Records

After church today, I and my brother went out for lunch. Since I had such a craving for it, I had Bun bo Hue. We then headed over to the University of Texas at Arlington to join in the protest to call for the lowering of the Vietnamese communist flag on the UTA campus. All the roads around the campus were already blocked off in preparation for the march. The crowd of at least 2,000 has been there since 1:30 pm listening to various singers and speakers. At 3:00 pm, we started the march a few blocks around the campus. The march took a good part of an hour before we were back in front of the outdoor stage in the large parking lot again. It was good to see Thi Vo, my highschool buddy who is currently the vice president of the Vietnamese American community in Austin. His parents were also there along with about 50 people from the Austin area, including many University of Texas students of Vietnamese descent. UTA officials at first did not take thing seriously. Particularly associate provost Dr. Michael Moore was rather insensitive with his comments regarding the request to lower the Vietnamese communist flag.

I was out building with Dallas Habitat today. I started with sodding with Will, then siding with Neal & Kathleen, then putting in the trimming with Morgan, and finally painting with Lauren & Christine.

We have five teams, each of three people, went out to share the gospel tonight. My team went to the first house, the people were not home. The second house, they were having a party so we will come back another time. The third house, they were having dinner. We then went to the market to do questionaire. Talked to one guy and did not have the opportunity to present the gospel but will be praying for him, his wife and five children.

Updated map. Since last May, (check May 19th, 2005 entry,) I have visited Las Vegas, Park City, Utah and Annapolis, Maryland. Twenty one states out of 50, or 41%. If I had more than 3 weeks of vacation per year, I would have visited Wisconsin too this May for the NRA convention.

I have been to four countries so far, Vietnam, Taiwan, US and Canada.

We heard from SMU president Dr. Gerald Turner tonight at the United Central Bank Excellence in Education banquet hosted by the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce. The United Central Bank is the signature sponsor for the 20 scholarships along with many other sponsors such as Darden Restaurants of Florida, DART, Texas Instruments, .... Had a chance to chat very briefly with Dr. Turner and Mrs. Gail Turner, both are native Texans. I have never heard a university president did a better job encouraging people to attend the university. Dr. Turner made very successful bids for the university in so many different way in a short but most enjoyable speech.

The recipients: Zachary Brown, Andy Chang, Kevin Chen, Saunak Desai, Dianne Doan, Afrin Fatema, Michael Ho, Emily Hsu, Mariam Karamali, Sodanet Khem, Stephanie Lee, Angela Lee, Michael Lee, Colin Nelson, Gloriane Nguyen, Saher Notta, Vijita Patel, Neha Thankore, Astrud Villareal, and Christine Vuong, were of the most impressive caliber. Out of twenty, two will attend SMU, two will attend Harvard, one will go to Georgetown, one off to Rice, one will be at John Hopkins, one will go to Emory, a couple will go to UT, one to A&M, another will attend the University of Dallas, one to UT Arlington, .... Additionally, Michael Lee was also the recipient of the Jerry Junkins' scholarship award and one of the girls, I can't remember who, was the recipient of the James Yoo's scholarship award.

Also got to meet and chat with Juanita Duenez-Lazo, who kindly gave me a Texas Women University thermal mug.

Seagate has started shipping its 750Gb 3.5 inch drive. We have seen storage in the terabyte range by putting together an array of the gigabyte drives. Now I guess we can look forward to single terabyte drive next year and storage in the range of petabyte by putting together an array of terabyte drives. The march will continue on with exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte, and then what? Maybe xenta or xona but we will have to wait and see, 18 * 3 = 54 months, or rougth four and a half years from now.

We heard from Gary Griffith at the Greater Dallas Pachyderm lunch meeting today. Gary is currently the councilman for district 9 and candidate for mayor of Dallas. Gary talked about improving education, reducing crime, police officers recruitment, hiring and putting about 500 more officers on the streets, unity at city hall, .... Questions were asked about budget, spending cuts, FBI investigation of current councilmembers, ....

Checked on my 401k and it looked like I have a 15.3% return over the last 12 months period, April 24, 2005 to now, which I think is decent. However, a 5.9% return since January 1st of this year until now, which I believe is a little conservative but not necessarily bad, right?

VPS Dallas has been helping to intepret for people as they were being helped to enroll in the new Medicare part D program. As its president, I have wanted to help but had been having conflict of schedule until Saturday. We finished around 1:00 pm and we went for a nearby restaurant which had the best Bun bo Hue (Hue beef noodle). I then ran some errands, went home and took care of some bookkeeping before headed over to Bruce's house for our church's young adults' combined fellowship.

I, my brother and parents went to Zander's house tonight for dinner. I have been meaning to take them there but didn't have a chance until today. The food is very authentically Vietnamese and very delicious. Kirk's family was the best host you can ask for.

We got to hear from Major General Dean W. Cash at the 3rd annual Jonsson School Forum luncheon, jointly organized by the Metroplex Technology Business Council. General Cash started in the Army infantry and was the J9 in the Joint Forces Command by the time he retired after a distinguished 30 year career from the US Armed Forces. He currently is the Director for Joint Concepts and Experimentation for Raytheon Net Centric Systems and also Director of the Net Centric Enterprise Priority. He spoke on the topic of Fearless Engineering. An example of this is the Persistent Surveillance Dissemination System of Systems (PSDS2), which is currently deployed in Irag and had a complete development cycle of only 110 days. Fearless engineer is to response to that which has yet to be invented. The $140 Xbox has more computing power than the lunar lander. Like most of you, I have heard of Moore's law before but today was the first time I have heard of Metcalfe's law, which basically stated that "the value of a network equals approximately the square of the number of nodes of the system."

He's another gentleman with a great sense of humor I have had the privilege of listening to this week beside congressman Ralph Hall earlier this week. He had nothing to say about secretary Rumsfeld nor anything at all to say about those who had something to say about the secretary. Being an Alaskan native, he had a few things to be proud about Alaska, of which I can't remember all:

1. Minnesota is proud to be a land of ten thousand lakes, Alaska has over twenty one thousand lakes.
2. Arguing the fact that Texas is the second largest state in the Union, when the tide is out, the muddy area of Alaska alone is a larger area than the state of Texas so according to general Cash, Texas should be the third largest state in the Union.

And how can one have fun without picking on California. Here is the essence of the California model: "anything not worth doing, do it to excess."

The UT Dallas Alumni association hosted a networking event at the Artist's Showplace on Coit at Arapaho. Haven't had a chance to meet and chat with Dr. David E. Daniel since he took over as University president until tonight. He's a great, down to earth guy and seemed to know what he's talking about.

I like Bill O'Reilly and watch his program frequently but I think he should stop sticking his nose where it does not belong. If ExxonMobile wants to pay its chairman Lee Raymond $400 million dollars, the largest retirement packages in history, it's their business. It's called free market in case he doesn't get it. If ExxonMobile shareholders doesn't like it, they are the only ones that could have any say. According to Dr. Yaron Brook, the Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute:

"During the 12 years he ran Exxon, it became the largest oil company in the world and its stock price went up 500 percent.

The $400 million Raymond will get for his 12 years at the helm of Exxon represents about 1 percent of the $36 billion in profits Exxon made only last year. That is the largest amount of profit of any company ever--and Exxon's CEO deserves to be rewarded for that.

We should not be complaining about Mr. Raymond's compensation, but congratulating him--and other high-performing CEOs--for a job well done."

I have been doing Krav Maga three days in a row so some of my fingers are rather stiff, can't type much!

The US Chamber hosted a breakfast with congressman Ralph Hall at the Maggiano's Little Italy. He was presented the US Chamber's coveted Spirit of Enterprise Award. The congressman has a great sense of humor. Here is a great laugh: Faith is a little city in Rockwall county, the population stayed a constant of 79 people over 100 years. The trick? Everytime a baby is born, a guy left town. Here is another one: a guy was told that the sheriff is hiring a deputy so he came to the office to apply. He was asked: "what is one and one?" He put together two forefingers, one from each hand and answered, "it's eleven." The sheriff said: "not exactly the answer I was looking for but not exactly wrong either." Question: "what are two days of the week that start with a T." Answer: "Today and Tomorrow." The sheriff again said: "not exactly the answer I was looking for but not exactly wrong either." Question: "what is illegal?" Answer: "Ill egal, that's one sick bird." Same comment from the sheriff: "not exactly the answer I was looking for but not exactly wrong either." Last question, "who killed Abraham Lincoln?" Asnwer: "I have no idea." He went back to the barber shop and his friends asked him how it went? Well, it went ok and they already gave me a murder case to solve.

We just came back up from a power outage that lasted for a few minutes. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the outage is statewide and was ordered by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This is my first time hearing of the existence of such an agency.

We landed at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in the big easy late on Friday but there was still enough sunlight to see the devastation from the air, especially all the blue tarp on the roof. It got worse went Kaitlin picked us up and took us along I-10 east to Biloxi. Rubbles were everywhere. All the houses in the neighborhoods along the highway were just empty, dead silence with no movement of life whatsoever. Looked like a scene from a movie, so unreal. We had all the seafood we wanted once we got to Kaitlin's house. I stayed at the hotel The Isle of Capri with Hoan and had a pretty good night sleep.

We were at the Ocean Springs Civic Center on Saturday around 9:00 am to help decorating it. The wedding ceremony took place at Kaitlin's house at 2:00 pm followed by the reception at 6:00 pm at the Civic Center. Afterward, we headed over to Henry's house in Biloxi for the night. We had more food: crawfishes and great steaks, and hung out and talked late into the night.

Sunday morning, I, Teresa and Dan Thu went to church. We then went back to Kaitlin's house for lunch before we dropped Dan Thu off at the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport. We headed to New Orleans, dropped off one more friend so he could catch an early flight out of there, went for dinner with Kaitlin and then Kaitlin dropped us off at the airport for our early evening flight back to Dallas.

Got my new Bel RX65 Pro Radar Laser Detector yesterday and was only able to try for a short trip from my Krav Maga class back home. I-Net Distributors did a really good job. I ordered late Sunday night online and already had it in my hand yesterday. One thing I would have loved to see on it is a built-in compass.

Kirk Cameron was great on the interview with Bill O'Reilly show last night. He said and I paraphrased: at the heart of an atheist is the desire to live an unaccountable life.

Congressman Kenny Marchant had a round table discussion with his constituents tonight in his Valley Ranch district office. There were 7 of us there: Don, James, Pamela, Tibor, Tuan, myself, and Tim along with Kenny, his district director Susie, and two staffers: Steve and Ben.

We each took turn to discuss with Kenny the most pressing concerns that we have. Don is a member of the Republicans for Environmental Protection and he believes that the congress should pass legislation to require more efficient car with better gas mileage. The rest of us disagreed with him. Tim proposed direct credit for those who buy hybrid efficient car instead of more government regulation. That would make it a personal choice and not the government forcing something down people's throat. The five of us were for that. Afterall, we Republicans are for limited government and free market.

Immigration dominated the discussion. James, Pamela and Tibor all spoke regarding that matter. Tibor mentioned the Landmark Legal Foundation as a great source of reference for him. The need for lower federal spendings, limited government where the federal government should focus only on national defense and interstate commerce and nothing else. Eliminating voter fraud was also discussed. I also learned of the Main Street Partners.

I quickly ran through the concerns:

one regarding a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 unnecessarily requires having ballot in languages other than English.

Not only do we have ballot in other language, as an election judge, I have to find bilingual clerk all the time. Now it's only Spanish but eventually Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, ..., things will become rather messy. Why don't we just eliminate that provision altogether since you are required to be able to read and write English sufficiently to become citizen and only citizens can vote.

the need for an individual to be able to carry over from year to year his Health Savings Accounts balance.

the need for FairTax which would tax spending and consumption while encourages savings and investments at the same time.

the need for religious freedom and human rights discussion to be on the table when the US sit down to have dealings with some of the countries where people are persecuted for their faith, some even paid with their lives.

the need for Social Security reform, particular personal accounts.

I was only five minutes into my 20 minute workout on the treadmill this morning when the belt slipped from the rotors and so the rotors was spinning like crazy but the belt didn't move at all. I went to Google and search for "treadmill repair dallas" and got a whole bunch of listings from treadmilldoctor.com. Called A1 Fitness, 972-488-3224, based in Farmers Branch, and found out that they are at 3340 Garden Brook Dr., less than a mile from my house. God is good. Spoked to Steve and he said that the problem happens frequently with Nordictrack as well as a few other treadmill brands. I need to drop it off as soon as I can.

The Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Korean American Coalition together with the Dallas/Fort Worth Asian American Citizens Council organized a candidate forum tonight at the Korean Full Gospel church. We had 6 of the 8 city council candidates for the upcoming May 13th election there: Charles Thrasher, Herb Weidinger, Cathy Henesey, Larry Don Williams, Tim Hayden, Pat Malone. Diane Harmon was on a mission trip in Mexico and couldn't be there but one of her students, Sam Kiser, was there representing her. Bob Garza was traveling on business in San Antonio but one of his friends was also there to represent him. Mayor Becky Miller was also there as well as former city council member Terry Simons and Bonnie Kaplan.

Our congregation moved to our new facility this weekend so I went to Arlington Saturday to help moved the stuffs: the pianos, drums, speakers, amplifiers, file cabinets, tables, chairs, .... We had a locksmith came in and rekeyed the new building during the week. I had to leave early running back to Addison to help Henry and Taylor picking up their child's bed, they are expecting next month. However, the salesman messed up and ordered the wrong color so we didn't get it afterall. Then headed over a friend's house for another meeting that lasted late into the night.

We went to get some more things from the old church building after the service and then I had to run for our VPS Dallas April board meeting. Afterward, we headed over to Dan for some really spicy crawfishes.

I will be serving on the Organization committee at the upcoming 2006 Republican State Convention in San Antonio. Thus, I will be down there starting Tuesday, May 30th and will be hanging out with Jane & Bill, Tim, Tom, who are all staying at the Menger Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders, and a whole bunch of other friends who will be on various committees down there that week.

We went out witnessing last night. We alternate weekly between home visit and doing questionaire. We did questionaire last night. Our group of me, Henry and Helena was able to talk to 2 people. The first guy, we were only able to ask the two diagnostic questions and he had to leave. The second guy was waiting in the car for his wife. We talked to him, was half way through presenting the Gospel: heaven, man, God, but we didn't finish. He agreed that man is sinful but did not agree that man cannot save himself. By the time he agreed to that point and I moved on to God, his wife had done shopping and came out. He started to leave so we gave him two tracts and got his phone number. Will be doing follow up hopefully the week after next since it's Good Friday and Easter this next weekend.

The Concerned Citizens for Enforcing Carrollton Term Limits website is now up, check it out.

I feel pretty good that I got up this morning, got on the treadmill for my all inclusive 20 minutes work out, showered and still got to the office, with half an hour commute, in time for the conference call at 8:00 am. And yes, I was driving within the speed limit, thank God, because the Richardson Police was out in force this morning, with officers every, especially school zones. I spotted three different patrol cars sitting ready to catch the unfortunate drivers within a one mile stretch.

The American Nurses Association has more up-to-date and more extensive info regarding congressional staffers than even congress.org.

Godly men and women: Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Ralph Reed, and Tim LaHaye are being attached by groups like DefConAmerica so unless the people of faith and conviction stand up for what we know is right, Satan will make it hell here on earch before Christ's second coming. Remember, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke. Yes, this world is only going to get worse, entropy is only going to increase. I believe however that Christians are God's instruments that He uses to slow down the decay and at the same time share His love with this world because: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." II Peter 3:9.

I re-read my own post from last Thursday and it does sound a little personal, just as a friend pointed out to me. I would like to clarify, I have no problem with Herb Weidinger, Larry Don Williams, or Tim Hayden. I have had opportunities to work with them before in many occasions that I have come to the council. In fact, if they run as Republican candidates for any other office, I would be more than likely to support them. I can't support them if they run as the other party's candidate. The problem I have is term limit and the way the city charter was amended inaccurately in my and many others' opinion, including former councilmembers. Here is the Carrollton Courier newsletter published on July 20th, 2001. Look at proposition #2 on page 8, which said two consecutive three year terms. Now look at the Carrollton City Charter, section 2.02 on page 8, the two words three year were dropped off, even though in the same sentence, the words three year appear later. I have been told of explanation by the city attorney that three year term was implied, then why is it not implied through out the document. Isn't it better to make sure that the city charter is written as clear as possible without ambiguity since the rest of us are not all lawyers and the government is supposed to be by the people and for the people?

On this same topic, this article written by Crystal Forester, 972-538-2118, crystal.forester@scntx.com, on the Star Community Newspapers Carrollton Leader has a comment by the city attorney mentioning that Harry Truman was excluded from the 22nd amendment to the US Constitution, which provided that "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, ...." There was absolutely no term limit before the 22nd amendment was passed by Congress on March 21st, 1947 and adopted on February 27th, 1951. President Harry Truman was elected vice president in November 1944, elected president in November 1948, both times were before the 22nd amendment went into effect. The main factor contributed to the adoption of the 22nd amendment was FDR, a Democrat whose supporters gave the excuse of continuity, broke from the tradition of self imposed term limit set by president George Washington, who did not desire to have another King George III ruling these United States of America. Unless I am mistaken, term limit was adopted by the citizens of Carrollton in 1991, and was in effect since then before any of these council members were elected.

For a list of all candidates in the upcoming municipal elections in May, check this out.

Karen Willcutts, the Republican candidate for the 298th Civil District Court had her reception yesterday at the Reflection Fine Art gallery. I really like all the pieces there.

Went on to the University of Dallas where Blake had Francisco Gonzalez, who is the director of membership and campus leadership with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute came and spoke to about thirty some north Texas area College Republicans. Francisco gave out a whole bunch of books published by the ISI, including the "American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia," which suppose to have an entry for everyone who's who in the conservative cause in America.

Teresa Hawthorne is the only candidate in the April 11th runoff election showed up and introduced herself at our Dallas County Young Republicans monthly meeting tonight at the Dallas GOP headquarters. We heard from Andy Rittler, senator John Cornyn's north Texas regional director about immigration reform. Andy covered all the basics of all the bills that are before the Senate.

Here is the summary: the US Senate is currently debating and amending the bill S.2454, introduced by senator Bill Frist, the majority leader. Pretty much a senate version of the Sensenbrenner's bill that was passed by the US House, H.R.4437. The Cornyn-Kyl bill, S.1438 is seen as the compromise between H.R.4437 and S.1233, the McCain-Kennedy bill. S.1438 will stop incoming flow, thought not by a continuous wall along the 2,000 miles border but rather putting boots on the ground, increasing the number of border patrol agents and ICE attorneys for deportation proceedings; penalize employers who hire illegal aliens, which should eventually dry up the demand for cheap labor provided by illegal immigrants; and address the future flow with a temporary guest workers program, one that would have the workers come legally from their country of origin. Along with immigration reform, many have brought up the matter of making English the official language of the United States of America. I applaud senator John Cornyn, along with senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, for introducing S.1815 "the Strengthening American Citizenship Act, legislation to help and encourage legal immigrants who are prospective American citizens to learn our common language, history and way of government."

Maybe the day of no income tax and national sales tax is not that far off into the future if the Fair Tax bill, S.25 introduced by Georgia Republican senator Saxby Chambliss, and its House companion bill, H.R. 25, introduced by Georgia Republican Congressman John Linder, get some needed attention, which I have reasons to believe they are. Also related is the S.1921.

Went to the monthly Asian Youth Fellowship but then had to leave early to go to the birthday party for Phuoc at Rev. Dinh Le's house. On the way back, we were stuck on Hwy 360 for 45 minutes. A terrible accident involved at least three cars shut down the highway and everyone was re-routed onto the service road, or feeder road as the folks from Houston like to call it.

I adjusted my wrist watch and the clock in my car but forgot to adjust the wall clock in my bedroom and the alarm clock. Thought I had time to at least put in 15 minutes on the treadmill but barely 5 minutes into my exercise when my brother reminded me that we've gotten to run or we would be late for church. Got back to playing some ping pong at church after the service today. Today was our last day at this church facility. We are moving into our new building this Saturday and have our first service next Sunday.

Got my trucked inspected this morning before going to the core volunteer orientation with Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity. I got there right before 9:00 am, thinking that it starts at 9:00 am but found out that it didn't start until 10:00 am so Jennifer suggested I went over and help building the wall frame for about an hour. I never thought of myself as handy but I found that I was pretty good with the hammer.

The more I found out about Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity, which has its mission statement: "Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity is a Christian ministry that builds quality, affordable homes in partnership with deserving families," the more I like it. It was started in 1985 and will be dedicating its 500th house end of this month.

Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian housing organization that builds simple, decent, affordable houses in partnership with those who lack adequate shelter. Millard and Linda Miller founded Habitat for Humanity International in 1976, the year that I was born, how about that. But it was really made known in 1984 by former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. Habitat for Humanity International is building today in over 100 countries, dedicated their 200,000th home last year. Millard himself said that: "These houses become tangible evidence of God's love of each and every man, woman and child on this earch."