wetter than a dirty sewer.” That has to be the worse fucking punchline ever.

Roman Reloaded is like one of those shows that the opening act is way better than the entire presentation.

My sister-in-law gave birth to a baby boy a few weeks ago; therefore, my mother-in-law had moved to her house to help out. My sister-in-law lives three-minute drive, without red light, from our house. Now each morning we dropped Dan off to her before heading to work.

Her day is filled with looking after Dan, helping out my sister-in-law and her kid, cooking for seven people and taking care of grandpa. If Dao gets sick and stays home, she watches him too. The best part is that she does all of that with a smile and not a word of complain. In my book, she’s a super grandma.