Vinh Pham

I have an affinity for fruity desserts. That’s why I am always inclined to pick that sugar glazed Cherry Danish at the baked goods counter. However, there is something awfully flawed in the design of a Cherry Danish.

Why is the cherry all concentrated at the center? You practically have to eat through 2 inches of a croissant before you even touch the center. If I wanted a croissant, I would have gotten a croissant!

Imagine if you bought a pizza and all the tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni was layered in the center. Wouldn’t it be pretty disappointing having to eat all that crush first?

On top of that, once you get into the center, the cherry reward is VERY unsatisfying. Why? Because it is way too sweet. It’s like eating jam straight out of a smuckers’ bottle, or spooning ketchup without the fries.

Is it so hard to spread that cherry goodness all around? Evenly distribute the jam for a perfect mixture of bread to jam, resulting in syrupy goodness.

Today I joined the civilized world as the new UI Engineer for Netbooks.com. Although giving up afternoon naps is going to be hard, I am very grateful to be gainfully employed in the mist of this down spiraling economy.

To be honest though, sitting at home writing code doesn’t feel any different than sitting in an office writing code. Well, maybe the only difference is that I can freely pick my nose and scratch my ass when I am home. Not so in an office setting.

When arguing with my girlfriend, I often get blasted with “Why are you turning things around on me? This is not about me, it’s about you.”

I always thought this was a very strange defense, but I just recently noticed that my girlfriend is not the only female who uses this illogical line of reasoning. Women everywhere are using it: Here is one example. Here is another.

My belief is: if things COULD be turned around, it SHOULD turn around. Basically, an eye for an eye.

For example: If you have a roomate that drinks all your milk. You confront them about it and their response is, “well, you eat all my ramen.” If that is true, then their counter argument - turning things around on you - is PERFECTLY valid.  I think anyone, male or female, can agree with me on this.

But for some reason, this kind of logic never works when arguing with your woman. Sigh…

Just as I start to enjoy my freelance / contractor life, the reality of this shitty economy creeps up on me.

Every day I wake up and the Dow has slipped past yet another threshold, jobless claims grow, and more companies announce massive layoffs. For the first time, in a long time, I am really worried about my ability to continue getting work.

I wish I could blame someone for this, but I don’t think any single person deserves all the credit for this travesty. Besides, the culture of blame in America is the reason why we are here in the first place. Instead of taking responsibility for being where we are, a lot of people start pointing fingers. Its the auto industry, its the shady housing lenders, its the stupid Bush administration, its OPEC lousy oil production.

Well no shit.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, lets do something productive. Lets start building better cars, lets put in regulation to protect the consumer from misleading lending practices, lets prosecute the Bush administration for their crimes, and lets start changing our life style so that we are less dependent on foreign oil.

It’s like getting a bad beat at the poker table. When some people get a bad beat, they bitch and wine about it for hours. They blame the dealer, they blame he unholy cards, and they even blame their unlucky seat. I say, fuck that, shit happens, learn to play better. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and cry when someone steps on it.

Our economy is a donkey poker player. We obviously have no bank-roll management skills, we wagered way more than we can afford to lose, and we chose to go on all-in with a weak hand when all the odds are stacked are against us.

We got beat, now lets move on. Don’t go on tilt, don’t pass go, don’t collect 200.

The results of this study is very surprising, considering how many times I have seen men walk out of the bathroom without detouring to the sink. With all the grunting that some men do while at the urinal, you’d think at the very least they’d want to dry their hands before heading outside…

Study: Women lead men in bacteria, hands down (AP)

Me, I suck at aiming, so I always have to soap and wash.

Yesterday I officially launched this new fruity blog. I found this design after searching hopelessly for hours. I wanted something “earthy” and fun. This design fits that criteria, but the rainbow in the background makes it oh so gay… ( nothing wrong with that… )

Anyways… The new design is due to my transition from Nucleus CMS to Wordpress. I had to write a PHP script to export all my old Nucleus entries into Wordpress format. That was fairly painless, and I should publish that script to the Nucleus community someday.

This is also the reasn why I have not written in my blog in hella days….

During the move, I have decided to drop by wiki, since it was hard to update the wiki, and the wiki format is just hard to use when it comes to social networking with my readers. Dropping the wiki means that I will lose some of the most highly trafficked pages on my website. I will try to recover some of that lost traffic by re-posting those wiki pages on to my blog and praying that goggle will index them again.

I could do some crazy rewrite hackery to make things ‘just as they were’, but I am way too lazy to do that…

Something is seriously wrong with me. I have been sick at least 5 times this past year. Normally I get sick about once a year, around the flu season. But this year, I get sick whether it’s 50 degrees or 100 degrees outside.

Chills are like the worst thing. When I stand up, the chills run up my spine and make it seem like the hair on my head are standing on ends. On top of that, my head feels like it’s inside a big fish tank, so I can’t get any work done. For someone who works at home, this means no money….

I can’t figure out why I am getting sick so often this year. I thought that since I stay home all day, I would get sick less because I don’t have a lot of contact with people. But that’s not the case. I am not sure where my sickness is coming from?!?

1) People who have garages - A lot of great companies began in a garage. All my life, I have never had the privilege to live in a house with a garage.

2) Software crackers - Ever since high school, I have always wanted to be a cracker. Reverse engineering anything is awesome. Damn my slow brain.

3) Web Designers - I can’t design worth crap. Nothing I put together in Photoshop ever looks right. Web designing is a talent. A talent I sorely lack.

4) Flash Designers - Flash is stupid and useless, but it looks cool. How do people do that stuff? I have spend hours watching flash tutorials, but it gets me nowhere….

5) Good writers - Grammar, curse it to HELL. Me no English.

Lately certain “individuals” have complained that my blog is too negative, and that is it more like a “rant”. So in an effort to be positive, I will only speak about he “positive” aspects of the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

Hrmmm… Where do I begin?….

So the shaved-ice we bought at the Garlic Festival is awesome. It was pretty simple, just ice and syrup, but dang, that is probably the best shaved-ice I had in a long time. I guess it had something to do with the weather being blisteringly hot, so the cold shaved-ice really did a good job of bringing down my core temperature.

Well… That’s it for today. See you next time…

Oh wait, one more thing… I am also happy that the line for the Garlic ice-cream was pretty short, and they served it pretty fast. That was a good thing. I wouldn’t have wanted to wait so long for the ice-cream.

Colbie Caillat - Bubbly

I’ve been awake for a while now
You make me feel like a child now
‘Cause every time I see your bubbly face
I get the tinglies in a silly place

It starts in my toes
Makes me crinkle / wrinkle my nose
Wherever it goes
I always know

That you make me smile
Please stay for a while now
Just take your time
Wherever you go

Link to YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PWfB4lurT4

Do you know that you crinkle your nose when you try to be cute? It lets me know that you want something from me.