For some odd reasons, I never paid much attention to A Tribe Called Quest until recently, particularly its 1991 release, The Low End Theory. “Excursions” kicks off the album with a hypnotic baseline. Q-Tips rhymes virtuosically, “You could find the Abstract listening to hip-hop / My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop / I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles / The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin’ like Michael.” Ali Shaheed Muhammad has an ear for jazz and he brilliantly connects jazz and hip-hop together and his signature sound is more pronounced on the next track “Buggin’ Out.” The baselines hits even harder against hip-hop backbeat. Phife’s straightforward rap contrasts nicely with Q-Tip’s fluid flow. On “Jazz (We’ve Got),” the muted horn sample, reminiscent of the Miles Davis sound, flows over the beat like ghost. Now! That’s a classic jazz-hip-hop album.

After a few days of heavy rain, I needed to climb up to the roof to clean the gutters. I always dreaded going up to the roof and I didn’t go up last summer.

This morning, the weather was cleared; therefore, I decided to go up. Sure enough one of the gutters was clogged. I just had to clear it. I also hammered in the nails and tightened up the screws. The strong wind made them loose.

I wondered if anyone else was doing these. I haven’t seen any of my neighbors up on their roof to hammer in the nails.

At one point the sun hit me hard. I was sweating profusely. I was hoping I was not getting dehydrated.

Demented Donald claims that he came up the new word “equalize,” which has been around since 1599. Trump is definitely showing sign of dementia.

Khuê Phạm’s debut, Brothers and Ghosts, is a historical fiction loosely based on stories of her family. Set in Berlin, Sài Gòn, and California, the narratives flips between a young Vietnamese-German journalist who is searching for her identity, her father who left Việt Nam during the war to study medical in Germany, and her uncle who settled in California. The stories of the war in Việt Nam and the new life in a foreign land juxtapose from one chapter to the next, which is similar to Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing.

I would prefer reading the novel in its original text, but Ms. Phạm wrote Brothers and Ghosts in German. I had to read in English translation. Fortunately, Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey have done an excellent job of translating from German to English. The novel is engaging from start to finish. Furthermore, Vietnamese words have proper diacritics, which make a huge different for Vietnamese readers.

Type and Graphic Designer Dương Trần mentioned Vietnamese Typography in his HyperTalks 3.0. Dương gave an informative presentation and shared his own experience on designing Vietnamese diacritics.

Demented Donald forgot to sign executive order. He came. He ranted. He walked out. His staff had to remind him to sign it. What do we expect from an almost 80-year-old child?

Of course he did and the Washington Post is on sell too. I stopped reading the Post after Bezos blocked the presidential endorsement in 2024.

After six years, I had to move on from my old MacBook Pro. The main issue was that some of the keys weren’t working anymore. Typing had become slow and annoying. I tried to wait it out because I dread starting fresh. Thanks to the cloud, I only spent about 4 hours getting everything back up and running without having to do the automatic migration, which my tech guys warned me not to do.

I got my mails and Adobe Clouds up and running pretty quickly. Transmit was a piece of cake to migrate thanks to its export tool. I got new license for Nova and spent a bit of time to get SASS running again. What I worried the most was setting up MAMP. Fortunately, that was also a breeze. I was also able to run MySQL server 8.0.40 in MAMP for WordPress, which I was not able to do on the old MacBook Pro.

I got a brand new black MacBook Pro this time and it is so damn slick. I am loving it. This laptop should last another 6 or 7 years, but I might cut it down to 3 or 4 years depending on the Law Library budget.

On Saturday, the Scout dads got together to cook crawfish, play volleyball, drink some liquor, and talk shit. Of course, parenting came up. Some dads share their militant style of discipline. I didn’t join in that conversation. After having four kids, I am less qualified in this department.

I have come to accept that my kids will do the opposite of what I expect. The more I hope, the more I get disappointed. The more I worry, the more I stress out. The more I do for them, the more they become dependents and the less they become appreciative.

My wife is a loving mother and she would do anything for her kids. Each morning, she wakes up to make their lunch while I pack our leftovers. Last week, one of them didn’t eat her lunch because the meat tasted like “cardboard.” Mother and son got into a huge fight. My solution was simple. I told him, “Son, get up early and make your own lunch or pack leftovers.”

When I first became a father, I wanted to be involved in their lives because my father was not there for me. Unfortunately, that had backfired. Every sport we played together they quit. Every activity we did together because I forced them to participate. They need to get good grades so that I can look good—not for their own good. They do everything because I am an authoritarian in the house and they have to comply. If I leave them to their own device, they would just spend all day on their own device.

I have become less and less involved. The less I do for them, the more they will do for themselves. I want to become a deprecated dad. After all, Jeff Bezos, Lebron James, and Jesus did well without a father in their lives. If Jesus had a dad, he would have become a carpenter and his name would have been Jesús instead. I stole that joke from Andrew Schulz.

As the heat rises to 90 degrees, I miss the snow, especially snowboarding.