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.

With my wife’s approval and my mother-in-law’s help looking after Dao, I’ll be attend the WordPress DC Meetup tonight. The topic is on Responsive Web Design. Definitely looking forward to it.

My wife brought the Graco DuoGlider for $37, the best bargain price for a stroller ever. I use it almost everyday after work to walk the boys around the blocks. Even though it is a bit clumsy to fold and taking up a bit of space in the trunk, I can’t really complain.

Yesterday morning, lil Dan work up around 6 and Dana woke me up also to look after him so she could crawl back to bed with Dao. The weather was around 40s, which was a bit chilly for a walk, but I took him out anyway. I just had to double up the blanket. We walked to University Mall for some Dunkin’ Donuts and Saxby coffee. He fell back to sleep after five minutes we left the house. I loaded up 5by5 for some geeky podcasts.

These days 5by5 has been visited on my iPhone quite often. I caught up all the episodes of The Web Ahead. Jen Simmons is a fantastic host with an awesome lineup. I also listened to some of The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman as well Content Talks with Kristina Halvorson. Both are excellent. I am also going through some The Talk Show podcasts with John Gruber. I am also listening to some of Shop Talk with Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert.

Let’s get back to the kids. Around 3pm yesterday, neither of the boys wanted to take a nap. The quickest solution was taking them out for a walk. The boys got to take a nap and I got to do some exercise. It was like killing three birds with one stone. So I walked for almost three hours and the kids slept for three hours until time for dinner.

Everything was fine until Dao started coughing. He coughed until midnight before he could go to bed. I knew that the next day he wouldn’t be able to go to daycare. I ended up taking a day off work to be with him. I also took him to the doctor and turned out that he has allergy. The pollen got to him when we were walking outside yesterday. Poor kid. The little guy is doing fine though. He’s awesome!

Found this recipe in Reader’s Digest:

Author of Comfort Food Fix, [Ellie] Krieger tweeted that she spreads avocado on toast or with a slice of tomato and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt.

Here’s another good tip from RD:

By the time produce travels from its source to store shelves, it has lost many of its disease-fighting compounds. Buy fresh veggies locally or when in season. If not stick to to frozen, which is prepared at peak ripeness to lock in nutrients.