For the past couple of weeks, I have been working like there’s no tomorrow. I am taking on a couple of very exciting projects for both GWSB and consulting. Lately, I have been very motivated to design and I have to thank Duke for it.

Watching him sleep every night somehow inspires me. After Dana nurses him to sleep in our bed, it’s my job to watch him in case he wakes up and crawls off the bed. He no longer sleeps in his crib. With a reading light, a stool to sit on, and the corner of the bed as a computer desk, I have been working way past midnight cranking out designs and codes for my consulting works.

The night is so quiet and the only sound I would hear is when Duke twists and turns. All I have to do is tapping his butt and he would go back to sleep. Sometimes I just look at him and so damn proud of myself.

My sister-in-law invited me and my wife to lunch at Pasara, a Thai restaurant located a block from USPTO. The place is a bit small, decorated with heavy wooden furniture and Asian arts. Even the menu cover is made out of wood. The food was not outstanding but savory enough for a revisit. We had fried calamari, which is my sister-in-law’s favorite appetizer and she could make it better. We also shared clay pot shrimp, chicken green curry and drunken noodles. The noodle was the best out of the three dishes. The service was not all that bad either.

Fuck Minh Tuyet and let’s make it official—Le Quyen is the new hooker. On the street, a hooker is someone who offers sex for money. In music, a hooker is a singer who lives by the hooks and makes luscious love to the hooks.

Le Quyen’s volume 3, Neu Nhu Ngay Do, is packed with catchy, contagious choruses. Right off the opening title track, she drips her thick, husky vocals over the banal lyrics like honey and ginger over plain, white tofu. On the Chinese-melodic “Tha Thu Cho Em,” she wraps her big-ass pipe around the hilariously-heartbreaking lines, “Neu em ra di bay gio thi nhieu nguoi se trach moc / vi da ben nhau bao ngay ma gio day doi thay,” as if girls these days really give a fuck what people say. With “Roi Mot Mai,” she brings out her rockability that is a reminiscent of Phuong Thanh.

Just when I give up on her for going down the trendy, poppy path, Le Quyen Acoustic pulls me back and gives me some hope again. Unlike Minh Tuyet, Le Quyen is not a mediocre singer at best. She has a dark, raucous, powerful voice with a bit of range. Her jazzy cover of Jimmy Nguyen’s “Mai Mai Ben Em” is intoxicating. She knows how curl her raspy, smoky vocals around the acoustic picking guitar and sentimental sawing violin. On Tran Le Huynh’s “Chan Tinh,” she completely erased Van Truong and intimately made it all her own. With Phu Quang’s “Noi Nho Mua Dong,” songbird Le Quyen trenches her soul into a bitter cold winter night and her delivery is a resemblance of the younger Thanh Lam who I truly missed.

Acoustic has its stale moments with tracks like Thanh Tung’s “Mua Ngau,” Duc Huy’s “Neu Xa Nhau” and Ngoc Le’s “Xa Roi Tuoi Tho.” Yet as long as Le Quyen doesn’t waste her voice with lollipop tunes, she remains one of my favorite Vietnamese vocalists.

Yesterday I went to the mall trying to do my Christmas shopping. Three hours later I ended up with a bunch of promotional designs I picked up from various stores. I really like the way Crate&Barrel incorporate photo into its gift cards so I took two of them. I also like Bloomingdale’s brown bag gift card concept. If you pull the bottom of the bag, the gift card pops on top. I was holding the bag in my hand and a salesman offered to ring me up. I told him I just wanted the card and he let me have it.

Being a designer, I have always picked up well design pieces I see laying around, but I never pull them together in a central location. After yesterday’s shopping, I decided to save a collection for design inspiration. Now I have a reason to go shopping even if I don’t need to buy anything.

Complementing Jeffrey Zeldman’s third edition of Designing with Web Standards, John Allsopp’s Developing with Web Standards is a comprehensive guide for web designers and developers who seek to implement latest technologies including HTML5, CSS3 and DOM into their projects. Allsopp’s vast knowledge of web development combined with his clear, simple instructional approaches come through on the pages.

Allsopp takes us all the way back to the basics of markup (HTML) and core concepts of presentation (CSS). For those who come late to the industry, the first part of the book will help you understand the important aspects of web standards. For those who have been in the game for years, part one and two are great for refreshing your knowledge and picking up things that you might have missed. The third part is where Allsopp delves into the principals of HTML5, CSS3, web fonts, and SVG.

Whereas Designing with Web Standards is recommended for directors, clients and the big bosses, Developing with Web Standards is without a doubt is a must-read for designers and developers.

I had my first web site back in 2000 registered under D3Firm.com. I lost the domain name because I signed up with a horrendous hosting company. I started from scratch again with D3Studio.net and made the same mistake. The company went offline, out of business and took my domain name with it. I was so frustrated that I started to do careful research on hosting companies.

In 2004, I registered Visualgui.com with GoDaddy separately just in case the hosting company screws up I can still have my domain name. Then I started hosting with Lunarpages because of all the rave reviews. It turns out that Lunarpages has been quite stable for the past five years. If you visit my blog everyday, you probably notice that my web site stays up about 98% of the time. Both iLoveNgocLan.com and Simplexpression.com are also hosting with Lunarpages. Whenever I work on a freelance project, I always recommend Lunarpages for my clients. In fact, I just referred one of my new clients.

Lunarpages is running a special promotion for the holidays. You’ll get 50% off on any 12-month plan. If you’re looking for an inexpensive, reliable hosting company, I highly recommend Lunarpages for the excellent service, reliable support and reasonable rates.

Why am I promotion it? I just hope that the company gets more clients and continues to do a great job so my web sites stay in good shape. That why I don’t have to deal with all the nightmares I’ve through five years ago.

In a packed concert hall at the John F. Kennedy Center last night, Sonny Rollins showed that he is still the Saxophone Colossus at the age of seventy-nine. Limping on stage in a white jacket and sun glasses, Mr. Rollins was greeted by an up-roaring crowd and standing ovation. He wasted no time charging his bop licks over an uptempo rhythm provided by Kobie Watkins (drums), Victor Y. See Yuen (percussion), Bob Cranshaw (electric bass), and Bobby Broom (guitar). Clifton Anderson added the rough, deep trombone sound to the sextet.

Mr. Rollins then ripped through the bluesy “Heaven In the Sky” like a young man with a wounded soul. He also poured his heart out on a sentimental tribute to “J. J. Johnson.” The band members are mostly younger than Mr. Rollins and they sure kept him active. Drummer Kobie Watkins played as if he meant rhythm he hit. The passion and emotion expressed on his face were a joy to watch.

Mr. Rollins and his band closed out the night with a highly groovy tune that had a Caribbean flavor to it. Some of the audience members got up and danced along with Mr. Rollins improvisation and interaction. Once again, the crowd cheered on as they exited the stage. Even without an encore, the show was mesmerizing.

Unlike shopping, don’t settle for cheap when you want to choose an agency to design your business web site. You really do get what you paid for. Lovely Nails & Spa is an example. Instead of hiring a web designer to create a professional looking web site, the owner, who was a high-school acquaintance of mine, chose to go with an amateur design.

Right on the homepage, the looping Flash animation is annoying. The first thing catches your eyes is the text effects that says, “Explorer the possibilities.” The justified paragraphs below the Flash piece is hard to read. The slap-on logo is disconnected with the layout. Under the hood, the codes are way outdated. Font tags for texts and tables for layout are still being used.

From time to time, potential clients who shop around for a web design agency would send me proposals from another company who offers similar services that I do, but only with a third of my price. I often explain to them the differences and let them decide.

I was up almost two in the morning cranking out a web page for Cu Dao while he was sleeping and rolling around our bed. I wanted to create a page for him when he was first born, but the slideshow took over the priority. Then it just got pushed back. Last night, I decided to just whip it up.

I got up half asleep this morning, changed him, put him in the play room for a bit. We even made coffee together. When it was time for us to leave, he crawled over to me and cried. I picked him up and he smiled. It was so hard to let him go. Anyway, this is for you, my little sunshine.

While sorting through my mail this weekend, I received a collection notice from Afni Inc. for a Verizon bill when I moved out of New York, which was about two years ago. I can still remember clearly that I shut off my home phone service before I moved and even received some credits back. I even called several times to make sure that I didn’t owe them anything.

Today I tried to call Verizon to verify the bill, but the damn representatives kept putting on one automated answer machine to the next. They couldn’t even pointed me to one person that I could talk to about the matter. Verizon’s fucking sucks and I am stuck with them because most of my family members are on Verizon.

I couldn’t reach Verizon so I called Afni Collections to ask for the creditor information. About two minutes into the conversation, the fucker from Afni was ready to bite my ear off. He stated that I owe Verizon and now he’s handling the collection not Verizon. I told him “I am done with this shit” and hung up the phone.

I went online and found that many people had been targeted with the same scam. Some people was hit with the collection even though they never were a Verizon customer.

I did what folks have suggested: dispute the claim and validation of the debt. I sent them a letter with certified mail. Let’s wait and see how things go.