Switched to Project Fi and Save Some Money!

For the longest time until October 2017, I was a faithful T-Mobile subscriber for my mobile phone. They offered the perfect combination of package that I need: 5 GB of high-speed data (it was 3G, 4G, and then LTE over-time), unlimited SMS, and some non-unlimited voice (100 minutes) - all for $30 per month. I was on that plan for years (along with my wife's phone). So we are paying around $64 per month for our cellphone bills combined. We both rarely talk over the phone, most of our communication is happening via data (SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, Skype, etc), and we also have a home phone (VOIP) that we use for long-calling (like calling family members, customer supports, etc etc that are minutes intensive).

I have heard about Project Fi when it came out - somehow it was not that attractive for me at the time. Until I have to buy a new phone ...

So what is Project Fi? It is basically Google's phone carrier - but instead of using their own towers etc, Google uses three existing providers (T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular) to provide the subscribers their mobile data services. Project Fi approved devices will be able to switch among all the providers seamlessly. Regular GSM devices will be able to use T-Mobile service only. Project Fi is also a PREPAID service - so there is no contract, no cancellation fee, etc. Which is awesome!

How does it save me money? I thought paying ~$30 per month is cheap already!? Project Fi simplifies your billing - so basically the main account holder must pay $20 per month for the main line - which includes unlimited talk and text. Now on top of it, you only pay for the data that you use with rate $10 per GB. So if I am only using .5GB this month, I will only billed for ~$25 before tax. I don't know about you - but in my day-to-day, 80-90% of the time I am always connected to WiFi (home, office, my friend's house, free WiFi at a coffee shop/restaurant, etc) - and I have my stats too from the last year of my T-Mobile which shows that on average that I only use around 0.7GB of LTE data per month. With that, I am potentially saving $5-$7 per month - not much, I know - but I gain so much more (better coverage, unlimited call, better support, and simplified billing).

Then ... Google released this app call Datally. You can read more about it here. Which basically allows you to control data usage on an app-by-app. The default setting is to not allow data if the app is not on the foreground. So by installing this app, my LTE data usage actually goes down from ~0.7GB to ~0.5GB per month.

Better with more people! It gets better! I switched my wife's provider from T-Mobile to Project Fi - now because she is not the main account holder (her account is working under my account), she is only billed $15 per month (for unlimited calls and text) instead of $20 (like me because I am the main/primary account). Then our data usage is combined and billed together. So what this means is that if we are assuming that her data usage is similar like me (between 0.5-0.7GB of LTE data per month), at the end of the month our combined cell phone bill is ~$49 ($20 + $15 + $7 + $7) before tax - which is ~$12-$14 saving per month. Not much, but we'll take it.

Bill Protection Benefit! Project Fi has other advantages - such as: "Bill Protection" - which is a cap of your bill (not your data usage), but a cap of actually how much Google can actually bill you. The cap is $60 for your LTE data. So if you are on a single account plan, that would $80 total ($20 phone & text + $60 data). Or a different way to look at it is this is the "Unlimited Plan" for Project Fi subscriber.

Free International SMS & Data! With Project Fi, you can use SMS and data freely (already included) in around 170 countries. You can also make or receive phone calls, but it is not free.

You can read more about Project Fi here.

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Munchkin Strategy: Orc

An Orc card says this:

An orc who is hit with a curse can always choose to ignore the curse and lose a level instead - unless he's already at level 1.

When an orc fighting alone defeats a monster by more than 10, he goes up an extra level.

On the surface, these abilities seem to be superficial and not that powerful. Lose a level? What idiot prefers to do that instead of absorbing a curse? Extra level if defeating more than 10? Sounds either useless or extremely hard!

But, to a skilled Munchkin player, becoming an orc can be a powerful strategy in both early and late game.

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Munchkin Strategy: Wizard

Munchkin is a card game, where you play a character in battling monsters in order to get to the winning level (level 10 for regular or 20 for EPIC). The game involves some luck (drawing cards), strategies, a good amount of persuasion, trash-talking, and bantering back-and-forth with other players. That combination makes the game a lot of fun, interactive, and can be played again and again without getting boring.

For more information about Munchkin, you can read their website: http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/

If you are familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, then Munchkin should be somewhat familiar to you - a funny version of D&D. It has races & classes, curses, combat strength, charms, potions, etc.

The rest of this post assumes that you are somewhat familiar with the game, basic rules, and its vocabularies - outlining a basic strategy to use if you are playing as a Wizard class.

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Acadia National Park

In August, I went to a 10 day vacation, spanning over 11 states! We went from Ohio to New York to Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and passing over West Virgina and New Jersey on our drive.

But the highlight of our trip was when we were at Acadia National Park in Maine. Acadia National Park is about 5 hours north of Boston, MA. When I planned our trip, I had some expectations about how beautiful this park going to be, but I was still blown away - it exceeded all of my expectations! I think all of our family and friends agreed that it was the best national park we've seen and the highlight of our trip. I eager to go back next year and spend more time over there.

Acadia National Park has everything - like from beaches (ocean sandy beach or lake beach), serene lakes, hiking trails, bike trails, rocky coastline, sandy coastline, mountains, and spectacular mountain top view.

Anyway - if you have the time, Acadia is a must visit. I think our family is going back there in summer 2011!

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Ooma Review

In August, I bought a phone gadget called Ooma. You can go to their website to get a full exposure of what it is etc here. For me, I am using it for money saving cost for international calls between my parents and my family in US. We talk pretty frequently and I have been paying around $20-ish per month for long-distance international calls on my land line. So in a year, I amp paying around $300 for international calls and that's just me. If my mom calls me from Indonesia, I don't pay anything but she pays her international charge from her phone carrier.

Prior to this, I was considering other options such as Skype, Vonage (or any other VoIP solutions), MSN/YM web-cam chats, etc - but nothing seems to work as good as Ooma as a whole experience.

So, if you are calling internationally a lot and want to save some money, you may want to consider Ooma. Read my experience with it and why is it my solution of choice after the jump.

REQUIREMENT
You will need a broadband connection for Ooma to be able to works as expected. The connection speed where I hooked up my Ooma with is pretty modest (768dl and 256ul), but so far it works pretty well as soon as the internet is not used up for heavy downloading.

COST
Ooma will cost you around $200 up-front. Unlike Vonage or other VoIP solutions, which are using subscription model, Ooma actually sells you a device AND you do NOT need to pay anything else. You have the option to add more advance options stuff if you want (and you do have to pay for them) - but I don't need them - so I only pay $200 for the device and that's it. So right of the bat, Ooma is a CHEAPER solution in the long run compared to Vonage ($15 / mo).

INTERNATIONAL CALLS
But Ooma's website says it will charge you if you are calling internationally? Yes, that is right. What I did:

1. Registered my Ooma under my name
2. Gave it a local number (so area code is the same as my home phone, my cell, my wife's cell, and my office number)
3. Setup the device at my home (very easy) and test it for several hours (or days if you want)
4. Send the device to my parents and tell them how to hook it up with their broadband internet router
5. Plug a cordless phone to the device.

This setup enables me to call my parents anytime without incurring international calling cost. If I call them from my home phone, it is FREE. If I call from my cell phone, I only lose my cell-minutes. If I call from the office phone, it's FREE. And ... they also can call me anytime for FREE.

PHONE / AUDIO EXPERIENCE
My experience with Ooma as a far as audio quality has been great. Only a few times that my mom would call me and the sound quality were like broken up - those were caused by my dad/brother downloading MS updates/photos/music from the internet. Once they stopped the download and recalled, quality back to clear and no delay. It is basically as good as calling from a land-line to another land-line locally; clear, no delay, and full duplex quality.

WEB-CAM/SKYPE?
Webcam/Skype kind of requires you to sit in front of a computer. To hook it up to a regular phone, you have to buy an extra device to connect and then maintaining the software, etc. I am ok with all that, but I don't think my parents is quite a tech-savvy to able to handle all that. Ooma is a stand-alone hardware, plug and play. No software, no computer, just plug into the router, connect your own phone, and voila!

All in all, after 4 months of usage - I am very satisfied with Ooma and recommend you to use it if you have the need for frequent long distance calling like me.
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Dirty Franks!

A friend of mine told me about this "hot dog" place called "Dirty Franks" - so in the name of trying new restaurant, we went. Here are some information about Dirty Franks:

Website: http://www.dirtyfrankscolumbus.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dirtyfranksdogs

248 South 4th Street
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614.824.4673
Hours: 11am to 2:30am

Food:
I think their food is great. Their menu is basically hot dogs with different styles. You can get Chicago style hot dog, hot dog with kim chee, with beans, topped with brisket, or anyway you want it (called "Your Wiener"). See their full menu here. You can substitute the franks with Polish sausage, brats, veggie sausage, etc. I have tried several of them and I like "Dog From Hell" and "Chicago" the most (out of the seven or so).

Drinks:
They have a full bar - which is nice. But, the stuff to get is the Slushes or Root Beer Floats. They use the local Jenis ice cream for their floats - which is awesome.

Price:
Relatively cheap - $3 per hot dog. So if you are only after 1 dog, side and drink water, it will cost you $5-ish. I ordered 2 dogs, a side, and pop - set me back around $10 - and went home super full.

Atmosphere and Service:
The place is kinda small and packed during lunch hours. So if you are planning to come for lunch, come early (like before 11:30) or late. For dinner, it is still packed, but not as bad. Decoration is kinda funky/artsy - which is - depending on your taste - could be weird or cool. I personally like it. Service is superb, my drink is never empty, meal is fast, and my server is friendly.

So, check them out!
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Saving Money on Electricity & Gas Bills

A friend of mine just told me about his gas bill for last month - a whooping $600+. Good thing that he lives in the house with 6 other housemates and the house is also an older house - so there are probably some leaks here and there which creating more work for the heater, hence more expensive payment.

Another fellow also is paying about $150+ per month for his electric bill per month.

I used to never really consider them as a big deal until I moved into a house, got married, and had a son. My expenses are piling up and I need to tighten my budgeting and do some cost cutting. One of the first area that I was able to successfully reduce is in the area of utility bills.

My gas bill used to be about $300 during the winter months and about $70 per month for the rest of the year. Last year, I reduce my gas bill from averaging $300 per month between December to March to about $150 per month (so about 1/2 of it used to be).

So how did I do it? Here are several tips that I found to be pretty useful...

Gas
I live in a 4 bedroom house, but we in most nights we only use 2 of the bedrooms: for my wife and I, and another room for my son. We use another room as my office and the last one as a guess bedroom. So keep in mind that the suggestions below may or may not apply to you in all situations - I am just providing tips that so far have been working pretty well for me and my family.

1. Get a programmable thermostat
This may cost you between $30 to $200, depending on how fancy you want to get with your thermostat. At least get a programmable one for both heat and cold air - and can be programmed based on daily basis. Some only has weekday or weekend setting. Depending on your need, get whatever suited for you. Mine is programmable by day and it is only $40 (one of the best investment in home improvement I have made).

2. I programmed it to turn down the temperature during the day on several days of the week where nobody is at home. Do not turn your heater off, but just lower the temperature. I lower mine to 10-15 degrees cooler than the regular temperature. So when I am at home, the thermostat usually shows 72 F and ~60 F when nobody is at home. You can program it so that it goes back up to the regular comfortable temperature 30 minutes before you are back home so you will come home to a warm house instead to a cold one. Obviously you cannot consider all possibilities, but try to get the "typical" schedule - and then program them it - you can override them as necessary.

3. If you are going away for a longer period of time (like on a vacation), lower your house temperature to the upper 40s F (but do not turn off your heater) and set it to come back up when you are about to come back.

4. If your household is like mine, where we typically are only using 2 rooms at night (or less), you may want to consider buying an oil portable heater. So at night, schedule your main house thermostat to lower the temperature to the 60s F and turn on your oil heater in your bedroom(s). That way, you are only heating the necessary rooms (typically your bedrooms) and not wasting energy on other unused rooms. I usually turn down the house temperature at 9:30pm and turn on the oil heater in my bedroom around the same time. Since the heat dissipates gradually in the main house so I won't notice much difference when I am walking into my bedroom (typically around 10:30pm) where the temperature is already picked up my the oil heater. My oil heater has a timer so it shut itself down around 7am, while my main house thermostat increase the temperature of the house around the same time (up to 72 F).

5. Reduce leaks. Make sure your doors, windows, etc are not leaking. You can buy weather strips at the hardware store to stop the leaks from doors and windows.

6. Install a ceiling fan. Heat goes up and ceiling fan helps to circulate the hot air from your heater better. You do not need to do this on every room of your house, but it will be very helpful to have it in your most used rooms in the house. Secondly, during the non-winter times, it can also give you some extra breeze.

There are other things you that requires much more money, such as replacing your windows with double layer windows, installing screen doors, fixing wall insulation, etc. I am going to get into those things in this post. Another thing you can do is put on an extra layer of clothing and lower the temperature. One of my friend set his daily temperature at 68 F during the winter months - and always wear a sweater or extra layer of clothing at home. Works great for him!

Electric
The principle is no different than "gas" - less usage means less payment.

1. Change filament based bulb with CFL bulbs. They cost more to buy, but they are worthy investments in the long run. Especially if you live in a house, where there are tons of bulbs. CFL bulbs usually cost you $2 per bulb but they also last longer than filament bulbs. In most cases, your average house filament bulb is a 60W bulb. Using CFL, you can get the same brightness with just 15W - that is 75% energy saving per bulb.

2. There are some light fixtures or lights that cannot use CFL bulbs. Light fixtures with dimmers cannot use CFL bulbs. Also, some of my lights are using fluorescent lights. In those areas, I would try to find the lower energy bulbs/lights (substitute 40W fluorescent with 34W, etc). Read more about CFL bulb here.

3. Always turn-off when unused. You can get a smart switch that automatically turn off the light when the room is unused for a period of time. OR ... you can just create a good habit of turning off the light when you are not using the room. In my house a good example of this is the kitchen, where there are 4 strips or 40W fluorescent light on the ceiling - totally to a 160W energy used when it is on. You can reduce the energy usage to 0 if you turn it off. Of course this also applies to other appliances and electronics, such as TVs, computers (or you can set it to hibernate automatically), DVD players, etc.

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Future Quarterback?

Once sport that Jon was exposed to since early on is football. He basically grew up knowing that Ohio State is THE team in football and yelling "O-H" "I-O" is something considered to be much more precious than "da-da". His first ball is an Ohio State football and his first jacket is an OSU jacket.

Anyway, I took some pictures of him playing with buddy Andrew on Monday - and surprisingly he could hold the football correctly (most of the time) and threw some spiral several times.

So here are some pictures:

Call plays and reading defense ....


Ball is snapped ...




Fake pump to the right!


It's a Quarterback Draw!


He runs and he scores!!! Touchdown!!!


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Jonathan is 3 years old - time flies!

Three years ago, early December was nervous time for me. Helen, my wife, was pregnant and the baby is due anytime. Jonathan was born Dec 10th 2005, 7am, @ Riverside hospital - 51cm, 7lbs 8oz. There were no complications, the delivery was smooth, and we went home being proud parents.


The first couple of months were rough. Helen sister stayed with us for the rest of the year and went home end of December. My mom came after that and stayed for 2 months to help us along. Jonathan loves his milk and he had no problem with food or milk. He had eczema on his cheeks which worried us for a bit, but after the 1st year and a half it pretty much went away. He started eating solid food at 4 months, and by that time, Jon could hold his own bottle. He was huge fir his age at the time - I believed he was in the 70-90 percentile back then.
Another thing we worried about back then was that Jon threw up a lot, especially when he was crying. This led us to eventually not allowing him to sleep by himself in the crib until he was almost 2 years old. Putting a humidifier in his room helps a lot too.

Jon started walking on his own when he was 11 months. I remembered that his first attempt to walk across the room in our living room was during a OSU-Michigan game (OSU won 42-39 - GO BUCKS!!). He was a fast walker and he was the type that cannot stay still - so we installed gates in our house to prevent him from going too far or going into unsafe rooms. Grandma and grandpa came during Jon's 1st birthday and we threw a party. Since the Buckeyes were going to National Championship that year, the theme for the party was "Buckeyes". Everybody came wearing scarlet or grey apparels. Even though Jon has not understand football yet at the time, but he was able to respond to "O-H" with an "I-O"! I was soo proud ...

Jon 1st birthday party!


Jon and his first snow ...


Jon's first haircut - done by mommy and daddy!


Halloween!

By the time Jon was 2 years old, he was talking Indonesian and English, sleeping on his own bed, ate all kinds of food, understand that OSU is the best, what an email is, how to chat to daddy, etc etc.

Jon's 2nd birthday party - can't wait to eat cake!

Yesterday was Jon's 3rd birthday - o how time flies. He is wearing bigger clothes now, brushes hi own teeth, talks in full sentences, ask the most difficult question I can ever imagined ("Why daddy has to go to work?"), loves staying in a cabin, etc. Jon loves his train set (me too) and looking forward to have it expanded. Taking pictures of Jon regularly also pays off big time.


BTW, Jon now has his own blog, written by mommy - http://jonathansetiabudi.blogspot.com, check it out.
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Open Source Family Tree Software: Family.Show

I stumbled on a free open-source software written on MS .Net (C#, WPF) that is really intriguing and cool. This software is a "family tree" software. It is a simple one - but for my use - it is more than sufficient.

The software itself is called Family.Show. It was mad by a company called "Vertigo". It is very user-friendly and easy to use. It came with a sample family; the Windsor (English Royal family).

Did I mention that it is also open source? Yes, so you can go to codeplex and download the source code for the app. You will need Visual Studio 2008 to be able to open the solution fully, but you can use any text editor to view the code in C#.

So OK, I downloaded it and started my family tree. I happen to keep most of my family members data in my Outlook, so I can enter them right away. After you enter a person, you can add related person to the existing one. So you cannot add somebody who is not related to anybody in the system. For example: once I added myself, I can only add person who is directly related to me: spouse; brother/sister; mom/dad; son/daughter. If I want to add my cousin then I have to add my mom, then add her sister, then add my cousin as my mom's sister's daughter.

The software is pretty intuitive to use and quite simple. You can drag photo to the edit pane to assign a photo to a person in the system. You can add "story" to a person - a free text format where you can have some kind of a biography for the person.

Another feature is that you can filter the family data to find certain family members easier. Clicking "Expand" button will expand the list of family members into a big table, where you can filter, sort, search, etc - as well as displaying stats about age distribution, birthdays, etc. Clicking on the age distribution chart will filter the list automatically by age.

A super cool feature is the time slider. You can slide the time slider to see people's age on certain year. For example: if you want to know the age of your dad when you were born, you can slide the age slider until your age reaches 0 (zero) and see your dad's age displayed appropriately under his name. When you slide the age slider closer to current year, you can see his age is increasing.

The data is saved in an XML format - so you can send it to your families and ask them to install the software and complete/add missing data and send the xml file back to you. You can also export it into a GEDCOM format - which is the "family tree" standard format for most "family tree" software.

Check it out!
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SLANK CONCERT!

SLANK concert @ Columbus was awesome. It was a part of INDIGO - an annual celebration for Indonesian students in Columbus, OH. Ticket price was decent, $20 (or $25 at the door), you get plenty of Indonesian food, tons of drinks, a performance by Columbus band and of course, SLANK!



I was in charge of setting up the sound system. We rented our house and monitor equipment as well as some backline equipments. SLANK & crew brought their own guitar amp head - a Marshall JCM 2000 and their own Bass head - AMPEG. Bimbim is endorsed by PREMIER drum - but since we could not find a PREMIER kit locally, we compromised and use another brand - and instead of renting, we borrowed one - from ME! So YES, it was my drum kit that was used during the concert by SLANK! One of their guitarist, Ridho could not make it - somehow he could not get a visa by US embassy.

Between 1pm until 4pm, there was a lot going on. The food came in and there were several people arranging them, putting them into boxes, putting all the drinks in cooler to chill, etc. We prepared around 400 boxes of Indonesian meal - that is a lot of boxing! Our food is sponsored by an Indonesian restaurant in Columbus called TASTE OF BALI. They are located @ Carriage Place on Bethel Rd, next to the dollar theater. I tasted the food - it was awesome!

Preparing ourfood:


We picked up our drum kit from my house around 10am and went straight to SLANK's hotel. We met with SLANK's crews - Dado & Wahyu as well as Sonny - their sound engineer. We arrived at the concert hall @ Ohio Expo Center - Rhodes Hall by 11am and the FoH & monitor equipments are already arriving and being setup by our rental company. SLANK at this point stayed behind @ hotel and they were going to meet several friends in the soccer tournament.

We proceeded in setting up our equipment and by noon-ish, we are all set. We went to lunch, stopped by a guitar shop to get several guitar stands, and went back to the concert hall to do sound check. After an hour or so sound check - we are ready to ROCK!!!

SLANK's crews:


At 4pm-ish, our opening band showed up for sound check. They are doing 4 songs. SLANK was kind enough to let the opening band borrowed their equipment (guitar head & bass head & snare drum). These guy never sounded that good before - primarily because of the quality of the sound system equipment and the sound engineer we hired.

All of our crews are on location right now, arranging furniture, preparing tickets, finalizing food preps, etc. The door opens @ 5:30pm and opening band to get on the stage @ 7pm.

Our MCs - Bebe & Aree:


Openning band - Columbus band:


SLANK in the waiting room:


Jon & Helen:


After the concert, SLANK's crews and I cleaned up the stage, as well as the backline and FoH & monitor rental crews. SLANK was in their waiting room with fans taking pictures, singing autograph, etc. At around 10:30pm, everything was done, and we drove back to SLANK's hotel. I helped SLANK's crews packed their equipments for their next flight to NY. Sonny gave me a used snare and I got SLANK's autographs on it. We went to Raising Cane's for late late supper, had a great talk with Ivan outside, and rolled home @ around midnight.

Long live SLANK & SLANKERS!
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Pumpkin Patch!

Jon, Helen, and I went to the pumpkin patch last Saturday. It was fun - a bit cold and windy - but fun overall. Sky was gorgeously blue in the morning. The patch that we went to was at Dublin (take 33 west, exist @ Post) - so it was not that bad of a drive from our house. We went with a bunch of friends (and their kids) - so we have a big group.

Once we got there, we got several options ... we can walk on our own to the area (which is about 10 minutes walk - not bad at all) - OR we can take a hay-ride. Since Jon has never been on a hay-ride, so we opt for the hay-ride.

Here is Jon sitting on an unused tractor while waiting for our hay-ride:




This is inside the wagon - there were about 20-something people inside the wagon, so it was packed. I sat across Helen and Jon and able to get this shot.


Once we got to the area, it was a free for all ... we can pick any pumpkin we can find. Most of them are bad though or too big. After searching for about 45 minutes or so, we finally found one that is big but not too big and one that is small enough for Jon to hold.


On our walk back to the weighing area - there was an area where it was filled with small size pumpkins. So we played around a little bit there and try to find some small pumpkins for Jon - or he was trying to find for his own.


It was fun and we enjoyed it - although warmer weather is more desirable for next trip. We ended up going home with 4 pumpkins (1 large one and 3 small ones).
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New Appliances

My electric range needs replacing ... Two of the ranges (the bigger ones) don't even work now and the rest are only working half the time. Oven still works great, but not the range. It is an old GE range and it is screaming for replacement.

My dishwasher is also broken. The water outlet is broken so sometimes there will be a "pool" of water on the bottom. If the water is left there, it will become a bacteria sweet spot - so we have to keep using the dishwasher periodically or cleaning the bottom and removing the water - which is a pain. We try to have it fixed but the parts are hard to find and expensive - almost as much as buying a new one.

So when the company I work for announce that we will be getting our bonuses, we are off to our search for new appliances: dishwasher, electric range, and a matching hood/vent.

Electric Range
For one reason and another, we decided to go with Whirlpool as our chosen brand of appliance. For our electric range, we wanted to go with "coil" instead of the ceramic glass cooktop - because we found that the coil "heats" better. Since we cook on regular basis, coil seems to be a better option. Plus, the ceramic glass is expensive to replace if it is damaged (could be $250 or more) - even though it is really really easy to clean and certainly looks better. The model that we went for is Whirlpool RF263LXS. We also got the vent/hood for it: RH3730XL

Dishwasher
For the dishwasher, we also went stainless to match with the range and the hood: DU1055XTS.

So what kind of "heavy duty" cooking are we doing on our range? Well, my wife cook almost everyday and about once a week we host a bible study group at our house on Saturday. So more often than not, the heaviest use of our range is on the weekend, where our friends and us must cook for our bible study group (abour 20 people).

We do not use the oven as much - which is why probably the oven is still in good shape. As Asians, most of our food are deep fried, stir-fry based or soup based - which means that almost all the cooking is happening on the cooktop instead of in the oven.

We ordered these last weekend and they will be shipped within this week. I hope they work as long as my old appliances are, for years and years and years.
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The Flip is Sweet!

It has been over a month since I bought a Flip for my wife as a birthday present. Wait! What is a "flip" you say? A "Flip" is a video capturing device that is as big as your Treo phone. Not only it is small, but it is also excellent in capturing video and very user friendly.


My wife has been pretty happy with it and I tell you, it is probably one of the best bang for the buck investment I have done lately. The one that I bought is the "ultra" version. It has a higher quality video than the basic, uses 2 AA batteries, more color options, etc. You can see the complete comparison here.

Helen mostly uses it for shooting video about Jon so we can send them to my parents. It is very easy to use - Scott Hanselman says that it has a very high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). There are only 5 buttons: record, play, delete, next and previous - and they are self-explanatory. Sync-ing with a computer is a breeze and you can configure it to auto upload to YouTube if you want. You do need to install MPEG-4 coded to paly it back in your computer though - or you can just install the software that comes along with the Flip itself.

I paid $129 for mine @ Amazon - and it is probably cheaper now since the Mino is out.

Here is a sample - Jon dancing his Robot Dance:

The "flashing" light was me taking pictures with my digital camera.

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Boston Trip (day 4 & 5)

Helen's sister and her family went to Nantucket island and spending the night there - and we decided to go home to Columbus Thursday evening, but we wanted to spend some time in Boston before leaving.


Thursday (7/24):
Hearty breakfast @ home with Helen's aunt's homecooking (yummy ...) started our day. We were planning to go to MIT campus and spend the rest of day @ Quincy market area. I plotted our course through Google map and copy them down on paper - all was good to go. I was driving and we took 1 right turn too soon (Boston street name signs are not the best) and we ended up in Newbury St. again.

After deliberation, we decided to stop and walk along Newbury St. again ... since last time we missed some good spots and Mom's birthday was coming. As parking was quite difficult, after circling Newbury for 4 times, we found a spot for our car and started our birthday gift searching. Jon fell asleep in the car during the parking spot hunt. Within half an hour into our nice sunny day walk, suddenly it got dark quickly and started pouring rain ... we ran back to our car all soaking wet - Jon was not because he was in the stroller with the cover on - o well. My camera was poured on - worried me a bit - but it was ok.

Somehow with all these madness and damp, we wanted to march on to go to Quincy market - so off we go - with spotty direction nonetheless. Needless to say, we were lost for about an hour (it was pouring hard too during that time). Phone call here and there to Helen's cousin and SMS to Google to get directions, and finally we got into our destination - Quincy market. The rain stopped and we had a nice lunch at the food court, window shopping, and got Mom's birthday present. We went back to Helen's cousins apartment to take an afternoon nap and rest before the long drive home after dinner.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called "Bernard's" - a chinese food restaurant in Boston's suburb. One of the food that we order was a a deep fried sea bass with some kind of spicy sauce - it was awesome! Gotta look that restaurant up again next time we are in the area.

Helen and I cannot thank Helen's aunt enough and her cousins for their generosity in allowing us to invade their apartment for several days and showing extended hospitality toward our family. We finally took off from Boston around 10pm EST ... to the west ... o well - midwest!!

Friday (7/25):
After a looooong drive, we finally got back in Ohio. We stopped by Cleveland (around 8:30am) and planning to go to a Chinese restaurant called "Li Wah" to get dim sum. But it was not open until 10am (crap ...) so we continued on and stopped @ Bob Evans to get breakfast before going into Columbus. Home sweet home ...

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Boston Trip (day 3)

Wednesday (7/23):
After a well needed sleep and rest (after the long 13 hours drive), we woke up and headed off to Portland, Maine on Wednesday. Stop by at the Lighthouse and had lunch @ Flatbread Co. We thought it was seafood related flatbread/pizza, turns out just a brick oven pizza with NO seafood!!



The lighthouse was awesome. It is somehow related to the "Perfect Storm" (also a movie by the same name/title). The weather was cloudy with some breeze, good enough for photography. I bracketed some shots for HDR and reached a borrowed Nikon F5 for a slide shot, but it was not working. Got an "ERR" message on the display. Crap! Must go full digital for the rest of the trip - I guess it was not that bad - my Nikon D80 is reliable. Put my SB-600 on and got some people shots with balanced (not blown out sky and properly lighted subject).

O well ... it was starting to rain and we were hungry - so we are off looking for places to eat - "Flatbread". Even though it was just a regular brick oven pizza place, but the pizza was excellent. Jon had a good time looking at the brick oven and comparing it to my smoker/grill (not in the same league) - and walking out in the deck, where there were boats and birds.

We took a stroll on the same street as the restaurant, going in shops etc and we left Portland around 4pm, promising our cousins that we'll be back in Boston by around 6pm. Goof around at home (and let Jon plays Guitar Hero) and resting before heading off to dinner.

For dinner, we went to Union Oyster House for more seafood! We ordered a combination plate filled with scallops, shrimp, crabs, lobster, and fish on top of rice pillaf. It was great! But ... there were no refills for sodas (bummer =( ). Union Oyster House is one of the oldest restaurant in Boston, filled with history, and of course - excellent food. The place was packed - and we were there closer to 8pm, so it was past normal dinner time - but still filled with people. I stopped by Hard Rock Cafe on our way home and got my shirt and bought one for Jon and Helen as well.
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Boston Trip (day 1 & 2)

Boston was awesome. It was a long drive (13.5 hours from Columbus, OH) ... good thing we left from Columbus and going back to Columbus at night (so Jon slept 90 % of the trip). We left Monday night and got back in Columbus by Friday morning. The trip itself left me a desire to comeback and spend more time in New England area.



Monday night (7/21): leaving Columbus

Tuesday (7/22):
We stopped for breakfast. We were looking for an IHOP, because my niece was craving for it ... but it was not open when we got there (during breakfast time - like 8am). So the other option was Cracker Barrel - since hungriness was eating our souls, Cracker Barrel it is ...

Arrived in Boston around 10am, went straight to our cousins apartment. Helen's aunt cooked some killer Indonesian food for lunch! With full stomach we headed off Harvard Square. Jon did not want to be photograph with John Harvard (he said he liked Brutus better - good answer!) - but he had an excellent time chasing squirrels (apparently squirrels in Harvard are friendlier to human than ones in Columbus). Took some pictures here and there with some old buildings ... and next destination is ... ice cream @ Newbury St. PJ Licks!

But first, our our way back to the car, Jon fell down on and literally kissed the concrete, got blood gushing out of his lips and into his mouth, his nose also bleed. I carried him in my arms (he was crying, obviously ...) while wiping tears and blood out of his face and chin. Turns out it was not that bad, all teeth were still intact, only busted lips. Jon fell asleep in the car to Newbury and we just put him in the stroller while we were there (he pretty much asleep for the whole walking around in Newbury - about 1.5 hours).

Newbury St was awesome. We could have spent the whole day just walking around in Newbury St. But our destination was JP Licks ... an ice cream joint - just perfect for the weather. With Jon sleeping on the stroller, we walked and walked and walked ... the ice cream joint was 7 blocks away from where we parked (about 1-1.5 miles), but since parking is precious on Newbury St., so we accepted the consequence of walking.


I never knew that Paris also has a "Madura" - it is an island north east of Java, Indonesia.

Legal Seafood for dinner ... Legal Seafood is a staple of Boston dining experience for seafood. Just 3 blocks away from JP Licks, we went there directly. It was excellent seafood ... we had plenty of food and kept sampling each others' food. After dinner Jon and I went for a walk in the mall (while everybody else was having desert). That was it for Tuesday ... we called it a day and went home ...

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