Records

The company I work for, Shared Technologies, is ranked #18 on the list of 100 best company to work for in America by Fortune, moving up from #25 last year, not bad huh!

President's Approval Rate.

There's a reason why the liberals are called progressive. Because they can just go with the flow, whatever is prevalent at the time. The liberals are not grounded with any basic principles or beliefs. No strong convictions for which they would be willing to stake their lives on. So if owning slaves was the thing of the days, then they will support it at all cost. It was the Republicans, such as Abraham Lincoln, who are grounded in the Biblical principle that all men are created equal by the Creator Himself and everybody will one day have to stand before the Almighty and account for everything that one does, who went against the grain and stood for what is right, not what is popular. It was the Democrats in the US Congress who were hanging on to slavery. It was the Democrats who had a stronghold in state government who were against the universal equality of every man, woman and children. To this date, unborn children, over 2 millions murdered each year, still are being denied the very basic right life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the US Constitution. And who is adamantly against protecting the unborn's equal right, you got it right, the Democrats.

Defendant sold plaintiff, a widow of 51 years and without family, 2302 hours of dancing lessons through 14 different contracts for a total cash outlay of $31,090.45 over a 16 months period. This is a case in Florida in 1968, isn't it outrageous?

Thanks to my friend and colleague Gitartha Pathak, whose daughter is a student at Plano East Senior High, I had the opportunity to be a judge at the annual Panther Classic Forensic Tournament that is taking place there this weekend.

I want to congratulate the 8 students I had the privilege of listening to tonight: Allie Parker (speaker 1) and Chelsea Yamashita (speaker 3) team up against Devonte Hardy (speaker 2) and John Putnam (speaker 4), Kara Jo Peed (1) and Tonya Rajan (3) against Chris Byrd (4) and Andrew Overby (2). Each team took on affirmative and negative positions arguing for and against a resolution calling for federal government mandate on all passenger cars and light trucks to use alternative fuel by 2040.

Here was the format:

Speaker 1 spoke for 4 minutes

Speaker 2 spoke for 4 minutes

Crossfire (speakers 1 & 2) for 3 minutes

Speaker 3 spoke for 4 minutes

Speaker 4 spoke for 4 minutes

Crossfire (speakers 3 & 4) for 3 minutes

Speaker 1 Summary for 2 minutes

Speaker 2 Summary for 2 minutes

Grand Crossfire (all) for 3 minutes

Speaker 3 Final Focus for 1 minute

Speaker 4 Final Focus for 1 minute

Overall I was most impressed with team Allie and Chelsey. They had thorough research of the issue and excellent delivery/presentation. Tonya, Allie and Chelsey had commanding knowledge of the issues and so were naturally great at crossfire. Chris particularly had great body language and a good debater. Both Allie and Chelsey had a great presence and presented the issue in an excellent way, made it coming across clearly and succinctly. Andrew was also excellent at crossfire as well as Devonte. Kara Jo and John were equally great.

I thorough enjoyed the one and a half hour spent listening to them, particularly because I myself is very much interested in public policies, and have kept up with the issues, among them alternative energy.

Sometimes I wish people would be a little more courteous and polite to one another. Life is already tough, why giving each other more grief?

I left the office and was in line at McDonald's quickly getting myself a burger to help me hold over until I can get home for dinner after classes. The lady in front of me was so rude to both the guy at the window taking her money and the guy at the window to give her her food. I kept hearing her telling the first guy "I don't want any mayo." Don't know what the deal was but she had to repeat herself a couple of times and her voice was rising by the minutes. Maybe the guy wasn't a native English speaker. Why can't she say the entire word mayonnaise? If I hadn't lived here long enough, I wouldn't have known what mayo is in the context of food, or any context for that matter. If you say something and the other person does not get it, after the second time, I would try to say it in a different way. If I used an abbreviation, I would say the whole word the second. Then when she got to the window to get her food, she also yelled at the person at this window. Her words: "I didn't want any mayo, I said no mayo, ...." The person then directed her to move forward and wait while he served the next customer. It was my turn, the guy gave me a shake instead of my burger. I calmly told him what I had order and he had no trouble giving me the correct order. Then I told him I don't understand why the lady in front of me was so rude and that I was sorry that she was rude to him. Maybe she overheard me because she had her window rolled down, or maybe I pulled up right next to her bumper, but she pulled forward out of the line to let me go on my merry way.

In class, seating was already done on the first day of class. Today, there was not enough seats in a particular row because someone had purposely ignored the seating chart and sat as they chose and wouldn't moved. Then time was up but the professor was still talking, people were closing their books and laptops, making all the noise. I don't like long winded people either but I was always willing to let people finish up with what they have to say. Grace period is 15 minutes, right? The professor was only like 2 or 3 minutes past.

Insurance by the miles is here MileMeter.com so theoratically you can finally have two cars: one for commuting and one for fun driving, or one truck for the macho man in you and one convertible for the sport car enthusiast in you.

Wow, here it is the last day of 2008, how did time fly so fast?

I have so much to be thankful for this year. Starting with the most significant change this year, I started law school in August. Not only did the Lord open the door for me to be able to work during the day and go to law school in the evening, He provided a study partner as well. Chuck and I took turn driving each week and while commuting, we discussed the materials we read, the things we heard in classes, almost everything law school related, and of course, politics as well. We are both committed born again Christians, both Republicans, and both starting law school mid-career in the IT industry, couldn't ask for a better like minded study partner.

The second most significant thing I must give thanks is that the Lord had provided and I have been to Israel (check my May entries). I've made it to Jerusalem. I stood on the temple mound. I stood looking toward Syria from the Golan Heights. I stood at the most northern point of Israel, looking toward Lebanon. I've been baptized in the Jordan river. I was on a boat cruising the sea of Galilee. I've prayed at the Western wall. I visited the tunnel under the Western wall, prayed at the point in the tunnel that is closest to the Holy of Holies. I walked and prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. I've walked the Via Dolorosa. I've walked through the old city and all its gates. I've visited the Knesset. I've been to the Israeli Supreme Court, even sat listening in on a case of prosecution of Hamas member. I've had my rental car towed in Tel Aviv, an experience not many first time visitors to Israel had.

Got to see my uncle who lived in Frankfurt, Germany, whom I have not seen since 1987 when he left Vietnam for Czechslovakia. Got to meet his wife and kids for the very first time.

And it goes without saying that I am tremendously thankful for my family, parents and brother. I am thankful that my dad has been doing well, no trip to the emergency room. Except for my dad who retired at the end of last year, everyone in the family has a job and doing well financially. I love my job, love what I am doing, and on top of that great boss and great colleagues.

Thank God I've been healthy. My allergy went away too, thanks to my mom for all her fervent prayers on my behalf. I ran the Dallas YMCA 8-mile Turkey Trot in 82 minutes. If it were not for the cramp in both of my legs, it would have been better results. I am taking magnesium supplement and hope that will help ease the cramp if not eliminating it. I should be able to post much better result for the half marathon this coming February.

The balance in my 401(k) dropped about 29% but that's expected. Anything that goes up has to eventually come down. This is the time to buy and I've scraped together as much cash as I can afford to buy, and buy, and buy some more of the stocks that folks are dumping. I am thankful that I still have plenty of time ahead of me for my retirement account value to go up before I need to withdraw.

My new year resolution for 2009:
1. Continue to focus and do well in law school.
2. Get back on the band wagon every time I fall off in memorizing Scriptures.
3. Train for and run the Cowtown half marathon in February and then go for a marathon either in 2010 or 2011.
4. Run the 2009 Dallas YMCA 8-mile Turkey Trot at faster pace, hopefully under 9 min/mile.
5. Saving up for the next car, which in all likelihood will be the X5.

Long term things I want to do here before going home to my Lord, Savior and Creator:

1. Speak Spanish fluently.
2. Get my private pilot license, first single engine VFR, and eventually multi-engine IFR.
3. Continue to practice my guitar, and hopefully I'll be able to play some classical pieces eventually.
4. Learn how to play the piano.
5. Read and write at least another language: French, German, Chinese or Russian.

Just finished watching and I have to say White, the middle of Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy "Three Colors" is one of my favorite movies of all time.

This is funny but this is serious.

I got me an IOGear GCS1782 KVMP switch today. Plugged it in and got my Mac mini up and running in no time but found out that my openSUSE box won't output to the DVI. Spent a couple hour searching the net until I found this simple fix.

A great article by the Texas Lawyer. I believe what can be taken from the ruling by the Texas Supreme Court is this: "the government cannot assume people are doing things bad, take away their children, and make them prove that they are not." The burden is on the state to provide sufficient evidence to prove that people are doing things badly enough to warrant removal of children from parents. Thank God for the justices on our Supreme Court. This goes back to before this past November election, when the Democrats running for the Texas Supreme Court ran an ad accusing the Republican justices of overturning the trial courts' decisions a majority of the time. The fact that the Supreme Court reversed the trial courts' decision a majority of the time is not bad in and of itself though that was exactly what the ad implied: undoing the will of the people as expressed through the juries. In this case thank God they did. It's hard enough to raise kids these days, we don't need anymore government intrusion unless the state can justify it with sufficient evidence.

So my first semester of law school was over as of last Wednesday night, when the Torts final exam ended at 10:30 pm. I was not so sure I could do it at the beginning of the semester, full time job and evening school. Hearing from a few part time evening students that I met, they all said it was manageable but one of them said by the time October was rolling around, he quit his job to concentrate on studying since he didn't have enough time with a full time job. Well, I am here to tell you that it is manageable, if you are discipline and stick to it. Don't have to worry too much about elaborate scheduling like I was told by some but as long as you keep up with the reading assignments, updating your outlines, and keep up with a study aid of your choice, week after week, you should be just fine. My study aid of choice is the Examples and Explanations series, recommended to me by Josh Andor, who made it to law review. I found the books to be thorough, very relevant and really help you understand the subject matters. Because my Torts professor chose to test us on a final exam that is an even mix of multiple choice questions, short answers, and long essay, I had to buy the Finals series to practice multiple choice for Torts but I imagine if the professor only do short answers or long essay, like my Contract professor, the Examples and Explanations would be sufficient.

It takes between one to four barrels of water to produce a single barrel of oil from oil shale, quite reasonable compare to 1,700 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. And one barrel of oil developed from oil shale will cost somewhere between $37 to $65, pretty reasonable. Also, the federal government, reads our tax dollars, doesn't need to subsidize oil shale development the same way it did for ethanol. As far as proven technology, a Brazil company has the technology. I say go for it the same way Thomas Edison developed the electric light bulb instead of sitting around waiting ...

The race for chairman of the RNC will be decided at the January meeting of the RNC. Former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele may seem to be a perfect candidate but take a look at this before you decide.

Watched on FoxNews the interview of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal during the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida. I think he would be a good match for Obama in four or eight years. Whenever asked about Sarah Palin in the context of 2012, he would say it's not important who the messenger is but it's the message that's important and gave examples of how he as governor has been able to implement conservative policies in the state of Louisiana. Pretty shrewd!

I've heard a lot about him from my friends who are Louisiana Young Republicans during his second run for the governorship of Louisiana. He was too nice and did not respond to negative ads in his first run. Lost the first time and learned his lesson and won the second time around. During the open primary, opponent was running ads attacking him for his Catholic faith in the northern part of Louisiana, where the majority of the voters are Protestant. That prompted me to search out and read his article where he expounded on his Catholic doctrinal beliefs. I found the man had true conviction in his faith and not just Christian in name only or worse, faith that is convenient for election like many of our politicians. More importantly, I as a Protestant found nothing really offensive but rather nodding my head a lot in agreement with what he had to say.

I would say Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin or another conservative Republican female candidate would be a good ticket in 2012 or 2016.

A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said: 'Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 yr. old and I'm pregnant again. I don't want kids so close together.'

So the doctor said: 'Ok, and what do you want me to do?'

She said: 'I want you to end my pregnancy, and I'm counting on your help with this.'

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the lady: 'I think I have a better solution for your problem. It's less dangerous for you too.'

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: 'You see, in order for you not to have to take care of 2 babies at the same time, let's kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we're going to kill one of them, it doesn't matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms.

The lady was horrified and said: 'No doctor! How terrible! It's a crime to kill a child!

'I agree', the doctor replied. 'But you seemed to be ok with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution. The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

Michella Obama, the next first lady of this country, was not proud of this country when in whole or in part it collectively

elected a black governor of a state that formerly had the capital of the Confederate,

appointed a black justice to the US Supreme Court,

appointed a five-star general as the chairman of the joint chief of staffs,

elected a black senator who is her own husband to the US Senate.

Only when the entire nation nominated her husband to be the candidate for the highest elected office in the land can she be satisfied, what does it say about her?

And please do not tell me a Harvard law school graduate in a public setting misspoke something like this.

The morning after, I pledge to accord president-elect Obama all the respect due the office of the president but will work with everything I've got to make sure he fails to implement any and every of his policy proposals to the maximum extent possible. And will keep track of what he promised during the campaign and what he's able to achieve while in office so we can have a record four years from now to compare.

You think it couldn't get worse but then it did. Obama started with no rap sheet, in the words of Joe Biden, first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright and clean. Then it seems Obama hasn't learned scandal 101: it's never the sin but the cover up that does you in. If you don't believe it, ask Republican president Richard M. Nixon about Watergates or Democrat Bill J. Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. So far, Obama claimed:

himself to be a natural born US citizen but refused to produce a certificate of birth

not to know that his very own beloved aunt is an illegal immigrant

not to know that his very own beloved aunt is a foreign national, and therefore it's illegal for him to take her campaign contributions, which leads me to question from how many other foreigners did he "unknowingly" receive campaign contributions.

Vietnamese has a saying that for every time a wrongful act is caught, there must have been at least ten that went unnoticed.

Very interesting article. It seems everyone from Joe Biden to Nicolas Sarkozy agrees that Obama is an empty suit.

I find it both amusing and hypocritical how these bleeding heart liberals always ready to help the poor with other people's money but never seem to be able to spare some of their own. Obama couldn't help out his beloved aunt and uncle who live in a rundown public housing estate in south Boston according to this article.

Joe Biden is on the record of having a total income of $2,450,042 from 1998 to 2007 who gave a total of $3,690 in the entire ten years. To put things in perspective, his charitable contributions for the entire 10 years is less than one third of mine in one year.

If you are a black guy, a Columbia and Harvard law school graduate, running with the novelty of being the first black president, against an opposition party candidate who is stuck with a very unpopular termed out lame duck incumbent, whose political brand is very much damaged, spending upward of $650 millions compare to $84 millions by your opponent, and only leading by 4 points in the poll, it's not so impressive, is it?

Check out this yard sign in east Texas:

Quoting secretary Williams, for the Democrats to say that domestic drilling won't make a difference for at least 10 years so we shouldn't do it is like for John F. Kennedy to say that space exploration won't help us putting a man on the moon until the end of the decade so we shouldn't be doing it. See how absurd that is? Take the time to think through every policy that these Dumbocrats are telling you.

Thanks to my buddy Jeff Turner, here is a great story:

"Once upon a time in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort. The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf. While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each." The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once again there were monkeys everywhere. Now you have a better understanding of how Wall Street works."

Regardless of what is being said about Collin Powell's endorsement of Obama, I believe it's as simple as a black man endorsing a first black candidate running for the highest elected office in the land. I am not defending general Powell by any means but I can imagine the kind of pressure he's under from all the leaders in the black community. My friends are calling him closet Democrat, traitor, deserter, ... but I took the time to remind my friends that until you are in his shoes, you shouldn't judge him too harshly, quoting Dale Carnegie, the author of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. Abraham Lincoln during the war between the states told people not to judge southerners too harshly because northerners put into southern's circumstance could very well behave exactly the same way.

With all the phone calls, emails and whatever other means employed to put pressure on him, maybe even pillow talks, he caved in. Yeah, maybe he's not that strong of a Christian to stand up for his pro life conviction and refuse to endorse a candidate who favors killing 1.2 million babies each year. It may be that he's not that committed a Republican. But he's only human. Until I stand in his shoes, I wouldn't want to be like Peter, telling Jesus: " ... even if everyone denies you, I go with you even to death ... " and then denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed.

Black folks are only hurting themselves if they continue to listen to all the lies Democrats are telling them. They should instead listen to folks like Bill Cosby and Wayne Perryman. Black families before 1968, before Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty used to have the rate of children born out of wedlock at parity with white folks. Black children used to grow up in loving two parents home. Black males did not comprise 40% of the incarcerated population. Black children used to fear God and poor folks depended on God's faithfulness and provision through His churches. Everything turned upside down when government took the place of God.

I've said it and will say it again. I feel really really sad but if Democrats want to continue to kill little unborn Democrats, it's their choice. All those babies will be in heaven with God. They just won't have the opportunity to be born, to grow up and become voting Democrats.

I keep hearing most small businesses do not make more than $250,000. I don't care. Fiscal conservative folks like me oppose Obama on a policy level. We just don't believe in robbing Paul and giving it to Peter is the right policy. Heck, I didn't escape communist Vietnam to come here to vote for a guy who wants to implement exactly the policy which I ran away from. When Arnold Schwarzenegger first came to the US in 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson was on TV. He didn't understand much English so his friend translated what LBJ said. After hearing it all, Arnold asked which political party LBJ represented. His friend told him Democrat. He's been voting for the other party ever since because all of the things LBJ wanted to do were the things he ran away from in Austria. There's nothing wrong with helping the poor but after the Social Security program, which is run by the government and realistically I will have no chance whatsoever to see that 12.4% of my income again, I am not inclined to have the government run any program whatsoever. I am all for private non profit charity organizations, especially faith based, helping the poor, the addicts, .... I am more than willing to give to private charity. I am however strongly oppose to the IRS taking money away from me by force. Additionally, rich Democrats like Joe Biden, Al Gore, ... have become famous for giving almost nothing to charity from their own pockets. They only like to take other people's money to help the poor. LBJ declared war on poverty in the 60s. If they had succeeded, we should have no more poor people with us. If they had not succeeded, why the hell do we continue. We should scrap the program altogether.

With all the color 4D sonogram devices, we can pretty much figure out if a baby is boy or girl sometimes after week 16 of pregnancy. But senator Obama refuses to protect a full term baby from being partial born, then the skull punctured, and brain sucked out, and finally killed. To realize how ridiculous it is, let's replace the word abortion with slavery in senator Obama's answer to the question at the last presidential debate: "I think that [slavery] is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on." Can you agree with that statement?

I thought senator McCain did pretty well last night in the debate. He hit Obama again and again and you could see that Obama spent half the time defending his record, especially on the pro-life "woman's health" issue, on the Joe the plumber tax and health care, on the ACORN, .... It's spectacular when senator McCain again and again praised Obama for his eloquence because it's obvious to everyone watching that Obama pretty much got nothing more than his eloquence.

I particularly, fundamentally and strongly disagree with senator Obama on the court standing up for fairness and justice when no one else does. That's not the job of unelected and therefore unaccountable judges. That should only be the job of the legislature, where legislators will have to face the electorate and answer for what they do each time they want to be elected. Not only that, judicial systems are not designed to address public policy issues because they cannot address all the different fact patterns but rather limited to the particular fact pattern of the particular case that has come before the court. Only the legislature can make policies that are broadly applicable to all fact patterns. Dicta are not precedence and stare decisis will do no good. Also, appellate court's decisions are effective retrospectively back to the original date of the events that took place that initiated the law suit. Law should not take effect retrospectively. Most legislation when passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor does not take effect until 90 days after the legislative session have adjourned. This is to allow the time for the public to become aware of the new law before charging folks with obeying them.

We turned in our first legal memo yesterday on a case of a child being injured when he trespassed on land and whether he has a valid cause of action, a viable law suit, against the land owner to recover damages, in the state of Minnesota. So that was common law torts, as governed by section 339 of Restatement Second of Torts.

Now we are moving on to the subject of our second memo, statutory issues. To start off, we have a little exercise on state statutes. I have two issues, mainly dealing with marriage license issuance in the state of Nevada and nepotism in the state of Wyoming. The professor didn't want us to get into the habit of using Westlaw or Lexis all the time. He specifically wanted us to use the actual code books in the library, or he will make us do it all over again. So I spent 10 minutes yesterday looking for relevant part of the Nevada code but couldn't find it. The Wyoming statute, the book contain the title I was looking for was missing from the shelf. Frustrating.

So I went online searching with Google and found the relevant statutes in a couple of minutes. Pulled up title 9 of the Wyoming statutes and title 11 of the Nevada statutes, search for nepotism and marriage respectively, and I got it. Now just go to the library, double check the books there to make sure I indeed look it up in the books because the professor said he can tell the difference between someone doing it online and using the books.

Reading all these tort cases in the area of comparative negligence, I can't help but get a sense that we want to allow people’s families to get some compensation even when folks did something negligence to contribute to their own death because of lack of knowledge. So, are we moving away from Darwinism, survival of the fittest then, and want to do as much as we can to protect every life because there is intrinsic value in every life, from conception to death?

So tomorrow and Tuesday are Teddy Bear Immunity days. If you buy a teddy bear, and put it on your desk, you are immune from being called upon by the professors. The money goes toward the summer internship fund which provides stipends for students who work as interns at non profit public policy institutes where they do not get paid $3K a week like law firms do. All the professors conspire together to make it maximum pressure this weekend. Our legal memo is due on Tuesday, Torts reading is 61 pages, Contracts is twenty-some pages, and on top of that you have to memorize as much of your outline as possible to prepare for Torts practice exam this coming Thursday, or Saturday morning if you so choose.