This year’s Memorial weekend, we went to the beach and I took Samantha and Eric along. They love water so as soon as we arrived, they wanted to go the beach right away. Since they only got to stay for two days, I wanted to make the most out of the trip even though I was so tired from the five-hour drive.

The water was cold so I let them played for about half an hour. When I told them to wrap it up, Eric didn’t want to. I had to repeat several timed before he would obey. As we were walking back, I called my sister to give her status on the kids. I told her that they were being very good except that Eric didn’t do what I instructed him to a minute ago.

After we hung up the phone, Eric got mad and cried. I asked him what’s wrong and he told me that I said the “F” word to his mom. I was like, what are you talking about? I didn’t say any “F” word. He asked me to come closer and whispered something in my ear. He didn’t wanted to say out loud because he didn’t want Samantha to hear. He whispered several times and I couldn’t make out what he was trying to tell me.

I tried to guess the word, but nothing was right. Of course, I didn’t guess that “F” word. So finally he said that I said “pha” (misbehaved in Vietnamese) to his mom. He demanded me to call his mom back and say that Eric was not “pha.” So I called up my sister and told her that, “Eric is a very good boy and I didn’t use the ‘F'” word.

I asked one of the salesmen if Sears carries Discman. The guy didn’t even know what I was talking about. I had to explain to him I was looking for a portable CD player. Sears doesn’t carry discman anymore and the salesman probably thought I came from the stone age or something.

As much as I love my iPod Touch, I do not have the time to rip 72 CDs from Miles Davis’s The Complete Columbia Album Collection . In addition to time, it would take up too much a space on my hard drive. I want to be able to jog while jamming to Miles Davis and the easiest way is to get a Discman, but it seems like it is obsoleted. I gave my mom a really cool one from Sony a few years ago. I might have to ask her to get it back since she is no longer using it.

I just can’t believe the Discman is already dead. Man that was fast. RIP the discman.

I finally got around to install WordPress for the School of Business to replace the good old handcrafted newsletter. I no longer have to spend time hand-coding each newsletter. My colleague who writes the content of the newsletter could just post as she go along. One of the advantages is that we don’t have to wait for two weeks to send out the hot news. It will be more immediate. I also don’t have to feel guilty spamming 25,000 people every two weeks. They can just subscribe to our RSS feed and read as they pleased.

I installed the latest version of WordPress, which is 3.0, and tried to theme it based on Twenty Ten, the new default template for WordPress, but the new theme is way too complicated. Furthermore, the new template from GW isn’t so simple either. To get the two to work together will take tremendous amount of time or at a week straight to breakdown the PHP. So I went back to the classic theme, which is the most straightforward out of the box. Even with the classic theme, I had to strip the code down to its core for my needs and trim away the extras. Twenty Ten has 26 files and two folders. My theme only has three files (index, comment and css).

What is up with the long URL? When I thought about the project, I couldn’t find an appropriate name for it. I brought it up at our communication meeting and asked my colleague to help come up with a name. We tossed out a few ideas, but then it hit me: atthecenterofitall.business.gwu.edu. My boss was immediately sold on it even though it’s damn long address. She defended the idea by retelling the story about one of our alumni. In an executive meeting somewhere in another country (I can’t remember the name), he introduced himself as a graduate from GW School of Business and one of the directors at the table complimented, “At the center of it all.” Furthermore, We had done quite a bit of promotion on that catchy phrase. So I thought it’s a great marketing strategy and I was so glad that my boss was with it. I still love saying it: at the center of it all dot business dot gwu dot edu. How awesome is that?

I just launched Sketches of Miles, an experimental project combining Miles Davis’s albums and web typography. The concept is to design each individual poster-style page based on Mile’s cover art. To make the project more interesting, I also write a Twitter-style, one-sentence review and each piece has to include the title of the album.

What inspired the project? After purchasing Miles Davis’s The Complete Columbia Album Collection a few weeks ago, I am still trying to get through more than 70 CDs with every chance I get. I listen to Miles at work, on the train and on road trips. One night, I just drove Dana and Duke around DC just so I could get through an album. The problem is that I can’t soak in everything that fast. The only way for me to pay close attention to an album is when I want to write something about it, but I can’t review all 52 albums. I could if I don’t have to take care of Duke. Being a parent changes my priority.

So if I could listen to the entire album and sum it up in one sentence, it would force me to be more focused. Sure, I can just post a quick sentence on Twitter, but I don’t want to be lost in the Twitter world. I want to make simple project and learn something out of it. I have been wanting to play around with web typography as well as crafting each page with a unique design.

A couple months ago, I came across an article from David DeSandro about Stacey, a lightweight content management system and how he uses her to create each individual entry. Stacey is simple and very different from a traditional blog system like WordPress. I downloaded Stacey and was impressed by her simplicity, but I couldn’t do anything beyond the default template. I needed a real project to get a hang of it. So I stripped the system down even further to do what I wanted to do. I got stuck and contacted David for assistance. He replied the next day and even showed me the source to his entire site. I was in awed. Mad props go out to David.

Since this is a personal project, I could careless if the site works across all browsers. Safari is the only one I test it on. There are no reset CSS, no layouts and no clear fixes. The site is a very basic HTML5 markup with very little use of CSS. All fonts are real (no images). I am currently using some from Google Font Directory as well as the safe fonts beyond the Helvetica. I’ll try to look out for more free fonts to link to.

So I hope you enjoy this tiny project. I am not sure how often I will update this site, but you could pick up the RSS to be notified whenever a new piece is up.

After hanging out at the mall and had lunch at Cheesecake Factory with Cu Dao, Dana and my sister-in-law, I couldn’t stay awake for the match between Germany and Uruguay. Both Dana and I got knocked out on the couches while my sister-in-law looked after Duke. Besides, I was not too excited about this game. I am looking forward to the final game tomorrow. I pick Holland simply because I had been so wrong in this World Cup. One more wrong doesn’t make much difference. In any rate, I wish both countries best of luck.

It’s amazing how a month of World Cup already over. After tomorrow, things will be back to normal again. The World Cup category will be disappeared on this site as well.

After the disappointment of Argentina’s performance, let’s hope the Spain will give Germany a heck of a game.

After getting back from my vacation last month, I haven’t jogged again. Work is still overwhelming and the rising heat (above 100 degrees) is blocking my motivation. I just stay inside and eat more. When I look at life, she depresses me. Fortunately whenever I look at Duke, he keeps me going even though I can hardly keep up with his energy.

I’ll be surprise if Uruguay could send the Netherlands home. Then again, I was so dead wrong about Argentina.

The World Cup this year has been quite unpredictable. Even Brazil lost to the Netherlands. The next match, Argentina vs. Germany, should be one of the best games in this World Cup. In fact, it could have been a final match. My prediction is that Argentina will advance. Then Spain will advanced over Paraguay. The Argentina will beat Spain to go the the final. On the other hand, Netherlands will have an easier win over Uruguay to get to the final. So next Sunday, the final match will be between Netherlands vs Argentina and my prediction for the 2010 World Cup will belong to Argentina.

I am still in the process of transitioning to a new Mac laptop. I migrated everything except for CS5, in which I am still waiting for the eligibility variation. I sent in both my GW’s ID and pay stub, but I was rejected. Now I have to wait for HR to write Adobe a letter to state that I work for GW in order for me to get the serial number. If I knew that I had to go through all these troubles, I would have stayed with CS4. If this is how Adobe continues to do business in the next release, I will not upgrade to CS6.