I was going to title this post “I’m Doing Science and I’m Still Alive,” after a line from the end credits song for Portal. But I didn’t, because a cursory Google search revealed that a ton of other like-minded nerds did the same thing — months ago, in fact — so it’s already passé. [...]

We’re back from Orlando, and I’m back to work. It was a great few days off, everything went swimmingly (with a minor exception or two) and I’m feeling envigorated and ready to tackle some new tasks at work. Many thanks to my parents for sparing some extra Vacation Club points to let us [...]

In just over a week, Apple and I will be embarking upon the next episode of what has become an annual ritual: a vacation to Disney World. Since 1988, this miniature city on the outskirts of Orlando has been woven into my life in some form or another, and over the years I’ve regarded [...]

So last week, as I was shaking off the last vestiges of whatever ridiculous illness I was suffering from, I did something I’d been meaning to do for a while now: I bought a 16 GB Apple iPhone.
Love it or hate it, I find that the iPhone is another example of Apple’s exemplary user interface [...]

So on Monday night, I came down with that disgusting flu thing that’s going around. And while I’m doing a little bit better today, I still feel like I was hit by a truck.
This year’s flu is really, really nasty. It seems to be of the “intestinal” variety, if you know what I [...]

I want to offer my heartfelt congratulations to my brother-in-law A and his wife Pond on their new baby girl! She was delivered during the wee hours last night in Thailand, and the pictures I saw this afternoon show how cute she is. Congrats to the lucky parents!
She doesn’t have a name yet, [...]

Just yesterday I posted up a rant about how much this year is costing us so far, and at the end, I smarmily asked for an end to the surcharges. Well, it seems I owe 2008 a nod of thanks — having gotten our tax return wrapped up, it looks like we’ll be getting [...]

2008 is barely a month old (barely four days old if you live in China) and it’s already costing us a great deal of money.
First there were the rats in our attic. Well, more like rat, singular. Still, trapping, sealing off and baiting the place cost us $650. Since I run a [...]

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone — albeit slightly belated, particularly if you’re in the eastern hemisphere. Ironically, 2008 is the year of the rat. Well, we’ve certainly welcomed plenty of them into our attic already, so that’s apropos.
Fortunately, as of this week, there should no longer be any more rats [...]

My mom recently remarked that this past week was one where anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I definitely understand what that’s like. Ironically, I was having the same kind of a week myself. At least, now that the weekend is here, things no longer look so bad — although [...]