This is our last night in Las Vegas. I am sitting on the 25th floor of The Palazzo looking at the gorgeous view of the Sin City. Duke is already deep asleep after a long day of walking and pushing his own stroller from The Venetian to Caesars Palace. For some reasons, he likes to push the stroller more than sitting on it. Maybe being born on the year of the water buffalo has something to do with it. Dana already sneaked out downstairs to spend some last minutes with the slot machines.

Taking a kid to Las Vegas results in some interesting experience. We need to find kid-friendly environment as well as taking turn to be with him while one of us was at the Casino. Dao discovered the slot machines as soon as we landed in Las Vegas. He loves anything that has buttons and spinning wheels. He also loves the view from the Palazzo’s window. Each morning he got up and ran to the window. He looked up on the sky and said “bay” if he saw an airplane. He looked down and said “xe” when the cars passing by.

Although we stay at The Palazzo (courtesy of my brother-in-law), my favorite spots are in downtown. I don’t have to burn too much cash to have a good time. Yesterday, I sat at the Pai Gow table for five hours with around 15 rounds of gin and tonic and only lost 100 bucks. In Atlantic City, $100 would have lasted in 10 minutes. I am not a big gambler and I set my limit is $100 a day. On Sunday, I hit a bonus for $100 so I treated everyone to dinner. After dinner, I went back and lost all of my bonus.

Gambling aside, Las Vegas is still my favorite spot for relaxing and enjoying Vietnamese food. There are places that even open twenty four a day so I could get some good pho any time. Ok, my brain is fried. My head is still spinning from yesterday’s alcohol. I better catch some sleep before we head back to Virginia tomorrow. Flying is a bitch and it gets even worse when you don’t have enough sleep. Good night, virtual world.

The two kids who were born on the same day finally met in real life. Dao and May seem to get along well. They even held hands. We also got to meet May’s parents who married on the same day as us. We met up at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. With the $5-special admission, the aquarium was packed with more human than fish. Dao enjoyed his visit, but he got tired around 8:30pm so we headed home. It was a nice play date for the kids and we would love to arrange something like this again. If you come to D.C., let us know.

My next goal is to turn WordPress into a simple CMS so I could offer to my future clients an easy way to update their web pages. All that I really need the CMS to accomplish is the ability for the clients to change text, add a page or insert an image. It’s sound like a simple system, but I want the framework to take full advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 and I want to strip away many admin features that my clients won’t need.

The simple CMS has been in the back of my mind quite some time, but I haven’t had a chance to work on it. Maybe when I redesign Visualgui.com, I would use it as a project.

Thanks to Text Link Ads and the sponsors (on the right column) for supporting Visualgui.com. As of today, Text Link Ads makes more money than both Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate combined and the sponsor links don’t even stand out. It really is a nice way to create some passive income to pay for my domain and hosting fees. If you have a blog, you should give Text Link Ads a try.

I hate to admit it, but the quality of my own blog has been slipping. Blogging is no longer exciting like it used to be and being a father makes blogging no longer a priority. As Cong Dao is growing, so is his demand. He sucks up so much energy for such as little fellow. Try to spend an evening with him at the playground or the mall and you’ll see what I mean. By the time he goes to bed, I am also burnt. Trying to blog half beat and half sleepy doesn’t seem to cut it. I used to be able to blog during my commute to work, but now I spend that little amount of time catching up some sleep. Thanks to Starbucks’s fifty-cent refill, I go through my day with two venti cups of French Vanilla ice coffee. One in the morning and one at 2:30pm.

I am not complaining at all because there is nothing I rather want to do more then spending time with Cong Dao. I have so much fun just seeing him discovering new things everyday. I want to blog about our experience, but if I do’t do it right away, it will slip away. Each day goes by and he had learned so many new things that I simply lose track and don’t want write about it at all.

Beside Cong Dao, writing about music, Vietnamese in particular, has been my passion for this blog. I got into music critique because the music excited me and I wanted to share my thoughts. Back then many singers such as Tuan Ngoc, Thanh Lam, Hong Nhung, Thu Phuong, Nguyen Khang, Tung Duong, Ngoc Khue, Duc Tuan rocked my world. With each new release, there was something new to look forward to. For the past two years, it seems like the music scene either stands still or just so much mediocre. I don’t feel good writing negative reviews most of the time. It just makes me feel like an asshole making fun of the singers’ work.

The music has become absolutely uninspiring. Dam Vinh Hung won some golden album is a perfect example. I was going to blog about this over the weekend before they announced the winner, but I had other things to do. Not that I really care about some worthless award, but it came no surprise to me that Dam Vinh Hung’s horrendous Nhung Bai Ca Khong Quen beats Le Quyen’s classy Khuc Tinh Xua. In fact, I already predicted the outcome when I first read about it in the news. Musically speaking, Le Quyen blows out Dam Vinh Hung like Ly Tong blew pepper spray in his face. It’s a no brainer at all. Even though I only listened to Dam Vinh Hung’s Nhung Bai Ca Khong Quen, he included enough “red” tunes in the double album to guarantee himself an award. It’s not about music. It’s all about politics.

Anyway, my focus for this site will be changed. The blog is no longer a priority. I will be concentrating on web design and development. HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery are the things that get me exciting. I would like to revamp this site completely when I am done with my client work. For now I just need to take a break and hang out with my little guy. Nothing gets me more exciting than going up and down the escalator with Cong Dao. This little fellow has no fear at all when it comes to step on and off the escalator. In fact, he is intrigued with it.

Our first gig for Simplexpression did well at the 40th Annual Festival of the Leaves.

Since it was our first time, we didn’t really expect much. We would be happy even if we were to sell five items. Fortunately, we sold way beyond our expectation even though some of our competitors only sell items that were a fraction of our price. In addition, we only had a very limited collection. In fact, our display was so simple and spare that one of the customers asked, “Is this all you have?”

We only showcased a handful of selected pieces, but they stood out. The compliments were mostly “simple,” “beautiful” and “elegant.” We also sold quite a bit of our classic designs from our original web site. Big props to my sister-in-law for helping us out. She was great at creating the displays and greeting the customers. Thanks to Duke too for being such a good boy. He enjoyed the parade and running around our booth saying hi to our customers. I spent most of my time looking after him.

Of course, the show wouldn’t succeed without the creative designer who handcrafted these beautiful pieces late at nights. I am very proud of her and her work. I had fun and I am looking forward to future festivals.

In the introduction of Miles On Miles, a book that complies Miles Davis’s interviews, Paul Maher Jr. and Michael K. Dorr point out Miles’s favorite word:

“He plays like a motherfucker,” “my band is a bunch of motherfuckers,” “those guys are dirty motherfuckers,” “my legs hurt like a motherfucker during that tour,” “she’s a fine motherfucker.”

In an interview with John Palcewski, Miles offered his solution to end the Vietnam War:

“What we gotta do is draft all the bitches under twenty-five and send them over there. All kind of tough-lookin’ white bitches, with all that clean, white skin and blonde hair and big tits. When these cats read in the paper that a hundred of them get killed by the Viet Cong, the whole thing will be over in a day.”

Miles sure was something else.

After five years on sabbatical, Miles Davis made a comeback in 1980 and continued to create controversial music until his death in 1991. In The Last Miles, George Cole spent almost 450 pages covering every track from The Man With The Horn all the way up to Doo-Bop. Cole interviewed musicians who worked with Miles and quoted critics who had written about Miles. While Cole’s focused and thorough research makes The Last Miles informative and insightful, particularly Tutu, which alone takes up four chapters of the book, his lacking of “definitive assessment” makes a weak case for Miles’s final decade. Cole informed us both sides of the controversy, but hardly from the author’s point of view. Perhaps Cole is being too respectful of Miles music?

The Prince of Darkness cast his dark, mysterious spell on the compelling soundtrack of Louis Malle’s Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud (Lift to the Scaffold). Backing up by drummer Kenny Clarke and solid French jazzmen, Miles improvised as the film being showed on screen. “Dîner Au Motel” displayed Mile’s exceptional, hard-swing bebop licks on muted trumpet, but the real deals are the slow, sensual scores, like “Générique,” that were perfect for film noir’s mood. Check out this scene.

Every morning you would say “George” when I sat you down for breakfast. You started to watch Curious George when grandma was taken care of you. What hooked me into Curious George is the incorporation of jazz. The episode that caught my attention was the one in which George and the dog were lost and they used their ears to find their way back. They remembered passing by the busker who was blowing his trumpet so they would listen that sound to figure out where they were at. Another episode was a band demonstrated the technique of singing at different tempos (from half time to double time). Another favorite episode of mine was the one George joined the family Latin band. He had to go around looking for a place for the band to play.

Yes, you pulled me into George and we could sit and watch him all day, but the conflict in schedule had prevent us from watching our favorite show. Still, I love it when I make the monkey sound “Uh uh ah ah” and you would repeat “ah ah.”