Records

State senator Jeff Wentworth introduced SB 378 today. This is the companion bill on the senate side to HB 284 introduced by state rep. Joe Driver back in November. With 100 of 150 representatives co-authoring it and at least 26 of the 31 senators who are ready to sign on, it should pass and governor Perry would be more than willing to affix his signature.

I found Challenge Blasphemy from a clip on YouTube today. Great response from young and technically savvy believers.

It looks like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will file papers on Monday to form a presidential exploratory committee. I love senator Sam Brownback but I still believe the best chance is governor Mitt Romney and senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, follow by governor Mike Huckabee and whoever he chooses for running mate.

We heard from David Campbell, TXU Corp. Executive Vice President and Acting Chief Financial Officer, at the Dallas Friday Group luncheon today. Dallas mayor Laura Miller was on hand to complain that she was not invited to be part of the program. She claimed to be the spoke person for a group that claimed to represent about 7 millions Texans. And they are all up in arm to stop TXU from building the new coal power plants because they don't believe these plants go far enough to reduce emissions. If these plants do not get built, there may not be enough electricity to go around beginning in 2008.

Our Evangelism Explosion ministry resumed tonight after a few week hiatus over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Looks like there will be opportunities for those of us who have been trained to help train other in Atlanta this coming March at an event put together by Rev. Thomas Stebbins.

I maybe coming down with something because my body was aching all over when I woke up this morning and now. I don't feel good at all. To bed I go.

We heard from Tom Pauken last night at the Dallas County North Republican Club monthly meeting. On hand were state representative Fred Hill, Richardson mayor Gary Slagel, and Richardson council members Steve Mitchell, Bob Townsend, John Murphy, who are all more or less oppose to the recommendations put forth by the Texas Task Force on Appraisal Reform, chaired by Tom. The one recommendation that created the most heated discussion is the lowering of appraisal cap from 8% to 5%. Anything more than 5%, the taxing entity must put on the ballot for the voters' approval. I think it's reasonable, given that an additional half percent of sales tax will be allowed as a replacement source of revenue.

There are many components to the property tax. Taxing entities include the city, the county, the independent school district, the county community college district, Parkland hospital district. Parkland hospital is the one problem unique to Dallas county. None of the surrounding counties has public hospital so Dallas county residents have to shoulder the cost for all the indigent people coming into Parkland, in addition to who knows how many illegal aliens giving birth there. Other than the hospital district, the schools takes anywhere between 65% to 85% of the property tax, depends on which city you live within Dallas county.

A group of singles at our church will be on a 5-day Western Caribbean cruise in September. There are some really good deals can be had on cruise.com.

An interesting website airliners.net.

I learned something new the other day while we were chatting. Rebekah, who volunteers on a regular basis at the Bryan's House in Dallas told us that if they can detect a new born baby is infected with HIV within the first 48 hours after his birth, they can pump enough medicine into the baby to cure him for good. All the doctors out there, can you confirm?

Also, more about the president's state of the union last night. Why are we Republicans talking more about mandatory regulations? Wouldn't positive incentives always be better? We should reserve negative enforcement to the minimum and maximize positive enforcements, the same way they train dogs, dolphins, and other animals. Or as they have been encouraging parents to do in bringing up their children. If president Bush wanted to increase internal combustion engine efficiency by increasing the number of miles per gallon, create incentives instead of more government mandated regulations! Heck, without government intervention, maybe Toyota can force GM to do it. As it had many times before.

Don't know about last year but the full text of the president's State of the Union address to the joint session of Congress was available on Drudge Report at least an hour before the actual delivery.

While the president spoke, I noticed congressman Mike Honda kept on reading something he had in his hands. I met him before and thought he's a man very much following protocol so I was surprise what would be so important that he must keep on reading.

I noticed Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't applaud when the president called for medical malpractice lawsuit reform. Those ambulance chasers must be given her a lot of money. Oops, the Democrats do not serve any special interests, I am clueless then on why she didn't think it was a good idea.

I also noticed congressman Jeb Hensarling was one of the very few who stood up with conviction in supporting the president's call for increasing the number of troops in Baghdad and Al Anbar province needed to complete the mission there. He's one of the great congressmen in the US House I really admire, who is a true conservative.

In advanced Krav Maga tonight, we were in full fighting gears toward the end of the class, with head gear, mouth piece, boxing gloves, shin guard, and the ever present cup. It was my first time so the partners were gentle but I still got bruised lips.

I was again the lone wolf rooting for the Patriots tonight at a party John threw at his new house. I had called for a Saints and Patriots Super Bowl but it turned out I was dead wrong, first with the Saints being slaughter 14-39 by the Chicago Bears and then the Patriots put out by the Indianapolis Colts.

The Vietnamese Professionals Society - Dallas Chapter had our membership mixer tonight at the Firewheel Clubhouse in Garland. We had a pretty good showing even with the rain continued all day and into the evening.

Netflix is pretty efficient at what it does, utilizing the US Postal Service to send and receive back its movies on DVD that it rents to customer and at a decent cost too.

It was raining all day and the temperature was hovering around freezing so we postponed our weekly EE training tonight until next Friday.

I am surprise to find that the town of Neuwied, Germany, where my uncle lives with his wife and two kids, has a website in German, English and French.

China now has the ability to shoot down a satellite 4ft by 4ft orbiting 530 miles above the earth. This followed the story of China using laser to disable US satellites late last year. The Chinese navy is expanding its capability to dominate the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Its submarine was able to escape detection and stalk a US carrier group, "surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected." Complacency will kill you quickly if you don't wake up fast. The US should forget the crap about "improving relations between the two nations' militaries." When we have a superior military force with superior technologies and competently trained military personnels, we will improve relations real well. They will listen attentively to what we have to say. Being of Vietnamese descent, a small country just south of China and suffered thousand of years under Chinese domination, I am telling all of you that it's not something you want your children to live under. It would not be an astonishment if we found out that the majority of the engineers working on this Chinese missile program were trained in the US, even at some of the Ivy League universities.

The current communist government of Vietnam has been welcoming the US Navy to its ports in Cam Ranh Bay and Saigon. Without a doubt it's a message to counter the growing and powerful Chinese navy. At the same time, Vietnam is stressing its independence because the current communist government learned the historic lesson of how the US dropped its cold war ally, the South Vietnamese government, like a rock once Nixon has cut a deal with China in 1972.

Four of our tickets are included in the 4,500 tickets mentioned in this story.

I enjoyed watching Loves of a Blonde, a very tasteful comedy directed by Milos Forman. I especially enjoyed the dialog Milda's mother carried on with Milda's father and Andula. Also finished watching All About Eve, enjoyed people actually having conversation instead of all these action movies of shooting, things exploding and etc .... Both are black and white movies and I do enjoy that as well.

The swearing in ceremony of Texas governor Rick Perry and lieutenant governor David Dewhurst was moved inside the House chamber because of icy weather down in Austin today. The streaming webcast is available if you are interested.

Barack Obama finally announced that he is going to explore the possibility of running for president. I don't believe he's another John F. Kennedy, the last senator who was successful in the race for the highest elected office in the land. If I were him, I'll build up some executive experiences by running for governor first. He joined the crowded field of Democrat wannabees: former South Carolina senator and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Connecticut senator Christopher Dodd, and many more who have yet to announce, including the junior senator from New York and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Check here for the long list.

Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback filed papers with the Federal Election Commission on December 4th, 2006 and will formally announce the formation of his presidential exploratory committee at noon this Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at the Kansas Expocentre Heritage Hall, 1 Expocentre Dr., Topeka, KS 66612. Doors will open at 10:30 am. He's one of those Republicans I highly respect, because he does what he believes is right, even when no one is looking. He's one of the very few elected US officials who traveled to Vietnam to look into religious freedom and human right issues. I wish he had been governor instead of a senator.

Karl Ninh with senator Sam Brownback and his wife Mary at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Originally we were to drive down to Austin today for the inauguration tomorrow and then come back on Wednesday but with all the ice on the roads, we decided it's not worth the trouble so I canceled my time off from work, hotel reservations, ....

My team the Patriots advance another round in the NFL playoff by defeating the San Diego Chargers today. I felt as sleep for a second and missed the Chargers second touchdown but it doesn't matter now.

You've got to love this clip.

I turned off the alarm clock Friday night, believing there's no way I would sleep past 10 o'clock Saturday morning but I did. It was pouring rain when I got to Leslie's place for the baby brunch she put together for Jonathan, Tricia and baby Esther. Esther was just full of energy and she's not even one year old but she can dance to the music. The food was delicious and I helped myself to a lot of it. Thanks Leslie!

I saw that Micro Center had a 1GB PC3200 DDR-400 memory stick for $104.99, with $25 rebate available so I came into the store to get one. Well, I didn't find one on the shelf so I asked an associate. He took one look at the item on my printout shopping list and said that they are out of stock. Well, I went out ready to go home but it was pouring rain outside and it was cold so I walked back inside. I asked a different associate, Dale, to check if they carry any of the Diologic cards and he walked over to a terminal, checked and found that they had none. I then asked him to check on the memory stick because I didn't see any on the shelf. Surely he found they have a whole bunch of them in stock. He went to the back and came back shortly with one for me. Now that's great customer service. The other associate I first spoke to, was just a lazy dude and a manager should sit him down and give him a little talk about serving the customer better.

My desktop is running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Nortel does not yet have a 64 bit VPN Client so I have had to use my laptop every time I want to connect to Nortel internal network. With the free VMware Server installed and Windows 2000 as the guest OS, I am able to connect using the 32 bit VPN Client. But with 1.5GB of memory, and giving the guest OS 1GB of memory, both the host and guest OS were running rather sluggish. With the new memory stick, my box has a total of 2.5GB of memory, both the host and guest OS are running satisfactorily. I am pretty happy. Let the memory prices go down a little more, I may just get two more 1GB sticks to bring total memory to 4GB, that way I can have both of my virtual machines, Windows 2000 and Solaris 10, up and running simultaneously with the host OS.

The following clip begins to spread but wasn't Al Gore at one time was very pro life and pro second amendment when he served as a congressman from Tennessee? I believe this was over 12 years ago and I will give Mitt Romney the benefit of the doubt. He will remain my favorite guy unless former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee entered the race, then he has some competition.

The Texas Legislature is in its second day of the 140 days biennial session. Check the journal if you are interested in what took place each day.

Gary Griffith was our guest speaker tonight at our Dallas County Young Republicans monthly meeting. One of the things Gary talked about was the "redesign" of high schools in DISD to give the principals more control over their schools. This is exactly what many of my high school teachers said would be one of the best measures to make schools better, along with curbing corruption in the DISD administration. Mr. Max Wells, whose mayoral campaign just took up the space that was our 2006 Victory Center, stopped by to visit and introduce himself.

I have seen Karen Hanretty sat in for Sean Hannity and today Kirsten Powers sat in for Alan Colmes. I would really like the addition of these two pretty ladies to the Hannity & Colmes show. Would any of you agree with me?

It's a great day that ended with great results. Terry Simons defeated Jack Stotz 55% to 44% in the runoff election for the unexpired term of Ron Branson, Carrollton city council place 6. What it tells me is that you can win without the firefighters and police endorsements and enforcing the law regarding illegal immigrations is a winning issue. One interesting point is that the turnout this time, a runoff election, is 3.15% compare to 2.63% for the 6-way election on December 5th.

Tom Craddick remains speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina endorsed Mitt Romney for president in 2008.

Did you know that January 16th is Religious Freedom Day? Religious Freedom Day is a great resource for those Christian children who attend public schools. In the words of president Clinton on May 30th, 1998: "...Schools do more than train children's minds. They also help to nurture their souls by reinforcing the values they learn at home and in their communities. I believe that one of the best ways we can help out schools to do this is by supporting students' rights to voluntarily practice their religious beliefs, including prayer in schools.... For more than 200 years, the First Amendment has protected our religious freedom and allowed many faiths to flourish in our homes, in our work place and in our schools. Clearly understood and sensibly applied, it works."

According to US Department of Education guidelines:

1. Students can pray, read their Bible or other religious books, and talk about their faith at school during school hours.
2. Students can organize prayer groups and religious clubs and announce their meetings.
3. Students can express their faith in their class work and homework.
4. Teachers can organize prayer groups and Bible studies.
5. Students may be able to go off campus to have a Bible study during school hours.
6. Students can express their faith at a school event.
7. Students can express their faith at their graduation ceremony.

If Martin Gramatica had been given the same opportunity as David Akers tonight, the Cowboys would still be in the playoffs. I was the only one cheering for the New England Patriots at church. They are the only team I have to cheer for now that both the Denver Broncos and Dallas Cowboys are gone.

Other than football, I enjoyed a great weekend, starting with Un Petit Soiree on Friday put together by Rebecca and Stefani, then a baby shower for Hieu & Hanh on Saturday, and finally an engagement for Huong & her husband to be today.

Tony Romo lost the game for the Dallas Cowboys tonight against the Seattle Seahawks when he couldn't hold the ball for the field goal kick. Such a missed opportunity!

WinMerge with its Clearcase support, really saves the day for me.

We were discussing New Year resolutions at our small group meeting and we all agreed to renew memorization of scriptures. I first started memorizing scriptures when I read a testimony of an American veteran who was shot down and spent time in Hanoi Hilton. He thanked God that scriptures which he was made to memorize by his grandmother when he was a kid sustained him through the years there in prison. There is no guaranteed that you will always have free access to a Bible anytime you want. A friend in our small group also shared that in China, one factor for admission to Christian training classes when there is less seats in a class than there are the number of attendees is only those who have memorized all four of the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get admitted.

Former Wisconsin governor and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson added his name to the list of 2008 Republican wannabees: Arizona senator John McCain, former New York city mayor Rudy Giuliani, and of course my favorite Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Still waiting to hear from Kansas senator Sam Brownback, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who is known for his voluntary contribution account where those who do not think the government tax them enough can deposit additional amounts of their own money, and rumored dark horse South Carolina governor Mark Sanford who has just been elected to a second term.

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney finally filed papers to form a Presidential Exploratory Committee today. From everything that has happened since early 2006, my prediction still stands for a Mitt Romney/Kay Bailey Hutchison GOP ticket in 2008.

Filed my first general political action committee campaign finance report with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Saw part of the Lyndon B. Johnson funeral on C-SPAN yesterday. It's the first day of the new year and a funeral can be shown, that's the freedom we as a Christian nation enjoy. In a country like Vietnam, it would have been unthinkable to show something such as a funeral on the very first day of the year.