I dropped you off at daycare this morning. Not only you weren’t crying, but you were also smiling. It must be the new haircut I gave you last Friday and the teachers complimented you on it. I didn’t cut your hair really short this time, but gave you a spike on top. Your mom thought it makes you look kind of a badass and she wants to go back to the cute cut. I am still debating about it.

Last Friday, you made me proud. You almost stopped crying when I dropped you off at daycare. When I handed you over to Ms. Meaghan, you scream out twice. She teased you saying that you cried simply because that’s the thing you do in your daily routine. I hope you enjoy your time there.

Ms. Meaghan also told me that you were dancing, clapping and enjoying yourself at the pep rally during school. I could just see in my mind the delightful spirit of yours. I hope you will keep that wonderful joy for the rest of your live. Keep up your lively spirit and be yourself.

You might be small (according to a stranger who complimented that you’re the smallest walking person she had ever seen), but you’re doing really well. I love the way you just wondering around the mall and trying to touch everything you’re curious about. When you grow older, you’ll probably will run into those comments. So be yourself and don’t let anything get into your head.

I don’t have too much experience with kids since you’re my first; therefore, I just go along with what my instinct tells me. I am so happy that you’re actually making my life easier by being curious and willing to try anything. I try to give you any food that you might enjoy and you response by tasting it. Most of the time, you’ll like it. It’s food to try different flavors, my son. You’ll appreciate the richness of food when you get older so continue to to be adventurous.

I apology if I make you listen too much of Miles Davis. I hope you enjoy listening to him as much as I do since you don’t seem to complain. Sometimes you uttered the words mimicking the trumpet lines as if you could pick up Miles’s playing. At time you hold the bottle of milk in your hands like you’re holding a horn. How cool is that?

Well son, it’s one in the morning so I better catch some sleep. I will write more for you next time. Love you more and more each day.

On her new release, Tim Lai Giac Mo, Ho Ngoc Ha sounds pretty damn relax for a pop star whose personal life has been caught into the media whirlwind. She delivers each track with such effortless as if she pays no mind to the media circus.

Being a mother could be the reason for the calmness in her. She is more focused and she doesn’t allow the noise breaks her concentration. Even on the heart-aching title track, she just eases back and lets the saxophone does the soaring. Unfortunately, the screeching sax tries to break your eardrum rather than your heart. On the pop-jazz “Tinh Yeu Cua Em,” the sax once again overpowers her raspy voice. Other than the crying sax sounds, the album stays consistent throughout.

Tim Lai Giac Mo is an easy-listening pop album. The opening track, penned herself, is light but catchy. The closing English track should have been dropped. In a live rendition of “Unchain Melody,” she told the audiences to pretend that they all drunk when she sings the tune. I took two shots of Jack Daniel’s and still couldn’t get past her stilted phrasing and mispronunciation.

If Y Phuong’s new release were about global warming, she would have outsold Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. After listening to ten tracks on Mua (rain), I still feel dry and humid. Accompanied by Asia’s draggy productions, Y Phuong puts no effort in making these tunes her own. She sings like a weather reporter: In track one, “Thang 6 Troi Mua,” it’s going to be rain all day, but never did; in track two, “Chieu Mua,” it’s going to be a heavy rain in the evening, but never did; and on we go. Even with the support of Don Ho, Quoc Khanh and Le Nguyen, still no rain.

Dressed up as a woman, Ly Tong approached Dam Vinh Hung to give him some flowers as well as some pepper spray. A clip has been captured and posted on YouTube. As much as I dislike Dam Vinh Hung’s music and wouldn’t paid to see him perform, I sympathize him. He’s standing a very thin line between the two political parties. He is more than just an entertainer. He’s a controversial figure. Still that’s not the reason to be attacked in public. Ly Tong, please stop your stupidity.

Need to catch up on on HTML5 quick? Look no further than Jeremy Keith’s concise HTML5 for Web Designers. Keith also does an excellent job of clarifying the confusions of the new markup.

With clear explanations and demonstrations, Keith walks readers through some of the major developments in HTML5: the simplified approach to markup, the native support of rich media, the handling of form without JavaScript and the addition of new elements.

HTML5 is not the future but the present of the web. Even Steve Jobs has jumped on the bandwagon. If you’re a web designer, you should too and HTML5 for Web Designers, published by A Book Apart (the new Visual QuickStart Guide), will help you get started. Keep an eye on Keith’s blog on HTML5 as well.

I took you down to the basement to help me with laundry. I flipped up the light and let you walked. You walked toward your own shadow, got on your knees and touched your shadow. It was one of the cutest things I have ever witnessed. You were so innocent and I love that so much about you.

You still cry every morning when I drop you off at the daycare. When I walked out the door, I sat outside, tied up my shoes slowly and listened for your voice. It took about five minutes for you to calm down. You’re making good progress, buddy. Even though I was not around when you were in daycare, I always thought of you. Mom told me that you were dancing with your teacher, Ms Natalie, when she picked you. Ms. Natalie must be your favorite teacher. You didn’t want her to go on break so you stood at the door yelling when I came in to take you home. Ms. Natalie told me that you were holding a girl’s hand when she took you guys on a buggy ride. Good choice, boy. She’s a cutie with the big eyes.

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?