Holiday Message 2009

It’s hard to believe 2009 is almost over. Before it is, we wanted to write you to look back on some of the many friends we saw, challenges we met, and travels on which we embarked in 2009.

The year started auspiciously with Andy getting to cross off his list something he always wanted to do while growing up on the East Coast: see the Tournament of Roses parade. Since Jeannie grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, it was easy for us to view it like locals do. The evening before the parade brought prime people watching as we strolled down Colorado Boulevard and looked at all of the suckers spectators camped out and freezing along the side of the road. Instead of freezing, Andy and Jeannie slept comfortably in their hotel room, and in the morning, went to The Family Secret Viewing Location at the end of the parade route. We had a great position and saw up-close all of the marching bands, floats, and even Grand Marshal Cloris Leachman.

February is birthday time for Andy, and this past year his presents included a visit by his mom and dad and a trip up to Sonoma to go on an awesome safari at Safari West. A hidden gem in the Bay Area, we all had fun with a great guide on the tour. Andy especially liked sitting with his dad on the top of the safari truck at eye-level with giraffes, one of whom liked very much the taste of his shoelaces. Jeannie was just happy to keep all of her hands and other body parts in the vehicle at all times. Goal for 2010: stay overnight in one of the luxury tents in the park.

March brought changes for Andy and Jeannie, as Andy decided to take a job offer with Sony. He took a week off in between roles to have fun visiting his parents, brother and sis-in-law and niece, and then onto his the annual meeting of his college fraternity friends investment club in Las Vegas. Andy would say more about the trip, but what happens in Vegas…

In April, Andy started at Sony but we still had time to go to a spring festival at the Thai Temple in Fremont with friends John and Whitney, Calida and Humberto, and Lily and David. We all enjoyed insanely fantastic and HOT food, and the dancing and music.

Jeannie had her birthday rapidly approaching, and so we went the last weekend in May to Brentwood to pick cherries and have a picnic in our own orchard to celebrate it. Jeannie and Andy brought a blanket, sandwiches, and their favorite reading materials, and spent a beautiful day lying out in the sun and enjoying each others company. The only sound that broke our afternoon of relaxation was the ring of an ice cream truck, sending us running for some cold treats. Andy also confirmed, once again, that cherries are still on the long list of Foods He Does Not Like Eating.

In May as well as June, Andy and Jeannie took trips to Los Angeles to celebrate Mothers Day and Fathers Day. We ate as a large clan at a tiny French restaurant in Monrovia, and enjoyed seeing all of our relatives in SoCal. June also saw the inauguration of outdoor.lounge.hollenbeck, with our sun shade and cool modern furniture serving as the venue for summertime entertaining and weekend morning lounging.

July held many activities related to weddings. Over the July 4th holiday, Andy and Jeannie celebrated their own third anniversary while sister Czrena and fiancé Minh were in town. They also attended the wedding of friends Penny and Mason on July 4th. In addition, Jeannie went to Las Vegas in July for her sister Czrena’s bachelorette party … Andy still does not know what she did that weekend. And the month ended with one of the year’s best highlights, a vacation in San Diego at Comic-Con.
The largest comic book and sci-fi/fantasy convention around, Andy and Jeannie, along with George and his family, and Brian, took in the oh-so sweet sights and sounds of geek heaven. Andy discovered, and exceeded, the performance limits of his Segway when they took a tour of the city on them, and Andy and Jeannie also caught up in San Diego with Adobe buddy Michael and his doggie Abbie.

In August, Andy was introduced into the joys of cooking with smoke when chef Brian set up a ghetto smoker in our backyard for the U(x)nited team BBQ. The day included ribs, a brisket, several different sauces, and lots of mostly-city-dwelling adults, children, and one doggie enjoying our little patch of sleepy suburban grass and sunshine. While Andy and his co-workers were trashing the house celebrating, Jeannie was off in Los Angeles for Czrena’s wedding shower. August also saw another visit by Andy’s parents, this
time to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. And celebrate it we did by taking a cooking class and staying overnight at Ramekins, a cooking school and B&B, in Sonoma.

Labor Day weekend in September saw Andy and Jeannie in SoCal for the wedding of Czrena and Minh in Newport Beach. And they liked it so much the month before, Andy and Jeannie returned to Sonoma for another weekend in September where they learned how to cook food including crab and pizza on the BBQ from master chef John Ash.

In October, Andy and Jeannie each took a week off of work for a very relaxing staycation at home. For part of the time, Jeannie’s mom came up for a visit. And okay, it wasn’t completely a staycation … Andy and Jeannie took advantage of the cheap fares and room rates in Las Vegas to fly in to see Cirque du Soleil’s “Love”. While the weather in Vegas was cold and stormy, the seats we had were fantastic and the show
really groovy, man.

Last month, we visited friends Peter and Wu-Lan to meet their new baby boy Lewis and to celebrate Peter’s birthday. When Thanksgiving rolled around, we celebrated by eating a fusion of Thai and American foods at Lily’s Aunt Judy’s house, and by joining in to browse Black Friday shopping deals with buddies Mike and Ray.

Finally, we ended the year in December with another mouthwatering smokerfestivus for the U(x) team, featuring Andy’s brand-new permanent smoker and Brian’s buying pounds of spices in order to conjure up five sauces.

We would love to hear from and keep in touch with many of you in the New Year in the usual ways in the virtual and in the “real” world. We hope 2010 is an even more happy, healthy and prosperous year, and we look forward to sharing it with many of you.

Hacking Your HTC ‘Droid For Better Performance

I attended Google’s I/O Conference earlier this year. This was the conference where they had an “Oprah Moment” and gave every single attendee a free Android phone, essentially a Google-branded flavor of the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G (same hardware as the HTC Sapphire / Magic except for the radio bands).

What’s occured in the months subsequent is that many of these developers have taken their device and started writing Android apps. There’s over 15,000 in the Market now. And all those little apps with multitasking and background notifications and location-based calls can conspire to make your device really slow and unresponsive.

The good news is that developers have also taken the Android OS open source, their devices, and optimized the OS code for the HTC models in a way no OEM (even HTC) has done thus far.

It was with a small amount of trepedation — but with the promise of the better experience detailed in this Lifehacker post here — that I decided to take the plunge and hack my ‘Droid with the Cyanogen ROM in search of better performance and functionality. My experience has, on the whole, been fantastic.

Here’s what I did:

1. I assume you have the Android SDK installed and you know what adb is and have that working with your phone.

2. A good guide with exactly what to do to gain Root (should you need to do so on your device) is here. For those who do not know, most Android devices come protected by the operator/OEM to prevent users from, say, erasing the OS on the device or doing things operators don’t like, such as tethering without paying outrageous data fees.

3. Instead of installing the ROM they use in the link above (which is a Hero ROM with nice UI but performance bloat) you should go here and download the latest ROM version (4.04 at the time of this writing). Note that this ROM does work on the T-Mobile G1 (aka, HTC Dream) as well as the later Magic series, but only if your Magic hardware is not the earliest version 32A.

Also note that you should always always do a Nandroid backup (available through any recovery ROM) and then copy those files in the nandroid directory on the SD card onto your PC. Do this before you wipe or flash your ROM. Also, with Cyanogen you do need to wipe your ROM, so note any free apps you downloaded as Market doesn’t remember them when you sign in later.

If you want to learn more about this fantastical OS build, in which a dude has integrated code from the next Android release (2.0, aka Donut) with lots of performance and feature tweaks, check out the 400+ page forum entry at XDA-Developers here.

4. Note that before you install Cyanogen, I recommend you set up a MicroSD card as explained in the following Lifehacker posting here. I am currently running a 8gig SD card in my HTC Ion with 1.5gig ext4 partition for applications as well as the 32mb cache, and things are very good in terms of responsiveness and stability.

5. Cyanogen takes a long time to boot up the first time the ROM is loaded. This is because it is copying tons of applications and helper files onto the SD card partition you set up. This makes everything move much snappier as the main memory (the Achilles heel of HTC ‘droid devices) is less cluttered. You can monitor what’s going on to ensure your device hasn’t crashed by having it connected via USB as it is booting and doing a adb logcat to see the device log live.

6. Once you do update your ROM, you should go to the Android Market or the Cyanogen site and install the CM Updater application. This little utility checks for new Cyanogen ROM versions, which flash onto the device and update it without the need to wipe the device first. The developer improves the code frequently (usually after spending his whole weekend on this, it seems!) so it is worth keeping up with the updates.

Your mileage may vary, and don’t blame me if you brick your phone, but if you follow the links above, you should have a hawter device to show off, and to stave you over until the next wave of Android devices with faster processor speeds and more application memory hit this fall.

Happy Food for Sad Times

My wife is a very good cook. But sometimes, such as on weekends – as well as sometimes during the week – we would rather go out to eat.

However, in these trying economic times, everyone is tightening their belts. We are no different. Eating at restaurants is one of the highest regular discretionary income expenditures, and is consequently one of the first to go when it’s time to spend less and save a lot more.

So what to do if you want a break from the monotony of cooking at home, without the hit to your household budget? Why, check out if your favorite restaurant has a happy hour.

These can be especially good if, like me, your wife is home from work at 3pm every day, meaning that it is not too inconvenient to saddle up for an early evening of eats… Remember, most of these restaurants only offer these specials before 6pm, and only in their bar area.

But if you’re willing to put up with these limitations, you can put some generally yummy food in your belly. You can find some suggestions of Happy Hours on Yelp here and here. In the meanwhile, here’s a couple of our favorites (and one to avoid!):

• BJs has a generally very complete selection of food that is on special. Their whole appetizer menu is available for $2 off, and they have mini-pizzas at half-price. Of course, being a microbrewery, all of BJs food goes well with beer, and they have good ones.
• Elephant Bar is another good casual dining experience with a decent selection of appetizers. The lettuce wraps and sweet potato fries are particular favorites with us.
• The Cantankerous Fish had very good food quality, but not enough selection, so it’s not our favorite.
• Finally, combining lack of selection with positively horrible food quality, Shiva’s is the happy hour (and restaurant) to avoid. Two of the dishes we ordered had the consistency of hockey pucks of various sizes – and they tasted like it too. The chicken appetizer was even worse – it was still raw on the inside. Been there, done that, not going back.

There are more restaurant happy hours on our list to try, and we will post an update in the coming weeks. In the meanwhile, try some of the above places if you’re looking to go home full and happy and with some money still left in your wallet.

Watching a Good Parade

When I was a little kid, my dad took my brother and me into New York City to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade. My father’s office was in a building on Broadway along the parade route, with an amazing view of the huge balloons. As a little kid, it was a great celebration to see all of my favorite cartoon heroes such as Snoopy, Underdog, and of course, the Sesame Street character du jour — Grover — pass by my dad’s office window larger than life.

So with that memory in mind, I had the opportunity this New Years’ Day 2009 to see the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, CA. For those who are too hung-over in the morning on New Years Day to watch or to recall, the Parade has been going on for 120 years on nearly the same route. In the days leading up to — and all throughout the night before — volunteers glue hundreds of thousands of flower pedals onto intricately designed, elaborately constructed, motorized and many-times animated floats. These floats cost upwards of $300,000 apiece to their sponsors. And it is the dream of high school and college marching bands all over the country to be invited to march in the Rose Parade. Only the best do get invited, and the parade, with its floats and bands, is huge, usually running well over 2½ hours from start to finish.

My wife is from the area, and we visited her family for New Years 2009. Going out to dinner in Pasadena on New Years Eve, we saw the many tourists and visitors from all over the country and world camping out on the sidewalk along Colorado Boulevard. Equipped with sleeping bags, portable DVD players, hot beverages, and, for some, entire portable kitchens complete with rotisserie grilles, prime space for watching the parade was at a premium and went fast. It seemed you had to get there early (and spend New Years Eve camping outdoors in 35 degree temperatures) or just continue to watch the parade on TV.

This year, we learned from Jeannie’s sister of the trick way the locals see the parade. We didn’t have to use the sidewalks of Pasadena as our mattress on New Years Eve at all. You see, after the parade goes through $100-per-seat grandstands in the downtown Pasadena area, it makes a left-hand jog through residential streets before winding up at a park, where the floats remain on display for several days as they wilt.

But it takes the beginning of the parade nearly two hours to reach the residential area, where there are good parking spots and viewing locations for the taking so long as you arrive a little before 9am. We parked in Our Secret Parking Area and were able to snag Our Secret Viewing Location with a nearly unobstructed view. (I am not publishing these Family Secrets here for obvious reasons, but if you want to view the parade as a local, email me for the secret).

For nearly two hours, my wife indulged my interest in seeing many floats, including some great animated versions of Road Runner and Wil E. Coyote, a tribute to movie watching, and of course, Big Bird leading the national high school marching band. And the bands were fantastic too – sounding great and marching, even after two hours in unseasonably warm temperatures. Cloris Leachman, this year’s Grand Marshall, was still smiling and lifting her leg enthusiastically for the crowd to cheer at the end of the route too.

However, I was disappointed to hear of the economic strains on the parade this year, and the changes the organizers began to institute as a result. Apparently, television networks, which all used to cover the parade, have cut-back coverage, and the networks that remain are threatening to curtail or drop coverage of the parade altogether. So this year, organizers began to make the parade more TV-friendly, having a troupe of dancers perform only for the television cameras at the beginning of the parade. And they are reducing the size of the parade and the numbers of floats, so as to make the parade fit into a more TV-friendly format inbetween bowl games.

I guess if changes to shrink the Rose Parade help it to adapt and continue to survive and thrive in tough economic times, they are a pill needed-enough to swallow. But organizers should remember that their real constituency is not the millions on TV and corporate sponsors, but in the locals and tourists and children that line the parade route looking to capture, or to recapture, the simple joy of watching a good parade.

See my pictures on Flickr.

Holiday Message 2008

It has been amazing how fast 2008 went by for us. We wanted to write you to look back on some of the many friends we saw, things we accomplished, and travels on which we embarked in 2008.

The year started with a trip we took to Sonoma to celebrate Andy’s birthday. We stayed in a bed and breakfast nearby downtown Sonoma, and enjoyed delicious dining at The Girl and the Fig and The General’s Daughter (which has since changed hands and been renamed). And it was an easy choice for Andy to get soaked in several wineries to escape the rain that weekend, especially with such a nice designated driver – Jeannie – shuttling him around.

February brought a trip with our friends Peter and Wu-Lan, as we rented cabins and enjoyed the off-season at Yosemite. It was our first time at the famous park, and we took full advantage of our surroundings, snapping many great pictures and even enjoying the skiing at the first ski resort built in the western United States. This was, of course, all much better luck than many tourists had over the summer when the park was shrouded in smoke from wildfires.

In mid-March, Jeannie went to LA for a day to surprise her mom on her birthday. Jeannie took the family out to a nice brunch before heading back north at the end of the day.

April brought trips for both Andy and Jeannie. For her part, Jeannie took two planes, with a stop-over in New Jersey at her in-laws, to join her friends at Lynda and Tim’s wedding in Grand Cayman. Jeannie, although scared, particularly enjoyed swimming with stingrays. Andy did nothing as dangerous, although he did fly into New Jersey for his dad’s birthday.

Friends Daphne and Ken tied the knot in May, and we were on hand in Palo Alto to celebrate with them at Mings. There was, of course, the customary post-Chinese-wedding stop for Andy at In-N-Out Burger on the way home, as very little of the traditional Chinese wedding banquet food is to his tastes.

In June, we were back in LA, but this time it was Jeannie’s dad’s 70th birthday that we were celebrating. Jeannie’s mom organized a huge party with many friends and family joining for the day. Andy still is unable to remember all of their names, but we’re working on it!

July saw us breaking ground on our backyard reconstruction project. For the next two months, many artisans (speaking at least three languages), labored in our backyard with heavy machinery. We removed nine crooked trees, tons of cracked cement, countless roots, lava rocks, and some dead bodies (just kidding). When it was all done, we had a thoroughly modern and improved yard of grass, natural stone pavers, an Asian rock garden, and a permanent home for Jeannie’s vegetables.

In August, it was back to the East Coast for a vacation that included time with Andy’s parents, and a run up to Boston to spend time with Jeannie’s college friend Siri and her husband Terry. Our trip also included joining mutual friends from the Bay Area (and some of Andy’s long-lost friends from childhood on Long Island!) at Biren and Yu-Fen’s wedding. Jeannie loved the multi-colored saris worn by the Aunties and Yu-Fen’s elaborate makeup … and Andy much enjoyed essentially 24 hours of good Indian buffet food.

Also in August, friends Lilly and David were married on the auspicious date of 8-08-08, at a beautiful church in Portola Valley, and we were there to celebrate.

The end of the summer brought the beginning of the engagement of Jeannie’s sis Czrena and her fiancée Minh, marked by a party in LA. Andy served as official party photographer, and learned several important things, such as that the cargo capacity of the Scion tC is just barely enough for one full roast pig. We cannot wait for Czrena and Minh to be married next year – especially if the dessert is as good as the delish cupcakes at this party….

The beginning of November saw us jetting back again to the East Coast for a weekend wedding in NYC of longtime friend Noah to Mikey. Andy and Jeannie soaked in the views from the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockerfeller Center. When we left the party, we wondered why there was heightened security everywhere outside the building – until we saw who was on Saturday Night Live that night. John McCain was doing his mock-QVC skit only 50 floors below where we were partying, yet he didn’t stop by to say hello. Other highlights of our New York trip included a brunch with bro and sis-in-law Dr. Dennis and Christine, seeing our friends Marc and Andrea, and a tour of NBC including Conan’s studio and the set of SNL!

Finally we topped the year off with a completely and totally free vacation to Aruba. To do this, we emptied out all of our hotel points from three different sources, and used up frequent flyer mileage. This left us with a nice budget to spend on other things, like some very nice dinners at places like the Flying Fishbone, Papiamento, and our #1 favorite, Wacky Wahoo. Another highlight of the trip was our visit to an ostrich farm – Andy is still seeing those gigantic stupid birds in his nightmares.

With all of the bad news for which 2008 will be remembered, we think its important to also look back and remember that there also were many fun memories we will have for the year. As you can tell, it was a very busy but fun year, punctuated with five weddings, two visits to the Caribbean, and one recurring theme … sharing time with our families and friends.

We would love to hear from and keep in touch with many of you in the New Year on Facebook, Andy’s blog, and in the “real” world.

We hope 2009 is an even more happy, healthy and prosperous year, and we look forward to sharing it with many of you.
– Jeannie+Andy

Blame it on Elmo

“Elmo is ticklish in here!” screams the voice when you disregard instructions and open the tab on the box.

It’s the hot present to have under the tree in 2006, and Jeannie and I were the couriers for this particular Elmo on his way to reach my nephew’s tree in Los Angeles today.

Had the other passengers waiting with us at the airport known of the chortling package, we would certainly have induced a riot.But it was this particular Elmo who caused us to miss our plane.Without him, Jeannie and I had enough space in carry-on-friendly luggage to carry our four days of clothes.

But with our little lively friend hitching a ride, we had no choice but to check in our bag.  And unfortunately, it would take us two hours on line at the airport to check in Elmo, and our plane was leaving in less than an hour.

So instead of braving tons of crowds with Elmo, Jeannie and I left the crowds behind at the airport, loaded Elmo into the trunk, and decided to drive down to LA.

And we didn’t touch his stomach once, despite his pleas of “Again!”

Gear of the Away Team

Many of my friends ask me “just what exactly do you take with you when you travel?”

Last weekend, we stayed in Coconut Grove and South Miami for my cousin’s wedding. Here’s the quick rundown of what we packed for a quick three-day trip:

iRiver clix 2mb:  Gotta love the little clix.  The ui on their improved version of the u10 is great, with good sound quality and enough capacity to shuffle enough music to keep me from feeling bored.  I have ripped versions of the latest NPR content from my home server (see here), along with my latest favorite tunes.

Sennheiser Noise Advance headphones:  I bought these suckers on layover in Munich and couldn’t be happier with their compact size and dynamic range and performance.  They aren’t overpriced Bose, and they have a name that you just want Governor Schwartzenegger (or Conan O’Brien’s immitation of the Governator) to say just once.

Dell Precision M20:  “Hey Dude, sorry you got a Dell!”  Dell’s fortunes took a dive ever since that “Dude, your getting a Dell!” dude got busted for smokin a joint.  My laptop feels cheap, it looks cheap, it performs like it looks.  It even came with a defective (read ready to blow up and didn’t hold a charge) battery, and a LCD panel that was low-res.  Dell replaced the battery and screen.  Only good thing: it’s free from work.  And I got the extra ultra-bay battery, so battery life is an awesome 6+ hours.  You pay the price of more than a pound of weight per hour, though.

FOM Blindfold:  This thing is awesome, I cannot go to sleep without it.  Best thing my wife’s ever gotten me (just kidding, Jeannie).  With it, I can shut out the real world whereever and whenever I need to, and the thing never comes off my head, no matter where I am sleeping.

Melatonin:  Great for inducing sleep in me anytime, anywhere.  Just choose the red pill, Neo.

Four-Wheel Roller Luggage:  These babies roll on 4 wheels that rotate 360 degrees so they stand on their own.  Jeannie and I rolled on these through half the city of Roma last summer.  Four wheels good, two wheels bad.

WIRED and AutoWeek:  Gotta have my technology and car magazines anywhere I am.

Garmin Nuvi 350:  Jeannie and I have more GPS systems than we have people.  Or cars.  I have a horrible sense of direction, but at least I know it.  I love the little Nuvi for road trips in rental cars.  Although Garmin has come out with later models (the 360 adds Bluetooth phone integration, but not sure how good its performance would be; and the 660 adds a bigger screen, but at the price of portability).  Its the perfect companion (well, next to Jeannie of course).  No way I’m going to die on a logging road in Oregon.  Or the Biscayne Highway in Miami, for that matter.

Hello Moto:  You don’t really appreciate the thinness of Motorola’s handsets until you travel with one and forget that you even have a handset in your pocket.  I remember all of those trips with an uncomfortable, gigantic, enormous, uncomfortable Treo digging into my right leg.  Combine with Moto’s over the ear headset that never falls off and you’re stylin any time you’re in comm range to your buds.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

The New York Times finally joined lesser print and broadcast media in publishing an article in their Sunday Magazine’s Week in Review on the very sad story of that family’s death in Oregon.

Their angle on the story is that someone can be “lost, even in the age of technology.”  The article notes how authorities and Mr. Kim’s father used such extraordinary means as infrared detection and satellite repositioning to try and find him.

But what the article, as well as none of the authorities, point out is how the Kims made mistake after mistake, diminishing their options for each subsequent decision they had to make.

The most glaring and perhaps dooming mistake is that James Kim, a senior editor at the largest technology review company in the world, relied on paper maps instead of bringing a GPS device with him.  How can someone who clearly loves technology not have something so basic to know where he was going?

GPS devices cost as little as $200 and would have probably prevented the Kims from missing their original turn.  It would have rerouted them to Hwy 199 instead of a logging road that is impassible in the wintertime (I experimented, and my Garmin Nuvi chose Hwy 199 instead of Bear Camp Road).

And when James Kim decided to get out of his car and walk, it would have told him where to walk — and that they were not 4 miles away from civilization like he thought they were.  Kim would probably not have perished in a stream — and walked 10 miles in a makes-no-sense-energy-sapping circle — if he had one of the many devices his employer has sitting on the shelf.

Of course the Kims made lots of other choices that I wouldn’t have made.  These include keeping going when you couldn’t see outside the winshield on the deserted road (he just opened his door and drove farther along the road).

These include not being confident in knowing the weather and the mountains before going through them.  (I have aborted several Tahoe trips due to weather and not having the right vehicle to get through them).

And when they weren’t even stuck, they parked the car, instead of driving as far back towards the main highway as they could.  They thought they were going to run out of gas soon — but parking in the middle of nowhere was not going to help them get out soon.

But these are all secondary.  The point is that technology cannot help you if you don’t pack it and bring it.  And the media is doing a disservice by not pointing this out.

“Lost, Even in the Age of High Technology” (New York Times)

Car GPS (Navigation) on CNET

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