How Cool Is My MIL (Mother-In-Law)?

April 9, 2009 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

I don’t know many mom’s that are hip to the tm (that’s “text messaging” for you unhipsters). Here’s a mom 2.0 message I received on my birthday.

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Birthday Card 2.0

April 9, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

fb-screenshot

Some think it is impersonal and lazy to send a Facebook message to say Happy Birthday, especially since Facebook tells you when your friends birthdays are coming up.  I’m with the cliche - it’s the thought that counts.

I do have to admit, Facebook very close to making it impersonal.  The way they can do that is to have a template message that gets automatically sent on your friends birthday.  Something like this:

Happy Birthday <friendName>!!!  Hope you have an awesome day today!!

Hmmm, that sounds like an awesome idea!  Maybe I’ll write a Facebook app for it… anyway…

Thank you all for the birthday wishes - both digital and analog.

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Our Love Language

March 25, 2009 in Coding | 1 comment

The following is an actual email that I sent to my wife today.  It’s talking about a coding function that I’ve been using that I find very handy.  Please feel privileged that I am sharing such personal, lovey-dovey material.

Subject:
FFOTD - Favorite Function of the Day

Body:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-diff-key.php

array array_diff_key ( array $array1 , array $array2 [, array $... ] )

Here’s the situation:

  • I’m checking to see if the currently logged in user has certain roles to access a page
  • I have 2 arrays, 1) the roles the user has, 2) the roles that they should have for access <= key’s set to the role_id

Instead of running a nested loop to see if the user has those roles, I just use array_diff_key to see what the deltas of the array keys are in both arrays. If there’s a delta, then NO ACCESS. If there’s no delta, then they are all good!

woot!

Anyone wanna go on a double-date with us?

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Merry St. Patrick’s Day

March 17, 2009 in Food | 1 comment

I have not one drop of Irish blood in my system, and like many others on this day, I am “celebrating” St. Patrick’s day.  In Chigago, they dye the Chicago River green every year, and I do a micro-version of that in spirit - a mint-chip Guinness float! After consuming this (and a few more Guinness’), I pseudo-physically inherited some Irish blood :)

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Boutique Brew

March 12, 2009 in Food | No comments

My sister-in-law Helen knows the way to my heart - a 6′er from a boutique brewery.  Sudwerk is a microbrew out in Davis.  She picked some up on the way home from a daytrip to Tahoe for some boarding action (note the beanie).  

Here we have the Marszen which is a darker brew with a nice nutty and malty flavour (that’s right, I put a “u” in flavor).

Variety IS The Spice of Life

March 10, 2009 in City Life, Food | 4 comments

Since moving up to the Bay Area on January 28th, 2009, I’ve eaten at a variety of places (to say the least). In the OC, you turn the corner and there’s yet another TGI McFunsters* in a brand new plaza (no offense, it has it’s own charm and sense of security we all need).  Up here, turn the corner and you find a place that you’ve always wanted to go to that’s on your list of 100 places to go to before leaving the Bay Area.  Having said that, 28 days passed before I went back to a place the 2nd time around - the “Taco Truck” on the corner of Polk and Hayes.

BTW, for those of you who have given up (good) food for Lent, I didn’t write this post to rub it in :p

Here’s my list of places I have eaten in the last 40 days - yelp links provided:

* phrase coined by Anthony Bourdain, my foodie hero

** yumm!

Sunday Night Dinner

March 8, 2009 in Food | 2 comments

Tonight’s menu was requested by my mom herself.  She had a whole bunch of fresh fish fillets sitting in the fridge and thought fish ‘n chips would be a good way to dispose of them.

Nothing super fancy here, just meat and potatoes, so to speak and literally.  I also made some yellow and green squash along with some eggplant and mushrooms, sauteed in garlic chunks and olive oil.

For the fish batter, I used some flour, salt, pepper, and the secret ingredient, a bottle of New Castle.  A bunch of sauces also came to the party.

Parking In SF

March 6, 2009 in City Life | 1 comment

This is dedicated to those of you out in The OC (Orange County):

We went to go have dinner in the city with some friends on a Friday nite (at the club), which became an eventful evening before we even got to the restaurant.

After 30 minutes of circling, U’ing, and broken-heartedness, we finally found parking far far away.  In the image on the left, the green pin denotes where we parked, and the red pin denotes where the restaraunt was.

I’m not complaining about the parking.  I share this situation for those of you who do complain about parking at a “far spot” in a nice parking lot, with the destination a whopping 100 yards away :p

Weekend Cooking

March 1, 2009 in Food | No comments

Living with the parents definitely has it’s perks, namely, built in babysitting.  Another great perk is that my mom loves to cook us dinner.  Needless to say, she’s a great cook since it has been her profession for the last 30 years.

To give her a break, Susan and I cook dinner for the weekends - not a bad deal for us, a 5:2 ratio.  This Sunday, I cooked a few dishes I’ve been cooking and refined many times over since college (the mid 90’s).  Here we have a Chinese food trinity - starting on the left going clockwise: garlic chicken, hot braised string beans, and eggplant.  I’ll leave you with the ingredients:

Garlic Chicken:

  • chicken (duh)
  • garlic (double duh)
  • water chestnut
  • bamboo shoots
  • soy sauce
  • ginger
  • green onions
  • Tuong Ot Toi Viet Nam Chili Garlic Sauce (but of course)
  • sugar
  • salt/pepper

Hot Braised String Beans:

  • String beans (duh)
  • garlic
  • ginger
  • sesame seed oil
  • Tuong Ot Toi Viet Nam Chili Garlic Sauce
  • soy sauce

Saucy Egg Plant:

  • Eggplant (duh)
  • Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet Sauce (I cheated)
  • garlic
  • ginger
  • salt/peper

BTW, no MSG added.

Happy McFlurrytine!

February 14, 2009 in Food, TV | 2 comments

30rocksalmaalec_l

 With my new work schedule, I get home around 7:30pm, which doesn’t give me much time to do much before sleepy time (which bedtime is now around 11pm).  My priorities when I get home are my family and eating dinner.  Before I know it, it’s time to sleep already, which means no time to watch the myriad of wonderful shows on during the week.

So Friday nites and the weekend have become catch-up time on our TV shows.  On this Valentine-Eve we first watched America’s Best Dance Crew and Lost.

FREAKY TANGENT: In the ep of Lost, there’s a lot of time travel going on temporal displacement - which basically means each time you travel through time, your body dies a little bit more, which on the show is shown by nose bleeds.  So after one of the time-warps a couple of the characters noses started bleeding… and then all of a sudden MY NOSE STARTED BLEEDING!!!  WTF!

Back to the nite.  So after those 2 shows, we started watching this weeks 30 Rock. By then it was already 1am an we were getting tired.

So 30 Rock has always had a ton of obvious product placement and I always kinda laughed at it… until this ep.  The sub-plot with Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and Elisa (Salma Hayek) is revolved around the greatest dessert - which is a metaphore for their status’.  Jack is a capitalist rich white guy who thinks this $1K dessert at some fancy smancy place is the best around.  Elisa being a middle-lower class hardworking nurse says the McFlurry trumps all.

20 minutes later, I’m on my way to a 24/7 McDonalds in the neighboorhood getting a McFlurry for my wife and I to share <3.  It was sort of an early-valentine-impromptu-celebration (just like when we were kids).  And just like in the show, we had a great time sharing such a “cheap” non-fancy-smancy dessert.  BLAST YOU CAPITALISM AND 30 ROCK!… and thank you at the same time :)

Now go get a McFlurry!

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