Thoughts in Veeberland

Just thought I’d share this video of Izzy taking the vacuum away from Sarah. I guess we’ll see if she still tries that when she’s a teen.

So Paul and Eunice are finally hitched. I had the wonderful privileged of being one of the groomsmen. My new phone came just in time so I got to take a few videos during the prep. Pictures are here.

This first one, David is pinning flowers on Paul.  David pinned flowers on all the guys.  It was fun getting to know him and extremely helpful all day.

I’m sure you can figure out what’s going on here.

And this was probably one of the best shots of the day.

While we were in LA for my grandmother’s funeral last year we took a trip out to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.  This is just a little compilation video of some fish.

So last July 4th we went up to the Poconos.  Just thought I’d put up a little video.

A little while back our neighbors organized an Easter Egg hunt.  Isabelle wasn’t very interested.  Just put this together on YouTube.  Karyn was teaching the kids a little dance.  Mike and Karyn are probably the best neighbors ever.  Their kids treat Izzy really well and they are always inviting us over or hanging out.

On a side note, instead of posting this on Facebook I’m trying to diversify our social media so that I have a bit more control.  All these weird privacy changes of they keep making are getting scary.

Yes it was my birthday recently. Sarah let me buy a mac-mini to install in our home theater. We decided to move the iMac downstairs so that the baby wouldn’t keep pulling on the wires. I’m still playing with the setup, but I’ve pretty much settled on Plex for most of the playback, but am running Hulu Desktop separately. Also Hippo Remote on the iPhone…pretty cool.

Back in early November I had a visit with my podiatrist.  I was complaining about some foot pain.  He took a few x-rays and diagnosed me with plantar fasciitis.  Basically he felt that my shoes were not providing sufficient support so the excessive flexing of my foot was calcifying my tendon.  He suggested getting custom orthotics.  He also mentioned that walking barefoot would make things worse.

Something didn’t sit well with me about the barefoot part.  I like walking around the house barefoot.  That’s one of the reasons we have wall to wall carpet.  I did some searching and found some information about barefoot running and how many people were no longer experiencing shin splints.  That prompted me to look further and found these new shoes from Vibram.

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I was too young to remember the struggles that my parents went through.  While I knew we weren’t wealthy later in life, I knew that everything we ever needed was always met and taken care of.  If anything Kevin and I were a bit spoiled and didn’t really get to know what it could be like to struggle with finances.  While dad’s story is not unique it does offer perspective.

My dad grew up in Shanghai, raised by his grandmother.  The rest of his family had already moved to Hong Kong.  He’s always been a very bright man, but realized that the burden of college would be too much for his family.  He attended a junior college and became a commissioned radio officer for the merchant marines.  He spent six years on the water before meeting my mom, at which point he realized that he needed to have a land based life.  He told my mom that he was going to leave the service and move to the US.  My mom was at that point planning to go to Rutgers for her master’s degree.

He first landed in LA, where he worked for two months in a photo development store.  The owner there was apparently not very honest, and cheated my dad out of his salary.  Angry, my dad moved to NY, where he began working as a bus boy in a Chinese restaurant, and moved his way up: waiter, bar tender, then a manager.  Eventually he moved to a larger restaurant but disliked the supervisors and quit.  During this time he had already started formulating his idea of opening an auto shop.  He still needed some more income at the time so he began driving a cab in NYC.  I’m still confirming dates, I believe this is around the time my parents got married.  He eventually opened his auto shop the month before I was born, which probably presented it’s own difficulties.

My dad, is a very perceptive man.  He is can read people very easily, and has a very refined understanding of his customers and their thoughts.  While he never thinks of himself as being very sophisticated, I can see where Kevin get’s a lot of his characteristics.  I’m more like my mom when it comes to these things, more gullible and trusting, but thankfully I got both of their desires to learn and be inquisitive.  In case I forget to tell my kids this, or they don’t get to experience this, your grandfather lives by a very simple creed.  Loyalty to your family is always primary.  Do whatever it takes to protect them and provide for them, everything else is secondary.  I know we have all been blessed with his steadfastness in this belief.

Thanks Dad, and happy birthday.

So I’m sure everyone has been familiar with all my past attempts to get back in shape.  I’ve been playing with the Wii Fit Plus for a bit, but honestly it doesn’t really give you that good of a workout.  Some of the games are fun, but that’s about it.  Apparently just playing Wii Tennis or Boxing ends up being a better calorie burner that the entire Wii Fit genre.  It’s still nice to use to track your weight and play every so often.

Instead I’ve embarked on something that I had tried in the distant past.  I know I’m never going to run a marathon or be ripped like a 20 year old.  But doing simple fitness items like push-ups, squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, and jogging should be within my ability … eventually.  So for the last six weeks I’ve been going through the 100 push-ups program.  The goal is eventually to be able to do 100 push-ups in one set.  I’ve had to repeat weeks three and four, so I haven’t finished the initial six week program yet, but already I’ve gone from less than 10 in a set to 20+.  I’m going to have to continuously repeat the whole program to get to the goal, but it’s a start.  This week I just added the 200 squats program to the list.

These programs seem to be effective and don’t take that much time.  There’s a straight forward progression and it’s pretty easy to see progress.  As I get closer to completing the first round of these two I’ll add sit-ups.  There’s also another site that has a program for getting to run a 5K.  Here’s to hoping the new shoes can help me run again without the knee and back pain.  I just got the Vibram Five Fingers, so I can’t give a good feel for them yet, but so far they seem to be working to reduce my foot pain.  One of these days I’ll talk about them a bit more.

The most attractive thing about these programs is the lack of equipment required.  It’s pretty cheap to engage in these activities and the author even went ahead and developed an iPhone app for each one.  It makes timing the rest period pretty easy and tracks all of your progress.  I think it would be pretty annoying to use the Twitter integration to post my progress, but who knows, maybe I’ll be vain enough to do so one of these days .  I bought a set of the Perfect Push-ups to reduce the wrist pain and after I lose some weight I may get a Perfect Pull-up to start those workouts as well.  Still that’s less than $60 overall.  If anything, the new shoes cost me more than that.

So here’s to yet another attempt to get healthy and lose some weight.  Hopefully going slower this time around will help me stay focused and motivated.

[Originally posted December 22, 2005]

NYC will always overcome.  I am quite proud to be from there, though I really don’t fit the typical Manhatten resident.  This strike has really put a lot of people out and yet it seems everyone’s making a great attempt at getting in to work regardless.  I’m sure the casual shopping is down, but they brave the 2-3 hour walks or incredible traffic on the bridges and streets.  What troopers those New Yorkers are.

I really think the TWA is being greedy.  They are arguing because the city wants new employees to pay 6% of their salary towards their pension, which they can start claiming as early as 55.  Most workers across the US can’t really retire until 62 and probably don’t even get a pension.  You’ve got really good benefits already and you’re asking for respect and dignity?  What is that saying about all of the other workers in NY or the rest of the country.  Those people who working for minimum wage and no benefits are just suckers?  The strike really only hurts them.  The rest of the business world is moving on since their companies can afford to have them work from home or to arrange transportation.  The MTA should fee free to negotiate the best contract that they can, but they cannot claim the moral/judicial high ground when they are causing tens of thousands more to suffer.  That’s just rediculous.  At least go back to work while you are negotiating.  The people of NY are not on your side in this.