I had not been on Twitter for awhile so October 13 was a big catch up day.  Unfortunately slavery has not disappeared since the last time I was on Twitter.

And Ji Seon left me for four days!  But fortunately she’s coming back this evening.  We’ve done okay, the kids have been great but I am a little tired.

These are my tweets from the last several days.

Family

• Ji Seon says to Victoria "You’re so demanding." Victoria responds "I want so demanding." Oct 19 09:45:10
• The wife is leaving me for four days. I am doomed. Please feel free to visit and help. Oct 22 06:31:59

Christianity

• RT @IJMHQ @JonathanMorgan: christianaudio » Free Audiobook – “Just Courage” by Gary Haugen of IJM. Highly recommend it! http://bit.ly/Ho7SN Oct 13 10:14:12
• Voices We Need to Hear: Randy Woodley. Maybe we should go to Native American Sweat Lodges to worship God on Columbus Day http://bit.ly/L6elR Oct 13 11:34:47
• 45 Slaves Rescued – @IJMHQ. IJM asked people to pray for this operation and now 45 slaves are freed! http://bit.ly/33D62e Oct 13 12:49:02

Food

• Little Duck Organics | Healthy Organic Snacks For Infants And Toddlers. Free sample! http://bit.ly/10t4Mq Oct 13 18:56:45
• French toast – Wikipedia. Used to be called German toast prior to WW1 but was changed because of anti-German sentiment. http://bit.ly/41vq98 Oct 13 08:04:36

Society

• From Budapest to Toronto: Eva’s Story of Slavery. It pains me to read about this happening in TO not that I’m surprised http://bit.ly/189IWS Oct 13 10:50:36
• "Why I Slept with 1300 Women" (End Human Trafficking – Change.org). Words cannot describe my disgust. http://bit.ly/147LcI Oct 13 10:51:47
• RT @johnbmarch @eugenecho: Reconsider Columbus Day? We don’t do enough to honor the hiSTORY of Native Americans: http://bit.ly/vn9Zh Oct 13 10:53:01
• Immigration, Fear, Cultural Idolatry and the Liberating Power of Faith. To be clear, love casts out fear, not immigrants http://bit.ly/YKHkB Oct 13 11:33:08
• RT @johnbmarch: today’s slaves are cheaper. 10x more slaves traded today than at height of trans-atlantic slave trade. http://bit.ly/HHfev Oct 13 14:24:50
• RT @Not_For_Sale: Author @DaveBatstone discusses his book ‘Not for Sale’ as part of the Authors@Google series. He’s cool http://bit.ly/fPPp2 Oct 13 14:32:43
• Half The Sky. The best way to fight poverty and extremism is to educate and empower women and girls. Sexism sucks. http://bit.ly/BsYR4 Oct 13 14:44:38
• RT @Not_For_Sale: Recent NLC report reveals supply chain that leads to Prius has sweatshop abuse and #humantrafficking http://bit.ly/4eXWUT Oct 15 16:28:10
• Seth’s Blog: The problem with cable news thinking. Personally I am concerned about Fox News but MSNBC is not innocent. http://bit.ly/4brRaC Oct 21 12:25:32

Sports

• Prediction: Yankees in 5 over Angels, Dodgers in 6 over Phillies. Oct 14 18:53:24

Finance

• RT @RealEstateRain: The Block – Real Estate : Most expensive homes in U.S. California has 8/10, Bay Area has 3 of those. http://bit.ly/4imB0 Oct 13 10:36:40

Tags: ijm,immigration,Ji Seon,not for sale,organic,prius,real estate,slavery,toronto,tweets,Victoria
Categories: Miscellaneous
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Fried Shrimp Galore

On the first night, Monday night, all I ordered was the fried shrimp appetizer.  The waiter tried to get me to order more but I wasn’t feeling hungry and thought I’d end up eating a lot of the kids’ leftovers.

The waiter warned me that the appetizer only has three shrimps but I said that’s fine.  He then brought me five shrimps and said he would get me even more.  Then later he brought me ten more.  Pretty nice guy, Levente from Romania.

Ji Seon enjoyed her snapper filet.  Dylan had his favorite, baked potato with parmesan cheese since no other shredded cheese was available.  Victoria ate three hot dogs while Isaac had one.  All three kids enjoyed the french fries.

Grilled Lobster Tail and Tiger Shrimp

Tuesday night everyone ordered the grilled lobster tail and tiger shrimp.  It wasn’t as good as fresh New England lobster but it’s still always nice to eat lobster.  I also enjoyed my Indian roasted pumpkin soup.

Dylan ate his baked potato, Victoria had bow tie pasta, Isaac ate mostly french fries with some sliced hot dog.

More Fried Shrimp

Wednesday afternoon we went to the sushi bar before dinner.  It wasn’t bad, I never had mackerel sushi before.

Later Isaac took a late nap because, which we didn’t realize at the time, he was starting to get sick.  Since he wasn’t awake when dinner began in the formal dining room I waited for him to wake up and the rest of the family went to the buffet cafe.

At the cafe I ended up again gorging on fried shrimps.  The first night’s fried shrimps were smaller and had a batter coating.  These shrimps were bigger, somehow straightened, and had a breaded coating.

Indian Veggie and Seafood Pasta

Thursday afternoon we went to tea.  The desserts were good, especially the fruit tart, but we really did not want to eat too much.

Thursday night most of us ordered the crab cake appetizer.  Everyone enjoyed it except me, I never seem to like crab cakes but I always think I will.  I also ordered the wild mushroom soup.  Ji Seon asked me after why would I order mushroom soup and I told her this was much better than your plain mushroom soup, that it was thinner and much more tasty.

Then I ordered the Indian vegetarian plate and after a recommendation from my brother-in-law, the penne with shrimp, calamari and scallops.  I was hoping the Indian food would be good since the head chef is Indian and it was superb.  In fact I wish I could remember what exactly I ate since I have never eaten anything like it in a restaurant.  In fact the last time I ate something like that it was made by a friend.  The penne was also the best Italian seafood pasta dish I have had since the seafood linguine dish I ate at La Groceria in Cambridge, MA.  I went to that restaurant a few times after and never could find that dish again.  Maybe that’s why they closed.

Tags: cruising,Dylan,Isaac,Ji Seon,Victoria
Categories: Food, Travel
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Yesterday was Andy’s birthday.  His wife, Jean, created a scrapbook for his birthday (seems like something wives like doing for their husband’s 40th birthday) which she presented yesterday.  Ji Seon and I sent in some of our favorite photos of Andy and I wrote something too.

Andy,

You thought I was a complete loser when I wore swim shorts to basketball but you were kind of enough not to tell me.

You were astonished when Ji Seon ate all six eggs you had cooked for the guests but nice enough to cook more eggs.

You thought I was a heretic when you let me lead your Bible study once but gracious enough to not say that but just correct my theological errors.

For all of this we repaid you by encouraging your subversive campaign to win Jean.  We told Jean you loved her before you proclaimed your love to her.  We raised your standing in her mind by saying such things as “You could do worse.”  When you finally proclaimed your love in that filthy apartment with its squirrel invaders and vat of congealed fat, Ji Seon waited patiently thirty minutes and even did not mind your angry stare when she came into the bedroom of tension to ask how much longer you’d be.

Happy 40th birthday Andy!  You are someone we admire and love.

Love,

Frank and Ji Seon

Below is a scan of the final result which includes a photo of our family and the Noh’s at Isaac’s second birthday party.  I hope Andy was more excited at his 40th birthday party than Isaac was at his second.

Tags: Isaac,Ji Seon
Categories: Friends
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Vegetarianism is sometimes denounced as not masculine.  But I will go on public record that I am sort of vegetarian.

I have considered this lifestyle change for several years, being inspired by friends (Esther, Roger and John) and recently doing more research via blogs and books.  Ji Seon remarked after I made my decision that she was wondering when I would.

My exact label would be “minimal meat eater who only eats humanely raised meats.”  But since there isn’t a technical term for that I usually find myself fumbling to describe my dietary lifestyle.  Saying I am pescetarian, i.e. a vegetarian who eats seafood, might be more accurate but people often don’t know what that is.

In public  I end up being effectively vegetarian because I don’t really want to ask if the meat is humanely raised because most likely it is not so I just eat the veggies.  This proves especially difficult at barbecues like the Mother’s Day barbecue the men in our small group did for their wives.  The organizer bought filet mignon steaks, which I love, and did not realize I just made this lifestyle change.  I did appreciate very much his sympathy.

The truth is I am still eating meat almost every meal at home.  We still have all this grass fed beef I bought in January which at least was humanely raised.  Also a good friend and avid fisher keeps giving me a large portion of the fish he catches, which I am quite grateful for.  Plus my wife and children are not vegetarian.

I consider this time a transition time for me.  I have actually enjoyed trying to put more vegetables and less meat into my diet.  For the first couple of weeks I noticed my energy was low.  I am not sure why but I think I might have been low in iron.  It seemed that went away after eating some Chinese leafy greens which I think are high in iron.  It might just be mental but I do feel more healthy.  That might also have to do with the fact I have been getting more exercise lately.

Tags: Ji Seon,vegetarian
Categories: Frank
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I was going through my old work email and I found this email I sent on Friday, August 28, 2008, the night we released the new Upromise Online Mall.  (The rumors about metric and the Y2K bug aren’t true but everything else is.)

These fixes were first tested by hot swapping the files in because Perforce was down.  During this time I was mercury poisoned by a broken CFL, there was a car accident, a pizza arrived upside down, Perforce went offline for several hours, Outlook decided to slow down, and there are rumors that everything is switching to metric and that there is a Y2K bug that happens at midnight tonight.

The email was sent at 9:54 PM PDT which does not seem that late until one considers that the team I was working with is located in Newton, MA.  The rest of the team was wide awake and it was almost 1 AM their time.  Some of the team didn’t end up going to sleep until 3 AM.

This is somewhat typical of releases or upgrades at major websites.  We try to test everything but when we go live several issues will suddenly appear.

This particular release though was an unusually event filled night.  Our configuration management system went down and our email server became incredibly slow making communication almost impossible (we moved to AIM).  The manager had to leave because his wife got into a car accident.  Fortunately she was okay and the manager got back online in a few hours.  Even the pizza that was ordered for the team arrived upside down, a bad omen.

To top it off Ji Seon knocked over a lamp in our living room and its CFL bulb broke, sending mercury dust around the living room.  It was like a toxic waste emergency.  We cleared everyone out, I put on a mask and started cleaning up, Ji Seon went on the internet to research what to do and even called the doctor who reassured us the amount of mercury was too small to be a health risk.  After cleaning up the best I could I opened all the windows and kept the kids upstairs.  I vowed that night never to use CFL’s again but I have since revised to that not using CFL’s in table lamps.  I can’t wait until LED lights become more common place.

It’s nice to look back at such a stress filled night with a smile.  I’m glad I am paid by the hour.

Tags: Ji Seon
Categories: Frank
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Ji Seon named Isaac her “snuggle bear” and Victoria her “snuggle bunny.”  Dylan suggested that he be called “snuggle hero.”

Tags: Dylan,Isaac,Ji Seon,Victoria
Categories: Children
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For the most part I enjoy Northern California winter.  In fact I think it might be my favorite season which is the opposite of when I was living in the northeast.  There are several reasons why I enjoy it.

1. It does not get too cold.
2. It is apparently too cold for most other people which is why when you go to the park or any other outdoor place, they are usually somewhat deserted.
3. The rain is really welcome since it does not rain at all the other nine months of the year.
4. The sun is not so hot so you do not have to wear sun screen.
5. It does not feel as busy.
6. The landscape is green instead of brown and the mountains sometime have snow on top.

On New Year’s Day Ji Seon and her anonymous friend along with Dylan and Isaac went to Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Of course it was raining but the boys had a good time though in Ji Seon’s opinion not good enough to justify buying a season’s pass and driving ninety minutes each way.

With the rain the oranges on the trees ripen.  In this photo Dylan holds up a siamese orange I picked from one of our trees.

Isaac and Dylan have really begun enjoying riding.  Dylan is still on training wheels while Isaac loves his new Cars tricycle.

Victoria loves being outdoors whether it is raining or not.  Here she and Isaac are hanging out in the rain in our backyard.

Tags: Dylan,Isaac,Ji Seon,parks,Victoria
Categories: Family
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