A typical coffee table cost more than $300! Throw in two end tables and two pieces of sofa, you will be expecting to shell out at least $3K for a roomful of wood and padding to collecting dust. I rather spend the money on a nice flat HDTV, heck! I rather spend that kind of money to outfit the garage with a complete set of handy tools! (Vivian might object to it tho)

IKEA to the rescue! Practical and modernistic furniture at a very reasonable price! “We ship furniture, not air” was the phrase used by IKEA explaining their too-good-to-be-true prices. Majority of the things sold by IKEA came in a tightly packed, flat package containing disassembled furniture parts. It is DIY furniture, you’ll have to follow the instruction and put things together piece-by-piece. I enjoy the exercise; it allows me to relive my childhood Lego™ days.

Over the weekend, Vivian and I ran to IKEA in East Palo Altos, and picked out a large comfy white sofa and lamps for the family room, along with numerous miscellaneous items to help organizing things around the house. I got creative with the cheap white lamps we found in the store, and cascaded them on the living room corner, actually it turned out pretty nice! Well, at least we thought it looks pretty cool!

Home Depot delivered our new fridge this morning! No more warm Coke!

Vvvvr~rr~r~oooo~o~oommm~m~m...

The sound of the 10-plus feet wide propellers on each side of the fuselage is deafening. My in-ear headphone blasting Tiësto’s “In Search of Sunrise 3” at full volume can’t even block out the constant white noise. The seats are humming and vibrating to the tune of the propellers and half of my butt is numbed. Errhh!

Alright, I might be exaggerating a bit. This is actually kinda fun to ride in this 60-seater Alaskan Airline turboprop servicing from Boise, Idaho to San Jose, California.

The climb to the 25,000 feet cruising attitude was very bumpy due to turbulence and I enjoyed every second of it!! You see, I have a lot of faith in the plane and the people who designed and built it; I never had an once of fear that the plane might crash from bad weather (it would simply be fate even if it does). Turbulence to me is like ridding a rollercoaster, exciting and usually lasts more than two minutes you normally get on an amusement park rides.

I had flown in planes much smaller than this, 6 or 7-seater tin cans that connected remote towns in the vast continental America. Back in 1998, after my graduation from U of M and before I headed out to work for Intel full time, I took a short three months internship just for fun. I’d go in to the office on Monday mornings with my luggage; the secretary would hand me an envelope with that week’s itinerary and off I went... Usually I’d hit 2-3 cities in one week, installing database in field office. Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Butte, Montana; Anchorage, Alaska... It was a great experience to visit all those places, especially since I’d probably never go to those places on my own dime.

Oh, have you heard? You can now “freeze” your credit profile!

“What does that mean?” You might ask?

Well, say someone went through your trash on garbage day, and got a copy of your credit card statement or somehow found out about your SSN, and went ahead and applied credit cards on your behalf or did something damaging to your credit rating... Crap! What would you do? You’d probably eventually call up one of the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) to report the existing damages, but how do you stop the deserves-to-be-neutered-or-spayed identity thief from opening up more accounts under your name?

My friend, that’s where this credit “freeze” comes in handy! It allows you to call up the credit bureaus and lock down your credit profile. Financial institutions or merchants normally checks your credit history prior to any account opening or major transactions, with a frozen credit report, these merchants will most likely reject any activities proposed. So, you are essentially avoiding damages before they even began! Pretty cool huh? Well, this feature is a state-regulated, and so far only California and Texas allow their residents to temporarily freeze and thaw their individual credit history. Many other states such as Vermont is following suit and in the process of passing the law similarly.

Even with such arsenal under the belt to fight identity thief, it is still a lot of hassle to go thru canceling your credit cards, calling up your bank and freezing your credit. Personally, I encrypt sensitive data on my PC and shred everything (after archiving for three years of course): credit card/bank statements, bills/pay stubs, investment letters, even credit card invitations... I love my shredder!! It is fun to see it chop everything up, a great stress-releaser.

If you have other tip on this, please share with me!

Pending Congress’s approval, US is talking about selling hundreds of F-16 fighter jets to India and Pakistan. The deal will surely revive F-16’s maker – Lockheed Martin’s Texas plant – which otherwise scheduled to be shutdown permanently in 2006 if no new orders are placed this year.

Selling high tech weaponries to two rival countries that have been at war with each other for decades might be a great business plan, but the notion is definitely not good for the stabilities in that region and the safety for the rest of world. Let’s not forget, these two countries are both packing heat – nuclear heat that is, and it just takes one desperate idiot to push the launch button.

Already European Unions are already criticizing US for its double standards, singling out the weapon ban against China that US is boosting. Not sure how US determines who’s safe to play with its F-16.

Personally, I think SU-27 and MiG-35 are better anyways...

I am going to Boise, Idaho tonight, have a meeting with a customer there. I recall being there once before, but have no recollection how the town looked. I wonder if they grow potatoes instead of shrubs on the side of the roads… :-) just kidding, I am being stupid again.

Wine by Leonardo Da Vinci? You bet! I got a bottle and it tastes goooood!

The Renaissance man Leonardo’s greatness results his hometown to be named after him in the Tuscan region of Italy. The small wine maker -- Cantine Leonardo Da Vinci was recently picked up by the giant wine maker/distributor E. & J. Gallo, which will help to boost the wine label to new height.

I am not a wine critic, and lack the proper sophisticated fancy vocabularies to describe all the impression the wine promoted. To me, the Chianti Da Vinci was a dark red wine, a bit acidic which I like and sent off a very nice earthy aroma. Anyways, that was my first ever humble and brief attempt to critique a wine.

Great tasting wine from Tuscan with a Saint-like name at around $13? I will be consuming more bottles in the years to come.

We finally finished moving! We hired a moving company to do the actual move and saved me from breaking my back, and let me tell you, it was money well spent! The movers were very professional, charged us a flat fee that was very reasonable and never slugged. They even took apart furnitures before the move and assembled them back together after the move for us. We were very happy with their service and would like to recommend them to anyone.

Although the physical move was taken care of, but the hard part of migration was packing and unpacking. Jenny came to help us on Saturday. Even with her help, it took us off and on more than a week to pack up. There were moving boxes everywhere throughout the apartment, and made us wonder how the heck we ever accommodated so much junk?

Oh, want to hear something stupid we did? Well, we forgot to call the utility companies to transfer the electricity/water/garbage/gas. Last Friday night, we took some of our friends over to the new house wanting to show them our new place, only to be greeted by absolute darkness! And guess what? The Santa Clara Municipal Utility company was closed until Monday, so, on house-showing for us! But anyways, Vivian called the utility company this Monday and got everything squared away.

By the way, our runaway MaoMao back! He came back by himself! Vivian already wrote three blog entries on this, so I am not going to repeat it here…

Yes, for all you Star Wars fans out there, ENVY ME!! I am a member of the Jedi Committee. :-) Just playing, I really meant JEDEC (Je-dek).

I have been in Phoenix for the past few days; well, since Sunday night to be exact, and have endured two days of 8am-6pm conference. This is my first time attending JEDEC conference, despite its long hours, it is fairly interesting, I will explain why in a minute. However, doesn’t matter how fascinating it is, a long day of listening to people digging deep in to the technical details or arguing about regulations can be brain numbing, and the constant lunch/dinner sessions with our customers/partners only intensified both mental and physical fatigue-ness. I find myself unable to pay attention to the discussion at times (such as now) and hence, writing blog sounded like a good alternative.

I have attended a lot of various conferences during my years of working: IDF, RSA, CTST, Comdex… and now JEDEC. While the previous conferences were more “show-n-tell”, “impress-the-visitors” type of deal, JEDEC is very different in nature; it is where all the industry standards/specs relating to the semiconductor memories are set, covering RAM, Flash, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, AMB, AMB2, memory modules, electrical characteristics and etc, etc, etc…

On average there are about 140 or so attendees representing RAM/memory module vendors (Micron, Hynix, Samsung, Elpida…), register/PLL dealers (IDT, ICS…), memory controller companies (Intel, AMD…) and other relating organizations; most of the attendees are seasoned members, and either friend of foe, they are all on first name basis. Setting industry standards implies all involving companies to agree upon a mutual understanding, and that is not easily achieved due to individual interests. Earlier I mentioned JEDEC has been a very interesting experience is because the meetings are highly heated; people argue on everything from specs to JEDEC procedures. Since the decisions made and the technologies discussed at the conference can literally translate into Millions of dollars in gain or loss for a particular company, therefore, intellectual properties, patent rights are highly emphasized at every meeting session and the format/rules of the meetings are heavily regulated by lawyers. People would get up and say “I would like to make a motion to send the ballot to the BoD on raising the DDR2 register voltage level…” and “I second that motion”…

Today I was invited to a JEDEC new member luncheon along with numerous senior JEDEC officers. These guys have set countless standards in the industry; it was a humbling experience to sit on the same table with them!

To all the ladies, enjoy your day! Although it is an “International” holiday for women, USA doesn’t seem to recognize it. But nonetheless, ladies, you deserve it!!

My friend from back in the Intel-Arizona days just told me that not only she received a nose-bleeding high score of 174 (max: 180) on her LSAT, she has also received the acceptance letter from Harvard Law School! Smart people make me nausea.

Woke up this morning, felt strange, looked at my watch… 10:20am! SHIT!!! I am extremely late for work!! Jump out of bed and leaped into shower, 10 minutes later, I was in the parking lot starting up the car…

With the help of Nancy and Sam, we moved a lot of stuff over to the new house last night. Later, Vivian and I proceeded unpacking and organizing. We put away all the linens and towel, hung up clothes, and stored away boxes; by the time we got back to the old place, it was well pass 2am, and then it was followed by the MaoMao escaping episode. All those activities led to my overslept this morning. Can’t be late anymore!!

MaoMao left us! We took him to the new house last night so he can checkout his new home. But as we pulled in to the parking lot of the old home, MaoMao in the back seat somehow opened the car window and jumped out! We spent half hour trying to corner him before he ducked under the fence and ran across the street. We circled around and couldn’t find him. Stupid cat! Now I have to go look for him!

Finally found out the name of the song from Grover Washington Jr. -- Winelight. Placed an order for a DVD-Audio format copy of it from DVDPlanet.com, can't wait to get it!!

Cherry Blossom by Keiko Matsui, another CD that I wanted but it is not available in DVD-Audio format, oh well, I think I will just get the CD version from Amazon.

The melodies of those two artists takes me back to 1996, while I was still attending college at the University of Michigan. My buddy June -- the Renaissance man, the Jazz musician, got me hooked, and I'd listen to them over and over again. Years have passed, something sparked, and I am dying to hear them again, and again...

While on the topic of Google and being a Google aficionado, I feel obligated to share their latest tool offered...

Give Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) a try! Its map is clearer and its interface is simplier (as always) than the rest. The 3-D look and map-drag is amazing! I have been using it for the past few weeks and now it has become painful to look at the old Mapquest or Yahoo! Maps again.

Googlebot finally came to my site!!! Probably the most loved and anticipated search engine spider out there today, Google’s spider left a significant trace in my forum today and it stayed for hours going through all the postings. The transition from jeekaz.com to houfamily.com I made last year destroyed a lot of previous inbound links to my site, and thus hurt the site’s visibility online greatly. Hopefully a visit from Google helps out!

Papers signed, bank account funded, title transferred, and keys obtained!!

Vivian picked up the keys from the escrow office today while I was in San Francisco attending the IDF. We later stopped by the house together to absorb the idea of living there. Although the house is in very good condition, there are still a lot of cosmetic fix-ups we want to do. The previous owners loved gold decors; gold door knobs, gold towel racks, gold trims... Yuck!! We will have to Silver-ize all of those.

Although our living space has more than doubled, but deciding how our existing furniture should be arranged in the new place is no easy task. I think we have a good idea now, and I can foresee many frequent runs to the local Home Depot... :-)

Home Sweet Home!