Since last year, Judy and I have been playing regularly in Phil Kaplan’s No Attitudes sand volleyball tournaments. This past Saturday, we played in the tournament with new partners for the first time. Judy paired up with Dave while I paired up with Bonnie. Unfortunately, Dave cramped up midway through the tourney and although they were doing very well, they had to forfeit. Bonnie and I ended up winning the Tidepool and so had our pictures taken.

After Phil posted the pics on his site, Judy called me up while giggling uncontrollably. If you look closely at the left side of the pic, you’ll see that Judy was able to sneak herself into the photo. Pretty funny. What’s funnier is that while we were laughing at Judy’s stealthiness, I noticed that both Bonnie and I have rabbit ears. At first, I thought that Bonnie was doing it to me and that Adam (the other guy in the photo) was doing it to Bonnie. This didn’t seem right as they both would have to have really long, mutant arms. It wasn’t long before we realized that Dave was actually the crafty culprit - you can see his white hat just above my shoulder. Good one Dave!

After a little over two years living at 104 Seale Ave., we decided that it was time to move to a larger place. No, we’re not buying a place; we’re continuing to rent. To think that the largest asset bubble in modern history has finished deflating is wishful thinking IMO. House prices remain fundamentally disconnected from people’s ability to afford them, and even with the recent price declines, renting remains more financially prudent than buying. But I digress…

Anyhoo, we’ve been looking for a while, but it was difficult finding a place that met all of our requirements: desirable location (which is defined by Judy to mean Palo Alto), nice (obviously subjective, but for us, it just means either relatively new or fairly recently remodeled), 2-3 bedrooms (preferably 3), have a garage, have a yard (for Latte), and most importantly, allows pets.

It’s actually quite difficult to find something that meets all those criteria so when we finally came upon this place, we decided to jump on it even though it was a bit pricier than desired. With help from Esnar and the Thomas family (Chris, Bonnie, and Makana), our move on May 31 went pretty smoothly. Our new place is really nice and big - there’s almost too much space! Here’s some pics.

Back on April 15, 2000, Judy and I went out on our first date. Today thus marks not only our anniversary, but also our 8 year anniversary. The number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese culture, and while neither of us are really superstitious, we both felt compelled to have a special celebration for our “lucky-8″ year anniversary.

Of course, “special celebration” can mean different things to different people. Our admittedly lackluster modus operandi for our last several anniversaries has been to make a reservation and then cancel it at the last moment because we (well, Judy) wouldn’t feel like dressing up and going out. So for the “special celebration” of our lucky-8 year anniversary, we decided simply to make a dinner reservation and then actually keep it. Do we know how to celebrate or what?

8 year anniversaries don’t come around very often (well, only once if they occur at all), and while not canceling a dinner reservation is arguably an effective way of making such an occasion memorable, I felt that our 8 year anniversary could use, well, a little something more.

I’ve actually been thinking about proposing to Judy for some time now and this anniversary seemed like it would be the perfect time to do it. Undoubtedly the question many reading this will be asking is, “What the heck took so long?” or “8 fricking years?!” Indeed, we’ve been asked that on more than one occasion by family and friends, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly.

So what was the big hang up? Did I have doubts that Judy was “The One”? Did I have a fear of commitment? Did I dislike Latte Dog who was, for better or worse, part of the package? The answers, of course, are “no”, “no”, and “no”. The reality is that for most of my adult life, I have not placed much value on the institution of marriage. I’ve felt that for the most part, marriage is one of those things that society says you’re supposed to do rather than being something that has any real value. Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of marriage:

Marriage or wedlock is an institution in which interpersonal relationships (usually intimate and sexual) are sanctioned with governmental, social, or religious recognition.

Well, neither of us are religious (understatement of the year in my case ) and neither of us see a need for our relationship to be “sanctioned” or recognized by the government or any social group or organization. If two people love each other and are in a committed, long-term relationship, why isn’t that enough? Why does any one or any thing have to sanction it?

We’ve had discussions about this, and both didn’t feel that marriage would change anything in our relationship or our commitment to each other. Nevertheless, I knew that a part of Judy would be happy to get married. The reason was not because she wanted a big, extravagant wedding (a colossal waste of money in our opinion; we’d much rather spend that money on a killer honeymoon) or that she wanted to get dressed up in a fancy dress (recall the way we celebrated our last several anniversaries). Marriage really was just a way to symbolize our commitment to each other. Judy would half-jokingly bug me every now and then wanting me to sign a contract stipulating that I wouldn’t leave her if she “let herself go” in her old age.

So from that standpoint, yes, I do see some value in marriage. There’s also the fact that in this society, certain things, such as buying a house together, are just easier as a married couple. While we won’t be buying anytime soon (I’m content to sit back and watch the carnage as the housing bubble implodes), we do intend to buy at some point in the not too distant future.

Taking the marriage step felt like the right thing to do, and I decided a few months ago that I’d take advantage of our 8-year anniversary and propose on that date. I entertained the notion of a more elaborate, orchestrated proposal, but I couldn’t come up with anything good, and more importantly, I decided that something like that just simply wasn’t “us”. A lower key, more personal approach would be the way to go.

Obviously, I’d be playing a role, but the question was whether or not to have an accomplice. Latte is such an important part of our life (she’s basically our kid) that I felt it was imperative that she play a part in the proposal. The basic plan was to go out to dinner that night (make a reservation and not cancel it) and upon our return, have Latte present Judy with a special note. I won’t get into details of the note (personal!), but it was basically the aforementioned “contract”, signed by Latte and myself. You’d be surprised at how hard it is to get a good paw print. I had to go through several iterations to get a decent signature from that cocker spaniel.

After she read the contract, I’d present her with the ring. Oh, and of course it wasn’t going to be a diamond ring. As some may recall, I’m not that fond of diamonds. My diamond reservations aside, after shopping around for rings, I came to the conclusion that I actually don’t find diamonds all that pretty anyway.

Judy’s birthstone is sapphire which is very fortunate (or is it fate?) because my favorite color is blue, and of all the gemstones out there, I find sapphires to be the prettiest. I especially like how sapphires can, depending on lighting conditions, exhibit so many different shades of blue. I really think they’re beautiful! I ended up getting the ring through Diamonds of Palo Alto, a local jeweler highly recommended on Yelp (thanks Ruth!). I was really happy with my selection and was certain Judy would love it. I’m not into jewelry at all, but I’ve got to say that this jewel is one mighty fine lookin’ stone!

I didn’t know Judy’s ring size and there was really no way to find out since she never wears rings. I therefore just went with the standard Tiffany setting with the expectation that we’d get it properly fitted afterwards.

The plan was simple, but even simple plans can go awry. Judy’s dad, who lives in Taiwan, returns to the States annually this time of year to take care of his taxes. This year, as luck would have it, he tells Judy on Monday night that he’s leaving for the airport to head back to Taiwan the next evening (the night of our anniversary). Of course, he wanted to see us before leaving so why not have dinner together before Judy takes him to the airport?

I couldn’t object because that would have alerted Judy that something was afoot. While it wasn’t quite what I had planned, it really ended up being not that big of a deal. We had dinner with Judy’s dad and then I went home while Judy took her dad to the airport. Judy actually wanted me to accompany them to the airport, but I had to prep Latte so I told her I was tired and wanted to head home. The funny thing, which Judy told me later, is that her dad kept grilling her about getting married all the way to the airport. LOL!

When Judy came back, I got Latte ready while Judy was in the bathroom. I rolled the note up and tied it with a red bow around Latte’s neck (kind of like a mini St. Bernard - she looked really cute!). Unfortunately, Latte didn’t quite cooperate and pretty much forgot everything we had practiced beforehand. She was supposed to present the note by walking to Judy in a calm and docile manner. Instead, she started galloping around while making her characteristic grunting and snorting noises. And rather than bring the note to Judy, she galloped into the kitchen, shoved her snout into her bowl, and promptly started crunching on Pedigree. The delivery of the note wasn’t quite to expectations. Cute and amusing? Yes. Romantic? Uh, probably not.

After finally calming down, Latte finally let Judy remove the note and read it. The long-awaited contract was a surprise to Judy and she was quite happy to have it. The follow-on was completely unexpected and, suffice to say, she was quite elated. She later said that she would have been totally happy just to get the contract so to receive the contract and a ring? Now that’s an anniversary to remember!

So that’s our little story. Of course, this wouldn’t be a real RohJuh story if there weren’t some pictures. I wanted pictures of both Latte and the ring, but both proved hard to take good photos of. Latte wouldn’t stay still or refused to look at the camera, and although a ring doesn’t have those issues, I found that it’s quite difficult to really capture a sapphire’s brilliance and dazzle with a photo. I tried a bunch of different settings and posted the better ones in the Gallery. Anyhow, here are the pics.

I’ve been HDTV shopping for several months now. Originally, I was debating between a 42″ or 50″ screen size, but after several excursions to the local Best Buy, I quickly concluded that 50″ was the way to go. Even for our relatively tiny living room, 42″ just seemed too small.

After looking at various TVs, I quickly eliminated rear-projection TVs from the running as I was unimpressed with their picture quality and turned off by their bulky size and issues with bulb life. The decision came down to a 50″ plasma or a comparably sized LCD. Plasmas generally offer better picture quality (deeper blacks and no motion blur) and for screen sizes 50″ and larger, they are more economical than LCDs. The disadvantages of plasma are slightly higher power consumption and the minor possibility of image burn-in, but the pros of plasma outweighed the cons for me.

Among the myriad brands to choose from, I gravitated towards Panasonic which consistently gets good reviews and high praise. In fact, Consumer Reports recently rated the picture quality of the Panasonic 50″ 1080p plasma the best they’ve ever seen. The fact that I have been very satisfied with my current Panasonic CRT only helped reaffirmed my brand decision. I nearly pulled the trigger a couple months back when Costco had the model I wanted on sale for $2,199. I reacted too slowly and by the time I decided to buy it, the sale had ended.

That turned out to be a good thing, however, as a month or so later, Fry’s had a sale on it for an incredible $1,699! It quickly sold out online, but they still had stock at the local store. As is typical, I went through some indecision in making the final decision. It wasn’t whether or not the price was right (it was undoubtedly a great deal), but whether or not we’d be better off getting a 58″ size instead. After staring at a 50″ and 58″ side by side, taking measurements of our living room, staring a bit more, and finally dragging Judy into the store to stare with me, we decided that 50″ was the way to go.

The day after buying the TV, we went looking for a suitable TV stand. As luck would have it, Best Buy had a sale for a really nice stand that we both liked. Judy, for those who don’t know, is freakishly strong for her petite size, and between the two of us, we were able to unload and set up the TV and stand (which I think weighed more than the TV!) with no problems. So far, we’re quite pleased with the picture quality (Lost is awesome in HD as are sports). We just lament that there isn’t more HD programming, particularly movies, currently available. And as for the screen size? 50″ turned out to be perfect.

Stating the obvious, Version 5 of RohJuh.com’s got a fresh, new look. If you’re scratching your head, then you’re either new to the site, have a bad memory, or need to hit “Reload” on your browser. Here are some key highlights of RohJuh V5:

• W I D E S C R E E N! I kind of went against convention and made the site pretty wide (1100px to be exact). For most people, it should be fine as long as you maximize your browser window. If not, get a bigger screen.
• New logo in preparation for a worldwide marketing launch to further brand awareness. Or not. The logo now also serves as the site’s favicon (that little icon to the left of the web address in your browser). You’ll need to clear your browser’s cache to get the new favicon.
• Hot new nav bar. The links change when you hover over them; that’s pretty typical. What’s unique is that the reflections of the links also change. Cool!
• RohJuh Shuffle is now on steroids - 6 random pics instead of one for your nostalgic pleasure. In addition, the four latest Featured Adventures are displayed.
• The scaled gallery pics will be are nice and big at 800px wide instead of 640px (it will take some time to update all albums to the new size).
• Site-wide, unified search. RohJuh V4 only had search for the “blog” portion of the site and not the “gallery” portion. RohJuh V5’s search will combine these into a single search. Unfortunately, this will take more time to implement. For now, the search will remain for the blog only.

I’ve done a lot of testing on my development site, but can’t fully vet through everything unless it’s on the production site. So expect some things to not work for a while as I clean everything up.

UPDATE (Mar 19, 2008): I think I’ve got pretty much everything cleaned up. There are still some IE (6 and earlier) issues related to PNG images, but I’m so tired of kludging things for this lame browser that I’m inclined at this point to just say screw IE. If you’re using IE 6 or earlier, you really should upgrade to Firefox, Safari, or IE 7. If you’re using one of these browsers and notice any strange anomalies, let me know!

Latte’s been having some health problems recently so we decided not to take any far-away snowboarding trips this year. She gets really stressed out when we leave her for more than a couple of days, and in her current state, such a stressful situation might very well do her in. Now that she’s on steroids, she’s doing much better so we decided to do a local trip to Tahoe and bring her along.

We actually headed up to Tahoe on Sunday in the middle of a big storm. “Awesome,” we thought, “fresh powder!” Just 35 miles from Truckee, the highway patrol closed the roads and turned everybody around, not because there was too much snow, but because visibility was really poor. Ordinarily, we would have just found a hotel nearby and just headed up the next morning. We had Latte with us though, so we would have to find a place that allowed dogs which can be tough. We had dinner with the hopes that things would clear up, but they didn’t. The condo we had booked was willing to cancel our reservation without any charges and so we just decided to head back home and perhaps try to come back again later in the week.

We headed up again on Wed night, this time with perfect weather. The storm we had driven in just a few days ago had left a lot of snow, but it warmed up quite a bit in the ensuing days and so there was nary a sign of any powder. No big deal actually since I probably wouldn’t have thought much about fresh Tahoe powder anyway being the powder snob that I am. We hit Squaw the first day and Northstar the next day. Conditions were spring-like with nice, warm weather and blue skies. Not epic conditions for a powder hound, but still lots of fun. Certainly better than staring at a monitor in a cubicle.

Unfortunately, Latte didn’t do as well as we would have liked in the condo. When we came back from Squaw the first day, we heaped praise on her because it looked like she had behaved herself. It wasn’t until a half hour or so later that we realized that our celebration was premature. While I was putting on my jeans, I noticed that they were a bit wet. At first, I thought it was just that my underwear was wet from snowboarding that day, but quickly realized that Latte had peed on my jeans! Damn dog!

The good thing was that my jeans (and one of my shirts that was also laying on the ground) pretty much absorbed all her pee and so very little got onto the carpet. Perhaps Latte peed on my clothes because she was smart enough to know it would absorb it. Or maybe she was trying to tell me something? Hmmm…

The original plan was to hit Alpine Meadows on Sat before heading home. On that morning, however, Judy was feeling really sore in her legs and since I just never got into the snowboarding mood this season (I just want to climb!), we both decided to head home a little earlier. I had pre-purchased our lift tickets through REI, but luckily, we were able to sell them to the first people we approached.

So that was our first, and likely only, snowboarding trip this season. I did manage a few shots during the trip, most of which are of Latte.

Added a few more pics to The Latte Dog Album.

Great news today on our long-running patent case against Echostar. This morning, we issued this statement:

We are extremely pleased that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit unanimously ruled in our favor in EchoStar’s appeal of the district court judgment of patent infringement, full award of damages and that the injunction, which was stayed pending appeal, was ordered to be reinstated. Today’s ruling is confirmation of the value of TiVo’s IP portfolio, which is in addition to the other benefits TiVo has to offer. TiVo can now continue to focus on its goal to drive greater distribution in both its stand alone and mass distribution efforts.

The market reacted positively, sending TiVo’s share up nearly 30% - woohoo! Later in the day, EchoStar, remaining defiant, had this to say:

We are pleased the Federal Circuit found for us on Tivo’s hardware claims, but are disappointed in the Federal Circuit’s decision on the software claims. The decision, however, will have no effect on our current or future customers because EchoStar’s engineers have developed and deployed ‘next-generation’ DVR software to our customers’ DVRs. This improved software is fully operational, has been automatically downloaded to current customers, and does not infringe the Tivo patent at issue in the Federal Circuit’s ruling.

To which we subsequently responded:

Echostar has made a series of statements over the years related to the infringement of the TiVo patent that has turned out to be both false and misleading. At this point it doesn’t really matter what Echostar says by way of further self-serving statements. It matters what the courts say — and the courts have spoken.

Entertaining, no? Definitely not a dull day in TiVo land!

So I jumped ship to Comcast once my DirecTV contract expired. Moving to Comcast also enabled me to replace our telephone line and DSL with cable internet. I knew cable was faster, but wow, it totally blows DSL out of the water! Check out this speed test:

My DSL speeds were a paltry 1.2 Mbs down and 384 Kbs up. Comcast has a feature called PowerBoost which gives a big boost to your download speed when you’re downloading a big file. Thus, these speeds are almost certainly not sustained transfer speeds. Nevertheless, it’s wicked fast speed when you need it. Now, even the biggest video files from RohJuh.com play instantly - no more waiting while the video buffers!

My entire cable install went smoothly, even the CableCARD part of it (I was able to get a single MCard instead of dual SCards). I’m still playing with all the TiVo features, but I’ve already downloaded and watched my first Amazon movie (Live Free or Die Hard for only $0.99!) as well as a bunch of free videos from MusicWatch. So far, everything’s been working well for several days now - knock on wood!

Since the Elf Yourself site was such a hit last year, it was no surprise that OfficeMax brought it back this year. Of course, this time I was ready. The way they coded the site made it difficult to pull the Flash file, but that’s not enough deterrence for a determined geek. Using the cool Mac app Snapz Pro X, I was able to save the files in Quicktime format for posterity. The first one’s a clip of Judy, Latte, and me doing the Elf Yourself shuffle (click on pic):

(click on pic above; the original link expires Dec 31, 2007)

Of course, I couldn’t resist creating a much more entertaining clip. In this clip, there’s not one, not two, not three, but, count ‘em, four Judys showing how the Elf Yourself boogie is really meant to be done. Sit back and enjoy this one (click on pic). It’s quite a hoot!

(click on pic above; the original link expires Dec 31, 2007)