Bigger Abode
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.
We’re Engaged!
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. More…
50″ Plasma TV
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. More…
V5
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 beare 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!
Squaw and Northstar
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. More…
Latte Lips
Added a few more pics to The Latte Dog Album.
Court Rules for TiVo!
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!
Switch to Comcast
I’ve been wanting to get a “real” TiVo box for some time, but was locked into a two-year contract with DirecTV. Until now, we’ve been using a DirecTV TiVo box, which is still supported, but these boxes only possess the base TiVo DVR features and don’t have any of the cool features of a “true” TiVo box (the DirecTV TiVo boxes are technically capable of having this functionality, but DirecTV chooses not to activate them). DirecTV has also made the questionable decision to drop TiVo and focus on their own generic DVR. This means that the existing DirecTV TiVo boxes are unlikely to get any new features, and perhaps more importantly, there is likely no path to a high-def DirecTV TiVo.
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!
Elf Yourself 2007
Last year, OfficeMax had a fun site that allowed you to upload a picture of a person and paste the face of that person on a dancing elf. It was a lot of fun and I created a great clip of Judy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out a way to save the Flash file. The link soon expired leaving the clip forever inaccessible.
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)
TiVo on USPTO Decision
Today, we issued the following statement:
“We are extremely pleased that the PTO has now found all claims of the Time Warp Patent to be valid after conducting a reexamination of the patent requested by EchoStar. This decision by the PTO is final and not appealable by EchoStar. Today’s decision by the PTO brings us another step closer to ending EchoStar’s continued infringement and we are hopeful that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will uphold the district court judgment of patent infringement and reinstate the injunction.”
Nice.
Bonnie’s Birthday
Pics and vid from Bonnie’s birthday, including the mesmerizing Foot Pleaser Ultra!
24″ Aluminum iMac
Pics of my new toy!
Iraj’s Birthday
For Iraj’s birthday, we went to a Persian restaurant where we enjoyed good food and belly dancing! Here’s some pics and vids.
China
Judy’s parents recently accompanied us on a 14-day trip through China. We started in Beijing and Tianjin where we visited the Great Wall (our second time), checked out several sites of the 2008 Olympics (including the sand volleyball area), and got a pedicure (my first one ever – hey, it was cheap so why not?) as well as a massage (also a first for me and it was done by a blind person no less!).
From there, Judy and I split from her parents and headed to China’s famous Huang Shan where we hiked to the top and also crossed the dangerous Carp’s Back Bone (it’s actually made out to be a lot worse than it really is). After Huang Shan, we met up again with Judy’s parents in Chengdu. Here, we experienced the highlight of the trip when both Judy and I had the opportunity to hold a baby (but still pretty big!) panda at the Wolong Panda Reserve – a totally cool experience! We also visited the Dujiang Dam which, after over 2,000 years, is still playing a major agricultural role today. Afterwards, we were treated to the entertaining Changing Faces show in which performers are able to instantaneously swap face masks right before your eyes.
After Chengdu, we headed to the higher (and much colder!) Jiuzhaigou where we were quite surprised to see an extravagant Vegas-style show in what was quite decidedly a very non-Vegas-like area. We admired the beautiful waterfalls and uniquely colored pools of Jiuzhaigou and Huang Long. We then returned to the Chengdu area and saw the Giant Buddha – it was definitely a big Buddha! Emei Shan was our next stop, and though we didn’t find the Buddhist temples all that interesting, we did find the chubby monkeys quite entertaining. As we wrapped up our trip, we visited a textile factory where we saw the specialized skills and complex devices required to create Chinese textiles, and also saw many examples of highly intricate silk embroideries.
It was a fantastic trip and we had a great time. Here are the pics and vids.
Jeff’s Birthday
Paul thought it would be fun to do something special to commemorate Jeff turning the big Six-Oh. So we blew up a bunch of TiVo balloons and filled up Jeff’s cube with them. Well, actually, we cheated a bit. After blowing up a few balloons, we quickly realized that we wouldn’t have the stamina to blow up enough balloons to fill Jeff’s entire cube – manually blowing up balloons is quite hard on the cheeks and lips! So we laid down some cardboard (TiVo set-top box cartons, actually) all the way across his desk so that we’d only have to fill half the cube but still have it look like we filled the entire cube.
We also printed a bunch of signs directing Jeff to his specially designated parking spot for that day. Paul came in early Friday morning to set up the signs, but after all that work, Jeff didn’t even show up to work! What a slacker! The balloons were fine sitting in the cube over the weekend, but Paul had to set up the signs again Monday morning. Here are the pics I took.
