bonnie & jason

West Portal Lutheran over OLP 14-0 with tenacious D

I took some pictures at Tyler’s basketball team this weekend.

Terry, Tyler’s dad (the goofball above) is the head coach this year.  He seems to have the girls running and gunning with a solid defensive effort preventing OLP from getting anywhere near the basket much less scoring.  Apparently it’s working as the team is in first place!

It’s actually pretty entertaining to watch.  Some of these girls are pretty aggressive!  And most of them have better ball handling skills than I do. 

It will be interesting to see if Alissa gets involved in sports.  I grew up playing tennis primarily with a little soccer and basketball here and there.  Tennis was great, but team sports definitely offer something valuable to kids.  I’ll have to pick up one of those huge lenses that you see the pros carry around at football games.  Better start saving now!

Got mohawk?

Another week, another set of pictures.  No big changes to report.  She did start laughing though.  It was super cute but we can’t seem to get her to do it again.  The first time, she was just looking in the mirror.  I guess she finds herself to be amusing?

I like this next one.  It’s like she’s too cool for me.

How cute is that smile?!

She’s not as happy with me… but she looks a lot like my baby pictures here.

And I’m sad to say, Alissa is already a TV junkie.  Here she is biting her nails about a particularly tense moment during the Warriors playoff game.

Alissa’s 4 month checkup

Alissa had her four month dr. appt yesterday and was given a clean bill of health. She’s now 12 lbs, 6 ozs (25th percentile), 23 inches long (10th percentile) with a head circumference of 15 inches (25th percentile). Still a little on the small side but moving towards the average.

Lots of random pictures from last week

Click here for a bunch of miscellaneous pictures from this past week.  I posted a few of my favorites below:

Bonnie had some extra time on her hands and decided to take pictures of Alissa in all her hats before she outgrows them all. For some reason, hats seem to make Alissa’s head look really round and makes her cheeks look super fat.

Alissa has a new place to rest… in our laundry hamper stuffed with Bonnie’s old comforter. 

Alissa first ride on daddy’s shoulders.

Alissa is getting stronger every day evidenced by the fact that she pretty much gets out of even my tightest swaddles after a while. 

Kathy and Eric visited us for lunch (at the Chick-N-Coop).  Afterwards, Eric and I worked on the kart and Bonnie and Kathy went shopping.  Below, Kathy is practicing for when their little bundle of joy arrives in September.  Woo hoo!  They’re gonna name him Honda Wong…. just kidding.  It’s actually going to be Mac “Pro” Wong.  Actually, I don’t think they’ve finalized a name yet.  I’ve always been partial to Jason though.

We got Alissa her first chair… a Bumbo.  It works pretty well.  Keeps her supported enough so that she doesn’t fall over but lets her exercise her neck muscles. 

Alissa is getting a bath every other day now.  Her hair still does the mohawk thing.  (And she’s still got that bald line on the back of her head.)

As I mentioned above, tons of other pictures if you follow the link above.

Couple last red egg and ginger pictures

Just wanted to share a couple pictures that I had missed previously.  This first picture has some of our favorites in a frame that we displayed at the front table. 

This second one just shows how lucky we are to have such generous friends and family!

Alissa in Kathy’s Wrapamacallit

Kathy gave Alissa a hand-made “Cozy Wrap” (I like Wrapamacallit better) for her red egg and ginger party.  It’s a big fleece wrap with wings and velcro to keep her snug as a bug in a rug.  I think Kathy and Bonnie should start selling them online.  I should note, however, that Kathy included a disclaimer… “The uneven stitches are not defects, rather it is an added unique characteristic to match the whimsical nature of the selected fabric.”  Hmm… maybe they should outsource the manufacturing. 

I’m sure Alissa will be glad to have it during the upcoming chilly San Francisco nights.  Thanks Kathy!

 

Alissa’s red egg and ginger party (aka, custom red egg and ginger party favors)

We had Alissa’s red egg and ginger party today at Moonstar. (It seems that all Chinese parents in San Francisco have their red egg and ginger parties there.) We were very happy that so many of our friends and family were able to make it. Everyone seemed to have a good time and certainly had enough to eat. For the kids, in case chinese/japanese buffet wasn’t to their liking, we made some personalized takeout boxes with some kid-friendly snacks.

And for the adults, we had some chocolate branded as Alissa “fat cheek” milk-chocolate bars.

And if that wasn’t enough, of course there were plenty of red eggs (and ginger) for those looking for a protein fix.

In addition to the plentiful tasty food, we were also really happy with the service. Susan, our coordinator, was very attentive, ready with hot water to warm baby bottles, additional seating when things got a little crowded, and floating amongst our guests taking pictures which she provided on CD before we left. She really was great… utterly exceeded our expectations.

Besides Susan, we were also grateful to have Bonnie’s dad there to take a bunch of pictures as I was on host duty. (I’ve posted all of them here.) And last but not least, as I mentioned earlier, we were very pleased that so many folks were able to make it, some to meet Alissa for the first time. It’s so nice to have such a great group of friends and family. If only wish we could see everyone more often.

So that concludes the first of many Alissa parties to come! Bonnie will probably start thinking about crafty things to do for the next party as we work on getting the thank-you notes out. (If you know anyone interested in this kind of stuff, Bonnie is ready to start taking orders!)

EDIT 10/7/2007: I’ve now had two people contact me about our where we got our red egg and ginger party favors (customized label chocolate bars) As it turns out, we did them ourselves with some photoshop magic and Bonnie’s creativity. So if you’re reading this and interested in having us do the same for your party, feel free to shoot me an email (jasonwang99 at yahoo dot com) and I’d be happy to answer your questions and provide a quote.

EDIT 1/25/2008: I’ve now had more than a few people ask about the favors. Here are some FAQ’s that might be helpful.
1. The design itself is $60. If you want me to print them for you as well, the price is $0.25/label.
2. The candy bars you need are from Trader Joe’s. They come in packs of three for about $1.50/pack. I think they offer both milk chocolate and dark chocolate available. Here’s a pic of the dark chocolate version. The milk chocolate one looks the same except the wrapper is red.

3. When posing your baby for the picture for me to extract for the design, try to either prop them up on a pillow with their hands and arms in front. Or you can also lay them down looking up with a contrasting color blanket over their torso but behind their hands and arms.
4. The back of the candy bars have “nutritional” information on them. For example, birth date, weight, height, etc. Also, ingredients like love, sweetener, cheesy stuff like that. I’m happy to put whatever you like on them though.

Captions…

Got Milk?

Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis?!

Yes, I know, I have a big head.

Getting sleepy….

Plotting to take over the world!

Bahnwich… better sandwiches than Vietnam Village?

I worked from home today so Bonnie and I took Alissa to Bahnwich for lunch.  Some of you may remember that we tried to go last week but were thwarted by their early closing schedule so we ended up at Chick-n-coop instead.  Also, faithful readers will remember that Vietnam Village has been the gold standard of Vietnamese sandwiches for the past six years and I had high hopes that a local establishment, like Bahnwich, could take over that claim.  Afterall, with “wich” in their name, how could they lose?

So, was Bahn-’wich’ up to the task?  Could David defeat Goliath?  Would 94116 prevail over 94066?

I’ll start off by noting that Vietnam Village is a good sized restaurant with room for at least 50 guests whereas Bahnwich is more of a takeout kind of place with room for eight… assuming you’re all close friends and no one has a bad B.O. problem.  Of course, as a Vietnamese sandwich connoisseur, I wasn’t really all that concerned about the ambience, but if folks are looking for a sit down place for a large group, you’d be better off at Chick-n-coop down the street.  That being said, it is cozy inside and everything is reasonably clean if not terribly new.  Also, the woman taking my order was nice (Bonnie said she spoke Cantonese with a Vietnamese accent) and was very speedy in preparing our food.

Right, the food!  I ordered the BBQ chicken and Bonnie ordered the BBQ pork.  We also got some fresh spring rolls (the kind with vermicelli, shrimp, and mint dipped in peanut sauce) and an aloe jelly drink.  As soon as we ordered the sandwiches, she put the rolls in the toaster.  Then she went back (basically two steps behind the small counter) and presumably got the meat started. 

Just a few minutes later, we were presented with two sandwiches wrapped in paper secured with a green rubber band and a ‘P’ written in blue bic pen on the pork one.  By this time, we had already dug into the spring rolls since we were super hungry.  They were quite good by the way… and really big.  But I digress.  How were the sandwiches?!

In short, they were very good.  The bread was fresh and toasty.  The fixins were as you would expect.  And the chicken was tender and juicy.  All for $3.00!  But, were they better than Vietnam Village?  Unfortunately, I’m going to rule slightly but definitely in favor of the incumbent Vietnamese sandwich king.  The Bahnwiches (clever, huh) were good, but they were lacking in a few key areas.  First, the chicken didn’t have that right off the grill flavor.  I would say this was a dealbreaker… aren’t they BBQ chicken sandwiches?  Also, the sauce wasn’t quite as savory.  Finally, they weren’t quite as fully stuffed as I hoped they’d be.  (Granted, they are a little less expensive than Vietnam Village.) 

But that’s ok… like I said, they were very good, just not good enough to dethrone “The Village.”  And now I know where to go for a Vietnamese sandwich if I don’t feel like driving down to San Bruno.

(photo courtesy of yelp.com… I forgot my camera again.)

Canon HV10 review: New thoughts

I had previously put down some initial thoughts about this camcorder and now that I’ve had some “time behind the wheel,” I have a new perspective about the battery, the size, and finally, usability.

I had mentioned that the battery life isn’t so good.  I didn’t expect it to be given that it is so small.  So I bought a generic oversized battery that sticks out a fair amount to see if that would work better.  I’ve bought generic batteries for my cameras in the past and some have been fine and some have been horrible.  Well, the first one I got was promising.  I put it in the camera and it lasted much much longer than the stock battery.  But I couldn’t get it to recharge.  After talking with the ebay seller, he agreed to replace it for me.  So after going through the return procedure, I got a new one which again, refused to charge.  The funny thing was that the ebay guy had no problems recharging his.  Anyway, I ended up buying an external charger so I could charge one battery while using the camera at the same time. It turns out that the external charger was able to charge the generic battery and I haven’t had any problems since!  Weird.

Even though the generic battery was quite a bit bigger than the stock battery, the camera still handles the same and stays true to it’s pocketable form factor.  That said, I had a bit of buyer’s remorse when Canon announced the new HV20.  It has a number of features the HV10 doesn’t have and isn’t much more expensive.  However, I’m such an amateur videographer that the extra features probably wouldn’t really make a difference to me, whereas the size and form factor of the HV10 certainly make it easier to bring along on video worthy trips… especially since I’ll also be carrying my big ole’ still camera.

Finally, on the subject of usability, again, I’ll have to admit to my clear beginner status in videography and say that it works pretty well as a point and shoot camcorder.  On those occasions when I’ve had to adjust for white balance, exposure, etc. I haven’t had a problem.  The controls fit pretty well in my hand and even the zoom control, which is still a bit touchy, is easier to finesse now that I have some practice under my belt.  The real problem usability-wise isn’t the camera itself, but how to share the footage with folks.  As a blogger, I’m naturally inclined to share, so I’m struggling with a few items in this regard.

First, it’s pretty time intensive to get the footage from the camera to the computer.  Second, editing in HD is extremely hardware intensive and my poor desktop is barely up to the task.  Third, it’s practically impossible to share anything in HD since the files are so large.  Even HD DVD/blu ray aren’t really feasible at their high costs for not only writing but also playing the discs.  Finally, even though Youtube works, I’m not really a huge fan since it takes forever for it to process your video and the end result is pretty crappy as it has to be compressed to stream over today’s limited bandwidth. 

So remind me why I bought an HD camcorder?  (To tell you the truth, I probably have three times as much video from my crappy Canon S400 digital camera actually shared than from the HV10.)

What’s a guy to do?  Well, first of all, I probably need to get better at editing video.  The quick solution is to buy a Mac and use iMovie HD (or final cut express) as it seems to be much more user friendly that the crappy free software (Pinnacle) that came with the camera.  (Unfortunately, funding for this solution has not yet been identified.)  Second, eventually, HD DVD/blu ray drives will become standard in computers and in living rooms so I’ll at least be able to share full HD content via disc.  I’ll just have to be patient on this one.  Third, I’ll just have to live with the realities of low-res, high-noise, high-compression Youtube for the time being.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  I’m saving all the raw footage tapes so when the technology catches up, I’ll still have everything in HD.  Who knows… maybe by that time, camcorders will be in hyper-HD and I’ll be in the same predicament again!  Oh well, the price you pay for being on the bleeding-edge.

So to sum up, the HV10 has been a great camera for me.  The battery problem was solved with the addition of an external charger.  The size is still right for me despite the lure of the HV20.  The only real issue is the post-processing work which isn’t really the camera’s fault to begin with.  *sigh*  More to come when the Mac fund takes priority over the Alissa college fund.  =)