its1204.com

Barbeque season is around the corner.  I can't wait.  This is an old picture from '04.  May each year get better...

As a preseason warm-up, Denise bought some barbeque before we left for Danny's wedding (shhh!) on Saturday from the grill outside Albertson's.  It was awesome :)

So Hien and Danny got married today.  Nothing much more to say except thanks for letting me be a part of the celebrations.  Hope you guys are having a good time in Hawaii. 

Check out some of the pictures John and Denise took:

Full set is in the gallery
 

These certainly aren't new, but just in case you missed a few, here's a short list of travel tips using free services from Google:

• Check flight status on your cell phone through SMS. You can send a text message to 46643 (daily mnemonics: it spells GOOGLE on the keypad) with any flight number (i.e. NH5) to check the flight status. Google will reference information from flightstats.com and send you a text message response with information about that flight. This trick is good for reconfirming pickup or drop off times before you leave for the airport. Beware of text message charges which may be incurred by your phone company though.
• Google web search can check flight information. If you don't want to check via text message or if you want even more details than the SMS service provides, you can simply search any flight number (i.e. JL 61) on Google's main page. The search results will present a special link to flightstats.com for in-depth statistics and real-time flight tracking.
• Install Picasa. You can load the hundreds of pictures you took into Picasa for light post-processing, tagging, and sorting. You can even attach coordinate tags to your images for integration into a mapping application later.
• Google Earth. Not only can you gain a solid geographical understanding of the places you will visit/visited on your trip, you can also use Google Earth's Geographic Web layer to see community contributed points of interest.
• Localized search. When accessing the internet abroad, Google will typically return localized results for that country. Unfortunately, this means the language displayed will also likely be localized and difficult to understand. To go to an English edition regardless of where you're searching from, simply click 'Google.com in English' found at the bottom of the main page.

I never imagined I'd be categorizing a post into food, culture and gadgets, but here we are.

Pictures of the new Asus 9" Eee PC 900 were published today on flickr. I'm looking forward to trying this device out... The 7" version was kinda nifty, but having the screen fill the bezel should increase utility of the Eee quite a bit.  Judging by the composition of the picture, I'm guessing it was put up by someone from Taiwan or Hong Kong; the casual shot features the popular machine next to a pretty typical Chinese dinner of fried fish and pickled vegetables and pork. As people commenting on the Engadget post show, however, this type of food is particularly unappetizing for some Western readers.

It's interesting that such a seemingly mundane post could strike a chord with me. As our clientele shifts more and more to the mainstream market (people accustomed to Western culture), we run into these sort of large cultural gap situations every day. For Americans going to Japan, Asian food can be quite a shocking experience. Even though the fish shown in the picture is close to its natural form (aside from the big slice exposing its bones), Americans are so accustomed to eating food processed beyond recognition that it's become disgusting to eat things in pure form.

Of course, being born and raised in the US and thoroughly Americanized, I can completely sympathize with those appetites that are totally turned off by the sight of such a thing. There are still plenty of more 'exotic' things I have a hard time stomaching. I just wish people wouldn't be so quick to judge and consider that natural just might be better.

My house is pretty close to the San Gabriel foothill area, so the fire that started up this weekend has been acutely affecting us over here.  The skies have been a dim grey and flakes of ash are floating down to the earth like snow.

My boss, who lives quite close, has already been evacuated.  Her car was covered with soot from all the brush burning up and her husband mentioned they were able to hear the crackling of the blaze throughout the night.

Thankfully, no casualties have been reported yet, but there have been several close calls including a trapped wedding party and a squad of firefighters who all made it out safely in the end.

They're hoping the slight drop in temperatures being forecast for the rest of the week will help prevent the fire from spreading, but of course, these things are hard to predict.  Last I read, they're still expecting about a week before things may return to normal...