Web 2.0 Expo Day 2

My second day at the Web 2.0 Expo and this time around, it is much better, I think. Some of the classes were very informative, one in particular offered a lot of practical ideas. I wished I had more time to hang out and just check out all the companies and their products now that I have an idea of what they do, but alas I have to meet up with a friend for a GS Warriors game vs. Dallas tonight.

Arrgh...wireless connection is so slow right now since everyone is out on their session break and these routers are probably being hit pretty serverely. FREE comes with a price, yes?

Not sure if I have time to come back tomorrow but then again...Weds. are "work at home" days.

I'm beat!

Anyone Web 2.0 Expo-ing?

Ajax, RSS, EC2, SaaS, AWS, RFP...If you know what that means, you belong here with me. Here meaning the Web 2.0 Expo in SF.

At times I'm wondering what am I doing here? I haven't done anything in Ajax yet although if you're developing for the web or interested in ui design, Web 2.0 terms like Ajax and those above are like the in language. To be truthful, I'm not quite sure what those lingos mean either, but I'm sure I'll be using in someday.

Anyways, the free t-shirts from the Expo are pretty nice, and of course all those darn neat-o "Beta" demos. It's so sexy these web 2.0 products!

In any case this has been a pretty exhausting day and I'm ready to just go home and sleep.

A Shameless Knot2Us Plug

There's a show on The Food Network called Throw Down with Bobby Flay. It's actually quite good. But the one that I enjoy the most has to be the effervescent Rachel Ray and her hilarious..."umm..." follow with her eye rolls.

Back to Throw Down. In the episode that I watched a well know hamburger maker was challenged by Bobby. Basically he showed up at this person's house un-announced and challenged her to a "throw down." Anyway I have no point and don't remember where I am going with this except to say that the Throw Down concept can be adapted to so many things.

Nothing Venture Nothing Gain-Knot2Us

My smallgroup Knot2Us will start up again this Thursday night. I invite anyone looking for a smallgroup (after Fall Launch) to come and throw down with us...whatever you have on your plates that night, leave it—come throw down with our Christian smallgroup community. We'll take the challenge to bring you to a relationship with Christ!

We made it back from Napa without any incident, having boozed up pretty hard. We hit up three wineries: V.Sattui, Sterling, and Mondalvi. Of the three Sterling was probably the most memorable since I have not yet been there. It was such a beautiful day, too.

Here are Dabruceski's photos on his smugmug site.

Lastly, our work website has undergone a total makeover. It is now mostly semantically marked up with CSS only. Gone are the HTML table markups. Yay! I'm excited about it!

Seattle Is Pretty Nice

But I don't think I would move there just yet. It's hard to say based on being there for only a few days but what Seattle offers the Bay Area already has...nice weather (at least while we were there), clean air, and an active lifestyle.

At times I felt like I was driving through parts of San Jose, Saratoga, San Francisco, Oakland, etc. About the only thing that was amazing and made me do a double take every time was seeing Mtn. Rainier. You could put it down as it's a nice place to visit, but nothing to fall in love with...like New York or Chicago.

Soon to be posted are pictures of the trip.

[Update] Sleepless in Seattle pics

To Dome And Back

The view from the top was awesome! Congrats Dan, Rich, K-dogg, mongolian deathworm, Ron, thecrystalball, Juliet and David. I even saw Clee up there and my cube-mate from work. Small world!

It was a great experience. I'm not saying it was easy...to hike 8.2 miles up 4800 ft. of elev. gain...with absolutely no water coming back down...but it was worth it.

Turn off your computer. Get away from your office. Go climb a mountain!

My humble flickr set of Operation: Mount Half Dome.

[Update] David Ko's photos of Half Dome. Dan's set.

Congrats to DWAY and JP!

Open Air Pleasures

And since the mountain will not come to me, well, then I will just have to go outside and find the darn thing myself.

Seriously I won't be turning on any computer this weekend. Time for me to get my refreshment somewhere else...some open air pleasures, of the planned and serendipitous type. The best part...I'll be waking up bright and early tomorrow morning to climb Half Dome.

I'll try to bring back snapshots.

Rediscovering New York

Wow it's been awhile since I updated. Since time is money, here is my quick update of the 'rediscoverd NYC' trip in digestable bite-sized bullets.

- Manhattan is amazing. Go. Go there now.
- There are plenty of real coffee and bagel shops, not those Starbucks/Noah's Bagel hacks. Even the restaurants are terrific.
- subnote: Soon to come to New York—a first!!!—a Starbucks will be opened within a Starbucks. Haha. Just kidding...
- Smiling at the crowds is futile, even deemed madness.
- Real walking requires a nice pair of running shoe, like Asics. Doesn't matter if they are old or new. Oh and only tourists wait for the "walk" sign.
- Peace can be found nearby, at Central Park.
- A camera phone won't do when your camera dies, especially when you stumble upon a film shoot that involves Jodie Foster.
- Oh if you can make it to Joe's Shanghai, go. We promise it's totally worth it.
- I uploaded the ONE day pics here: the New York Trip, June 7-11, 2006.

Some Photos of 2006 Big Sur Relay Marathon

This is probably a surprise as I haven't really mention it before but here are some photos of this year's Big Sur International Marathon Relay. Our time for Team Tsong Yo Bing and Team Pao Mein were 4:24:15 and 4:24:14, respectively. We really didn't train for this so we decided to just enjoy the scenery and run together. Still our pace came in a respectable 10:12 minute-mile. I've uploaded these photos to my Big Sur Marathon Relay 2006 flickr set.

Peking Acrobats Blues

VP (Vietpower, ie Alin, ie MD) came through for us, scoring us primo seatings to a grand night out at the San Jose Performance Arts Center last night. Why were we (Sandy+me) there? Oh to watch the Peking Acrobats, of course.

Before checking in to the Peking Acrobats, we made a dinner stop at E&O Trading Company in downtown San Jose. A few weeks ago on our way to the Melting Pot we noticed this quaint restaurant with a name more like an investment company than a 4+ star restaurant (according to Citysearch.)

E&O Trading Co. is basically an asian fusion place. Their menu you can download and view for yourself off of the website I provided above. I read through it and came up with these choices with the priority of getting the most varied foods out there without spending a lot of money. This is what we got in order:

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Los Angeles

The next few days starting tomorrow will see Sandy and myself embarking on a short trip down to LA LA Land. It has been awhile since I have been back to LA. Last night while playing around with a "note" widget in Quicken I briefly jotted down the plans for the trip. If all goes well, Sandy will see a side of LA that will be "all over the map." That is to say we will try to cram 8 years of hustling and flowing in LA to a couple of days.

First the practical matters of car rentals. I quickly fired up Firefox and after some multitabbing was able to side-by-side compare five different such rental places: Thrify, Budget, Hotwire, Fox rentals, Alamo. Fox had the cheapest deals so using that as a stepping ladder I went over to Priceline to use their "name your own price"™ system. After 5 minutes or so of "haggling" I got a full-size car for $15/day—from National. Needless to say I am very satisfied with the Priceline experience.

Fearing that the full-size may be some third world country car I called National in SJC airport to confirm that it wasn't. After some initial misunderstanding a voice off in the distant (really 10 miles away) told me that I had indeed garnered a full-size sedan—a good 'ole USA Chevy Impala. Can you picture it? Driving in LA LA with my Chevy Impala. Bom bom bom Bah Bah bom!

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Carmel Getaway

On Saturday Sandy and myself went for a quick getaway to Carmel-By-The-Sea. It was one of the best trip ever! (In an earlier post I mentioned using Yahoo!'s Trip Planner to create a Carmel & Montery trip. On Saturday I decided to visit only Carmel since there were not enough time for both. At some point I will reuse the Yahoo! trip.)

One Peaceful Day for A Stressed-Out Couple

Pre-Trip—Morning:
Having arrived at Sands place 1 1/2 hours late I quickly made concessions by complimenting on how beautiful she looked and gave her a big hug. That seemed to help matters.

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Too Many Ministries

There is so much going on right now I feel in terms of church activities. Relationally I'm so blessed with Sandy for her support in these ministries as well as meeting new folks and kids. But my only complaint is that I'm spreading myself too thin and I feel like I don't know if I am as effective with more rather than less ministry.

Busyness is self glorification masquerading as service rendered to God. (Pastor Dave)

For those considering where they would fit into what ministry that is appropriate for them any advice would be good. That is how do you know which ministry to serve? One where you enjoy or one where you feel you can be effective? Here are the list of my ministries and my thoughts of them. Okay some of these are more volunteer than ministries but...

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Sausalito Getaway

I am finally posting photos from our Sausalito getaway. Below are two places we ate at while siteseeing in Sausalito.

Sandy and I visited the Lighthouse Café where we had brunch. I think it is owned by a Swedish owner as evidenced by the Swedish flags. This probably explains the simplicity in decor and menu as well. I ordered the three eggs omelette with pancakes and bacons. Sandy ordered the corn hash which came in huge chunks. The food are quite good and generous. The place is tiny so expect a wait.

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New York City

I've been back from New York since last Saturday and here are some photos taken from my 4 year-old Fuji Finepix. I wished I took more photos but was not able to bring it along with me for most of the tour. Aside from the hustle and bustle, the numerous taxi cabs, the tall buildings nestling next to Central Park, New York is one beautiful place. As Sandy likes to put it, "Doesn't New York [City] feel like the center of the universe?"

With that in mind, I have this humble Flickr set of our trip to New York City. Sandy and myself (along with her friends Julie and Erica) were very blessed by the weather there as well as the chance to visit New York together (my first trip and Sandy's third.) Good times. Good times.

Debriefing WCSGC: $%?#@@#!

A co-worker asked me when I got back from Chicago what I did there. Really I didn't know where to start. I told him it's a Christian conference. But it was much much more than that. It's about reaching out to a community, whatever that community may be. Survival within a community. The ups and down of life is "better in community." It's about growing up and facing our fears and flaws, to be honest about ourselves, to learn what it means to be...human. It's about grace revealed and hope restored that comes from the small group community...our small group community...MY small group community.

It's moments like these that I wish I have one of those photographic memories and can recall all the details of the 4 days I spent in the quiet suburbs of Schaumburg to the thriving lights of Chicago. I'll leave this short post with images captured albeit with my digitally extended "eyes". Enjoy.

No promises but I will try my best to "clear my brain". Just give me some time.

Family Origin

I just had a meeting with my project manager to go over the next "lite" version of our software and its redesign. The meetings lasted about 2 hours. For the first hour we talked about his vacation in Greece...so beautiful with islands like Tinos, Santorini, Napflo (I happen to know cause I jotted them down on my notepads during our meeting). He also went through like four folders worth of pitures taken on each of those islands. It was a really great meeting.

He also started telling stories of these islands and where his great great grandmother is from, and how his great great grandfather came to the island of Tinos from Venetia. There was a church on the island that traced his family back to 350 years or so...and there's a tree this ancestral grandfather planted that now sits in the "main" streets of Tinos.

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Napa Valley Wine Tastings

Saturday: Napa Valley was amazing! A group of us — totalling ten — toured Beringer Winery, Mumm Napa, and V.Sattui for food and wine tasting. I bought a bottle of 1999 Leaning Oak Cabernet Sauvignon and a case of "Sweet Six" (six bottles of wine). I don't drink wine that much but something about being there and seeing all the wines. Beringer makes 45 different types of wine. They have a Private Reserve Cabernet 2001 that is rated 96 points...cost? $100 per bottle.

Sunday: Church service and end of "Authenticity" Series. Lunch at Myung Dong. If you're looking for Korean food, you can't go wrong with Myung Dong. Their tofu dishes are really good and that's what I ordered — Soon Tofu with beef. Make sure to get the regular as the spicy is "super spicy." After lunch rested a bit than had a bike ride with Frank on Page Mill going towards Foothill Expressway. Swam and dinner at Drew with Jen, Sharline, Hank, and Eugene. A very awesome (and active) weekend as that's what weekends are for.