www.ThomasHan.com

Grateful and fearful

2012-06-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Needed to put some thoughts into words and 140 characters weren't enough.

With Tivo, watching live TV is an activity reserved for nights when we're too lazy to get the remote, or when Charlie blocks the sensor. Fortunately, this behavior paid off recently when we stumbled upon MSNBC Dateline's episode of "America Now: Lost in Suburbia".

We were captivated immediately - which we seem to do easily, especially with hotel live TVs - as the story is a reminder of how fast one's life can change in the blink of an eye and we should not be too content. Unfortunate events (medical, layoff, etc) can hit and spiral out of control, anywhere, anytime, to anybody.

One of those profiled was a former human resources executive, who was laid off. After months of job search and stress building up in the family, she finally took a night job. The part time job was cleaning offices, the same types where she use to work in as an executive.

As we watched the show, I said Jean: "If this ever happened to us, I would go to McD." "Heck no, we can't afford to eat there!" she replied. No, I told her, for me to work there, not to eat fries.

Jean and I try to be grateful daily of our fortunate situation and live in constant (healthy) fear of the what-ifs.

http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/23/12376840-in-suburban-america-middle-class-begins-to-confront-poverty

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm running again

2010-02-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

Twelve years ago in 1998 I ran my first marathon with Team In Training and it was a great experience, so much fun that I did another one in 1999.

This year I'm back at it again and this time Jean is running it with me! The last serious run we did was the San Jose Rock'n'Roll half marathon, but was 3 years, so we're back at square one with training.

If you're able, help us raise money to find a cure for blood cancer and to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma, hey and it's tax deductible :-)

Thank you very much in advance. Here's the donation page.

reckless driver pisses me off!

2009-12-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

I try not to rant, but this morning I saw a lady that just pissed me off!

She was going at least 30 miles per hour in the Mountain View Caltrain parking lot. No, the parking lot wasn't empty, it was full of cars and people. OK, so I thought I'd give her the benefit of thought, maybe she is in some kind of emergency, maybe she is trying to catch the train, maybe there's a baby on the way? But nope, none of that, she goes at least 15 mph, pulls into a parking spot and slowly comes out of the van. I swear, she even looked herself in the mirror a bit before coming out of her van. Walks slowly to the train station.

I was so tempted to go up and ask her "any reason why you were driving so fast in a crowded parking lot?"

Reminds me of the "mean people suck" t-shirt, I need to find one that says "reckless driver suck!"

not mature enough, Hmmph!

2009-10-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm not old enough.

Few weeks ago when we went to Vegas for the weekend, Timmy and I got carded at the blackjack table. Dealer asked for our IDs, which is good because that's his job. But after we handed him the ID, he giggled and said "oh... you guys are definitely old enough"

Then at a recent Purdue alumni event, a gentleman came up to me "so you're a fresh grad, huh?" Then he took a look at my name tag which has our graduating year and with a very surprised voice "oh no, you're not a recent grad..." Not sure if that's a complement or not.

Oh well, at least these aren't as bad as when I still get carded for buying lottos, apparently you need to be 18 to buy the lotto.

2006 TV ad - "Get of a Mac"

2009-08-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

During our move last month from Cupertino to Mountain View, I had to pack up our 2 computers. One was the PC and the other was the iMac. Not even exaggerating... I captioned the photo

"30 minutes to pack the PC and 3 mins for my iMac"

While having lunch with some friend here at Apple, one of them said that reminded him of the "Get a Mac" TV ad from 2006

in door laundry and 2 car (attached) garage

2009-08-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yay! After buying our first house in Cupertino 7 years ago, we have finally moved onto a newer home and this time in Mountain View downtown!

When we bought the Eichler-like house in 2002 in Cupertino, we thought we'd just live in the 50+ yo house for a few years and then move to a newer home, who would've guessed that we were there for 7 years.

We can now finally park both cars in the (attached) garage and do laundry indoor. You see, we really don't ask for much, but this being the Bay Area, you can pay for a house close to $1M and still have to do laundry in the backyard and not have a proper garage. But now that's all over, we love our new house and new life in Mountain View downtown Castro area.

Here are some pictures.

household week

2009-04-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

This past week has been an eventful week of household stuff. And by stuff, we mean things that break and require money to fix.

It started few months ago with the washer not filling up our washer. Oh and have we ever mentioned that our washer/dryer is outdoor in the backyard? yeah, we won't go there for now. After debugging the washer for a few weeks, kinda like coding, I finally figured out it could be the solenoil. I know, I know, sole-who? I still find that name kinda funny. The $30 part finally came this week and I replaced it immediately thinking we could finally do a load of laundry that wont' take 4 hours. Nope, no luck.

After debugging with a set of new hoses did I realize that it's not the hose or the washer, it's actually the house's pipe. The pipe was spewing out these yellow crystals that would clog up the filter and preventing water flow. So in the meantime, I hooked the garden hose to the cold water valve and we were finally able to do a few loads of laundry. Ghetto, I know, but hey, at least we have some clean clothes now.

Moving on to this warning light that came on in my car. Took it immediately to the dealer only to get a call few hours later. "Sorry to inform you that rodent damage would not be covered under warranty." I remembered almost having a heart attack, just can't recall if it was from the estimated $680 we would have to drop to repair the cables or the fact we have rats in our detached garage. When I stopped back to the dealer to see under the hood with them, we found a few half eaten figs and lots of rat droppings, looks like they've been having a parteeeee in there for a while now

With car in the shop, the next issue to tackle is what to do with the new pets we now have in the garage. Suggestions came from all directions, from buying a new house to leaving Charlie in the garage from Jean's mom since she is not a big fan of Charlie. We finally decided on fixing the garage once and for all. We knew most likely the rats were living and coming into the garage through this semi storage shed contraption that the previous owners built between the garage and the fence. It's nothing more than pieces of wood acting as a small roof connecting between the garage wall and the fence.

While waiting for handymen to come and give estimates on Sat afternoon with our friend hanging out over at our house, he suggested, "why don't we just do it ourselves?" By now, it's 2PM and we were all just lounging in front of the TV waiting for an evening BBQ with some other friends. But hey, what the heck, I'm an engineer, he's in sales, neither of us handymen (ok, he is more than me), let's do it!

While he went home to get some tools, Jean and I started the demolition work. We'll spare you all the details, but let's say a few rat skeleton showed up while digging up the dirt and rotten wood in that so called storage area. I know, huh? rodent skeleton!!!

We ended up calling another friend up for reinforcement and also to borrow their truck so we can get wood from Home Depot. After a day and half of sawing, (lack of proper) measurements, lots of nails and screws of various sizes and few cans of foam, we were finally done around Sunday evening. Not exactly Extreme Home Makeover or Cribs quality, but a handyman came by later and said it wasn't too bad of a job, Jean and I both think he was just being nice while trying not to laugh his behind off.

Now the finale. With the car fixed, half of the garage rebuild and the washer almost back to full operation, things were almost all back to normal. Then on Tue night, I did something stupid which I won't mention here and broke the build-in microwave/hood combo above the stove. The handyman came by and dropped off an Asian range hood which he'll come back and install next week. On a side note, did you know Googling for "asian hood" and "asian range hood" gives you very different results? Never thought I'd Google for something that sounded gangsta.

So that would conclude our eventful week. On the bright side, we both still have jobs, nice house, nice cars, cute dog, so we're not going to complain :-)

Friend just came by tonight and told us he fixed his leaky toilet, probably our bad luck rubbing off in his house now. Hmm... we think our toilet might be leaking too, maybe we'll try to fix that next weekend?

Microsoft retail stores

2009-02-13T21:28:00.000-08:00

Told the wife that Microsoft is planning on opening retail stores, like Apple. And her response.

"umm... ok... so like a Best Buy? but with just one section?"

Pays to be patient and courteous

2009-02-10T09:08:00.001-08:00

Last month, we had a tire saga with Sears and Mercedes dealer. What started out as a simple nail patch in the tire took an unexpected turn. Fortunately, after few weeks, we finally got reimbursed for the full expense.

Here's the picture of the original nail in the tire. I took the car to Sears Auto so they could repair the tire. But was called back after an hour and they showed me the 2nd picture below. Notice how the nail is no longer an issue now.

According to the Sears technician, when he unmounted the tire, the shovel went right through the tire and (whatever that means...) the only way this could happen is if the tire is defective in the first place. Not knowing anything about tire or how this works, we took the car to the dealer and asked for their opinion. BTW, note to other SLK owners, the tire does not fit in the trunk :-) Of course, as expected, the dealer concluded that this is not a Michelin defect and it was Sears' responsiblity. To avoid more hassles, we just paid Mercedes to put on the new tire for $400 (ouch!)

Few days later, I returned to Sears to speak with the store manager. He is was friendly, courteous, but insisted that this is a defective Michelin tire. Without any progress, I finally wrote to both Michelin corporate and Sears corporate to explain the situation. Michelin informed me that "... inform Sears that you have been instructed by Michelin to have them contact us at the number below to discuss their findings...". On the other hand, Sears corporate forwarded my email to Sears Regional office and within days, the same store manager contacted me.

I brought in the tire and the letter from Michelin. To my surprise, after about 5 minutes, he said: "You know what I'm going to do for you... you've been so patient, friendly and just a nice customer, I've asked my regional manager and he agreed that we can just refund you back the full amount" Victory for us! :-)

Lessons we learned from this?

Patience. Right after the event, frustrated and upset, we didn't react immediately. It was helpful that we were both so busy with work and we could only handle this when we finally got time. By then, the calmer temperament helped.
Even in such situation, I think staying friendly and reasonable helped in our case. The store manager told me repeatedly that he thought I was nice and resonable. I explained to him that I'm just a customer stuck in the middle.
Maybe it is just safer to take a new car to the dealer for service next time.

Why we pay the premium to live in the Bay Area

2009-01-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

In the middle of January, here's what one can do in the Bay Area. No wonder we pay the premium to live here.

Hiking behind Stanford University campus to the famous "Dish"
Then having yummy lunch in Palo Alto downtown with friends.
While having lunch, looking across University Ave (Palo Alto Downtown) and spotting a Tesla
Driving home on beautiful HWY 280 with top-down!

We love the Bay Area!

sale sale sale

2009-01-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

The picture-taking at the mall started out innocently, before I knew it, I almost ran out of film. The retailers are doing all they can to lure shoppers in. If I didn't understand English, I'd think America's favorite brand is "Sale" and its favorite color is orange.

pet fashion

2008-12-29T21:55:00.000-08:00

Hee, look what Charlie got for Christmas, my old holely T-shirt. He didn't care much for it, by the end of the day when we came home, he took it off somehow.

Disclaimer: I'm not a dress-your-pet-up person, this is all Jean!

Foreclosure in Cupertino

2008-10-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

As if the stock market hasn't been bad enough already. Contrarily to what people believe, Cupertino does get foreclosures. Here's one just in our neighborhood.

This financial mess we're all in is for real! As Pundit Kitchen's capshun says...

Aruba - "one happy island"

2008-09-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

We just finished spending a week in Aruba with a few friends. Not much planning by us as we've both been extremely busy at work. So thanks to Timmy, a.k.a. our travel agent. Also thanks to his parents' time-share, we were able to stay at the (very) nice Marriott's Aruba Surf Club for a good deal! As in $20 per person for the whole week good deal!!! So we only paid for our airfare. Can't beat that, huh? That's what good friends are for :-)

This blog entry will serve 2 purposes. One is for our own sakes if we ever do come back to Aruba. The other as a tip sheet for other travelers to Aruba who might stumble upon this and find it useful.

Marriott's Aruba Surf Club (if you happen to stay here)

Bring your own inflatable tube to use in the lazy river.
The $3 fries at the resort is one of the best deals we found and the fries are surprising good!

Transportation

Arubus (get it, get it) is the island's public bus system. It's very easy to navigate and cheap. For the 5 of us to get from the "high rise hotel" area into Oranjestad downtown it's only $11.50 round-trip, take about 20 minutes.

Shopping

Aruba really doesn't have any local souvenir, but jewelry seems to be the thing here. Say you happen to be in the market for some jewelry or a watch, you might be able to find good deals here especially since there's no tax. For example, there's a Tiffany's and Chopard here and if you know the exact product you want, check the price before you come (or on the web once you're here) and then put on your bargain hat.

Food
Everything on this island is expensive! I guess we shouldn't have been so surprised since it's only obvious as everything is imported here. After 8 days here, we all agreed that the best meal was at the local joint "Shahai".

It's even better when a local dude who spoke a little English came up to help us with the orders and then bought us a local dish of mixed rice with beans. To thank him, we bought him the local Balashi beer. As we took this picture he said "don't make me famous on the Internet."

And if you're a baller or if one of your best friends proposes to his girlfriend on the island at sunset, then you can go splurge and celebrate at Aqua Grill, good seafood place.

So that's about all the tips we can think of and remember. Good weather (except for about an hour of thunderstorm with one video), good food and good companionship made it a great week here. See all the food we had, various places we visited, Liz's new ring from Jeff and some bumpy vidoes from the ATV tour. Head on over for the 150 photos and videos.

San Antonio Rancho PG&E trail on Path Tracker

2008-09-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

We don't know how to do things in moderation.

Jean mentioned that we should go for a hike this weekend and of course, I suggested it that we try the PG&E trail in the popular San Antonio Rancho Open Preserve. We did this trail about 3 years ago with a friend's dad. Yes, a father had to take us and we almost couldn't keep up with his crew of other older parents. Back then we were just a little more in shape and that was quite difficult already. Fast forward 3 years, add a few pounds (for me), and we naively thought, "hey, what the heck, let's do this again"

To our surprise we actually did the whole 6+ mile loop in about 3 hours. But we were huffing and puffing and aching that afternoon.

On a side note, one of our favorite iPhone applications is "Path Tracks". As you can see below, it sometimes forget to drop breadcrumbs and towards the end, it got as tired as we did and decided to just shut down for the day. It's really easy to use, you start it on the iPhone and as you walk, it'll leave points where you can then later save it up to pathtracks.com for a pretty picture like below. Check out the one we saved on Saturday and also screenshot below.

My first computer

2008-08-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, at 33 and after working more than a decade as a software engineer, I finally bought my first computer. No, no kidding you! One might wonder how a computer EE student made it through four years at Purdue. All I can remember are countless nights in the computer lab and the closest thing I owned to a computer was my handy dandy HP-48 which by the way is great to play Phoenix on.

So here it is... cool, huh?

We saw bears at Yosemite!

2008-07-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

This last July 4th weekend was fun, weird and scary.

Weird because it's the first time Jean and I were apart for so long and traveled separated. I know, I know, awww, isn't it? She has done her shares of backpacking in the wilderness, so she decided to take this year off and let me go with the guys (and few girls) so I can get it out of my system.

It was fun because I got to go backpacking in Yosemite. I just love going out there where it's secluded, no technology and we get to enjoy the wilderness for a few days before rejoining civilization.

Now here's the scary part. In the 10 years that I've been backpacking and numerous trails and parks we've been to (including Yosemite a few times) we've never seen a bear. We did this time. Twice! This particular bear below was obviously used to human (which is bad) and was not alarmed by us banging on our pots and making noise trying to scare him away. The bear was about 100 feet from us and Liz was quick enough to snap this photo.

Check out photos below to see our 3-day adventure which includes a yoga session (even with a head-stand), water-fall shots and some crazy group shots by the creek.

17 photos on Flickr.
And for the brave, here are (a lot) more photos on .Mac gallery (soon to be MobileMe).

Z Pizza in Mountain View

2008-05-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Everyone in the Silicon Valley knows someone who worked at some start-up, made lots of $$$. Or someone who was employee #10 of Google or employee #16 of Apple and use to eat lunch with Steve Jobs.

But I bet not all of you know someone who has a restaurant! Let alone an awesome and yummy pizza restaurant in the heart of Mountain View right on Castro Street.

Check out Linda's restaurant at www.zpizzamv.com. And when you get there, ask for her and tell her Jean and Thomas sent you there :-)

According to Yelp review, Charlie Barley likes it too.

Dood! And if you Google "z pizza mountain view" and look at the first result (as of now) from SJ Mercury News, did they just use my above photo from Flickr?

"MADE OF HO"

2008-05-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

We took a break this past weekend to watch the movie "Made Of Honor". I know, I know, you're thinking, it's a chick flick. But it's my payback for making Jean watch "The Forbidden Kingdom" when she thought that movie was about war; not that a war movie is what she would've wanted anyway.

So we got our tickets and look at what AMC printed on it. At least it did say PG-13, so we knew we got the right show.

CMU Prof. Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture"

2008-05-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know how we missed this initially, but I just came across this after an Apple colleague sent this out. This is probably one of the best 76 minutes that you'll spent. Truly amazing and moving story.

You can find out more about him and other videos on his page including an hour special ABC's Diane Sawyer did on him. In the ABC interview, his wife said "... there were many nights we would go to bed, roll over and hug each other and cry ..."

Sad, but him and his family are true inspirations to all of us!!!

My very technical wife

2008-04-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

me: "I can't wait for Apple to come out with the 3G iPhone." (disclaimer: no, this is by no way of me starting a rumor)

Jean: "What's that? huh, 3G?"

me: "It's the faster network. Right now iPhone is on AT&T's EDGE and its sloooow..."

Jean: "And EDGE is like what? how much of 3G? ... 1G? 2G? Squeegee?"

She then proceeds to laugh at her own funniness for quite a while. Yeah, I have to admit, that was pretty funny for me too. Love my wife!

Taipei Zoo

2008-04-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

We like zoos. Even this non-stop rain all week couldn't stop us from going to the Taipei Zoo.

At only NT$60 ($2) each, it's a bargain.

I uploaded about 50 more photos of the zoo into our "Taiwan 2008" Flickr set of us strolling in the nearly-empty zoo for 6 hours. The only other people there were school kids of various schools and grade levels on their field trips. Love being tourists and going to places while the rest of the country is working :-)

We also recorded a short video (40 seconds) of a very playful Sun Bear.

My brilliant wife

2008-04-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Taipei has been raining all week and probably will be for the rest of the time we're here. So we've been limited to activities that are not outdoor. Shopping and eating seem to be our favorite activities now.

Here's us one morning...

Jean: "Stores aren't open yet?"

Me: "I know, it's 10:30AM already, I guess they don't open til 11AM."

Jean: "I don't get it, why would they put that club security bar outside?!?!"

Me waiting about 10 seconds...

Jean: "Ah... never mind"

Here's my brilliant wife.

Kind Taiwanese Bus Driver

2008-04-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

We're still on our 2 week vacation in Taiwan. With a little Internet connection, we've been able to upload pictures onto Flickr, check a little email, write this blog and even Twitter a few times.

People have generally been very nice to us; maybe it's because we look like tourists. Yesterday, we went up to the "mountains" to visit Taiwan National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院). It started raining like crazy. On the way there via bus, the driver noticed that we didn't have an umbrella and offered to give us one that he had on the bus (apparently riders often forget them behind).

Here is that nice bus driver:

National Palace Museum in the rain...

Unfortunately, we lost that umbrella after 4 hours inside the museum. We knew it was a bad idea to leave it in one of those bins, commonly placed outside of buildings for guests to leave their wet umbrellas in. But luckily, we found an unattended umbrella inside Metropolitan Rapid Transit (MRT) on the way home. We waited for a good 5 minutes to make sure it really didn't belong to anyone before we took possession of it. Hopefully, no one in Taipei is mad at us :-)

So much for dwarf orange tree

2008-03-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

We bought a dwarf orange tree 2 years ago and planted in the backyard. The label that came with the little 2 feet tree indicated that they should be no more than 5 feet. Two years and one storm later, it is now about 8 feet and we got our first crop this week.

But does that look dwarf to you?