Looking back this past year, I thank God for He's been too good to me:

1. My faith.

2. My family: mom, dad and my younger brother.

3. Glad to be now in my 6th year with Nortel.

4. No traffic accident though I came close a few times, a crazy and fast driver that I am.

5. Elected chapter president of VPS Dallas.

6. Totally debt free.

7. Get to know so many new people and make many new friends.

Apparently a year has gone by and my new year resolution is still the same, sad huh:

1. Save up to have the 20% for my first house so that I don't have to worry about PMI.

2. Move up my time of coming to work earlier, like 08:00 or maybe even 07:30. That way, I can have time to work out everyday and then go to a lot of functions in the evening.

3. Play a few songs with my guitar, maybe even some classical pieces.

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

1. Get my private pilot license, first single engine VFR, and eventually multi-engine IFR.

2. Learn how to play the piano.

3. Speak Spanish fluently.

4. Read and write at least another language: German, Chinese or Russian.

Had our first VPS Dallas staff meeting on Tuesday night. We tentatively planned for 2006.

Did some home improvement on Wednesday before going to the credit union and also stopped by the bookstore. Borders had a really limitted selection of merchandize in their stores, at least the one on Arapaho and Coit. Don't know how they can compete with Barnes and Noble. I guess that's why Borders "merged" with Amazon.

Today, I picked up a set of photo albums, some picture frames from Costco and filled my tank before spending the rest of the afternoon doing some more home improvement.

I got around to going to the range and put about 200 rounds through my SigArms P229 .40 S&W today.

Christmas greetings with Psalm 32:11 from lieutenant governor David Dewhurst and greetings with Psalm 50:1 (King James) from Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs came in the mail yesterday.

Christmas greetings from senator Richard Burr of North Carolina and senator David Vitter of Louisiana came in the mail yesterday. Neither had a biblical verse.

Texas State senator Kenneth Armbrister has announced that he will not seek re-election. It would be great if we Republican can take that seat. Otherwise, it would be trouble if one of those amoral Democrat pick up the seat.

The Dallas GOP had their annual Christmas party at the Prestonwood Country Club last night, hosted by Geraldine "Tincy" Miller and her husband Vance. Everyone was signing the petition for judge Becky Miller, who was appointed to the 283rd district bench by governor Rick Perry on December 20th, after judge Vic Cunningham resigned that bench to run for the Dallas County District Attorney office.

Afterward I headed to Razoo for Amy's birthday celebration.

Saw Dan and Gretchen Jaworski last night and their one-month old little boy Reagan at the campaign kick-off reception of Ricky Grunden, who is running for State Representative District 63 at the home of Chad and Tammy Hennings. The seat is currently held by Mary Denny but she has decided not to run for re-election to spend more time with her family.

Christmas greetings from Florida senator Mel Martinez, Mrs. Kitty and the Martinez family came in the mail yesterday, quoting Psalm 145:3-4 (New Living Translation).

Also came in the mail was the politically correct holidays greetings from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science of my alma mater, the University of Texas at Dallas.

Our Vietnamese Evangelical Church of the Chistian and Missionary Alliance of Dallas/Fort Worth had our annual meeting this morning, or afternoon as it was after the worship service. Two of the board members were re-elected along with a new member.

Later, our church singles group went to the DSO "Angels Sing" 7-Elevent Christmas celebration tonight. Just as I was getting my valet parking ticket at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center downtown, I saw Donna Marchant and went to say hello. Later we ran into Matthew inside. Lindsay and little Kendall as well as Matthew's younger brother Kenny Jr. were also there for the concert. Apparently Matthew's dad, Kenny Marchant, was still up in Washington casting votes as the US House of Representatives was still in session. It was a great performance, including the reading of the Christmas story. It's so comforting to know in the midst of the culture war that the Christ is still celebrated during Christmas.

I went to my Krav Maga class this morning and then spent the afternoon posting the posters advertising the January 13th opening of the movie First Morning. Then got my haircut before heading downtown to the Dallas Arts Center for our annual VPS Dallas Christmas party. Shari, Dianne, Alisha and Justin of the Special Day Events Inc. did a terrific job decorating the room, providing us with everything we need for a great party.

After the Krav Maga class last night, one guy couldn't even hold a pen to write his name on the sign in sheet. We did a bunch of 2-minute drill of punching and kicking.

My set of Bocce balls arrived yesterday.

Former Republican state representative Talmadge Heflin of Houston has filed to run to regain the district 149 seat that he lost by 16 votes to Hubert Vo last cycle in 2004. It would be a very interesting re-match.

The Dallas County Young Republicans had their Christmas party tonight at the Nero's Italian restaurant. I can only stopped by for a little bit before I had to take off to get to Paul and Sharon's house in Frisco.

Posted my question in our Richardson Nortel General newsgroup and found my answer to the problem I have with Nortel VPN client. It's the Norton Antivirus Internet Worm protection that is the culprit, blocking incoming VPN connection, and not my Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I disabled that and everything worked like a charm.

The Christmas potluck party at the home of County Criminal Court No. 11 judge Dianne Jones turned out real well. Got to say hello and chatted a little bit with ChiChi, mayor Joe Chow's fiancee, a real estate investment manager. Also learned a few things from Josie Orosco, southwest executive director of the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce - Camara de Comercio Mexico-E.U. (that's Estados Unidos, not European Union).

I also met a few new candidates: Chrissi W. Gumbert is running for County Criminal Court No. 6, Misty Neal running against incumbent judge Manny Alvarez of the Criminal District Court No. 5, Toby Shook running for District Attorney.

I've been a supporter of Focus on the Family for a while but this year is the first time I am getting a Christmas card from Dr. James and Mrs. Shirley Dobson. Not that I am complaining but apparantly it's a non-profit organization and there's no way it could be compared with political campaign.

I finished listening to the audio book Ten Minutes from Normal by Karen Hughes on the way to Austin yesterday and on the way back today. Great book with what's going on behind the scene and also the insight into the decision she made to move her family back to Austin 18 months into president Bush's first term. I and my brother were going to stop by Jeffrey's for dinner but it was too late when we got there. The restaurant was already close. I knew Bennigan's opens late but didn't see any along the way back to the hotel so we ended up getting something at IHOP instead.

We woke up, checked out of the hotel, and went to church. Had lunch at church after the worship, hanging out and chatting with the young adults before heading over to the governor's mansion for the Christmas holiday open house. We got there early and had no trouble finding a parking spot on 10th street right at the corner of Colorado street. Inside, I was so clumsy that while taking the picture with the governor and Mrs. Perry, I brushed against the Christmas tree and caused one of the ornaments to drop to the floor. It was a Santa Claus figure made of clay but thank God it didn't break. It was embarrassing but Mrs. Perry was so kind and gracious, told me not to worry about it at all. Got to meet Jane Burch's mom, sister and brother-in-law. We went outside, took some pictures around the water fountain in the back and some more pictures at the small wooden model of the mansion on the lawn. We then took off and went back to Hillsborough and shopped at the Prime Outlet Mall there for some dress shirts, pants and belts before finally made it home.

Came by the For the Love of the Lake office and then followed Mr. Joe Sims out to congressman Pete Sessions' section of the lakeshore and spruced it up. The majority of trash are plastic and glass bottles, that's nothing unusual. However, guess what is the second most frequently found pieces, tennis balls. In addition, I found one basketball, and lots of bottle caps. There's no way we can spend time to pick up all the foam pieces, otherwise we will need to spend 2 days instead of 2 hours for that section of the lakeshore.

This UnitedMicro custom build 15.4inch notebook, with Intel Graphics Media 128MB, DDR2-533MHz MEMORY, DUAL DVD-RW costs $592. When adding the components below it totals to $1655. I predict that after Christmas, this will drop at least $100, specifically the CPU. By then, I'll pay the same amount and get better stuff, preferably a hard drive that is bigger than 80Gb. Let's see if I will be correct.

CPU $721	Intel Mobile M 780 2.26GHz 533MHz 2MB
Memory $152	1GB DDR400 PC3200 200 pin SO-DIMM
Hard Drives $154	TOSHIBA 80GB 16MB 9.5MM 5400RPM Notebook Drive
Wireless Networking $36	INTEL 802.11abg Wireless MiniPCI Card

Last night, I decided against going to the Dallas County North Republican club Christmas party at Mickey Kennedy's house, and the reception for judge Jerry Lewis, judge of the Collin County Court at Law No. 2, in downtown Dallas.

I could have worked from home today and not having to drive through icy roads and bridges had I taken care of replacing the old Linksys BEFSR41 EtherFast® Cable/DSL router that went dead a month ago with another Nortel VPN compatible router. No, I threw in one of the old incompatible routers I had and thus had no access to Nortel internal network and so I came in today.

The road only got worse this morning and so I didn't make it to the Park Cities Republican Women luncheon today with South Dakota senator John Thune at the Dallas Country Club either.

The US Chamber of Commerce hosted the first annual Thank You reception for the congressional and senatorial district staffers last night at the Blue Mesa Grill in Dallas. Peter Havel, the executive director for the southwest and south central regions did a great job organizing the event.

Had an opportunity to chat with Kathy and Harlan Crow, who graciously hosted Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, who is running for Comptroller, last night in their library. Both Kathy and Harlan were such nice and down to earth people. Kathy saw the Carter Bloodcare 2-gallon pin on my lapel so she asked me about it and we started the conversation talking about blood donation. I talked with Harlan about history. He's such a history buff, has in his collection everything from the original copy of the executive order with which president Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, declaring martial law to the cup of the last Russian tsar Nicholas II.

Headed over to the Adam's Mark for the Christmas holiday mixer by the Greater Dallas Asian Chamber. The turnout weren't anywhere near the previous years and we found out later the cause was a major closing of the highways.

The Christmas card from the governor's campaign came in the mail yesterday, with the last phrase of Nehemiah 8:10 as the Bible verse: ... the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Christmas greetings from senator John Thune of South Dakota also came in the mail yesterday, Bible verse taken from Micah 6:8.

We had a really heated exchange during the board's meeting yesterday, after Sunday service and before we went over to the Mar Thoma church to negotiate and finally agreed to acquire the property at 1715 SW 3rd Street, Grand Prairie, TX 75051.

We went out to Bangkok City, down by Yale and Greenville, to celebrate Teresa's birthday last night.

Caroline emailed our youth group about this End of the Spear movie, a good one to go see.

I had fun at the Richardson Christmas parade this morning even though it started late out of the Richardson Square Mall parking lot and I had to take off at 10:00 to make it to my Krav Maga class at 11:00.

Had a chance to chat with District 66 State Representative Brian McCall about his Ph.D. research last night at the Golden Corridor Republican Women Christmas party at the home of Republican National Committeewoman Denise and her husband Tim McNamara. I first met representative McCall during the legislative session earlier this year in his office down in Austin. He's a great listener, and a very sharp guy, who asked intelligent questions and mastered the subject very quickly, whatever the topic of the conversation or discussion maybe.

The White House Christmas card with greetings from president George W. and Mrs. Laura Bush came in the mail yesterday, mailed from the western White House in Crawford, Texas. This year scripture is Psalm 28:7 (RSV).

We talked about weapons, level of force, gun safety, ... and got to shoot at the Carrollton PD gun range last night.

Notable American of Vietnamese descent, Julie Nguyen Brown, elected to Brown University Board of Trustees.

My brother told me last night that there's talk of Dat Nguyen, Dallas Cowboys #59, is going to retire after this season. I thought he's been playing only like 4 or 5 years but it has actually been about 7 years. That would be kind of sad because the Cowboys has not been to a Super Bowl for all those 7 years.

Power will corrupt and absolute power will corrupt absolutely. I bet you more likely than not that congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, representing the 50th California congressional district, is not in a small group with his church, has no one to hold him accountable on a weekly or monthly basis.

Watching the classic Grace Kelly in her best in To Catch A Thief last night, even better than High Society. I guess I am bitten by the same bug with all the other guys, fascinated with the one and only Grace Kelly.

I don't get all these stories of people being trampled waiting in line to shop on black Friday. I mean, if you are in your 70s or older, why don't you just stay home and go shopping later. The cost of medical care if you get injured is much more than whatever savings you may get. There's more than one way to live frugally.

I finally found all my receipts and faxed them today along with my claim form to the administrator of my Health Saving Account for reimbursement.

I finally got to watch Meet the Fockers last night and really enjoyed it. Teri Polo was just amazingly beautiful in that movie.

The city of Carrollton has a budget of $69 million with a population of 116,700 people. It roughly spends about $596 per year per resident. The city of Farmers Branch ranked the best in cost for municipal services per household, with cost including property tax, sales tax, water, sewer, drainage and sanitation charges. Carrollton is ranked number #5 behind Farmers Branch, Addison, Plano and Frisco, in that order.

Stopped by Presbyterian of Plano to see Paul and Sharon, their boy Ethan and new born daughter Elia yesterday.

Met judge Jane Boyle of the US Federal District Court for the Northern Texas District today at the judicial investiture of County Criminal Court No. 1 judge Ada Brown, Criminal District Court No. 6 judge Danny Clancy, and Criminal District Court No. 7 judge Livia Liu at the Belo Mansion.

We heard from Sgt. Miller about the history of SWAT in general, and the Carrollton Police SWAT team in particular, learned about the weapons and gears they carry, and then saw demonstration from his team. It was freezing cold last night outside at the Carrollton PD gun range but it wasn't all that bad because we didn't stay outside too long.

What a great comeback the Dallas Cowboys had against the Philadelphia Eagles tonight. We were all so despondent until the last four minutes of the game!

I haven't been to Kristine and Tim's new house until today when Dee Dee and a whole bunch of their friends organized a babyshower for mom and dad to be. On top of everything else, I love their hardwood floor. It's interesting that they have the same floor layout and design as Chris and Mylinh.

Congressman Pete Sessions had a great cowboys style dinner and dance tonight at the Gilley's Dallas.

At last night Carrollton Police Academy, we learned about police pursuit and the Stinger spike and stop stick, both are tire deflation device. Though Carrollton police has yet to adopt the PIT maneuver, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol are using it to effectively and safely stop cars that refuse to stop.

Here are the results for the proposed constitutional amendments election yesterday in Texas. Great for the traditional family.

The California Highway Patrol got great help from four of the big rigs this morning in stopping that chase on the northbound lanes of I-5. I was gladly watching that guy being sandwiched in.

This schedule of working out early in the morning before I go to the office is really working out nicely for me. I can just get off work and go anywhere I want, or stuck at work for that matter, and not worry about whether I can put in that necessary workout session for that day.

The State Department today released its 7th Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. Vietnam is one of eight "Countries of Particular Concern" - along with Burma, China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan.

We welcome Heather Kline, our newest Carrollton Library Advisory Board member tonight. The city is still in search for a new library director, pay is 80K to 100K, so check it out if you have a Master in Library Science and at least 10 years of experience.

I thought this tidbit of information was interesting: Jack Carter, a Democrat from Nevada and son of former US president Jimmy Carter, is running against Senator John Ensign (R-NV).

Great reception for judge Bruce Woody with congressman Pete Sessions as the keynote speaker at the home of O.B. & Rosella Hutchison.

How better to succeed other than to imitate successful people? How do you learn a language? By pretty much listening and imitating speaking it. How do you learn to play a musical instrument? By listening and imitating playing it. So, you hear stories after stories of the successful folks, who start their days early in the morning with exercise? Well, I am proud of myself for having been able to execute my plan this week though the planning part has gone on longer than that. I woke sometimes between 7:00 and 7:30 yesterday, got on the treadmill and put in the continuous 15 minutes of raised heart rate, plus the warm up and cool down. Today, I have a conference call at 8:00 at work so I woke up at 6:30 and got on the treadmill, did the same thing. Eventually, I hope to make it a regular daily routine to wake up 6:00, exercise, shower, have my quiet time with God in His Word and prayer and be at work around 8:00. The tough part is all these meetings, parties and receptions that kept me up later than I like. I would really like 8 hours of sleep but that would put my bedtime at 10:00, almost impossible to do but I am going to try.

The Texas Women's Initiative put on a great reception at the Belo last night. The honorees included Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, Elizabeth Ames Jones, chairman of the Railroad Commission, the Texas 5th Court of Appeals chief justice Linda Thomas, and State Representative Linda Harper-Brown.

We learned about Carrollton Police Mobile Command Center as well as Crisis Negotiation at the Carrollton Citizen Police Academy class last tonight. We also had a couple practice sessions, with one person as primary negotiator and another as secondary negotiator, with the officers playing the bad guy and hostage, and also coaching us.

I sat in and listened to what was being said at the forum organized by the UTD Texas Center today. Terry Stutz of the Dallas Morning News was a really leftwing guy, Janet Elliott of the Houston Chronicles was better but I thought that W. Gardner Selby of the Austin American-Statesman was the best of the three.

We heard from Texas House speaker Tom Craddick and the famous Texan Boone Pickens, who beside the oil ventures that made him famous, also contributed 10 millions dollars to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, at the Maverick PAC of Texas reception tonight at the home of Katherine and Harlan Crow. The main house itself is 20,000 square feet. The addition on the right of the house where the reception took place tonight is 15,000 square feet, beautifully constructed and decorated mightily fine. There's another 15,000 square feet on the left side of the house also. How about that for a house, 50,000 square feet sitting on a 7 to 8 acres of land smack in the middle of Highland Park.

I enjoyed the lunch meeting with the Lewisville Area Republican Club at Abuelo's yesterday. Met Denton county commissioner Bobbie J. Mitchell and also learned all about the court system in Denton county with District Attorney Bruce Isaacks. His wife Vicki Issaacks is judge of the 393rd District Court so they arranged for him not to try any criminal case in her court but rather in the five other criminal courts in the county and she taking on the load of most the family cases.

Brought my Tacoma in to the dealer for them to take care of the SSC 50J Front Suspension Lower Ball Joint Safety Recall. It took the dealer 3 hours to get it done. Even though I don't have to pay anything, I saw that they are billing Toyota around $400.

Collin County District Attorney John R. Roach, running for the 296th District Court, had his reception last night at the Bavarian Grill in Plano. It was a great idea because of all the available parking. I was only able to stopped in for a few minutes and then run for the Dallas County Young Republican board meeting conference call before heading over to Paul & Sharon's house for our weekly small group get together.

Jim Parks, executive director of the North Texas Municipal Water District addressed the Dallas County North Republican Club tonight regarding long term planning for our water needs. According to Jim, we need more representation both on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Natural Resources Committee. Currently, the north Texas region has over 5 millions people, roughly 25% of the 21 millions Texas population, but we have only 1 in 11 state senators on the Senate side, senator Craig Estes, and 1 in 9 state representatives on the House side, state representative Charlie Geren. The opportunity is there, at least on the Senate side since senator Todd Staples is running for the Agriculture Commissioner seat and senator Gonzales Barrientos is not running for re-election.

Got a ride to the Frontiers of Flight Museum with Randy and Karen today for the Heritage Alliance fundraising luncheon.

Got some good BBQ at the reception for constable Mike Gothard at the Atrium in the Garland Granville Arts Center before heading to the Carrollton Citizen Police Academy tonight.

I flew into sunny 65°F Burbank Bob Hope Airport (BUR) late Friday for a meeting over the weekend. The weather remained beatiful throughout the weekend except for a barely noticeable sprinkling early on Sunday morning so everyone was like "What?" when the pilot announced shortly after we took off from John Wayne Airport (SNA) yesterday that it was 48°F in Dallas, consider it was 77°F when I left on Friday.

It was a great reception Dallas County Court at Law No. 4 judge Bruce Woody and his wife had yesterday at the home of Bill and Minnie Caruth. The house is beautiful, sitting on a sprawling piece of real estate right smack in the middle of University Park. Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson was one of the speakers. He's a Marine who volunteered for service in Vietnam. He himself is the fourth generation in his family who has served in the major conflicts this country has seen, all of them oversea with the exception of the war between the states. His son Travis, who is a Marine Lieutenant currently serving in Iraq, make it the fifth generation of his family. Retired Air Force Colonel Ken Cordier, who was shot down in Vietnam, was another speaker. Bruce himself was B-52D pilot serving in Southeast Asia from 1971 to 1976.

Today, we are going to Chettinaad Palace for lunch today to celebrate Randy birthday.

I like the movie Born Yesterday, especially blondie Judy Holiday. I just love these old movies, not much violence, foul language or explicit sexual acts.

Bentley Nettles is the third Republican candidate who is also seeking the Republican nomination in the 17th congressional district race.

We learned a lot about and also saw demonstration of the Carrollton K-9 unit. Both of the dogs are Belgium Malinois and were imported from Europe. Dog breeding is a science over there. The two officers handling them using commands in German. I also learned that Bloodhounds are the best tracking dogs.

The Virginia Governor race between Republican Jerry Kilgore and Democrat Tim Kaine is an absolute deadheat.

I watched the restored movie Vertigo last night. It's the kind of movie that is without violence and profane language, great cast, especially blondie Kim Novak, and fairly good story.

My company today announced that Mike Zafirovski, 51, will succeed Bill Owens, 65, as president and CEO on November 15th.

Tucker Anderson and Van Taylor will seek the Republican nomination to oust Democrat Chet Edwards for the Texas 17th Congressional District House seat. This time, hopefully we have the lessons learned from 2004 when then Texas House Representative Arlene Wohlgemuth challenged but lost to Edwards because of the massive amount of money poured in at the last minutes by the DNC.

I distributed all of the yard signs for the marriage amendment I picked up yesterday from Dallas County GOP headquarters as well as passing out the voter guides from the Free Market Foundation for the upcoming November 8th election with a total of nine proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution.

We had a grassroot training at the Dallas GOP headquarters from 9:00 to 12:00. We heard from Denise McNamara, Bobby Eberle, Gina Parker, pastor Mark Gonzales, and SREC 16 committeewoman Chris Davis. I got yard signs for the upcoming proposed constitutional amendment.

When that's done, I headed over to the Garland Asian American Festival, continue to collect signatures for a few friends to get their names on the ballot.

I am looking forward to the Plano Republican Women dinner tonight, where Peter Roussel will be our keynote speaker. Peter Roussel served two rounds in the White House, first as Staff Assistant to President Ford (1974-1976) and then as a Special Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary to President Reagan (1981-1987).

According to this online newspaper in Vietnamese, there was an assassination attempt on the life of former prime minister Vo Van Kiet of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Apparently it's a power struggle between the hardliners, most of whom are northerners, and the reformers, most of whom are southerners, within the Vietnamese Communist Party. It is reported that the former prime minister is in ICU at a hospital in Saigon and being treated by a French doctor named Jacques Frank for fear of pressure on Vietnamese doctors to finish him up. It also reported that the reformers appears to have an edge at the upcoming national party congress.

It was a great "You Earn What You Learn: Thriving as a Young Professional" lunch and learn session with Mike Cox, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Judge Tom Fuller's reception tonight was great. Too bad I couldn't stay long because of the Carrollton Citizen Police Academy, at which we got to dust and lift fingerprints tonight.

Also, I was glad to hear that finally someone steps up to run against Denise Garcia. Toni Sheehan will be running for the 303rd Family District Court.

I enjoyed the Stephen Philbin Awards Luncheon organized by the Media Relation Committee of the Dallas Bar Association today with secretary James A. Baker III as keynote speaker.

State representative Dan Branch was the MC at the reception Kenny had last night at the Melrose. We heard from Senator John Cornyn, who also had his reception there last night, right after Kenny's. We heard also from the senior senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and attorney generel Greg Abbot. Kenny had to stay late in Washington, D.C. for the vote on H.R. 3893, which finally passed 212-210 in the House close to 3:00 pm.

I spent a few hours today walking in Collin County for county commissioner Jerry Hoagland who is running for re-election and Karl Voisgtberger, who is running for County Chair since Rick Neudorff is running for county judge.

The weather has turned chillier today, 55° instead of the 61° yesterday. Hopefully it will be in the 60s with sunshine and clear blue sky tomorrow for the TX-OU Red River shoot out game at the SBC Cotton Bowl.

There were about 15 people outside Dallas Union Station tonight protesting Karl Rove at the reception the Dallas GOP has in honor of the "architect."

Kenn George was the speaker tonight at our monthly Dallas County Young Republicans club meeting.

In the Carrollton Citizen Police Academy class tonight, we discussed DWI, all the different sobriety tests, and everything related to driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

My alarm clock is set to KLIF 570 AM so I was waking up this morning hearing the president nominate Harriet Miers, his choice to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. She is 60 so I was a little surprise and in the natural order of things, I don't expect her to outlast John Roberts. Also, it's my gut instincts plus my observations so far, I trust president George W. Bush to do the right thing. In his nominating speech, he said that "Harriet Miers will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench." That is exactly what he campaigned on and he has delivered that. Only time will tell whether these nominees, who have the most loyal friend in the president, will in turn be a loyal friend to the president. So far I have seen none of those he trusted has betrayed him, except for a couple of the cabinet secretaries who have said a few things after they left their post with his administration. Afterall, God is sovereign and clean, confirmable and saying all the right things at the right time nominee like John Roberts does not come around that very often. And with the senior senator from Texas, senator Kay Bailey Hutchison already goes to bat for her, I believe this nominee will be confirmed sooner rather than later.

I did not know that State Representative Bill Keffer can sing. Got to hear him sang this afternoon at the 2nd annual rock and roll bash he has at the home of Reena and James Morris, right on the shore of White Rock Lake. Got to chat briefly with state senator Bob Deuell before I had to take off and headed over to Amy's place for our upcoming VPS academic challenge project meeting.

I've had a long and busy but productive Saturday. The Northern Dallas Pachyderm nominating committee met for breakfast and prepare the slate of officers for next year.

Leaving that, I went home and together with my brother ran to Euless to meet up with Larry and the three of us helped brought Steve's fridge to the appliance shop across from Steve's old shop in Keller for repair. Afterward, the three of us then went to Arlington to help Vivian moved. I and my brother then went shopping for a little bit at Costco.

If you ask me, this is also the perfect time to go shopping for summer clothes, just like it's the perfect to go shopping for ski gears at the beginning of summer. I went to Dillard's and got my brother and myself a few good shorts and short sleeve shirts.

I barely had time just to get home, changed and and headed over to the Metrocrest Republican club annual spaghetti hoe down. We heard from State Representative Jim Jackson, and County Commissioner Maurine Dickey as well as all the candidates for the upcoming 2006 primary and general elections. Got to meet judge Livia Liu, who was appointed by the governor to the newly created Criminal District Court No. 7 a little over a week ago; at the same time the governor also appointed judge Danny Clancy to the newly created Criminal District Court No. 6. Before the appointment, judge Danny Clancy was going to run for the 195th Criminal District Court, the seat that is vacating by retiring judge John Nelms. County Criminal Court No. 11 judge Dianne Kathryn Jones since then has announced that she will run for the 195th bench.

I have endorsed Cynthia Figueroa Calhoun for re-election to the Dallas County Clerk office. However, on the Dallas County Constable Precinct 3 race, I, like many others, am still carefully considering all four Republican candidates: Ben Adamcik, Mike Orozco, Vince Zubras, and Ray Skinner.

This is what you get once you start to go down the slippery slope of defining marriage is anything other than the holy union between one man and one woman. Victor de Bruijn (46) got his civil union with two girls, Bianca (31) and Mirjam (35).

I've heard that you can get a grand jury to indict even a banana so it's nothing new that the Travis County DA had one single vague indictment against House majority leader Tom DeLay. If you know Texas, you know Travis County, the bastion of liberalism, where this Ronnie Earle comes from. Even if it's serious, an indictment is nothing more than probable cause. One is innocent until proven guilty as far as criminal proceeding is concerned but politically, you can go up in smoke the way they had it with Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles.

We went out for lunch at the new Genghis Grill location in Plano to celebrate Duc's birthday today. Food was good and we saw the franchise applications they had at the counter so we were talking about the franchising idea. It does not look to be a lot of work since it's Mongolian barbeque and there's not really a need for a real cook.

The Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce mixer went pretty well tonight. I am going to continue to come whatever chance I get to brush up on my Spanish, or at least that's the intention.

I told officer Shawn Henderson I had to take off an hour early from the Carrollton Citizen Policy Academy to go visit my friend. She's got a terrible case of bacteria infection in her bloodstream and the bacteria damaged one of her heart valves. Strong antibiotics didn't help so the doctors had to perform surgery to replace the valve with a merchanical one. She's woken up and are recovering fine, praise God.

I had fun at our banquet last night and also the after party afterward. The fashion show by Lysabelle was a great hit with the audience.

By now, Katie Luong, Victor Vu, Philip Silverman, Van Pham and Vu Tran should be back home safe and sound. The feedback so far has been great both with the five short films: 1) Waltz, 2) Color Blind, 3) Yellow Bird, 4) A Soul Apart, 5) From There to Here, and our full length feature film, First Morning, which was a great movie, though intensely sad.

Picked up the LC-X5 yesterday, put the lense in and tested fine. I had to get out of the auditorium because they had another event going Friday night so I didn't worry about the particular of the projected image size until this morning, found out that they didn't do the ratio correctly between the throw and the width of the screen and didn't give me the correct lense. I'll talk to Clayton or Dave about that on Monday. Other than that, the film festival went well today. Just a quick change before heading over to Westin Park Central for the fundraising banquet tonight for the Katrine and Rita hurricane victims.

Being an American of Vietnamese descent myself, joking between close friends about my Vietnamese accent or any other aspect of my heritage is fine in private but as councilman Harry Krebs himself admitted in this article, saying it in a public and televised session of a city council meeting is a very dumb thing, especially to someone who is in an argument with you.

Instead of doing our VPAC radio show tonight, we dedicated the slot to promote our film festival this Saturday, September 24th at the Lone Star auditorium on UTA campus during the day and the banquet to raise fund for hurricane Katrina victims at Westin Park Central at night.

FedEx overnight a cashier's check to Sabina with DeWitt Stern of California to pay for the premium of a short term rental equipment replacement insurance policy.

Dallas County Republican Party chairman Nate Crain announced at the executive meeting tonight that he will not run for re-election.

Clayton Turnbow recommended the Eiki LC-XT3 projector for our VPS Film Festival this coming Saturday. I wanted something a little more affordable and he recommends either the Eiki LC-X5 or the Eiki LC-X4, both of which are much easier to set up and troubleshoot than the rest of the available projectors.

All the guys with wives and small kids picked up and left the party when the Cowboys were leading the Redskins 13 to 0 with a little over 5 minutes on the clock. One of the guys said it's possible for the Redskins to come back and win 14-13. It happened just like that. Sad, sad, sad.

I had fun at Sang's birthday tonight. Got to see Navin, Sang's boyfriend and his son Aaron for the first time, both of Sang's roommates, Amanda and Carolyn, and many of her friends, from church and small groups. I first met Carolyn at Taylor and Henry's wedding last November but I only met Amanda for the first time today.

Texas has become such a strong Republican state that basically, if you win the Republican primary in March, you win the statewide office in November. This is only sure for statewide office, not in certain county like Travis or Harris or Dallas County for that matter. Thus, you see more and more battles are being fought among Republicans in the primary. Let's try to keep track of who is running for what:

1. State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn (Rylander), mother of White House spokeman Scott McClellan, is running against incumbent governor Rick Perry.

2. State Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs is running for the seat vacated by the loud mouth grandma State Comptroller.

3. State senator Todd Staples (SD3) is running for the seat vacated by Susan Combs.

4. State representative Terry Keel (LD47) is running against Charles Holcolm for place 8 on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Did you know that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has become the fourth-largest voting shareholder in News Corp., the parent company of Fox News. Also, Viet Dinh, Georgetown law professor joined the Board of Directors in April of 2003.

The Dallas County Young Republican elected a new slate of officers last night at our monthly meeting at the Dallas County GOP headquarter.

Judge Marilea W. Lewis of the 330th Family District Court spoke at last night monthly meeting of the Metrocrest Republican club on all the things that passed through the legislature this year. Most are good, though it was the joke that you should lock up your daughters and your livestocks because the legislature is in session or that no life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Sibling can now sue for access to other sibling. The Family Code was modified to take into account our military deployment of moms and dads, to put limitations on CPS to hasten to provide a safe, secured and stable environment for the child as soon as possible after the child is removed from the family, to admonish family violence victims the right to a protective order, to clarify that parental obligation to support a child does not stop even if the parental rights was terminated, ....

The statistic are alarming. Divorce rate is 52% in Dallas County compare to 51% nationwide. Less than one-third of our children are being raised in what would be considered traditional family, committed loving mom and dad.

Among a few other things I learned was that in case of child support and spousal maintenance, (we don't have alimony in Texas) you do not have homestead exception under the new federal bankruptcy bill that has just been passed and signed into law, ie. your house is not beyond the reach of the collection agency.

Carrollton Citizens Police Academy, we got to try out both the radar and the LIDAR. Officer Craig DeCarlo said that if the red dot was aiming at the front license plate, most of the laser detectors out there will not detect it. Also, a patrol car is now equipped with radar that can detect speed from vehicle travels in any direction, same or opposite direction, coming toward or going away from the patrol car.

I do speak out when the Republican elected officials are wrong. The city of Carrollton, with a Republican mayor and all 7 Republican councilmembers, is going to raise property tax on the residents. Now, I don't have a problem of giving pay raises to our police and firefighters, but I have problem with other spendings. These are hard times and I don't believe the government should take away anymore of working moms' and dads' disposable income.

The DFWAACC banquet tonight was great. No major hiccup. Got to host Richardson Police chief Larry Zacharias and his wife Donna, Richardson Councilman Bob Townsend, Garland Councilmen Barbara Chick and Harry Hickey at my table.

Stopped by the Westin Galleria for the rehearsal of the DFWAACC 5th annual banquet after work today.

Those who advocate public transportation and total dependence upon the government to provide transportation should look at New Orleans. Those who had cars and fled, they survive. Those who did not ended up dying for lack of ventilation in the Superdome. That's not counting the thousands who drowned. It's a wake up call for you next time you go to the poll to choose your mayor, consider what incompetent Democratic mayor of New Orleans C Ray Nagin failed to do, utilize 150 buses he had at his disposal to evacuate people once the levee was breached.

Dan Leal of the Children's Advocacy Center for Denton County was the speaker at the Denton County GOP Women's club luncheon today. The fact that the luncheon was held at Abuelo's, my favorite restaurant and that it only took about 20 minutes on president George Bush Turnpike can only help to motivate me driving across town for lunch.

This article articulates exactly what I said in my post here a few days ago.

I learned quite a few things about the Carrollton PD tonight at the first Carrollton Citizen Police Academy, one of them being the dramatic drop in the number of recruits they have experienced since 9/11.

More partying at Steve & Hannah's pool party today.

Our church's family camp went great. Everyone loves the facilities at Three Mountain Retreat. Stan and Linda were just so nice, and Cliff, Sheila, Chris, David and Stephanie as well.

Just now saw the news about chief justice William H. Rehnquist's death yesterday. That would only complicate the nomination of judge John Roberts but at the same time it is proven again that ultimately God is in control. The rumors had it that the chief justice was doing president Bush a favor by waiting for judge Roberts to be confirmed before announcing his retirement. As of now, that's not going to be the case.

The president said that we will help rebuilding the community, not New Orleans necessarily. Maybe the Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert has a point there.

Maybe the gun control nuts can learn a thing or two from what Thomas Jefferson quoted Cesare Beccaria in his The Commonplace Book: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

Bill O'Reilly is saying exactly what I have thought since yesterday, that things would have been much better had Rudy Giuliani been mayor of New Orleans instead of Ray Nagin. And the governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco too, I know she's a Democrat and I bet you the mayor is also. National Guard should have been sent in massive number on Tuesday morning.

The news is that former Democratic Georgia governor and US Senator Zell Miller has joined governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina and governor Rick Perry of Texas to endorse Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell for governor.

Sat in the briefing this morning at the Tower Club, hosted by Dallas city councilman Bill Blayes and the Dallas Protocol. It was about the trade corridor, NAFTA, and the I-69 project creating a highway going from the Mexico border to the Canadian border.

Stopped by Browning Trophies to put in the order for a trophy and a whole bunch of medals for our church's family camp.

The new Yahoo! Messenger with Voice is pretty decent. I called and talked to my highschool buddy in Saigon yesterday and the quality was quite satisfactory.

I enjoy listening to Conversations with Rabbi Small by Harry Kemelman.

If you are like me new to airplane-for-sale listings:

TTAF stands for Total Time Air Frame, the same as AFTT, which stands for Airframe Total Time.
TSTOH stands for Time Since Top Overhaul.
TSMOH stands for Time Since Major Overhaul.
TBO stands for To Be Overhauled.

A great website I Will Worship I saw on one of the song sheets the band had this past Sunday.

The luncheon honoring State Representative Linda Harper-Brown at the Las Colinas Country Club was originally scheduled at 11:30 but it was moved to 12:30. When they began serving the food at 12:50, I was starving so the fajitas tasted really good. I had an appointment with my orthodontist, Dr. Joseph Ainsworth, at 13:30 so I didn't get to stay and listen to the keynote speaker, senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Finally I finished rebuilding my Windows XP box, now with 1.5Gb of memory installed and a good PVR/Video Capture Card installed as well.

Went to West Village for dinner and then a movie but we found out that the Internal Affairs is sold out at The Magnolia so we went to the Starbuck after dinner instead.

We all know that Microsoft Internet Explorer will hang and cause your system to become unstable if you set the cache too big. In the exhilaration of having my brand new 160Gb drive, I forgot and made the mistake. I am happy to report that it's been corrected.

It appears that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU - Christlich-Demokratische Union) party chair Angela Merkel, born Angela Dorothea Kasner, July 17th, 1954 in East Germany, is poised to seriously challenge incumbent chancellor Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder in the upcoming September 18th, 2005 German federal election.

If you are having trouble with Partition Magic 8.0, error #27 cannot lock drive, first shutdown all applications, including those in the task tray. Then get a command window, run chkdsk /f, answer yes to unmount volume and if applicable, no to running chkdsk upon reboot. Wait like about 3 minutes for all the file handles to be released, then run chkdsk /f one more time. The second time, chkdsk should run without the question about running upon reboot. Now, you are reading to run Partition Magic again.

Finally I found time to take a stroll through the new IKEA store opened a few weeks ago in Frisco.

Benigno Aquino Jr. said it's better to die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life. However, my associate pastor said it's impossible to die a meaningful death unless you have lived a meaningful life; and for Christians, it's living life according to the purpose for which God created you as he preached from II Timothy 4:6-8 this morning.

I really enjoyed lead singer Denver Bierman and the Mile High Orchestra tonight at the free concert hosted by the First Baptist Church of Dallas. I got all 9 of their CDs. We went out to La Madeleine for dinner after we have gotten all of our CDs autographed.

Went to the free concert featuring the Shane and Shane band, hosted by Park Cities Baptist Church at the Majestic Theater downtown.

I have always thought of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or the new name Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) as those with very limited capabilities but it appears that it's no longer the case, page 39 of the 2005 UAV Roadmap, emphasis added by me: "The sale of U.S.-manufactured UAS to foreign militaries offers the triple advantages of 1) supporting the U.S. industrial base for UAS, 2) potentially lowering the unit costs of UAS to the Services, and 3) ensuring interoperability by equipping allied forces with mutually compatible systems. Balanced against these advantages, however, are two areas of concern. The first concern is the potential for transfer of critical technology. This is mitigated by export license reviews and establishment of UAS disclosure/reliability policy guidance. The second concern is that an UA capable of carrying a given weight of reconnaissance sensors and data links on a round trip could be modified to carry an equal weight of advanced weapons twice that distance on a one-way mission. As the range, accuracy, and payload capacity of UA have overtaken those of cruise missiles and some ballistic missiles, controlling their proliferation has become a concern."

Now on the side of frustration, I had such a hard time getting my Windows 2000 SP4 box to recognize my new Western Digital WD1600JB 160Gb hard drive. Dell GX204 A05 BIOS recognized the drive as 160Gb. I have already enabled 48-bit LBA support by setting the parameter HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters\EnableBigLba to 1 according to this article. Western Digital Data Lifeguard reported the drive capacity as 160Gb but when I tried to create a partition, all it allowed me are 137445Mb, roughly 137Gb. I was ready to give up since I have read everything I found on both Western Digital and Microsoft websites, and did everything that could have been done. I decided that I am going to bring the drive home and try to install it on my Windows XP box at home and switch it with the 120Gb I have at home. One last search and I stumbled across someone's mentioning of something called the Intel Application Accelerator. I went and downloaded it for my chipset, 845, installed and prayed. Then opened up the case again, put the drive back in, boot it up. Whoa la, My Computer, Manage, Disk Management reported a 149Gb drive, certainly something better than the 137Gb figure. I then pulled up Western Digital Data Lifeguard and saw what I have wanted to see all day long, 160049Mb maximum size partition. Praise God! I should have prayed early this morning. Something I thought I had learned but apparently not.

At the Metrocrest Republican Club monthly meeting last night, we had Matthew S. Murphy of the Right To Fly citizen group and Brian Murnahan of the DFW Airport Media Relations Department, speaking for and against lifting restrictions at Dallas Love Field airport, respectively. I learned a few things I didn't know:

1. American Airlines has at least 2 gates of the 32 gates at Love Field.
2. Beside Southwest Airlines who operates 14 gates, Continental Express is another airlines flies out of Love Field utilizing 4 gates and Atlanta Southeast Airlines (ASA), wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, also has at least 1 gate.
3. The Wright amendment only put the destination restrictions on flights that have more than 56 seats.
4. Without the Wright Amendment, flights out of Love Field can only be to destinations within the state of Texas. The amendment by then House Majority Leader Democrat Jim Wright of Texas in 1979 added the four surrounding states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The 1997 amendment by Republican senator Richard Shelby of Alabama added Missisippi and Alabama. So to lift the restrictions, what we actually want is not the repeal but another amendment to expand further than the Wright and Shelby amendments, adding an additional 42 continental US states to the list of destinations that can be served by Love Field.

I have not bought anything from Hewlett-Packard for at least the last five years because they provide the money to develop and produce those, for lack of better words, "suction machines" use in abortion for population control in China. I replaced the HP inkjet I owned with a Lexmark inkjet and then a Samsung laser printer. My PDA is from Palm and Blackberry, not Compaq or HP. Along that line, Target has not gotten a cent of my business since last Chrismas when they decided that Salvation Army bellringer is no longer welcome at their stores. Now this list compiled by Life Decision International pointed out JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and a whole bunch of other big name businesses is supporting Planned Parenthood. It's going to be tough find the time to switch all my credit cards and bank accounts to other companies but it's on my to do list.

Saw Jeanine F. Pirro being interviewed on FoxNews just now and I think she's the kind of girl that can challenge socialist Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It's interesting to note that the practice of posting bond were there as early as 1st century according to Acts 17:9.

We had a long deacon board meeting at church today and so I was like 3 hours late coming to the babyshower for Anthony and Chi at Teresa's place.

We lost power and I called OnCor at around 9:30 pm. The customer rep. told me that the main feed was down and that the power would be back on by 11:30 pm but it's already back on by 10:00 pm as I am typing this.

Peter Jennings has gone on to see his Maker. Hope that despite his liberal view, he had received Christ as his Lord and Savior.

A whole bunch of us VPSers went to several Vietnamese businesses around the Garland area to solicit funding for our VPS Film Festival today.

On the way home, I stopped by Farmers Branch Manske Public Library to return the audio book Miracles by C.S. Lewis. Currently enjoy listening to The secret on Ararat, book 2 of the Babylon Rising series by Tim LaHaye. I also decided to pick up all four books currently available on the shelf by Francine Rivers about the women in the Bible: Unveiled: the story of Tamar; Unashamed: the story of Rahab; Unshaken: the story of Ruth; and Unspoken: the story of Bathsheba.

Went to Dr. Goldreich's bowling party with Nancy afterwork. They had free softdrinks, pizza and ice cream for everyone.

Because it rained, our church weekly community night was cancelled tonight so I went shopping at Sport Authority, taking advantage of the 7th annual sales tax holiday weekend we have here in the Lone Star state.

Everyone knows that Muslims do not eat pork but did you know that observant Muslims do not have dogs as pets; both swine and canines are considered unclean; they are
proscribed from drinking alcoholic beverages and they do not collect or pay
interest, according to this Congressional Research Service (CRS) report Islam Primer.

Congressman Pete Sessions spoke last night at the Dallas County Young Republican monthly meeting last night. Meredith Lindsey is now doing the Dallas scheduling for him, taking over Taylor Bledsoe's job basically. I was pretty disappointed to learn that drilling of ANWR has been pulled out of the enery bill as Amy pointed out during the Q&A with Pete. During Q&A, I know there's bound to be a question regarding Love Field, and Pete's got a pretty convincing case for gradually lifting the Wright amendment, or living in Switzeland as he put it, instead of the status quo, the Joe Barton camp or the immediate repeal, the Jeb Hensarling camp.

The Supreme Court nominee John Roberts said it best regarding judges, that they "do not have a commission to solve society's problems, as they see them, but simply to decide cases before them according to the rule of law.”

You think Microsoft would be better but the reality showed by this article contended that this line javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all') paste into the browser address bar would override the new anti-pirating Window Genuine Advantage Software.

Came in to Carter Bloodcare location in Plano and did a double red donation today before heading over to Hoang's place for our VPS Film Festival.

The 2005 Texas Young Republican Federation Convention took place this weekend in Houston. I didn't make it to the Hilton Americas in time for the Site Selection Committee meeting but did manage to show up to officially confirm our desire to host the 2006 TYRF convention in Dallas. The convention officially voted for Dallas to be the convention site for 2006 on Saturday morning session.

There were two business sessions, morning and afternoon, took place at the South College of Law in downtown, a few blocks from the Hilton Americas. Rex Lamb of Houston YR ran unopposed and was elected the new TYRF chairman. J. Paul Knight of Bexar County YR ran unopposed and was elected TYRF vice-chair. The race for finance chair was a contested one between Josh Tetens of the Heart of Texas (Waco area) YR and Joseph Bain of Austin YR. Josh was elected with an overwhelming majority. Kenda Culpepper, president of the Rockwall county YR, a newly federated club, ran unopposed and was elected TYRF secretary. Scott Jauregui ran unopposed and was elected treasurer. Claire Koch of our Dallas YR club ran unopposed and was elected the TYRF national committeewoman. The TYRF national committeeman was the only other contested race between J. Shane Howard, president of the Southeast YR and William England, president of the Austin YR. Shane was elected with an overwhelming majority of the votes. John Fowler of our Dallas YR ran unopposed and was re-elected TYRF Director of Club Development.

We heard from Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation on Social Security reform during lunch. Afterward, there were four breakout sessions with topics ranges: a) Media training: how to deal with local media, print, TV and radio as well as the internet with Doug Miller of KHOU, John Williams, formerly of the Houston Chronicles, and Dr. Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA.com, b) How to be a candidate with the honorable Michael Berry, Houston city councilman at-large place 5, c) Fundraising, maximize your earning potential with Elizabeth Blakemore of Blakemore & Associates, d) Washington, DC: how to land a job and survive with Angela Hernandez, who works in the Office of White House Correspondence. You can pick two out of four; I went for Media and Fundraising.

God has mercy on me. It looks like things are coming together for our church's very first family camp Labor Day weekend this year at the Three Mountain Retreat, a Christian facility run by Stan and Linda Gary, good friends of Dennis and Linda McAuliffe, the couple who discipled me. This will replace the youth group camp we have had annually the first weekend of October for the last few years.

Went to Discount Tire and got me a set of four new tires. They are 265/70/16 at 111S rating so the purchase set me back quite a few dead presidents.

Here are a whole bunch of important court cases compiled by Focus on the Family which justice John Roberts will be ruling on once he is confirmed by the US Senate.

First it's the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), now it's the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) leaving the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to join the Change to Win Coalition, whose membership also includes the Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North American (LIUNA), and the UNITE HERE, a 2004 merger of the former Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE). I felt sorry for the Democrats, who so far has refused to adapt and being crushed by the wheel of history.

Bach and Kelly's going away party was last night and David's 3rd birthday party was after church today.

We had our VPS Film Festival kick-off party at Lush tonight with the food donated by Linda the owner and wine donated by another individual.

Interesting project, should I hope for an automated car by 2025?

In the face of random but routine searches starting today announced by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and police commissioner Raymond Kelly, it would be a good exercise for the atheists, who are beyond reasons to begin with because it's rather illogical to be an atheist if you have read the book Darwin's black box (ISBN 0684834936) by Michael J. Behe, a graduate of Drexel University and a University of Pennsylvania PhD in biochemistry, to find a solution that strikes a balance between protecting civil liberties, one of which guarantee that one is secured in one's own person from unreasonable searches without probable cause, and preventing terrorist act in the city of New York mass transit system, subway and buses.

If you want to follow the money, here is the report of campaign contributions by John and Jane Roberts by the Center for Responsive Politics.

We covered the Supreme Court nomination, the US Supreme Court itself and also touched on the eminent domain ruling as well as the city of Arlington exercizing its eminent domain power to seize people's home for Jerry Jones to build his Cowboys stadium on our VPAC-DFW radio show tonight.

Yesterday was first day back in the gym after a little over a week and I found that I have gained somewhere between 7 to 8 pounds, quite a vacation!

Check out this somewhat encouraging report which stated that the number of abortions is declining, 242 for every 1,000 pregnancies that did not end in miscarriage in 2002 compare to 280 in 1990.

Check out this website the religion of peace .com, which documented the casulties since 9/11 by extreme Islamic terrorists. I wish the Council on American-Islamic Relations have come out stronger and more decisive with everyway they can in their power to counter the messages of these extremists calling for violence among Islamic believers.

Once again president Bush has proven that he is a man of his word by nominating a strict constructionist judge John Roberts of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for the US Supreme Court. Despite what many extreme rights people have said about Bush, he's principled and smart. He's there to do the job, being the president for all Americans, doing everything absolutely necessary and not one tiny little thing more to accomplish what he promised when he campaigned, and not to make enemy. He's as prolife as you get but to the best of my knowledge George W. Bush has only made one personal appearance at the 30th annual March for Life in January of 2003 at the national mall. Every other year, he either sent people or addressed the crowd through phone or satellite. In addition, I just love him for being loyal to his friends. Loyal and honest are the two character traits that I value the most and I have found that in this 43rd president of the United States of America.

We are finally home, sweet home after spending almost an hour at DFW airport waiting for our checked luggages.

I was surprised to find the LA Times in front of my hotel door this morning. Someone dares to put that liberal newspaper for a Republican like me to read? Usually I get the USA Today instead.

We went to lunch and then stopped by her house before taking a walk at Huntington beach with Kimmy, a long time friend of my mom. Chatted with her husband Ed while we were at her house about his deep sea fishing trip tomorrow.

We headed over to Rev. Ngoc Nguyen so we can go together with him and his family to Angel stadium for the 2005 Harvest crusade. Greg Laurie delivered a short message and the call to salvation. We listened to the music of Jeremy Camp and DC Talk.

We woke up yesterday, went to the Costco just north of the strip on I-15 to get another case of water bottles, got our breakfast from the drive-through at McDonald to save time and drove to Hoover Dam, which only took half an hour from Las Vegas.

Spent a few hours at the dam before driving back. It was 124 degree Fahrenheit in the valley but we were surprised to see that it measured 126 degree in the sin city, hotter than out there in the desert. We meant to wake up to have dinner together with Larry and Tiffany but we overslept. We woke up around 9:00 pm and ate quickly at a buffet place and then walked around taking some more pictures.

Drove back to Los Angeles this morning. Had dinner here in Van Nuys and then went out to the Santa Monica beach. Saw a gal there who was rather good on the hanging rings and was told about gymnastic supplier Frank Endo. Stopped by and got some ice cream at Baskin Robbins on the way back to the hotel.

Two business sessions on Tuesday also ended with not much accomplished except we elected a new district treasurer, and two at-large members to the district board. We heard a lot of great testimonies of what the Lord has been doing since the district conference last year in the many churches in the district.

We checked out this morning, had breakfast and then drove to Las Vegas. Checked in to Bally's and decided that it was too hot to drive to Hoover Dam. Will do that tomorrow morning before it gets too hot. Walked around and took pictures a little bit before posting this from my hotel room.

The business session ended yesterday with not much accomplished. I felt like there should have been better directions from the chair and the business could have been conducted more efficiently.

We had dinner with Rev. Ngoc Sanh Nguyen and his wife XuanDao last night before we went for a walk and shopped a little bit at the Spectrum, an outdoor mall in Irvine, just a few exits down I-5 from their house in Tustin.

I am posting from the library of the Azusa Pacific University, where I have been since last Friday for the 30th annual district conference of the Vietnamese District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

We started Friday night with a prayer meeting like always.

Saturday opening ceremony, I couln't really follow the service because it was crowded and I came in late so I had to sit in the overflow area to the side of the stage and couldn't really hear clearly what was being said because of how the speakers were set up and too much echos. To add to the complaints, the benches on the side didn't have any back support whatsoever.

Saturday afternoon single adults service was great with Rev. Timothy Tran and Mrs. Thi Nguyen were our two speakers, addressing the various issues of single life. We were encouraged to make sure that there are four things we need to be working on: 1) Have Christ as Lord of our lives, 2) To have direction and goal for our life, 3) to continue working on developing the nine fruits of the spirit, 4) to wait patiently and to accept God's will, to serve him diligently and to keep to a life of sexual purity. God only wants the best for His children so don't settle for any less. Also, she told us lthe ten things not to do in getting married: 1) not to do it while we were too young, ie. younger than 20, 2) rush into marriage, 3) to run away from problem with parents, happen a lot in Asian culture with the girls especially, 4) to please the parents, 5) know too little about each other, 6)when one yet to have the mean to support oneself financially, 7) too much differences between each other: in age (more than 10 years,) education, personality ..., 8) not to ignore one's parents' and spiritual leaders' advice regarding a particular person, 9) don't push your boyfriend/girlfriend to accept Christianity, 10) not to ignore any uneasiness in going forward with the marriage because that may be when the Holy Spirit is warning you about going forward with that person.

Saturday night, Rev. Thach Le once again talked about personal developments, the five steps everyone must go through to become a mature adult: 1) establishing one's identity, 2) to work out individual relations with one's family, becoming independent from one's parents especially, this is particular important in Asian culture, 3) to identify one's core values, 4) to development one's core competencies, 5) to choose one's life mate. In addition, Christians must go through two additional steps: 6) spiritual formation, and 7) become trained in Christian ministry and minister in the body of Christ.

Sunday morning worship service was the most crowded of all. Sunday afternoon was the 2nd commencement excercise for the Vietnamese Divinity School. We had to evacuate half way through the service because security and police found a bag left unattended. We had a service commemorating how the Gospel first came to Vietnam in 1911 and how the Vietnamese District was established here in the US in 1975 and the history of the District in the last 30 years.

The first business session started this morning with just the conference adopting the district's annual report.