Now that we own this baby for three days and I have overcome the initial shock of owing more debts, let’s reflect on the buying experience.

Dana and I have wanted to buy a minivan for over a year now. We knew that we wanted a big, comfortable car for our little family, but we pushed off buying because we didn’t think we really need it. If we keep on thinking that way we would never get the car. A couple of weeks ago, the minivan came up again in our conversation so we decided to go ahead and proceed with our plan since we drive to New Jersey and Pennsylvania almost every two weeks. Our small cars are doing fine, but why not make our road trips more comfortable?

It didn’t take us very long to decide on the Sienna because we don’t have that much choice when it comes to Japanese minivan. It’s either a Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey. I am an Acura fan, but the MDX is out of the picture. It’s not roomy enough for the family and it is too pricy for us. My sister has the Odyssey and I am not too fond of it. In addition, my wife is all for Toyota. We took a test drive on the Sienna and that was it.

Dana did research online and found out how much people are paying for their minivans. The nice things about the web is that people share information. She also put in quotes to all Toyota dealers in our area and found quite a wide range. With the price in our hands, it was time for me to do the negotiation. I am not a good negotiator at all so it is helpful that I have a price in hand. I hit several dealers and they gave me such a high price. I asked them to not waste our time and just give me their best offer. Instead of giving me their best deal, they ask me to give them my price. So I wrote down about $500 below the lowest price we were quoted. Then they would asked me how did I come up with that price as if I just came from another planet.

Finally I came to the dealer that offered us the lowest deal. The salesman seemed honest and he also seemed to know that he has offered the best price on the Internet. We went back and forth and I was able to lower $300 off his offer and it was a deal.

After we signed the agreement, the fun part began. He offered me insurance on the smart key system, which costs $500 a piece if I lose one. I passed on the offer and thought to myself if he told me that from the beginning I would have chosen a regular key. Before we made our payment, more offers were thrown at our way from the financial guy. Extended warranties for all the electronics in the car. I passed on the offer as well and said if that was the case then maybe I should just go with the CE for less electronics. Extended warranties on mechanics up to 100,000 miles. I fell for this the last time I bought my Acura TL. I paid $1,200 and the only time I used the warrantee was when I accidentally locked the doors and left the key in the trunk of the car. My TL now is clocking in around 150,000 miles and she still runs as smooth as when I first acquired her. The financial guy dropped the price on the plan almost half and still I didn’t take it. He was not too happy about it.

Anyone who owns a Toyota or an Acura knows that the first 100,000 miles do nothing to the car if you change oil regularly and tune up once in a while. I drove my TL for seven years and I hardly pop the hood to see if anything goes wrong. I am hoping that the Sienna would be the same in term of reliability. So now that I just increased more debts for comfort, I need to get more freelance gigs to pay off my loan.

The other day, I poured out some wine and said “ru” (my southern style for “ruou”). You repeated as “lu” and pointed to the pomegranate, your favorite fruit for the moment.

Yesterday, you broke the music box and told mom “uh oh.” Mom said in Vietnamese “I have to ask grandpa to fix it.” You heard the word “sua,” which means fix, but you associated with, “sua, sua, sua, sua” and pointed to the refrigerator for your milk.

You recognize family members through pictures. If I point to my mother, you would say “ba noi.” If I point to your mom’s mother, you would say “ba ngoai.” If I point to mommy, you would say “ma.” If I point out your baby pictures, you would say “baby.”

I hesitated to purchase Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog because the book only covers WordPress 2.8. After spending two hours in the bookstore reading it, however, I bought the book. From helping readers understand the core of WordPress including the syntax and the loop to guiding us through the process of theme design and development, Smashing WordPress is a great resource for customizing WordPress to meet individual project requirements. The downside of Smashing WordPress is that it doesn’t delve deep into a certain topic. For instance, the book only scratch the surface on how to use WordPress as a CMS. So if you would like to build an e-commerce site powered by WordPress, this is not the right book for you. If you need snippets of codes or how to accomplish certain tasks in WordPress, this book is very useful. I sure will have this book by my desk when I need to develop a WordPress site.

It’s a done deal. We drove home a 2011 Toyota XLE. She’s is dressed in predawn gray mica color and equipped with premium package which includes smart key, DVD and navigation system. I initially wanted the SE for its sporty look, but this is a family minivan so comfort plays a much bigger role. Big props to my wife who had done all of the research so the negotiation was much faster and smoother since we knew exactly what we were looking for. We didn’t buy any extra warranties even though the manager tried his best to hook us in. I learned my lesson 7 years ago when I purchased my Acura TL so I didn’t fall for that trap again. Toyota is running a special promotion through Twitter. We’re going to use that $500 for our next purchase, which is a big screen TV so my wife won’t need to squint anymore on an old-ass tube.

Last Saturday, I took Dao to Barnes & Noble so he could play at the train table. While watching him, I picked up some graphic design books and flipped through them. It’s been a while since I get a chance to do that.

Back when I was working at Vassar, I often turned toward the graphic design section in the bookstore to find my inspiration. After meeting with the client to get his vision for the web site, I would sneak out to the book store to see if I could get some concepts and ideas for the layout. One of the nice things about Vassar was that we were encouraged to hone our skills in whatever way we desired. So sneaking out to the bookstore to do work was perfectly fine.

When I searched for inspiration, all I needed was a notepad and a pencil to do my sketches. I don’t want to design with the design book next to me. I might end up making something close to the original design unconsciously. Looking back at some of the sites I had done, I could still remember how I came up with these designs: German Studies, Jewish Studies and Dean of Freshmen.

In Ordering Disorder, former design director for NYTimes.com Khôi Vinh deconstructs his grid-based design in details. The book begins with the concept to help readers understand the basics of the grid and the mathematical formulae. Then Vinh walks us through the process (research and requirements, wireframe, preparatory design, comps and production) as well as explains the terminology (unit, columns, regions, etc.). The heart and soul of the book is in the execution, in which Vinh illustrates his approach to a real-world project from sketches on paper to the final layouts. The real magic is flipping through the pages and witnessing the contents fall perfectly into the grid. With his own art direction, the book itself was designed on a grid. The texts on one side match up with the illustrations on the other side of the same page is not a coincident.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Playing the Piano has been my go-to album for the holiday season. Right off the opening “Amore” the vibe fits just right for the winter spirit. Sakamoto’s solo piano is relaxing and the way his fingers fall softly on the high keys is irresistible. The intimate setting continues on “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,” “The Sheltering Sky” and throughout the disc. I would love to listen to Playing the Piano on a snowy day accompanied by a book and save the second disc, Out of Noise, in which Sakamoto experiments with sound, for another time. The ambiance vibe is a complete different animal.

What makes Tung Duong so damn hypnotizing is that he puts his soul into every song he sings. He doesn’t cover too many old songs, but when he does, he does an amazing job. His rendition of “Ngam Ngui” is tender, romantic and expressive. My mother-in-law once told me that my father-in-law won her heart with this song. I am guessing through this line: “Em ơi hãy ngủ anh hầu quạt đây.” I did similar thing when I tried to win my wife’s heart. The different was that I didn’t “serve her a fan.” I just cranked up the air conditioner in my Acura.

Some new additions to Simplexpression Winter. Added snowfalls to jazz up the winter theme. Added social media share tool and back button to individual pages. I spent a couple hours last night checking out both Google and Amazon check out tools, but PayPal is still the best solution for Simplexpression. I also revert back to PayPay’s default “Add to Cart” button for better security. So have a happy and safe shopping.

Dan Cederholm’s CSS3 For Web Designers is a strip down version of his excellent Handcrafted CSS. While both books covered transitions, hovering effects, 2D transforms, multiple backgrounds and form enhancement, Handcrafted CSS delved further into useful topics such as CSS reset, framework, float management, ampersand and Ethan Marcotte’s invaluable contribution on the fluid grid. So if you already own a copy of Handcrafted CSS, you don’t need CSS3 For Web Designers. Between the two, I still strongly recommend Handcrafted CSS.