Found Huan's portrait, taken by a teacher at school. It's a BW image, and it captures the forever happiness and innocence of Huan.

Slow reader

The flight from Ontario to Denver, it was a commuter airplane; the type which has only two seats on each side. I had a window seat, and next to me was a 300lb line-backer size, motorcycle rider. With tattoos covered arms, he wore a short sleeve black leather jacket. On the back of the jacket is the emblem of his motorcycle club, in white lettering: Lords of Loyalty - MC - World, it curves around a dreadful looking skull, which is adorned with a doo-rag. For two hours, I witness the dark blue bleeding heart tattoo on his right bicep, rise & low to the ebbs & flow breathing of his nap, within only 7 inches away from my face; the perfect focusing distance for my near-sighted eyes, even without glasses. It was quite a distraction from my reading, I could only advanced 7 pages of The Grand Design.

What's with the Denver International Airport?

I had to layover for almost 3hrs there, knowing that by the time I get into DC, it's going to be quite late; so the plan was to grab a bite to eat, watch recently recorded Chase episode on the netbook, remove spams from my mailboxes if the internet is available, and perhaps caching up on my reading for I could not do much of it during the last flight. From the gate 89 all the way to the food court, I passed 60 gates, all the available restaurants and concession food stands; but I found not even a single Chinese food stall; as if the entire Denver population do not have knack for Lo-mein, Beef and Brocoli, or Spicy General Tso Chicken! Which is very hard to believe. However, the airport has plenty South of the Border style foods, in just a small food court I can count three different restaurants serving Mexican specialties. I ended up ordered a burrito with beef chunks, and asked for extra hot sauce to help with the swallowing rate. During the meal, I opened up the netbook, attempt to find free wifi services, like I had in SFO. The Denver airport offers four different internet services, but all are priced at $9.95 for around 10 minutes. I figured the amount of spams in my mailboxes would take more than 10min to remove, so I abandoned the hope of using the internet. However, I managed to watch the recorded TV show Chase, about a 5'5" 120lbs female Houston Marshall takes on 6'8" 250lbs escaped convict; it was not a convincing and satisfactory story; just like the 5 minute meal I just had.

Landed.

The airplane landed on Dulles tarmac right on the dot of 11pm. The reflection of a wet surface under the yellowish sodium vapor lights indicated of recent rain. The pilot reported of the temperature, 34 degree F, reminded me of the thick jacket I had in the carry-on, which I had no chance of using during those few days in California. Sitting in my seat, waiting for passengers who were anxiously to deplane; my thought was on the comments of my wearing shorts while I was there: Only if had they here now, looking out the airplane window through a thin sheet of ice, then they would understand the warm feeling of 60 degree F in the shade.

Yes, I got my wish on the Black Friday shopping frenzy: A brand new Acer Aspire One netbook. Bought at Target for less than $180! Yep, that's right. Only $180 bucks.

To top it off, I bought a 2GB module, and also a wireless mouse. Now, it's ready for me. Well, not quite. I open up the netbook the wrong way, since I usually open an old netbook that way; so ... here is the trick: to upgrade from 1GB of RAM to 2GB, you need to buy a 2GB SODIMM, open the bottom lid, which is basically pry it open (using an old credit card to avoid marring). Don't have to remove the keyboard, the cover plate, the motherboard to access to the underside as the old version of Acer netbook. Yes, I named it Escher, as in M.C. Escher, since it's a nice little computing device, and it reminds me of Escher drawings.

So, first thing first, I installed the Ubuntu 10.10 Remix; which has a nice, clean desktop interface. Since the screen is only 10" so screen's real-estate is very valuable, thus it can use the "auto hide" feature to hide the top/side menu bars when they are not needed. But, that can be for the next version I guess. Next on the list is to pull down the VLC, so that I can watch movies and recorded TV shows off the shared drive on the network. Using wireless, the 802.11G protocol would not cut it for streaming couple of HD video files, so I had to install the 802.11N wireless router. Now, I can watch movie on my netbook, hooray!

Next is installing STS/Groovy on Grails, because I would like to use this to develop. Then, the Android SDK to develop some droid app. But wait! What's with the missing top horizontal menu? Eclipse is missing the top menu! 5minute searching on the net, and here is the bug report & work-around. Isn't Ubuntu wonderful?

Bought a refurbished Linksys router online, and it showed up last night. After couple hours (yeah!) loading CD, setting up the router, and have all the laptops changed to use the new wireless setup; the piece-of-junk dropped my wireless connection after 10min, right in middle of streaming a TV show! What gives?

Very disappoint last night, and it was late to play around it so I switched back to use the old wireless G router. Will try to see if I can fix it today when I get home, and if not .. it's going back. Oh Cisco, you disappointed me, again!

The AARP membership application was waiting on the dining table when I got home from work few days ago. It's a gentle reminder that we, I and Hương, are at that age: the privilege age to join this 4-Letter-Initial club, which typically no one would be in a rush to join.

The membership fee is very reasonable, less than $50 for not one but three years. And even for both of us! I am not quite sure of the benefits, which I entitled as a membership, but the fee is hard to beat even if it's all for just the magazines. As filling out the application, I recalled the Confucius teaching: Tam Thập Nhi Lập, Tứ Thập Nhi Bất Hoặc, Ngũ Thập Nhi Tri Thiên Mệnh, Lục Thập Nhi Nhĩ Thuận ... My life progression is pretty much inline with Mr. Confucius lesson, because I was married around 30 years old, when I was 40, my decisions were not prone to change - no flip-flop! - that's what I would say. And now, at the brink of 50th, according to Mr. Know-All-Confucius, at this age, I should now understand the reasons for my existence in this universe! The intention of the Universe, which/who had brought-forth my existence. That is such a formidable claim even for Stephen Hawking, or even for great philosophers and scientists, let alone for the measly like me! How in the world could I figure out my reasons for existence? In my 1st year at the university, I was introduced to the similar line of questions: Why Are We Here? or Why Do We Exist? or Who Am I? All of these questions are of the same vein: trying to understand the meaning of life, or come to term with each own purposes in life. Buddha would reason that since life exists in itself, so our (and all beings) purpose in life is trying to end suffering. For Christians, we are here because God put us here to acknowledge (that God does exist!) and believe in him. Sure, I could also come up with some, but are those the quantifiable? I could also claim that "I know the intentions for my being", and politely ignore all the challenging questions; but at the end of the day, when I am lying in bed thinking, I still have to answer that ultimate question to myself.

I mailed AARP application yesterday. However for last few nights, I have been wrestling with the question, what's my purpose in life?. I still have few more months to think about this and ... according to Mr. Confucius, on the day that I turned 50th that I will have the answer. I certainly hope so, and for the first time in my life, I really looking forward to 50th. Just to see whether Mr. Know-All is really ... knows all.