The Big Day

Katie Hou-Wei Liu arrived on Tuesday, December 18th at 9:24 am. She weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and was 19 inches long.




A very proud father!


All warm and cozy.


Here is Katie sunbathing and she is only a couple days old!


We love this face.


Finally we are going home.

Our Very First Real Christmas Tree!

Since this is our first house and our very first Christmas here, we decided to get a real Christmas tree to celebrate. I was very excited because I never had a real tree before. So off to the tree lots we go. There were so many to chose from, but we finally found our tree. The guy was very nice to wrap it up for us and put it in our car. So far so good.

Things get a little difficult once at home. The biggest mistake we made was taking the netting off before centering the tree into the stand. I must admit this was my fault. I insisted we take the netting off so we could see how big the tree would be in the family room and how much space we needed. Once the net was off, it was almost impossible to see the center of the stand let alone get the tree in the center. I swear it took us like an hour to figure this out. Poor David got very frustrated with little ol' me. However, we prevailed and somehow got the tree in there to stand up!

Here is the tree ready to be decorated.


Once up it was time to decorate! I think it came out pretty good considering this was our first try.


Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Great HDTV Review

If anyone is in the market for a HDTV, they should definitely read this review on current sets. From talking to AV enthusiasts, we are about one technology away from "AGAIG" (as good as it gets). And that technology is 120 Hz display. Most people tell me if you are waiting to buy a HDTV, a 120 Hz display should be the last straw. There isn't any more latest and greatest feature after that, and after checkout the new Samsung 120 Hz set, I must say it is simply amazing. The price is still kind of steep, but I think it should come down by this time next year. You can really tell the difference from the non-120Hz set. Hey, life is too short not to be watching HDTV.

David's Weekend Project

When our old CRT TV finally gave way to the junk pile, I decided to pick up one of those nice looking high-definition TV's down at Costco. The decision to choose which brand to buy is another post all by itself. But after getting the HDTV, I realized it wasn't the same with my old standard definition Tivo. I needed a high power HD personal recorder. I had many options. I could just pick up the new HD Tivo for $299 and pay the monthly fee or I could order the HD-DVR from my local cable provider. But both options were too costly for my budget, so what I decided to do was build one with my old desktop. Of course deciding to build my own was just the beginning. There were still so many more options to choose from, from the OS to use to the software to the TV tuner card. Turns out there is a whole community out there of people building these so called HTPC (home theater PC). It took me about 1 week to decide what to put in and what software to use. There was a lot of driving back and forth to Best Buy to pick up components and then return them. Well here is what I ended up with.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 with HT
Memory: 1G Ram
Video Card: ATI Radeon X300 with 128 MB
TV Card: ATI HDTV Wonder
OS: Windows Media Center 2005
PVR Software: Windows Media Center
Network: Netgear MA101 802.11B USB adapter
Antenna: Philips MANT-310 Amplified Indoor Antenna
Hardrive: 120 GB

As you can see most of the components are very out dated, the PC is about 4 years old. The tuner card I got from Ebay for 15 dollars. I think the most money was spent on the antenna which cost me 30 dollars. Since I couldn't get it to record from cable (long story), I had to try different antennas and different positions with the antenna to pick up all the local HD channels. This wasn't the most expensive one, but it works only if I put it on top of the fire place. The USB adapter I took from my Tivo box. But the result is.... my very own HD PVR!!






Still to do: I still need to add a sound card on it so I can listen to digital audio. Also it would be nice to have a bigger harddrive to store all the HD programs I will be recording. And then maybe in the future I will get one of these nice looking cases to the put the PC in.

Oh I also decided to put some games in there.



Here are some links if you are interested in building your own:

HDTVTunerInfo (Very good resource)
http://www.byopvr.com/
The Green button (Good resource for MCE 2005)
http://www.makezine.com/extras/4.html

One Last Getaway

With only two months to go, we decided to take one last trip.


Destination Germany?


Nope just Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is one of those places that always comes up when we talk about where we should go for a vacation. It is so close to home that it doesn't really feel like you got away. We are not big gamblers so it feels like we don't have anything to do there. The shows are interesting, but usually the good ones are sold out and very pricey. The one thing that always gets us is the good food.....


This time we visited Gallaher's Steakhouse in the New York New York hotel and it actually originated in New York back in the 20's. How about that! This is the before picture... of the steak, not me. They display all their steaks outside the restaurant for everyone to see. I thought it was cool, but Quan wasn't too impressed.


This is what I had, bone in sirloin steak, dry aged for 21 days! Whatever that means. I am not an expert on steak. I just enjoy a good one every now and then, and this was good. Though I don't understand why in every steak house you have to order sides a la carte? Something about ordering a good steak means you have to pay 10 bucks for a 50 cents potato.


Here is what Quan had. Since she couldn't eat any bit of raw food, she got the pork which then came out a little raw. This was actually quite good. Came with the house sauce which had sweet pears in them.


Good bye Vegas. Thanks for being there when we needed a quick, last minute vacation.

New Look for Fall

A coworker of mine recently purchased this nice lovely home in Laguna Beach. He also purchased all the furniture in that house, which means he had a bunch of used furniture that he didn't need and he was nice enough to move them to mi casa....


This also gave me a chance to post some pictures of our house. This is the loft.


Nice looking file cabinet and book shelf.


A dining table for Thanksgiving dinner that is coming up. What you can't see in the picture is Quan yelling at me for not cleaning the place up first before I took the picture. We have decided to cook a turkey in our house this year. Lets hope we don't burn the place down.

Baby Shower

My sisters and me before the party started.


These guests are really concentrating on this game! They must really want to win.


Oh James, too much rice and not enough safety pins....


David and my sister displaying the items for "The Price is Right."


What? It's Christmas time already??


I sure hope this is a clean diaper I'm holding....


Oh no! A drunken bandit crashed our party....


Yummy ice cream cake....the hitch hiker agrees!

San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park

The baby's first trip to the zoo....even though she doesn't know it yet.

This mean monkey was giving everyone the evil eye the entire time.

This monkey was a little friendlier than the previous one.

The baby elephant was the highlight of the trip. She was very playful and entertaining!